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Search Tracking Purports To Show Effect of Racism On '08 Election
Hugh Pickens writes "Garance Franke-Ruta writes about a new study of racially charged search terms on Google that aims to predict the effects of the Bradley effect, a theory proposed to explain observed discrepancies between voter opinion polls and election outcomes in some U.S. elections where a white candidate and a non-white candidate run against each other. 'How much we are under-representing people who are intolerant and therefore unlikely to vote for Obama is an open question,' says Andrew Kohut, the president of Pew Research Center. 'I suspect not a great deal, but maybe some. And "maybe some" could be crucial in a tight election.' The study found that the percentage of an area's total Google searches from 2004-2007 that included the racially charged search for the word 'n****r' is a is a large and robust negative predictor of Obama's vote share. 'A one standard deviation increase in an area's racially charged search is associated with a 1.5 percentage point decrease in Obama's vote share, controlling for John Kerry's vote share,' writes Stephens-Davidowitz in the study. The results imply that, relative to the most racially tolerant areas in the United States, prejudice cost Obama between 3.1 percentage points and 5.0 percentage points (PDF) of the national popular vote in the 2008 election. This implies racial animus gave Obama's opponent roughly the equivalent of a home-state advantage, country-wide."
And how many people voted for Obama because he is black?
So... you want him to come out..?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Can we stop pretending that a black man who got elected president is somehow still a victim of racism? We're all hated by someone.
tl;dr, but it wouldn't be surprising that someone would vote against a candidate because of his/her race, gender, religion, etc.
On the flipside, how many votes are FOR the candidate because of his race. Does one cancel out the other?
And in the greater picture, how many votes for one candidate are purely superficial lacking perspective or insight into his or her take on policies, issues, and other big picture items.
I feel this kind of study, whether intended or not, has the effect of being purely inflammatory.
I'd be willing to bet that a lot of folks in South Central, East St Louis, and Camden won't be voting Romney any time soon.
Oh wait, they won't be voting at all. My bad.
As I recall, even dyed-in-the-wool racists were voting for Obama. I recall the phrase "When your house is burning down, you don't care what color the fireman is" being said by some redneck in an article.
Technoli
No where is it written what criteria voters are supposed to evaluate their choice for President based on.
If a votes want to make their selection based on race, who are the rest of us judge them for it. You an I might agree its a terrible criteria to use but that does not make the votes of those who don't think that any less valid.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
What about "nigga?" Is that a less "racially charged search word" to be excluded by such an analysis? Maybe they're searching for some rap lyrics or a Chris Rock bit.
prejudice cost Obama between 3.1 percentage points and 5.0 percentage points
Assuming that it's correct* -- good! This is excellent! When you look at where we were 20, 30, 40 years ago... 3-5% of votes being lost due to prejudice is negligable - in any study of a large population it's within the friggin margin of error
So - good job, America. We've come a long way.
* that said, the methodology seems fairly questionable, and I don't have any confidence in the accuracy of this measurement.
Remember, all this is based on the "researcher's" interpretation and "intuitive" guessing as to people's motivations. In other words - horseshit.
"We'll have the developed film at 11." It's interesting I guess but not really news. Some people base their decision on stupid stuff. "Obama is black" or "Romney is a cultist Mormon" or "Ron Paul is too old" and don't vote for the guy.
You forgot sexist, but yeah that covers pretty much alle the bases. What's the automatic religious bias against a non-Christian in the US? You've probably lost the whole Bible Belt long before you get to talk politics.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I see no correction in this study to correct for those who seek to correct for the bias inherent in studies such as these. What idiot in his right mind would vote how these things predict he would vote for goodness sakes!? Everyone knows the questions in these polls are all geared to prove the polster right anyhow.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
In 2008, black voters turned out in record numbers and gave Obama 95 to 96 % of their vote, depending on the source you believe
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1083335/Breakdown-demographics-reveals-black-voters-swept-Obama-White-House.html
http://www.thegrio.com/politics/democrats-have-black-vote-but-will-it-be-big-enough.php
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1108/15297.html
Prejudice goes both ways.
