The country elects a black man, partly because he’s black, and all of a sudden blacks no longer think that America is “fair and decent.” I guess that, like Michelle Obama, their pride in their country is extremely tenuous and contingent.
15 thoughts on “So Much For The “Post-Racial President””
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I wonder how good this poll is. Personally I think it is not likely that such a significant shift in the attitudes of 41% of all American blacks could take place in just 9 months due pretty much solely to a media narrative and absent even the appearance of supporting story behind it.
If it’s true, though, the implications are very troubling. If that large of a population of any one segment of the American people (41% of blacks is almost 22 Million Americans) can be duped so easily, our Republic is not long for this earth.
Troubling and depressing indeed. Assuming it is an accurate poll, what could be driving this? Do blacks perceive criticism of Obama as attacks on blacks as a whole?
Sadly, I suspect the next three years will move back race relations in this country by at least 5 decades, perhaps more.
Well, first, Rasmussen polling in general is fairly good about the science – I don’t doubt the veracity of the numbers.
That said, the most common bias introduced by media is timing bias. They take the unusually high number, and juxtapose it with the unusually low number. Not technically a lie perhaps, but neither is it a truth.
I’m sure that such a number would have peaked tremendously at President Obama’s inauguration. From there it could only go down.
The truly revealing data would be a comparison between several months before January and now.
I just read he even got a Nobel Peace Prize. For what exactly? I hope it’s not for being black. Sheesh, do these things mean anything anymore? Krugman gets the Nobel in economics, Arafat gets one for peace, Obama gets one for bringing hope.
I forgot Al Gore. OK, it’s obvious, these things don’t mean anything anymore.
This is exactly what I was thinking. I wonder what the number was at this time last year, or the year before that. I expect that right after Obama was elected a lot of Blacks were feeling really good about themselves and the nation, and that in the months since they have reverted to their mean.
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Martin,
To be fair, Krugman deserved his. When he’s not being a Democratic shill in the NYT op eds, he’s actually a very good economist. His work in the ’70s and ’80s was very much deserving of the Nobel.
I’m not disputing his academic credentials, though I don’t think much of economics as a discipline. An opinion that is apparently shared by Nobel laureates in the exact sciences.
Obama himself is president due almost solely to a media narrative without a supporting story behind it.
Don’t ever underestimate the willingness of large groups of people to believe what they’re told without question, so long as it confirms what they already believe.
OK, before the election, if you were NOT a BHO supporter you were a racist. But he DID get elected by a majority vote!! As I recall, the word out then was it was a New Day in America, we had verifiable proof of a change in the American hearts, a black man in the WH!! And NOT one who shined shoes or cleaned the floors. Didn’t last long did it?
Doesn’t BHO’s victory mean that a majority are treating blacks better if they’d conceded that a black man was capable of the office? Or did they, the voters, just treat ONE black man better? An interesting premise, eh? Or are they being treated worse since the election, from backlash? Or are they truly being treated worse since some other never before stated nebulous time when things were in fact better? And if things were better “then”, WHEN did we ever hear that as being the case? All I’ve ever heard is the same rhetoric about ghettos, gangs, bad schools and no jobs. Phewie on all of it.
Rasmussen is pretty good usually, but personally, I’m sick of polls like this regardless of who runs them. You don’t heal a wound be picking at it.
I guess the only way to make “people of color” truly happy, would be for all 100% white people to kill themselves and leave their assets to the the minorities left alive. Just given the money held by the Forbes Top 400 in the country, that would put about $150K per person in the hands of every “used to be a minority” person left standing. Add that to whatever working class and others leave, that would really boost the economy.
With white people out of the way, imagine how much better things would be. Less traffic, less pollution, smaller class sizes, less racial violence, and the list goes on to things I’ve not thought of.
Yeah, millions of dead white people is a stupid premise alright, but so are these ongoing race polls, methinks If I as a WHITE GUY can’t say anything about non-whites, why is the inverse not also the rule? You want racial or ethnic polls? Here’s a poll question I’d like to see,
“Do you feel, as a WHITE, MIDDLE-CLASS, CONSERVATIVE, CHRISTIAN, that you have the same rights and protections under the United States Constitution as those NOT of your particular group?”
You’d see the fit hit the shan for sure if someone asked that.
You only have to look as far as Zimbabwe to know what fruit that would bear.
The stat that’s missing is, how many African-Americans thought the US “fair and decent” six months before BHO took office? That’s what would tell which data point was the anomaly, 55% thinking so a month after BHO was sworn in, or 14% thinking so now. It’s entirely possible that the 55% was a temporary peak rather than the 14% being an unusual low – contemporary Af-Am popular culture seems to carry with it a widespread base assumption of victimhood.
And 14% is remarkably close to the percentage of African-Americans who also don’t reliably vote for Dems. Dems who regularly campaign on African-American victimhood. 14% not buying it sounds entirely plausible. Still, there’s hope in these numbers – 14% explicitly don’t buy it, and another 20% implicitly “don’t know” (from the 66% who currently do buy it.) This may well be progress. Can’t tell without similar data from previous years though.
cynically
Porkypine
Rand’s lament recalls a Saturday Night Live Weekend Update bit from a couple years ago:
The President has half Luo and half British Isles ancestry. The only common experience he has with Black America is… what, exactly?
The President has half Luo and half British Isles ancestry. The only common experience he has with Black America is… what, exactly?
He looks like a Black American, and so has been treated as one his entire life. It isn’t as if he grew up wearing a sign saying “I’m not descended from American slaves”.
He looks like a Black American, and so has been treated as one his entire life.
In what way treated like one? Tell us about such treatment.
I know his father traveled the world to receive an education at prestigious universities. Barack also attended a few prestigious universities and traveled the world as a youngster, even studied abroad. Is that what you mean?