Minute detail. Bring it back to the main point. :)

LOLOL. Hilarious.

Sometime I forget how good The Onion can be. It's always the details that make it.

LOL. Yeah, having a beer with any person you don't personally know can be awkward. Add to that the fact that the person you're sharing a beer with can go to THE ONION and do a news story on you, I wouldn't say much to this dude either. :)

Bush shared that he was a cheerleader at Yale and the guy was nonresponsive. He could've taken the male cheerleader thing to a lot of cool, unoffensive, places. :)

No shit.

What if McCain said he'd put a baseball diamond at the White House?

Surely you know that a baseball diamond is a lot more complex than a basketball court.

Not the point. What I'm saying is that everyone seems to be making this a racial issue because basketball is predominantly black. Well baseball is predominantly white, so what then?

Well, while one may not be there full time, IIRC ball games have been played there at one time or another.

And in either case, there is not the room for either one!

It should be.

Stop preaching to the choir.

Plenty of room for a sport court at at the White House. Baseball diamond other than the T-Ball one that they set up every year for Little League? No, probably not.

If that's the case then that is what people should say. Instead, this was made into a race issue.

Null point. Obama won't make the white house.

Especially when frightened white people are playing on existing racial images to discredit Obama. When the political approach doesn't work, just call him a "Curious George looking, basketball playing negro" and see if that works.

Just like people used existing gender images to attempt to discredit Hillary Clinton.

And when all else fails, just call McCain old and decrepit. It's not just one side.

Sure, people will use any apolitical jab they can use. Age, race, gender, infidelity, etc.

That doesn't make it less one sided. People know which apolitical attempts are the most salient at a larger scale. The larger scale is what matters.

Well, I'd assume it was for his kids because, as a result of his injuries in Vietnam, he cannot lift his arms very high. Otherwise, I'd be all about it because I actually like John McCain.

The thing that bothers me about the uproar over Obama's joke is that it shows me that a good chunk of the criticism of him is basically an attempt to take him down a notch and show him to be nothing but a hoodrat. Since this is something that I've experienced a bit lately, I'm sensitive to it.

I don't think they needed "gender images" to successfully discredit Hillary Clinton.

That's subjective. The fact is that gender images and stereotypes were used.

Brother, let us go back to the very beginning.
His "comment" was that he would take out the ally and replace it with a basketball court.
Take a good look at the size of the ally (posted up top someplace) and tell me just how one would make that space into a court;):D
And yes, T-Ball has been set up at the White House.

It'll be interesting.

In another era, I recall people attacking JFK as a candidate because he was Roman Catholic. The rhetoric was that the Vatican (Pope) would be running the country.

The American people got past that. Whether they can get past race (or gender someday), we'll simply have to see in November.

Agreed and Irish Catholics had that struggle to assimilate into "whiteness."

Unfortunately, if America gets past race for the November election, that doesn't mean the structural inequalities have been overcome. It means that Obama (if he wins) was considered "an exception." I hope people who want substantive and long lasting change do not become complacent and comfortable if Obama is elected.

The Catholic thing actually makes a little bit of sense though.

Won't that be tough to tell, though? I mean, I understand that there are people who will make their decision based on race, but there will also be people whose reasons have nothing to do with race, and won't vote for Obama because of disagreements with his platform and proposed stances on issues.

I think it will be difficult, when looking at the voting totals, to see just how much of a role racism will play in people's decision-making.

it won't be difficult at all, it's been done all along. Each primary they divvied up the totals by race and gender and that part has never ever played suck a front seat role until this election season.

That's a different question, though. It will be easy enough, for example, to break down how many whites voted for McCain/against Obama, but it won't be nearly as easy to break down how many of those whites voted against Obama because of his race vs how many voted against him because of his politics or because he's a Democrat and they always vote Republican, Libertarian, Green, or whatever.