The liars that concern me even more, are the ones who claim that Obama is a liberal, or a progressive, or has a moral character greater than GWB had.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Then this must include his own publicist, right? Damn idiots slash dumb. This is what happens when race is involved in anything, it becomes a weapon. Just vote for the race neutral person.
I imagine those same areas with high racial animus also had greater incidents of voter suppression and other dirty tricks to keep people of color away from the polls. It's certainly not as clear cut as the summary makes it sound.
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Considering Obama carried 95%+ of the black vote, I wonder why nobody's bothered to do a study to see how many votes racial intolerance cost McCain. Why is it considered perfectly acceptable to charge one side of the equation with racial intolerance but totally unacceptable to even *consider* looking at the other side for similar -- perhaps even more egregious -- motivations?
And before anyone decides to accuse me of being a shill for McCain, the GOP, or narrow-minded bigots with a racial chip on their shoulder, I thought McCain was a crap candidate and voted Libertarian.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
They're not lying. They're just belligerently stupid. There IS a difference.
The worst part about this is that nobody who isn't crazy even cares.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/06/10/sunday-review/racially-charged-web-searches-and-voting.html
See that? The yellow region is where people vote for him because he is black. The gray is people voting against him because he is black. For those too lazy to click, the yellow is one tiny bar, the gray is nine much larger bars.
It is overrated snce you're repeating a ridiculous line claiming blacks only voted based on race which is silly. In 2004, 88% of blacks voted for white guy John Kerry and more than 90% voted for white guy Al Gore and nearly 95% for Bill Clinton. So, yes, while the jump for Obama is noted, it's not that much bigger when you look historically. It's not as if a large proportion were gping to vote for McCain regardless. So, it's much more likely that the vast majority vote based on pltical affiliation not race when you look at he last couple f elections.
If any candidate, regardless of color, was hinted at being born outside of the United States, the other side would jump on that opportunity to attempt to gain votes. If there was a circumstance that made it seem remotely plausible that John Kerry was born outside the US, don't you think Republicans would react similarly there as well? And I doubt this is restricted to one side in terms of tactics.
The point is, you are painting "birthers" (is there a less derogatory term for them?) as racist because of this belief, which doesn't really make sense. While some or many of them may certainly be racist, I don't think you can argue that it is because of their opinion on this topic. This is just politics as usual, i.e., uneducated ad hominem, just like your response that people that don't vote for Obama for a particular reason are racist.
How is this news for nerds? Around 96% of blacks voted for Obama in '08. That isn't racist?
Black Panthers in at least two major U.S. cities (Philadelphia and Baltimore) used intimidation and threats of violence against white voters. Somehow I doubt these actions were counted as "racist" however since it violates their agenda.
>>> In 2004, 88% of blacks voted for white guy John Kerry and more than 90% voted for white guy Al Gore and nearly 95% for Bill Clinton.
Now see? That's what I'm talking about. I want REPLIES not moderators damaging my karma (which also means losing the ability to post). Anyway I looked it up. 88% for Kerry in 2004 and 90% for Gore in 2000. So you're right.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
"BTW this article fails to mention how race HELPED Obama in 2008. Close to 100% of black Americans voted for Obama, because he was making history as the first black president. So that's a +20% advantage right there.
TFA says less than 1% (waaaay off from +20%), which doesn't beat the 6%, so no. Also, it was 96-98% of african american voters that voted, not of all african american voters.
I'd like to think that as a country we've come to the point where racisim is far less of a factor than things like policy position, character, and record. Based on those things (in my opinion) Obama should have never been elected to office. It seemed like around the time of the election most of the people throwing race around were those for Obama essentially saying that if you disagree with his politics that you must be a racist. To me it's highly dishonest and indicative of the fact that Obama more likely won precisesly because of racism and "white guilt" than because of his merrits as a potential presidential candidate.
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
Yes, all facts that can be found with 10 seconds of Googling. But apparently it's easier to parrot the race line than look up the historical facts.
I always thought there was a lot of intelligent people on slashdot... yet everytime there is a race based post immediately there are a bunch of racists posts that get modded way up when they should be troll.
