David Sirota on the "Race Chasm"
Liberal author David Sirota is coming to Oregon soon for a Bus Project event, and the Oregonian recently published a column by Sirota discussing the issue of race in the ongoing presidential primary election. He notes a trend amongst the states that have already held primaries:
When you line up these states left to right from smallest to largest African American populations, and then chart Obama's margin of victory or defeat in those states, a striking V shape emerges. That dip in Obama's performance in states with a big-but-not-huge African American population is the Race Chasm -- and that chasm is no coincidence.On the graph's left are states with small black populations, including Western states such as Colorado, Idaho, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. Obama has destroyed Clinton in these states, in part because black-white racial politics are essentially non-existent here, and thus Clinton has no inherent advantage. From the now-famous Geraldine Ferraro comment, to Bill Clinton likening Obama's campaign to Jesse Jackson's, to Clinton aides calling Obama "the black candidate," the Clinton campaign's attempts to highlight race have failed in places where such coded messages have not been a significant part of the local political discussion.
On the graph's right are states with the largest black populations. Obama has crushed Clinton there, too. Unlike the super-white regions, these states -- many in the Deep South -- have a sordid history of day-to-day, black-white racial politics.
"But in the Democratic primary, the black vote is so huge [in these states], it can overwhelm the white vote," says Thomas Schaller, a political science professor at the University of Maryland-Baltimore. That black vote -- in part reacting to the Clinton campaign's tactics -- has gone primarily to Obama, helping him win these states by big margins.
He notes that Clinton has been successful in racially divided states:
It is in the chasm, however, where Clinton has defeated Obama. These are states -- from Ohio to Oklahoma to Massachusetts -- where black-white racial politics are ingrained in the political culture, but where the black vote is too small to offset a white vote racially motivated by the Clinton campaign. This chasm exists in states whose population is above 6 percent and below 17 percent black, and Clinton has won them by beating Obama among white working-class voters.In all, Obama has eked out victories in only three states with Race Chasm demographics -- and those are states that provided him unique advantages. He was victorious in Illinois, his home state; Missouri, an Illinois border state; and Connecticut, a state whose Democratic electorate just two years before supported Ned Lamont's insurgent Democratic primary candidacy against Joe Lieberman, and therefore had well-developed infrastructure to support his outsider candidacy. Meanwhile, three quarters of all the states Clinton has won are those with Race Chasm demographics.
Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Clinton supporter, publicly noted this dynamic in a February interview when he said Obama's ethnicity could prevent him from winning the state, which, at 10.6 percent black, falls squarely in the Race Chasm.
Read the rest. Discuss.
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Apr 8, '08
Some takeaways, to summarize an earlier comment:
Obama is favored to win Oregon's primary.
There will be more appeals to racism in the general.
Those appeals to racism will include proxies for racism, such as the "Barack Obama attended a radical madrassa"-type attacks (replacing anti-black racism with a supposedly more socially acceptable religious bigotry against Muslims, even when the accuser knows full well that Obama isn't Muslim), as well as the "Barack Obama's preacher hates white people (and Obama secretly does too!)"-type attacks (thereby making racism against black people acceptable because black people were supposedly racist against white people first), and of course the "Barack Obama hates America, the flag, the pledge, and everything else that symbolizes America (and his preacher does, too!)"-style attacks (replacing racism with some simple, good old-fashioned, "America-loving" McCarthyism).
In fact, McCain seems intent on making "I love America (unlike some people I won't mention)" the official slogan of his campaign. (It's actually, "The American President Americans have been <s>Americaing Americally</s> waiting for." No, really, that's seriously it. It was in his first general-election TV ad.)
Apr 8, '08
Saw that a few days ago at TPM and like this writer's take:
I have a simple answer for the question as to why Obama's getting endorsements from red and purple states: it has to do with Howard Dean's 50-state strategy, together with Obama's strategy of campaigning everywhere, as opposed to the Clinton/McAuliffe strategy of focusing resources on a few key states. (Yes, I know that Dean is officially neutral, but his style fits better with Obama's than with Clinton's).
