Quote:
Originally Posted by deepimpact2
How did you come to that conclusion?
I mean besides obvious racists, I don't automatically assume that someone white voted for McCain because he was white. So I fail to see why people automatically assume that black people voted for Obama because he's black. Implicit in such statements is the notion that black people aren't intelligent enough to discern whether someone has the capability to run this country, and they only care about skin color.  |
PhiGam is just being PhiGam. There is no valid or reliable method of quantifying this.
Voting patterns are largely based on familiarity. It's also why many people blindly vote along party lines with little knowledge of actual platforms (not to mention the history of the political parties).
There are whites who voted for McCain because he was white. Some of them outright stated it and others hid it behind false claims of Obama being a terrorist and whatever other falsehoods. If many of these individuals had an understanding of politics and voted because of conservative or Republican platforms, the race effect would be less evident.
Similarly, there are blacks (
and nonblacks) who voted for Obama because he's black. These are blacks (
and nonblacks) who knew nothing of him other than he's black. It's not the same thing as what some of us did, which is know about his platform, and vote for him because of it---while acknowledge the historical relevance of a black POTUS.
In previous elections, race and gender mattered in a more abstract sense because they weren't reasons for voting someone. All the candidates were white male.
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