Right now I see three big posts about "if 95% of black people voted for obama, how is that not racist" which is bullshit.
RTFA! It says he got a 1% bounce from being voting for him because of his race. Look at the past demographic breakdowns, 95% of the african american votes go to democrats even when they are white! So there was not change.
I for one would love to see this study on a conservative black at the top of a general election - like an Alan West - so we could see the inverse: 90%+ of blacks would vote against them because the Jesse Jacksons, Al Sharptons, and other modern day plantation owners* world would tell them not to. Finally then we prove that it's policies, not color.
Cites in Reverse: find me a black conservative candidate that they endorse. Hint: there isn't one.
* yes, you read that right - they're just as committed to keeping every black on their own ideological plantations as white slave masters were in the old south. Do you see them working to shrink (free!) their dependent constituency?
As Independant candidate for the presidency, I vow to never be seen or heard in public until after the election so as to stay as close to race-neutral as possible. I will even avoid any explicit statement of my species, just in case.
Remember, vote A.C. in 2012, because I won't tell you anything about who I am or what I plan to do. I am the neutral vote.
"I guess those voters didn't realize this isn't a Miss America pageant where if a minority wins, it's all special and great and fantastic and a leap forward. The person who wins a presidency election has to actually do something once they win and it actually affects people (and the entire world and all of human history from that point forward)." So why do people vote Republican, anyway? Oh, yeah, because they will do anything to keep a Democrat out of office... So Race vs. Political party, what' s the difference, to low information or bigoted voters?
Republican leadership = Idiocracy
Naggers?
"Not all who wander are lost" -- JRR Tolkien
Well, they got tired of the nasty tasting Tea....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
So how many people looked for 'nagger'?
And yet the Republicans and specifically the Tea Partiers were supporters of Herman Cain...ergo the Tea Party and Conservatives are RACISTS because they don't vote for DEMOCRATS...
African Americans only make up about 12% of the population. 90% usually vote Democrat anyways, so even if Obama got 100% of the black vote that's only an increase of 10% of 12% or 1.2% of the total population. A significant number, but not staggering, and you'd have to investigate the demographics of key swing states to really determine how much of a factor it was.
Remember, this is ONLY purporting to describe the difference between observed polling results and the final vote tallies.
I'd suggest that if we discard the hot-button issue of race, we'd find that generally there is almost always (at least) a single-digit difference between what people SAY they're going to vote for, and what they ACTUALLY vote for.
Otherwise, what's the point of a secret ballot? (Union members aren't entitled to comment on this.)
Further, I've noticed in my observation of local (MN) elections since 1984, a 4-6% difference in poll results vs real results, with poll results always skewed in favor of the Democrat. My interpretation is that
a) liberals love to tell you how they voted and what they believe in; conservatives are far more reluctant to do so or to deliberately mislead a pollster
b) we all agree that Liberal policies are perceived to be 'nicer'. It's better to feed the hungry, shoe the children, and house the homeless; less pleasant to say we can't afford it. (And yes, we all know that it's a guns/butter priority thing, and that BOTH parties today seem more about lining their friends pockets ANYWAY.)
-Styopa
Most people who vote base their decision on stupid stuff.
FTFY.
The mentality of the typical U.S. voter boils down to "Who cares that Candidate A would start another war in the middle east, strip us of our Constitutional rights, and give trillions of our dollars to his campaign benefactors - he's against/for abortion/illegals/puppy mills/gay stuff/[insert preferred non-issue here], and so am I, so I'm going to vote for him."
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
At least Tea is real and not some made up, artificial crap that will fuck you up.
Posting AC due to moderation (not yours - you got lucky). But you fully deserved your moderation. You parroted a wholly uninformed position that could have been fixed by reading the damn article. In other words, your post was completely useless, did nothing to help the discussion, was needless race-bait and took up screen space that is better used by pretty much any other post.
Don't whine about being down-moderated when you're posting bullshit.
Racism sucks but if one particular big money candidate wins or loses in that one office, that's a pretty minor issue. Either way, you're still going to have a corrupt, big-budget, deficit-spending, war-mongering, Orwellian, retroactive-telecom-immunity-supporting, lying sack of shit Republicrat in the white house. I'm not saying there's no difference between Obama and Romney (there are differences) but if you study them on the really important issues, they are identical.
