Saturday, October 27, 2012

I Thought Obama Was The Great Healer

From the San Francisco Chronicle: Racial attitudes have not improved in the four years since the United States elected its first black president, an Associated Press poll finds, as a slight majority of Americans now express prejudice toward blacks whether they recognize those feelings or not.
Those views could cost President Barack Obama votes as he tries for re-election, the survey found, though the effects are mitigated by some people's more favorable views of blacks.
Racial prejudice has increased slightly since 2008 whether those feelings were measured using questions that explicitly asked respondents about racist attitudes, or through an experimental test that measured implicit views toward race without asking questions about that topic directly.
In all, 51 percent of Americans now express explicit anti-black attitudes, compared with 48 percent in a similar 2008 survey. When measured by an implicit racial attitudes test, the number of Americans with anti-black sentiments jumped to 56 percent, up from 49 percent during the last presidential election. In both tests, the share of Americans expressing pro-black attitudes fell.
Personally, I think the poll is full of crap and I wonder why they didn't do a poll about Black's and Hispanic's feelings toward other racial groups and I would think that you will find the same results.
Do I think there are racists out there?  Sure.  Do I think the majority of people have blatant racial views?  No, I don't.
But even if the poll numbers are true, wasn't Obama supposed to the healer instead of being the great divider?

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