The only way to ascertain how much his race played a part in their decision is by asking those white voters something along the lines of "why will you/did you vote against Obama" or "did Obama's race affect your decision not to vote for him." I'm guessing a significant lack of candor, and maybe even of self-awareness, could come into play in answering that question.

He's talking about getting beyond the descriptive statistics and identifying explanatory variables.

This is where researchers and research engines can collect qualitative data to supplement the quantitative data. We can never assume that racial bigotry is the key explanatory variable. We can hypothesize that it's probably the case, based on context clues and societal tendencies, but to be certain we would analyze it. And this has been done in the past and will most likely be done after this election. :) It would be too grand a project to pass up.

Co-sign. A good number of people will give the "right" answer to a pollster but vote a different way in the privacy and anonymity of a voting booth.

Researchers take into account the "need to feel like a good person"/"place yourself in a good light infront of others" when they do this type of research.

Taking that margin of error into consideration, the results will still be about 90% accurate. Plus, there is always more than one researcher or research engine conducting this type of research on a macro or micro level. So taken together we can have a pretty accurate picture of what's going on.

That will be interesting, then!

Thank you for the insight; I knew they divided voting tendencies by race, gender, etc., but I could see the inaccuracy in it as well, in that there are people (like myself) who will be voting for another candidate on issues having nothing to do with Obama's race.

Yes and there's a difference between voting based on race (or considering race) and voting based on racial bigotry.

And when we make hypotheses about voting patterns, we aren't attempting to apply it to 100% of the cases. So there's no need for people to say "race wasn't a factor in MY vote (and that means that no one does it--so that claim is bogus)." We are looking for general patterns that can be assumed to not apply in many cases and assumed to apply in many cases where people are in denial. So there's also no need for people to say "I know for a fact that my FRIENDS wouldn't do that because they are nice people." Only your friends know what they would and wouldn't do.

I guess that just leaves West Virginia ;)

i wonder how many black voters are voting for obama because he's black?

possibly the same amount of voters that are voting against him because he is black.


from an email...

This older white guy asked his older black friend, 'Are you voting for Barack Obama just because he's black'?

So the older black guy fires back and says, 'Are you not voting for him because he's black?
Why can't I vote for him just cause he's black?
Hell in this country men are pulled over everyday just cause they're black, passed over for promotions just cause they're black, considered to be criminals just cause they're black, but you don't seem to have a problem with that.

This country was built with the sweat and whip off the slave's back, and now a descendent of those same slaves has a chance to lead the same country where we weren't even considered to be people. Where we were n't allowed to be educated, drink from the same water fountains, eat in the same restaurants, or even vote, so you damn right I'm going to vote for him!
Not just because he's black....
But because he is hope, he is change, and he now allows me to understand when my grandson says he wants to be president when he grows up, it is not a fairy tale but a short term goal, Because he sees, understand, and knows, he can achieve, withstand, and do anything just because he's black!

and both are completely ok.

A lot and there are nonblacks who are voting for Obama because he's black.

That's why it isn't ridiculous to hypothesize that a lot of nonblacks AREN'T voting for Obama because he's black. :)

We can look at campaign tactics and many apolitical jabs and see how race has been played. Unlike in years past, there have been nonwhite and nonmale candidates who seriously had a run for the White House. In the past, there were apolitical things like Catholicism to play on when that is what made a candidate stick out.

To save some folks some typing:
This doesn't mean that all (or even a majority) blacks and nonblacks are voting for Obama because he's black. This doesn't mean that all (or even a majority) nonblacks who aren't voting for Obama aren't doing so because he's black.

and even if they (browns, yellows, blacks, whites, reds, blues)were, it'd be their perogative.

Of course, it's ok in a "we can't control people or change minds because they have the right to choose" kind of way.

But it isn't ok in a "let's understand patterns of human behavior and challenge the illusion of social progression" kind of way.

I'm only concerned with the latter.

shut up.

i wub you.