Both think the government isn't spending enough of your money on defense contractors. They disagree about whether that money should be taken from you in the form of taxes, or in the form of currency devaluation. Both think citizenry should not have any privacy and government should have the technical capacity, if not the legal right, to watch you having sex without getting a warrant first. Both think industries should write the laws that regulate them, and that citizens impacted by those industries' externalities should not have any say. Both would be against passing a constitutional amendment to override SCOTUS' opinions about corporate rights. Both think that Mexican drug cartels should continue to be funded by US citizens by maintaining a black market in drugs, instead of turning Monsanto loose on the poor third-world bastards, who would fold like a house of cards if they ever faced serious competition rather than the pitiful featherweight pressures of other criminal gangs whose chief weapon is mere murder, rather than the awesome thermonuclear might of a Wal-Mart store. Both think taxpayers should lower the price of corn and corn-derived products, instead of leaving it to free markets. I can go on like this forever.
Someone should investigate why so many people talk about freedom, government waste, citizen disempowerment, etc yet somehow the most corrupt authoritarians totally thrash the libertarian candidate every time. There's the real discrepancy between opinion polls -- what people say -- and election outcomes -- what people do in the booth.
I think telling that the Hillary campaign didn't jump on this. The Clinton's have a reputation (according to the political right) of being ruthless in their campaign tactics and if there were something to the birther movement then Hillary would have been all over it. Same thing with the accusations of Obama being a closet Muslium. The only commentators who devote time to either of these seem to be the more conspiratorial talk shows, or Sean Hannity.
Time to offend someone
the study which analyzes the integrity of polls. Then a study on the integrity of pols. Hell, throw a marketing integrity study in there too.
Prediction: The root cause of America's downfall is BS.
You've got "hell yeah, he's just like ME" and "no way, he's nothing like ME"
How many would/wouldn't vote for Romney because he's Mormon?
How many would/wouldn't vote for Hillary because she's a woman?
How many would/wouldn't vote for McCain or Paul because they're older than dirt?
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
It appears to me in posts like this that the true nature of our electoral process is actually lost on most people. It doesn't matter if the popular election is biased one way or another, or if you have strong feeling for a certain candidate. Our electoral process makes it so that your personal vote doesn't really matter anyway, because you long sense cast your vote by the electors you put into power. Like Santa and the Tooth Fairy, our power of election is simply a myth we teach our children to make sense out of complex ideals and inspire hope. Overall, many people seem to not know or understand the process by which a president is elected. For burden of proof I submit that one should research the Electoral college and the 12th Amendment. Also on a side note I submit that one should inspect the amount of president who were not of the two major parties or the Senate so that they might understand the fallacy of believing in the capabilities of a 3rd party candidate winning an election.
If 20% of America is black (it's actually less than that), and Obama was +6% vs. typical democrats, he got a 1.2% margin in the general election that he otherwise wouldn't have. Which makes being black a very, very clear net loss.
You deserve to have your karma absolutely trashed for spreading that misleading crap. The whole point of the moderation is that shitty posters who spread lies (such as yourself) get downmodded and start at a lower level, thus helping prevent the spread of their lies.
20% advantage of black voters, which are 12.6% of the population... so any such effect results in a 2.52% boost in support over previous democratic candidates. But yeah, 20% sounds scarier.
Its true that the democrat party has a significant (90%+) advantage with African American voters. This immediately scews any argument of potential reverse discrimenation. If you want to identify if racism was present in the election (from either direction), you need to eliminate this major variable. I'd be curious to see the demographic measures from the primaries. Obama beat out a well-funded, named politician in the democratic party in Hillary Clinton to win the nomination (not to mention a pre-scandal John Edwards). Given that they have very similar stances on political issues, I would be curious what the African-American demographic showed between the 3 democratic candidates. I would also like to see the female demographics, as we may have had a similar advantage for Hillary.
