Election 08 – Are we Racists? Sexists? Partisans?
A new CNN poll tells us that 76% of Americans are ready for a black president. In the breakdown we see that 78% of whites and 69% of blacks answered this question in the affirmative. Additionally, 63% of Americans feel that the country is ready for a female president. On the surface you may be cheered by these numbers, but I suppose I’m just more of a pessimist by nature. When I first read the results I found myself asking, “you mean nearly a quarter of Americans are not ready for a black president and almost a third aren’t ready for a woman?” I had hoped we’d come further than that in the last few decades.
But then, upon further reflection, I tried to put myself in the shoes of some of these people answering the phones and responding to this poll. Do we really have that many racists in the nation? Are our ranks so filled with misogynists? Or might there be something a bit more complex beneath the surface?
I wonder if our pollsters aren’t being taken in yet again. If I am an ardent Hillary Clinton supporter and a caller asks me if the nation is ready for a black president, what I’m really hearing is, “are we ready for Barack Obama?” And then my answer might just be no. Would there not be a temptation for a die-hard Obama supporter to say we’re not ready for a female president because the question today means Hillary Clinton?
No, I suspect we’re doing betters on issues of race and sex than this poll might indicate. The area we’re falling down on is partisan political attitudes. As Shaun pointed out earlier, we will be addressing this question during the first part of our show on Mid Stream Radio today at 1:00 pm Eastern, 10:00 am Pacific. Stop by to listen or call in with your own thoughts on the subject.
8 Responses to “Election 08 – Are we Racists? Sexists? Partisans?”
[...] The Moderate Voice – Domestic and international news analysis, irreverent comments, original reporti… placed an observative post today on Election 08 – Are we racists? Sexists? Partisans? [...]
[...] The Moderate Voice – Domestic and international news analysis, irreverent comments, original reporti… put an intriguing blog post on Election 08 – Are we racists? Sexists? Partisans? [...]
You raise an excellent point Jazz. Asking “firsts” questions in this heated partisan environment just doesn't work. I think the majority of Americans wouldn't have a problem with black and/or female president. I base that on just how far our society has come in race relations (yes we still have issues). But this election cycle on the Dem side has excessive emotion in it. And we all know emotion skews our answers.
And count me in to call in on Mid Stream Radio today. Used to do Internet radio myself.
Yay!
This says 92% of people would vote for a female president.
Now there are two things to point out. A lot of times people “lie” (either consciously or non) about what they would do and project their real behavior based on other people. If you ask people what they will do and what others will do then for non-judgmental questions they tend to be similar, but for things that have a negative answer they don't. Since not being open enough to vote for a woman or black president simply for those reasons is seen as a negative, then the CNN poll might be more accurate than the one I posted (notice they have very similar numbers at the bottom as well and this was two years ago).
On the other hand, I think there is a lot of reverse thinking. I've read a lot of people say they know others that don't support Hillary or Barack because of the superficial reasons since they are convinced that the rest of the country would never vote for them. I would argue that you could make a case that racial and gender don't matter as much now as they used to in business and politics but that people's perceptions haven't changed to reflect this. In my opinion most sexism and racism is built on stereotyping behavior instead of believing that there is some sort of difference in genetic fortitude. A lot of the bigoted people I know like Obama and don't think anything of his skin color, and have black friends, they just assume that they won't like the black people they run into on average.
Of course they don't like the majority of the people they run into, but for some reason only point out the demographics when it's someone of a different race, so that's the racist part.
Oh yeah, here's the full run down of what people would vote for.
This CNN poll isn't saying that a quarter of Americans wouldn't vote for a black President, it's saying that a quarter of Americans don't believe that the NATION is ready (would vote for) a black President.
Polls that ask whether or not individuals would vote for a black or a female tend to be heavily disregarded, as most people are not willing to consistently betray their biases.
Most black people as recently as two years ago would have answered this poll in the negative. It doesn't mean they're anti-black. Jeremiah Wright was saying something like that around that very time, and it's been a very common sentiment. The Obama campaign has gone a long way toward removing that sense, but a lot of people believe there's enough racism left that they'll still answer it negatively. It doesn't mean the people answering are racists.