Simply put, Democrats in places like Montana or Wyoming are going to be better off this fall, for their own races, with Obama's people running the party than with Clinton's people, despite any concerns over Rev. Wright. They'll get more resources thrown their way, and an emphasis on grassroots fundraising instead of reliance on a bunch of billionaire friends of the Clintons will also send more resources their way. And that remains the case even if Obama winds up falling short.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/187032.php
50 State Strategy, Coast to Coast More and Better Democrats, please!
Apr 8, '08
And there have not been appeals to sexism? Every day, on every news channel, and on this very blog?
Apr 8, '08
And there have not been appeals to sexism?
One of the differences between sexism and racism is the polls more accurately reflect sexism. Folks more universally see it as unacceptable to be racist, so they lie to polsters. Where they find it more acceptable to sexist, and therefore more often tell the truth.
Apr 8, '08
Well, yes, backbeat 12, Clinton has sent a strong message throughout the primary season that she is a proponent of the 50% + l electoral college strategy and always dismissed the "small" states Obama has won until recently. Now that she is fighting for her life (in her mind) we small states like OR and MT and the Dakotas suddenly have become important to her. But the 50 state strategy has worked very well for the Republicans in the past, and Howard Dean and Obama will show that can be a winning strategy for the Democrats as well. Obama has shown both candidates and voters in the other 40 that they do and will matter in the general election, and he is going to take some of them in November. And I predict that even in states he does not win, the popular vote for the Democrats will rise.
3:54 p.m.
Apr 8, '08
The most striking part for me is the mention of states where the racial divide is smaller - because of less diversity - reflects Oregon's potential overwhelming win for Obama.
We don't deal with or in race very often in Oregon and many folks in Portland would not consider themselves racist. Does segregation from one another make the heart grow fonder? Does it make it easier to see the forest for the trees?
4:26 p.m.
Apr 8, '08
White Democrats in the south do not consider themselves racist, and by and large they aren't. They are proud of the civil rights heritage; those who aren't proud of it became Republicans in the 60's and raised their children as such. I can't speak for places like Ohio or Massachussets but I am deeply suspicious of the notion that Democrats their voted race over other interests; if they thought Obama was the more credible candidate for blue-collar values or issues like trade and health care, they would have voted for him.
It's a terribly divisive narrative this year to suggest that Democrats are voting for Clinton because she's white, or that she is courting such (which is stupid - if voters are racist, that means they'll vote race regardless of what any candidate says or does, right? So why would any rational candidate in this party push that button? The only way to gain votes there is to label the -other- candidate as racist).
How absurdly reductionist to try and paint a picture of a complex choice based on brute, shallow numbers like these. That's my central problem with this analysis and discussions prompted by it and the like - it disregards the many other deeply significant value systems that run their axes through the Democratic electorate, and it also plays into a very brutally cynical attempt by Obama surrogates and supporters (beginning before S.C. and continuing today now with Spike Lee's "massuh Clinton" hype) to paint Hillary as some kind of white racist elite, which is an insult to her record, her values and her life's work. And it is also a vast, degrading and divisive insult to her thousands of proud and passionate African-American supporters, including truly great leaders like this one.
If one wants to make generalizations about candidates based on their electorate and categories of votes, one should at least include enough categories to paint a more complete human picture of what's going on. You'll find that Hillary's supporters have many and varied reasons for supporting her - but race isn't one of them. That's a general election issue, but those who wouldn't vote for Obama because of race probably also won't vote for Hillary because of gender. It is expected that those foes of civil rights and their children, who are far more to be found in the other party, will no doubt try to remind us of their prejudices - but it's been highly damaging to see the media and, yes, Obama surrogates and supporters drive this wedge so cynically through our own ranks.
Apr 8, '08
You bet I'm sexist. As a woman with two almost-draft-age sons, I'd like the first woman president to be a peacemonger and sign on to the Mother's Day Proclamation:
Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice." Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war, Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother%27s_Day_Proclamation
If Senator Clinton were to sign this document, apologize and grovel about her Iraq vote, and renounce her Iran vote then maybe, just maybe it would be the Hail Mary she needs to get my vote.