But as to this study, I find it interesting that we can assume that since African-Americans usually vote democrat, we don't count them as voting democrat because of the race of the candidate, but some ultra-conservative (possibly racist) candidate, who would normally vote for the republican party must have done so because the democratic candidate was African-American.
In the end, unless you have empirical evidence stating that race was the underlying difference between the candidates, there simply were too many uncontrolled variables between McCain and Obama to jump to racial conclusions. Looks like another article where stats are contrived to support a conclusion, rather than a conclusion is formed based upon the available data.
Justin
It is ludicrous to censor the word "nigger", as some areas are doing with Huck Finn, and it is cowardly to avoid any word at all. To what god are you bowing when you asterisk out the word? Are you saying that merely typing it will turn you into some fucking klansman? Do you think you are racist if you say it?
That's ludicrous. It's an important word with serious history. Calling someone a nigger and typing the word are two entirely different things. No one's gonna ask you if you want to be grand fucking wizard because you didn't ***** out a fucking word, and no one will assume you use it in conversation. There's things in history way worse than "nigger". You never asterisk out mass murderers and those who carry out genocide, or the word genocide itself, right?
Stop playing games and speak.
...controlling for John Kerry's vote share
That's not much of a control, considering that John Kerry and Barack Obama ran against two completely different candidates.
I've talked with a fair number of Obama voters. Some of them did vote for him because they believed he'd be the best president in the race (or the best out of the 2 parties).
Others voted for him explicitly based on his race. In many cases this was not because they were racist, it is because they wanted to "prove" that they weren't racist to their friends. Of course, if folks think you're racist because you don't vote for Obama, they probably aren't really your friends.
That said, due to the vote being confidential, it's quite possible that several people that said they voted for Obama based on race didn't vote for him at all, but say that they did, in order to avoid labels. Such people might say so no matter who asks, including pollsters.
Other voters, such as those who must belong to a union to keep their jobs may claim to vote for a democrat in order to avoid being intimidated or ostracized.
Lying about who you voted for in order to avoid intimidation, social or physical, could very well account for some portion of this discrepancy.
Another possibility that may account for some portion is systemic polling error.
What, you can't even spell nigger anymore? Self censorship to this degree is not about sensitivity, it's about fear: people are afraid that if they use the word nigger, even in a non-insulting context, they'll get labeled. I've never seen it censored in print like this before, maybe that's common now, but this is just unacceptable.
Part of growing up is learning that words can't hurt you.
We learned in decision theory that when faced with a difficult decision, people tend to simplify. We also learned people tend to simplify irrationally. It is a foundational principle for advertising.
After 9/11 - everyone was racist against Muslims, after Obama - every white person is racist. The media fuels the fire of hatred by spreading lies!
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
didn't vote for McCain because he's a really old white man? And who voted for Obama because he's black? Yes, some people voted against Obama because he's black but probably not nearly 5% because most people who would vote against someone because they are black wouldn't vote for a Democrat anyway (so this would not effect the general election). Democrats have their own forms intolerance and bigotries but voting against black people is low on that list. This is just a FUD piece published by a Democratic shill, a student trying to graduate, and/or a professor trying to get tenure.
I think percentages could be misleading though. What were the total numbers. 90% of 500,000 is different that 90% of 1,000,000 no? Also, was there an increase in first time voters? I could care less about the end result in terms of the election. But percentages and statistics can easily be made to mislead...
Just because the NY times _choose_ to ignore increased voter turnout among blacks in their analysis doesn't mean it was not a factor. Taking their less then 1% number on face value reveals your bias.
Your dismissal of this issue is telling about _your_ bullshit.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Hey! I take issue with that Mitt (he's a M-O-R-M-O-N (not that it matters)) Romney is not a cultist. Mormons are not in a cult any more than Lutherans, Catholics, Hasidic Jews, Sunni Muslims, or Worshipers of Blind Io are cultists.
Only the Flying Spaghetti Monster offers true salvation.
There was no search for "mormon cracker". The research is incomplete, and obviously biased.
This election will be a true test of America's bigotry, Mormon versus Black.
I suspect your average bigot is far less likely to vote for a Mormon, given the amount of misinformation present in popular culture. I suspect the same sort of bigot that hates both Blacks and Mormons.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Blacks voted for Obama over 95%, some of them famously stating they voted for him only because he is black.
