"Your opinions on health care reform, taxes, and even the president’s dog come down to racial bias"

[Pirate Smile]

It All Comes Down to Race
Your opinions on health care reform, taxes, and even the president’s dog come down to racial bias.

By Sasha Issenberg



The wishful scenario many Republicans envisioned after Barack Obama’s change of heart this month on gay marriage—the president’s African-American base, far less supportive of expanding marriage than other parts of his coalition, becomes demobilized or even defects as a result of Obama’s stance—already seems unlikely to be realized. Last Thursday, Public Policy Polling revealed a 36-point swing in black support for gay marriage among Maryland voters, who will have the chance to legalize the practice in a November referendum, since PPP’s last poll on the subject in March. Then, 56 percent had been opposed to the new marriage law and 39 percent supported it. In May, PPP found the numbers nearly reversed: 55 percent supported, and 36 opposed. By all indications, black voters weren’t abandoning Obama over an issue on which they disagreed, but adjusting their opinions to match his.
That notion—that our views toward Obama are stable and everything else is changing around them—has been at the core of Michael Tesler’s groundbreaking survey research throughout the Obama era. Last week, as PPP tracked opinion in Maryland, the Brown University political scientist was reviewing his own national polls conducted since Obama’s switch, which helped moor the movement on gay marriage in a broader, deeper set of attitudes. Not only was Obama’s support pulling blacks toward his position, it was also pushing a segment of whites whom Tesler categorized as “racial conservatives” away from his position. In other words, Obama had such sway over race-conscious voters that they adjusted their positions on gay marriage because of him.

If Tesler was surprised by this, it was only because he believed views on gay marriage would be some of the most stable in politics, deeply anchored in moral values. Since 2009, Tesler has been chronicling what he calls the “racialization” of issues in the Obama era—the extent to which public opinion on topics unrelated to race have taken on a racial cast as Obama has staked out positions on them. Tesler has used polling experiments to identify a series of issues that have become enmeshed in complicated racial attitudes by dint of Obama’s association with them: health care reform, taxes, the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Even Bo Obama fell into this matrix; racists looked less favorably on a picture of the president’s dog when they learned the identity of his owner. That part, too, surprised Tesler. “I thought people would have stronger views about dogs than politics,” he said.

-snip-
Even presidential pets were viewed through the same lens. Tesler showed 1,000 YouGov respondents a picture of a Portuguese water dog and asked how favorably they felt toward it. Half saw the dog introduced as Bo Obama, and half as Ted Kennedy’s dog, Splash. (Both political dogs are the same breed, but the picture was of Obama’s.) Those with negative feelings toward blacks thought less of Obama’s dog.
The latest issue to fall into this pattern is gay marriage, although PPP’s Maryland findings seem to confirm that racialization can work in multiple directions. Tesler has repeatedly found that the polarization he has documented is partly a function of the voters he describes as “racial liberals”—those who score low on the resentment battery, a category that includes blacks and progressive whites—being more likely to support a policy when they learn that Obama does, too.

That’s one reason why Tesler, who does not hide his Obama sympathies, was cheered by the White House’s recent decision to embrace the epithet “Obamacare” in campaign-season communications, after years of dismissing the term. “I think health care is forevermore ‘Obamacare,’ ” Tesler said last month on the sidelines of the Midwestern Political Science Association conference in Chicago, a few blocks from Obama’s campaign headquarters. Voters who were against Obamacare opposed it for such deeply ingrained reasons that no number of ads about the bill’s provisions could change their minds, Tesler believed, but Obama had yet to benefit from racialized attitudes on the issue spilling over his way. “Why not try to get the mojo going for their side, too? People who are against it are against it. You might as well use it to motivate your side.”


http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/victory_lab/2012/06/racicalization_michael_tesler_s_theory_that_all_political_positions_come_down_to_racial_bias_.html?tid=sm_tw_button_chunky

[Pirate Smile]

1. Kick

[Egalitarian Thug]

2. Every time someone is surprised by the depth of racism in America, I'm surprised.

[Pirate Smile]

3. Kick

[hfojvt]

4. that's an unwarranted statement

"Those with negative feelings toward blacks thought less of Obama’s dog."

Okay, fine, that is a bit of a duh, but the headline implies the reverse. Further, they are not showing any numbers.

For example, let us suppose that a huge 30% has unfavorable feelings towards blacks. I think that is huge over-estimate, but for the sake of argument. Further, divide that 30 up into three groups - slightly negative, moderately negative and heavily negative. Now, what is the breakdown?

Of the 70%, A approve of Obama's dog and 1-A disapprove.
Of the slightly negative, B approve of Obama's dog and 1-B disapprove
of the moderately negative, C approve of Obama's dog and 1-C disapprove
of the heavily negative, D approve of Obama's dog and 1-D disapprove

Now, they have shown, supposedly that A>B>C>D

[font size=12] BUT [/font]

Unless A = 100% and B, C, and D are 0%, they have not shown that "your opinion of Obama's dog comes down to racial bias." Because there are still people with almost no racial bias who don't like Obama's dog and there are still some people with a huge racial bias who do like Obama's dog. So there may be a slight correlation, but nothing like causation.

Further, it seems pretty obvious to me, that people who already don't like the President are not gonna like his dog either. If I, for example, was shown a picture of some dog (other than a beagle mutt which I own or my childhood terrier) I would be more inclined to say "meh" to the dog if I was told it was George W. Bush's dog. Some of the massive dislike I have for Bush would likely transfer to the dog. I mean screw Bush and the dog he rode in on (or is that Romney?)

But the idea that my opinion about things like the War in Iraq or the massive tax cuts for the rich would have something to do with personal like or dislike, much less race, seems to me quite absurd. But just like the rightwing used to say our opposition to the war or the tax cuts was only based on hatred of Bush (or America), some of us just love to say their opposition is only based on hatred of Obama (or blacks).

I thought their argument was stupid, mean-spirited and wrong, and I don't think any more of the same ad hominem arguments from our side, and further such arguments seem to me to have a 0% chance of changing anybody's mind even if it does allows some of us to somehow feel good about ourselves because we are so superior to those subhuman scum in the other tribe/gang.