Apr 8, '08
It is in the chasm, however, where Clinton has defeated Obama. These are states -- from Ohio to Oklahoma to Massachusetts -- where black-white racial politics are ingrained in the political culture, but where the black vote is too small to offset a white vote racially motivated by the Clinton campaign. This chasm exists in states whose population is above 6 percent and below 17 percent black, and Clinton has won them by beating Obama among white working-class voters.
Sirota's article as reproduced above nicely illustrates what happens when one confuses correlation with causation. A certain correlation is noted--the data are there--that part is fine. The problem begins when the author casts around for an explanation. Whether he has found one is a matter of debate. His comment about a putative "white vote racially motivated by the Clinton campaign" meshes nicely with a common narrative in the Obama-supporting blogosphere, but I strongly suspect that Clinton supporters would deny that HRC has done anything to encourage voting along racial lines. I happen to be a white Obama supporter who thinks some Obama partisans (but not the candidate himself) have been keen to find racial motivations among Clinton supporters, and are largely "validating" their own prejudices.
I'm sure other possible explanation for the statistical trend could be put forward. It goes without saying that there are large state-to-state variations in demographic factors other than the fraction African-American population. Has Sirota examined how voting results correlate with these other demographic factors?
In conclusion: Sirota's claim is thought-provoking but far from proven.
7:45 p.m.
Apr 8, '08
joeldanwalls-
I also was wondering about the whole correlation vs causation issue when I was reading Sirota's analysis. So I decided to look into it a bit more myself.
A brief explanation of my methods for those who have some knowledge of statistical analysis; I performed a chi square test using the same data as Sirota. In his original article, he throws out a few states and explains why, I do the same, though I also count Hawaii as one of Obama's home states and thus ignore it. My null hypothesis was that the black % of total population for a state would have no affect on the % by which Obama won (or lost). Anyways, after doing the math, I arrived a significance level of 0.0419, meaning that the data are statistically significant at the .05 level, but not at .01 or .001. That's good enough for some people, but not good enough for others.
So, basically my brief research suggested that there is a 95.9% chance that the the black % of a state's total population is affecting Obama's win percentage in that state's primary. Of course, I whipped it up in under 2 hours, and it's been a year since I took a research methods class, so take it with a grain of salt, but it suggests that Sirota may be on to something.
Apr 8, '08
The first confrontation I had with an Obama supporter was at work. This person asked me who I would vote for, I said "Senator Clinton of course" to which she bounced about while saying "You are'nt progressive enough to vote for a black person".
I think the above article is just another way to keep the racial pot stirred. I also think quite a few younger Anglo people are voting for Senator Obama because they think it makes them progressive. I also think that older Anglo people are voting for him to purge the stigma of racism.
For me this election is about who I feel will achieve the things that are important to me in their 4 year term. Skin color, age and gender really are'nt a factor for me.
9:08 p.m.
Apr 8, '08
jacksmith... I support Obama too, but please stop copying and pasting that drivel all over our blog. Thank you.
Apr 8, '08
The most obvious explanation is that many Democrats are racist. They certainly are obsessed with race, they judge people by skin color, and many even profit by deepening and prolonging the racial divisions in our country.
Studies [1],[2] consistently show Democrats to be more racist than other parts of the population. Certainly Rev. Wright is a racist, and I believe he's a Democrat, as are his parishioners.
Apr 8, '08
Racism and sexism clearly play a role, but so does historical perspective, the view point of 50+ voters is different than that of younger demographics. The view of more deeply politically involved informs view points. Strictly economic class creates view points.
Case in point, whether there is a bit of truth in it, people perceive the Clintons as caring deeply about blue collar workers. Income gains over that period put a lie to it, but views developed over 8 years in a period 7-15 years ago gain a glow, true or not. That does not require racism, it requires a demographic matching that period and economic class. Toss in women 50+ and their economic experiences and the perception of Hillary's victimization of the period and you begin to see real numbers that do not require racism but meet the demographic profile of the states mentioned. Neither requires sexism or racism, simply identification.
For Pete's sake, Democrats are a complex bunch, reducing votes to simple equations begs a whole lot of questions and creates an atmosphere that is poisonous, pointlessly.