Also, black voter turnout was higher than usual, setting records in many categories, just because he's black. Black turnout took its biggest jump in decades. Meanwhile, white voter turnout in 2008 was actually lower, taking its biggest decline in decades. Some whites may have been making racist statements about Obama, but fewer of them were voting.
Look at hard numbers, not what comes up in Google. It catches the word "nigger" in relation to Obama as being a racist against him? Samuel L. Jackson recently used that word quite a bit when talking about the fact that he voted for Obama only because Obama is black.
What election did Bill contest in 1994?
Sure, Obama's black appearance might have cost him some votes, but it's plainly apparent that it also won him a disproportionate (to his ability, qualifications and eligibility) number of votes by whites to "prove" their progressiveness and lack of bias. Yeesh.
www.chihuahuarescue.com- Help to end dog abuse, abandonment and cruelty
In my sadly all-too-Red little burg, come Halloween night that election year, people's presidential lawn signs disappeared. But only the Obama signs.
'Kids being kids', the cops played it off. Yes; kids being as racist as their Christian, 'Family Values' parents.
Not that deep down, we're not that far removed from the 1950's. And in some places, the 1860's.
The whole birth control thing was a distraction. The woman was backed by the democrats to start off with. I am sorry if you can afford to go to Harvard, you can afford your own birth control. The Catholic church birth thing was also a distraction. That was kept in the new to keep Obama's bad policies out of the news. Look at things for a while. When the new networks start to cover Obama in a negative light (besides fox) another one of these issues pops up.
I think Obama is one of the most left leaning, divisive and ideological people I've ever seen in power in the US, much less in the presidency. I think he is so very stuck to his ideals based agenda, that he cannot truly compromise or even see when things he tries and supports just do not work. I think he is so bent on going with fundamentally changing the US, its principals...etc...that he wants to keep pushing it even to the detriment of our country and its people.
No. This statement is so diametrically at odds with the facts, you'll need to provide specific citations to support your contention. "You've seen?" This doesn't make sense even if you were six, much less a grown adult.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Nationally, there may or may not have been fewer votes for Barack Hussein Obama than a generic Caucasian Democratic candidate (say, Hillary Rodham Clinton).
However, not only wasn't there a "Bradley Effect" against Obama, there wasn't even one against Bradley. Rather, the very hypothesis was based on - at best - an incomplete look at the 1982 California Governor's election results. The exit polls suggested a Bradley win, and in fact Bradley won at the polling stations. However, the state GOP put out a major absentee ballot effort, votes that tended strongly for Deukmejian.
Luke, help me take this mask off
>>>Yes, all facts that can be found with 10 seconds of Googling. But apparently it's easier to parrot the race line than look up the historical facts.
(shrug). You and others post misleading crap about how Libertarians want to end all government. Or that the "R" in Republican means "racist". So you're really no better when it comes to parroting the party line of the Democrats (or communists or whatever party you belong to).
Note: The L's are not anarchists.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
>>>You deserve to have your karma absolutely trashed for spreading that misleading crap. The whole point of the moderation is that shitty posters who spread lies (such as yourself) get downmodded and start at a lower level, thus helping prevent the spread of their lies.
>>>
It doesn't seem to stop you from saying "Republicans are racists" and other bullshit. Strange that you think that's just a-okay??? Worthless scum. How DARE you (and others) go around and make those blanket statements and insults against millions of people? I hope you take your "republicans are racist" nonsense and shove it.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
What does this have to do with Linux?
A correlation between "nigger" searches and poor Obama voting does _not_ imply causation.
Other explanations exist. For example, maybe people who hate Obama's left-wing policies could become so angry at him that they would call him the most offensive name they could come up with - and that is "nigger". In fact, I think this is much more likely.
And how many people voted for Obama because he is black?
Yes. They would have to take into account a higher vote among blacks, a higher turnout of blacks, and the white progressives who thought it would be awesome to have a black president - meaning that some progressives who would previously not be bothered to vote decided to get out their vote.
