The author
Posted on 11/03/2012 9:09:10 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The fury sizzles from the screen: images of President Barack Obama on a trip to Kenya, declaring he is proud to be “back home.” Another denigrating Obama’s publicly released birth certificate with the label, “Stamp Out Fraud.” And yet another that blares “Missing: REAL birth certificates and 2 U.S. citizen parents.”
Extremist conspiracy theories proliferated in 2008, when Obama became a contender for the title of first black president. But these racially-driven slurs are circulating today on the Internet, and reaching ever-wider audiences.
When Obama won in 2008, pundits proclaimed a new “post-racist” America.
But a study released last week shows that although racist views are quieter today, they’re still echoing in the minds of voters. On Tuesday, they could even determine the outcome of a too-close-to-call poll.
“Anti-black sentiment seems to have increased slightly in America over the course of Mr. Obama’s term and this sentiment may be shaping evaluations of (his) presidency as well as the likelihood that individuals will vote for him in 2012,” says The Associated Press study, carried out by researchers at Stanford University, University of Chicago and University of Michigan.
Some Americans are willing to admit their racist sentiments in online questionnaires, if not in public. Fifty-one per cent of those polled in 2012 expressed “explicit” anti-black attitudes, compared with 48 per cent in a similar study in 2008. On election day, that could clip 5 percentage points from Obama’s popular vote in a contest with white rival Mitt Romney.
However, Obama could also gain 3 percentage points from pro-black voters. That would add up to a smaller 2 percentage point net loss due to racism.
The studies, done over the Internet, were developed to measure sensitive racial attitudes between 2008 and 2012. Altogether, they surveyed 4,336 people, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
“The results are disturbing but not surprising,” says Josh Pasek of University of Michigan, one of the study’s authors. “Racial attitudes in America have been a major issue for a long time. To imagine they’d disappear with the election of a black president is probably naïve.”
He adds, “I don’t believe that either candidate wants racial tension as part of the discussion. But to imagine those views aren’t playing out under the surface is to forget a lot of American history.”
So deep are those sentiments — either overt or covert — that “racial resentment” is one of two most strongly held contemporary political attitudes, says David O. Sears in the New York Times. The UCLA psychology professor extensively analyzed attitudes to race in the 2008 election.
Party identification, the other attitude Sears cites, is becoming increasingly polarized by race. According to the Pew Research Center, 56 per cent of registered white male voters identify as Republicans and 36 per cent as Democrats in 2012, a 20-point spread.
Rising resentment against Muslims also hits Obama, whose bitterest foes refer to him as “Hussein,” and refuse to accept that he is not Muslim. A recent Pew poll found that only 49 per cent of voters — less than half — know Obama is Christian, and 17 per cent believe he’s a Muslim in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The poll also showed that the number of Republicans who believe Obama is Muslim has doubled to 30 per cent since 2008.
The overlap of religion and race may be a factor in Pew’s finding that some 62 per cent of voters are untroubled by Romney’s Mormon faith.
While hate groups have increased sharply in the U.S since 2008, their main focus is no longer anti-black, but anti-gay and anti-Muslim, a product, researchers say, of widespread propaganda by the religious right.
Anti-Muslim hate groups tripled from 10 to 30 in 2011, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremism in the U.S.
“It is a completely artificial thing,” the centre’s senior fellow Mark Potok told ABC News. “That anti-Muslim wave is the work of propagandists and nothing more.” He blames not only religious extremists, but political “opportunists” for the spike in attitude.
Rising anti-Muslim resentment, along with the persistent “birther” movement, does shine a light on the forces behind seemingly puzzling trends in the U.S.
Their subtext is that Obama is an outsider, a foreigner, essentially un-American and anti-American — as in the Republican contention that he “apologizes” to Islamic countries for the U.S.’s behaviour and, in Benghazi (where a deadly assault on the U.S. Consulate killed an ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans), turned traitor to besieged American personnel.
If Obama wins the election, Potok says, the rhetoric, and rage, among hate groups could grow worse. “These groups are getting angrier and angrier. They’re looking at four (more) years under a black guy who they hate.”
For Obama, however, the white male voters’ drift to the Republican right may yet be less threatening than it seems. While their numbers have grown, those of black and Hispanic voters have also risen. If they turn out to support Obama with the same zeal as 2008, their vote could be the tipping point in 2012.
“Whatever scenario comes to pass,” says a Brookings Institution analysis, “minorities are going to matter. The new demography of the electorate guarantees it. If the white Republican base turns out in full force, the votes of African Americans and growing Hispanic populations will be necessary for Democratic wins in a slew of interior states with largely white electorates.
“The 2012 election will most assuredly be a battle of turnout and its outcome will greatly depend on the enthusiasm of minority voting blocks.”
The author
Ugly racist b!tch.
Obama the hater of 1% is going off to Hawaii to live in a 40 Million Dollar Beach House and we will be a better country
Judging from the photo. I’ll assume Obama has secured the Hag vote.
So, if we thought obama was born in France would we be racists?
If we asked Romney for his birth certificate would we be racists?
I don’t care if I’m called a racist. I was called a racist when obama made his first speech after he was sworn in. So, since then I’ve accepted that I must be a racist.
I’m from Kanadastan originally and whomever believes that canadians are friends of Americans are utterly stupid.
The canadian inferiority complex is alive and well, and when I head there for Christmas, all I hear about is how wonderful Odumbo is. In high school, we were all brainwashed to hate American history so this did not surprise me. I expect more stupidity from the land of imbeciles, Kanada when Odumbo goes down next week.
You got it all wrong....
We are throwing his sorry @$$ out...
...because he is a sorry preezy...
....who embraces sorry ideas
Like obamacare ( modeled after canuck-care)...
We are throwing him out in keeping with the finest American trradition of firing bad leaders....
.... Like Jimmah Cahtah... etc.
Don't get stuck on stoopey...
It’s not that he’s black.
He’s a lazy, lying, piece of shit.
Next time put the picture first, so I won’t bother reading such twaddle.
Now I need to go find some eye bleach.
Dayum...if she walked through a haunted house, she’d come out with a paycheck!
She so wants those riots so badly she can taste it.
Looks like someone from our Worker’s Party.
Sounds like, too.
please. Why do these people survive? The welfare state allows people too stupid to take care of themselves to thrive. Taking the human race further down with them.
Using their term, that’s unsustainable.
What amuses me about members of these so-called “worker’s parties” is that most of them never have.
Hehe. The woman this reminded me of is, in actual life, a bona fide washerwoman. Elected to parliament.
Doesn’t make her much sensible, though.
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