News Day Tuesday: Race and the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election
Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain greet each other before their 2nd presidential debate. (photo by Paul J. Richards)
Citizens of the GBD! By the time you read this, I will have entered the booth, closed the drapes, flipped the switches, and pulled the lever! Whoohoo!! Yeah Election 2008!!! Should I calm down with the exclamation points? Ok.
This is my 4th presidential election. The first one was exciting because it was my first. The second one was a nail-biter (Bush vs. Gore, Florida, chads…this election was ultimately decided by 537 votes out of the almost 6 million votes cast in Florida. In other words, it came down to 0.009% of the people who voted in Florida). The third one was a heartbreaker. But this one, my fourth one, is by far the most exciting and intense election I’ve had the privilege to participate in.
As many of you have probably already heard about a bajillion times…this election is historic. One of the reasons for this is that Barack Obama is the first black American to have an honest-to-goodness chance at becoming the next President of the United States. In an ideal world, race would never have been an issue in this campaign. But unfortunately, we do not live an ideal world. And so, given this state of affairs, much has been written about how much of a factor race has played in this election.
Some have written about the “race card” or the “elephant in the room.” Others have written about the “Bradley effect.” There are articles about ordinary citizens and their honest responses to the topic of race. And finally, there are tons of articles about polling. One of the polls that has been written about is an Associated Press-Yahoo News poll, conducted by Stanford University, that asked participants questions related to race. You can read about the poll and its results here.
In order to gauge the participants’ views on race, the poll asked them how well certain adjectives (both positive and negative) described blacks. It also asked them how much they agreed with certain statements. For example, one of the statements was: “If blacks would only try harder, they could be just as well off as whites.” According to the poll, people who agreed with this statement were much less likely to support Obama than those who didn’t.
What’s interesting about this poll is the relatively new methods used to gather responses. One of these new (and somewhat controversial) methods is called the Implicit-Association Test (IAT). The IAT was developed to explore “the instant connections the brain draws between races and traits.” The IAT is administered on a computer, and the participant is instructed to associate a set of words with a particular set of images. The idea behind this test is not to accuse people of bigotry, but to heighten their awareness of attitudes or prejudices they may have, but which “are so deeply rooted that people may not realize they have them.” You can read more about the IAT in this article from Time Magazine. It’s a really interesting article about race and the brain, and not that long, so give it a read if you can. 
Anyway, the people who developed the IAT made one for the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election. Participants are told whether they “slightly,” “moderately,” or “strongly” prefer either blacks or whites, and either Obama or McCain. I took this test and found the results both predictable and surprising. It doesn’t take long…about 10 minutes. And again, this isn’t a “test” test. The results are meant to open you up to yourself and to reflect, not to classify you as this or that type of person. If you’d like to take the test, or just read more about it, go here.
According to a New York Times article that came out a couple days ago, Barack Obama would lose if the election were restricted to only white voters. However, the article also says that Obama has more support among whites than Democratic nominees normally do. So what do you think? Has race played a major factor in this election? The latest Gallup poll shows Obama leading McCain by 11 percentage points. Do you think that’s more or less how things will turn out? Or will Obama win by significantly less than that? Or will he lose? If the actual results differ far from what the polls are predicting, how much do you think race accounted for the disparity?
Emma-Lu
November 4, 2008Kathy, that’s a really good article and well written blog! Gosh there are so many grey areas as regards the racial question and bias in the US election. I’d like to think people can just view each other as just another human being; who is equally entitled and capable. Unfortunately, for a major mind-shift and behavioural change to occur, it takes years and years and more years of open-minded education and mindfulness. My only concern is that even if we put all the right things in place for absolute equality and no racial bias in any aspect of society, I think that human nature is such that people find reasons to give in to their distrusting natures and will mostly look for opportunities to say, :’See I told you so!’. It’s the melodramas that perpetuate fear in human beings when drastic changes are faced.