Jones Beene wrote:
Steven
You may be underestimating the level of "closet racism" in the USA.
This is getting way off topic, but it has to do with polling and
public opinion surveys, a subject that has long interested me. (My
mother was an expert in this field.)
The issue of "closet racism" skewing poll results is called the
Bradley effect. (Look it up for details.) Anyway, there is evidence
that the Bradley effect has been suppressed by the selection of Sarah
Palin as vice president. To make a long story short, people who are
biased against Obama now have an "excuse" to support McCain instead.
They can say they are supporting a female candidate, which is as
open-minded as supporting a black candidate.
A study conducted in the last couple weeks, which I cannot find,
indicates that the shift toward McCain triggered by the selection of
Palin was mainly among closet racists plus diehard supporters of
Hillary Clinton. My guess is that most people in the latter group --
the so-called PUMAs -- will come around before election day, but you
never know. "Closet racism" in this case was measured by asking
people for adjectives describing black people. Such things are
difficult to measure some of these are crude metrics at best.
Palin's main appeal to appears to be toward fundamentalist Republican
party regulars who would have voted Republican anyway. However, the
selection was fruitful to the GOP because it motivated these people
to get out and work for the ticket and vote.
I was registering new voters last weekend. A white guy in his 30s who
I would describe as being in the redneck demographic told me with
considerable enthusiasm: "I am already registered, and I am votin' for Palin!"
There is a great deal of concealed racism or "denied racism" being
expressed as class distrust or envy. Plus there is real class envy
because Obama is a Harvard man after all, and that rubs a lot of
people the wrong way. (Bush is a Yale man and very much a member of
the U.S. elite, but he takes pains to cover up his upper-class
background.) By "denied" I mean the person himself is unaware that he
is expressing racist views. Some respondents say they "just can't
trust" Obama, for reasons they supposedly cannot put their finger on.
The weirdest expression of denied racism was a woman in Atlanta who
recently said: "I'm not prejudiced, but I could never vote for a black man."
Needless to say, you cannot always count on demographics. W. Ralph
Eubanks, a librarian at the Library of Congress, recently wrote an
article in the Washington Post describing the atmosphere at his alma
mater Ole Miss. The upcoming Friday debate will be held there. He
described an interesting encounter:
". . . discussions of class in the South can obscure honest talk
about race. 'It's easier to talk about class, the money you have or
don't have, than to talk about race and social segregation,' Patrick
Woodyard, a white senior from Hot Springs, Ark., told me.
On the other hand, Curtis Wilkie, a journalism professor at Ole Miss,
believes that nowadays, 'many of the divisions in Mississippi are
more partisan than racial.' His comment conjured an image from one of
my visits to Mississippi last spring: A white man in a muddy pickup
passed me somewhat aggressively along U.S. Highway 49. But he had an
"Obama for President" sticker in his window, right below the gun rack."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/19/AR2008091902807.html
- Jed