Besides, a correlation between "nigger" searches and poor Obama voting does _not_ imply causation.
Other explanations exist. For example, maybe people who hate Obama's left-wing policies could become so angry at him that they would irrationally offend him by calling him "nigger". So the causation is in the other direction. And I think this is much more likely.
Fox news, Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and that crazy guy who lives under the bridge by the dump. Just because you think you can claim to be unbiased doesn't mean that anyone with functioning brain cells has to waste any time on your blather.
Hey, nobody's stopping you from doing the same to them (don't reply and just down mod them when you get the chance). Since they're no better than you, there's no reason not to treat them the same as how they have treated you
If you think relatively, going from 88% of the speed of light to 97% of the speed of light is rather significant.
Barack Obama is a stuttering clusterfuck of a miserable failure.
in Slashdot comments, nearly every post has hateful ad hominem attacks on conservatives.
If you had your way, would you kill all the conservatives, or convert them to progressives? And after that, who would you spit on in these comments?
He hated that there were people who made like no money at all.
Article I Section 9:
"The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it."
How would you define rebellion if attempting to leave the union is not?
Is there no one the challenge the methodology of this article? The headline in the form of a question so that answer is NO. "If my assumptions are correct..." "The use of Google insights is problematic, but here I go anyway." I read the original NYT article. I don't know why the atlantic was linked here on slashdot with only a link to the NYT infographic. The original article is rife with statements starting with "If". This is pure shit.
That all the comments above actually start from a position of accepting/rejecting the article's merit at face value and then arguing is telling. The premise should be discounted as baseless right from the start. Are there any skeptics here? The only meaningful thing that anyone can claim out of this article is reduced to the following:
I have some opinions on race and elections.
Blah!
logical_failure is a known alias of damn_registrars. she is just trolling again, and still not doing a very good job of it. nothing to see here, folks, just move along...
confirmed: logical_failure = damn_registrars
Ever tri,ed sticking c,omma,s i,n the mi,ddle of word,s? it wo,uld be, only margin,ally mo,re retard,ed then[sic] the way you w,rite now, you ig,noran.t shit,brai,n.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Maybe the destruction of the economy and the fear of the future has shocked enough people into realizing that the Republican Way (tm) isn't actually delivering what they claim it will and is in fact only serving to make the rich and powerful more rich and powerful.
Obama is pretty rightwing (from my Canadian perspective) but he's closer to being rational than anyone else on the field.
Plus of course, you folks south of the border do have a huge racism problem that always amazes a lot of Canadians (not that we don't have a bias up here, but its more directed at our Indigenous population).
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
so are they assuming only white people will search using a racial slur.
i highly doubt that - didn't see how they controlled for that in my 2 second read:)
Hahaha, man, you take yourself way too seriously. The Republican Southern Strategy is racist. The whole point of it is to get the racist vote. That doesn't mean that all Republicans are racist.
I assume that's what you're talking about, because I didn't make any other posts that could be construed as "Republicans are racist". I also assume that you're the one who ran through and modded down all my posts over the past day as overrated, all modded down within seconds of each other, which is pretty pitiful. But no worries, I have karma to burn. All you're going to accomplish is getting your alt accounts banned from moderation. Enjoy :-)
Blacks = 12% of the US population. Whites > 50% of the US Population. Even if we assume racism rates are =, racist whites will have 4X + the impact of racist blacks on the vote. Strange, how the comments are almost exclusively focused on blacks, when whites will have 4X the impact on the election. Racism? No way!
by the blacks.
The real question is: they actually save everything we searched?
From the study:
The top hits for the top racially charged searches are nearly all textbook examples of antilocution, a majority group's sharing stereotype-based jokes using coarse language outside a minority group's presence. This was determined as the ïrst and crucial stage of prejudice in Allport's (1979) classic treatise. From 2004-2007, the searches were most popular in West Virginia; upstate New York; rural Illinois; eastern Ohio; southern Mississippi; western Pennsylvania; and southern Oklahoma.
I have more than a little passing familiarity with one or more of those places and I can tell you that "n*gger jokes " and hatred of minority groups as well as gays is alive and well quite as if it were still 60 years ago.
