An honest question about sex and race.

[XemaSab]

What percent of people in the US would not vote for Hillary because she's a woman?

What percent of people would not vote for Obama because he's Black?

I know on both issues people will say they're not sexist or racist when Zogby calls, but in the voting booth the truth comes out.

So how pervasive are sexism and racism? And could either one cost us the election? Taking into account the fact that most sexists and racists would probably vote Republican, and the states most likely to harbor sexists and racists (?) would probably never swing for us anyways?

What's your gut feeling?

[mike_c]

1. I think they are pretty pervasive...

...no matter how awful that sounds. However, I think racism and sexism cut both ways, and since there are as many females as males, a white female candidate's disadvantage is partly, perhaps significantly ameliorated by female preference. Unfortunately, that counterbalance doesn't exist, by definition, for minorities.

[XemaSab]

2. I think you're perhaps overlooking

sexism by women and racism by minorities.

It's a black hole, in short, but the question is can we make it OUR black hole?

(No sexism or racism is implied by the use of the metaphor :hide: )

[sampsonblk]

7. If so, we would have had a female president long ago

Woman are often biased against women just as men are. It doesn't work the other way around. There is never any debate as to whether a man is strong enough to be pres. But every time a woman runs, that question comes up. So no, its not a two-way street at all.

Polls:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/03/opinion/polls/main1281319.shtml

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-02-22-woman-president-poll_x.htm

http://legacy.rasmussenreports.com/2005/Woman%20President.htm

[lapfog_1]

3. I think that's not accurate enough question.

Here is the question I would want to know...

What percentage of likely voters won't vote for X because of race/gender who WOULD have voted for a white male candidate and, conversely, what percentage of voters WILL vote for X because of race/gender who would have voted for the other candidate had X been a white male.

For example, in Hillary's case, there probably is a significant percentage of people who will not vote for her or any woman... and the vast majority of those voters wouldn't vote for Hillary if she was Sir Edmund Hillary and held the same views... however, in the secrecy of the voting booth, there might well be a percentage of republican women who just MIGHT vote for Hillary anyway BECAUSE she is a woman who wouldn't vote for a Democratic male.

Same sort of thing for Obama.

If you could construct the correct pole questions, I suspect you can come up with a positive or negative number which is the candidates "bias" going in. I would suspect that some people in the campaigns already have these numbers and are working on improving them (appealing for more crossover votes to make up for any negatives that other candidates don't have).

[JDPriestly]

6. Sorry. I posted before seeing your post. I said pretty much the same thing.

I had not thought about this before. It is kind of horrifying, but there are people who would stay home but for the desire to vote against someone. That is awful.

[JDPriestly]

4. The people who vote by gender or race won't vote Democratic anyway.

So it isn't very relevant in my view. Maybe the question should be what percentage of Americans would vote for a candidate they really did not like in order to prevent having a female or minority president? That might be relevant.

[Mythsaje]

5. I have no idea...

Race or gender is the last consideration for me in this regard. I don't WANT to vote for Hillary because, well, I don't trust her. I've covered that ground entirely too often to repeat it. If she's our nominee, I'll vote for her, but I fully expect to be here or somewhere similar ripping her up one side and down the other because of her latest corporatist shitstorm she's unleashed on us average Americans. I hope to be pleasantly surprised if she isn't as bad as I fear.

I have no problem voting for Obama if he's the candidate. Or, rather, very little. Which, frankly, has more to do with the same issues as I have with Clinton in smaller measures. I'm not sure he's a man of the people. :shrug: But he COULD be.

We'll see, I suppose.

[noamnety]

8. Some of it isn't based on conscious thought

We're conditioned from a very young age to view white men as authority figures, and everyone else as not as competent - and as denying their basic identity if they act like white men are allowed to act. They get criticized for not being feminine enough or not acting black enough. "Normal" behavior (said with "air quotes") is only acceptable in a "normal" (i.e. white male) person.

A lot of that comes from watching tv and movies. Some comes from the curriculum in our schools. That is VERY pervasive. So we might view assertive women as bossy or shrill, and have a vague negative reaction to that in our gut, without realizing that it's the result of that conditioning. It's like interviewing job candidates ... people who think they aren't sexist at all will perceive a woman's resume as being weaker and showing less experience than a male candidate with identical qualifications. So it would be normal for people to say they aren't sexist, and believe that - but still have a bias.

That's not a republican thing. It's cultural - and from reading DU it's clear it's rampant.

[Sparkly]

9. Story about some 5-year-olds

This just happened yesterday. I was teaching a song to a group of kindergarteners. One verse was about a fox, the next was about a crocodile, then a hyena, then a crow. Of course, all the pronouns in the original song were "he" and "him." So I sang "she" and "her" for the last two verses. I didn't think they'd even remark on it -- just accepting the hyena and crow are "girls." But (maybe because I didn't do it until after two verses) a boy asked why I changed it from "he" to "she." (Not sure why or how he figured that I "changed" it rather than assuming it was just the way the song was -- two are female.) I said I did change it because I wanted the song to have two boy animals and two girl animals. The class was very quiet and thoughtful for a moment. But I saw a few of the girls smiling, and I smiled back.

[noamnety]

10. That is fairly profound. (nt)

[DemocratSinceBirth]

11. I Like Sex With Any Race As Long As I Can Catch Em...

Seriously, if somebody wasn't going to vote for an African American or a female they probably wouldn't vote for a Democrat anyway...

[beaconess]

12. My take

is that we just don't know. But I DO know that we will never find out unless we do it. Change has never happened in this country until it was pushed. If we had waited for white people to get comfortable with integration before bothering to integrate anything, we'd still be a segregated society. If we had waited for white people to "come around" to believing that blacks should be allowed to vote, we'd STILL not have the right.

We can't possibly know how people really feel about a woman or a black president until it's put to a vote. And we'll never know for sure if the fact that a candidate was black or female was what cost them an election since, given the extremely complicated nature of presidential elections, there are countless reasons that people win or lose on any given day. White men have been losing presidential elections since George Washington's time so I wouldn't necessarily assume that if a white woman or a black man ran and lost, that their race or gender were the cause.

I do agree that most people who wouldn't vote for a black or female candidate on that basis aren't likely to vote Democratic anyway. But I also feel strongly that we should not let the lowest common denominator in our party or in the electorate at large determine who our political leaders should be. The fact that some people might not vote for a minority or woman does not mean we should not nominate one - it means that we do our damndest to overcome the backward thinking in this country by generating enough voters to drown out the ignorant ones.

Otherwise, we will never make any progress if we fall on the excuse that the country's not ready for this or that type of person - that is, in reality, a self-fulfilling prophecy.