After two clear victories and “Bradley Effect” no-shows, it would seem that the fear that racism could cost Barack Obama the presidency was overstated. But Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, a Ph.D. candidate in Economics at Harvard, begs to differ; he thinks that racism significantly hindered Obama. With a novel approach that uses […] Read more »
Did Obama Lose Votes Because of His Race?
Most observers, with the exception of those who fervently believe in a “colorblind” America, accept the role race plays in perceptions of Barack Obama. His blackness influences supporters—generating enthusiasm for his candidacy—and detractors, from right-wing provocateurs like Rush Limbaugh, to left-wing critics like Cornel West. If there’s still an open […] Read more »
Why Section 5 Is Still Needed: Racial Polarization and the Voting Rights Act in the 21st Century
… There is no doubt that old-fashioned racism has greatly diminished over the past 40 years throughout the nation and in the states covered by Section 5. However, there are good reasons to be concerned about how a decision to overturn Section 5 would affect the voting rights of African […] Read more »
How Much Does Race Still Matter?
Earlier this month, I wrote about research by social scientists at Brown and the University of Michigan who reported that despite the fact that President Obama won a higher percentage of the white vote than any Democratic presidential nominee since 1976, racial resentment had increased during Obama’s first term. Over […] Read more »
Targeted killings: OK if Obama does it?
Civil libertarians have worried that some of President Obama’s comparatively hawkish national security policies are silencing “liberal” Democrats who would have opposed such measures under President Bush or another Republican. Now there’s new evidence that Obama’s support for such policies isn’t just silencing them — it’s winning them over. That’s […] Read more »
Why the GOP is and will continue to be the party of white people
… The true problem, as yet unaddressed by any Republican standard-bearer, originates in the ideology of modern conservatism. When the intellectual authors of the modern right created its doctrines in the 1950s, they drew on nineteenth-century political thought, borrowing explicitly from the great apologists for slavery, above all, the intellectually […] Read more »