I just couldn't bring myself to continue to live there when I had the chance a few times for just this reason.
I travel around with my job and these places are some of the most regressive places in the nation. I can't imagine living in Birmingham AL or Syracuse NY or Pittsburgh PA or Akron OH or any of those places. They're horrifying to tell you the truth and it's the people themselves (sorry to everyone who lives there and is now offended.) .
I was standing on a street corner in Syracuse, just standing there, and some car full of teenages goes by in the middle of the day and shouts' "fucking queer" ((not, actually) and throws a beer bottle out the window at me. Just standing there waiting for the light to change. What a regressive shit hole.
We went to a place in rural Penn. and the guy I was working with was black but not obviously so - whatever that means- to our host - we we're in our host's living room with his kids there for cirssakes- because he started in as a kind of "getting to know you" ice breaker with n*gger jokes ....and then did back flip over back flip trying to extricate himself when I pointed out (I couldn't help myself) that my coworker was, in fact, African-American. Yeah, and he had to work with us for the next three months...
In another one of these places I was standing with my friend talking with a guitar vendor about guitars and getting advice about different vendors around town I was going to be visiting while I was there and he said "oh stay away from X, he'll Jew you every chance he gets". Yeah, that's right the girl I was standing with was *quite* Jewish. Her faced turned bright red and she stood there for a while while I explained the situation to Mr FootInMouth. Then she left to go cry somewhere, and he left to go smoke a cigarette outside, where we ran into him again on the way out, which sent him scurrying away like a rat.
This is how it is in these places.. this is how these people grow up and carry it on, generation after generation.
No surprise that the FM music stations are all apparently also caught in a time warp of around 1979.... Lynrd Skynrd and Journey and all that (no I don't care if they're still around) .
What is it with these Places That Time Forgot? What's the dynamic? IS it just *that* offensive enough that anyone with any progressive impulse just flees and they start inbreeding amongst themselves?
>>>I also assume that you're the one who ran through and modded down all my posts over the past day as overrated
I have no mod points.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
I'm sad to say that having a Hebrew on the top half of a presidential ticket might lead to enough lost votes due to prejudice to swing an election. However, Senator Lieberman was Kerry's VP running mate, and it didn't seem to hurt his chances. I believe the specifics would very much depend on the actual candidate. For example, Colin Powell could have been a viable presidential candidate before Barack Obama was even in the Senate. The thing most people are uncomfortable talking about is whether such candidates are "too black", something that SNL spoofed (probably on youtube, and worth looking up if you like SNL). Similarly, some hypothetical Hebrew candidates might be considered "too Jewish".
I believe that before 9-11 a Muslim would have had an even harder time than a Jew, even as a VP pick. Afterward? I'd say forget about it for at least half a century.
Even among Christians there are divisions of flavor here. During President Kennedy's candidacy, he had to assuage concerns over being Catholic, and some of the fundamentalist Protestants here actually consider Catholics to be non-Christians (yeah, wrap your mind around that one). Romney's facing a little resistance due to being Mormon, and there are again/still a small minority of Protestants who consider Mormons to be non-Christians, or even consider Mormonism to be a cult.
I happen to be an atheist. For any public office, all the way down to a lowly Dog Catcher (if such office even exists anymore), I'm simply unelectable. A couple of the state constitutions essentially require candidates for public office to hold a belief in (presumably the Abrahamic) God, though that language would surely not stand up if it were ever challenged.
As for sexist, I think we're at the point where Hillary Clinton or Condoleeza Rice could be viable presidential candidates; Clinton was quite close to being the Democratic Party nominee for the 2008 election. Unfortunately, this means Sarah Palin could be a viable presidential candidate...
Regarding ageism, I think that is potentially justified in specific cases, though maybe not for Paul or McCain. Imagine if Senator Strom Thurmond had retired from the Senate in 2003 with an eye toward candidacy for the 2004 presidential election. Is a guy 101 years old "too old" to be considered for the presidency? I think age can be a valid concern, though it tends (like so much else) to be hyped. At the very least, we would have been paying much closer attention to Thurmond's VP candidate.
- T