Apr 9, '08
Avoiding talking about racism because people are insulted or offended, or because it's not subtle or complicated, isn't a convincing argument to me. Yes, we all notice people's race. Yes, some of us will, consciously or subconsciously, act or think differently with regard to people of a different race. To make the word "racism" taboo to the point where clearly racist things are called "racial" to avoid offending people isn't productive. Racism exists. Avoiding the fact is counterproductive. Talking about it straightforwardly helps.
Apr 9, '08
Yes, we all notice people's race. Yes, some of us will, consciously or subconsciously, act or think differently with regard to people of a different race. To make the word "racism" taboo to the point where clearly racist things are called "racial" to avoid offending people isn't productive. Racism exists. Avoiding the fact is counterproductive. Talking about it straightforwardly helps.
Yes, of course. I am part of a bi-racial family. I assure you this never escapes my attention, and we discuss issues of race and ethnicity regularly. All you can do is try to be conscious of the issue.
I also think quite a few younger Anglo people are voting for Senator Obama because they think it makes them progressive. I also think that older Anglo people are voting for him to purge the stigma of racism.
Uh, that's pretty damn patronizing, don't you think? Aren't you injecting your own preconceptions here?
People make voting choices for all sorts of reasons. Can we just accept that? It's awfully tiresome to hear that whites only vote for Obama because it's hip, or because they're wracked by guilt, or because they've drunk the Kool-Aid.
10:18 a.m.
Apr 9, '08
What you statistics say, Anonymous, is not that Democrats are more racist. What they say is that swing voters are racist - and there is a slight (8%) increase in racism between swing voters who tend to lean Democratic than swing voters who tend to vote Republican.
Now this is really not all that surprising. Many swing voters are lower educated, lower intelligence, working class people. They know they're getting screwed by the GOP, but they're also deeply tribal, and exhibit racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of socially acceptable hate, which causes them to vote against their own economic best interests.
Apr 9, '08
In response to Chris Corbell's comments:
White Democrats in the south do not consider themselves racist, and by and large they aren't. They are proud of the civil rights heritage; those who aren't proud of it became Republicans in the 60's and raised their children as such.
While I know Clintonista-style revisionist history is all the rage today, I just couldn't let this statement stand unchallenged.
For example, the ever-famous Civil Rights Act had just as much support among Republicans than Democrats, with the most effective opposition coming from Southern Democrats - whose children and grandchildren are the ones being discussed in this article. It was a Southern Democrat (Howard Smith) who chaired the Rules Committee and tried to kill the bill (and another Democrat, Lyndon Johnson, who manipulated parliamentary rules to unkill it). Another Democrat (James Eastland) tried to kill it in the Senate and was outmaneuvered, and yet another Democrat (Robert Byrd) then filibustered the bill when it hit the floor. These Democrats were overcome in each case with a strong bipartisan force that actually included a larger percentage of the Republican caucus than the Democratic caucus.
As for these folks migrating to the Republicans, Howard Smith was defeated in the 1966 primary but remained a Democrat, James Eastland retired from the Senate in 1978 as a Democrat, and Robert Byrd is still a Democratic Senator today.
So please, put away this superiority complex that tries to pretend that Democrats have always been noble and Republicans have always been evil. Both parties have a strong civil rights heritage, but when it comes to racism, the Democrats have the stronger claim to having a strong faction on the wrong side in the 60's.
Apr 9, '08
Also, Republicans saying "Democrats are more racist" sound like they're trying to absolve their party of its racism, or simply blame others, rather than solve it.
Apr 9, '08
Steve, what is your source for "Many swing voters are ... lower educated, lower intelligence, working class ... exhibit racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of socially acceptable hate, which causes them to vote against their own economic best interests?"
Apr 9, '08
The comment at 3:48 was directed to Anonymous, not Wes.
Apr 9, '08
I only know 2 Obama supporters in the real world, so my perception of voting motives are based on those two people and all of the ones I've met online and seen in the media. I would like to know more personally but everyone I know either supports Senator McCain or Senator Clinton....well cept for that handful of Nader supporters.
Online I generally get called a feminazi and racist because I don't support Senator Obama so apparently race is a big issue to alot of people.
Apr 10, '08