Which of these two President Obamas is smarter, better, and more honest?
It should seem quite obvious, but it took scientists to finally bring the “mystery” of intense Obama hatred by some in the GOP, ranging from tea party members to Trump supporters, into full relief.
A new study clears up any lingering doubt that the Republican Party engaged in the tactic of dogwhistle politics in the 2008 presidential race between Barack Obama and John McCain. The study, which was published online this month in Public Opinion Quarterly, shows that the McCain campaign’s negative ads about Obama overwhelmingly featured him with a darker skin tone in a subtle attempt to appeal to voters’ racial prejudices.
…
According to the study’s authors, 86 percent of the ads featured images of the president with a skin tone that fell into the darkest quartile of the ads they looked at.
As the Post reports, the closer the election got, the darker Obama’s skin became in McCain’s desperate ads. And while Obama’s skin darkened, McCain’s skin grew lighter and pastier.
During the 2008 campaign the McCain campaign appears to have cynically attempted to use digitally darkened images of Obama in order to stir potential bigotry against him and his campaign. Obama obviously overcame this to win that election and become president. But isn’t it somewhat plausible that this and other attempts to demonize the president and his supporterss for their race and ethnicity were actually at the heart of movement against him—such as the tea party, and Donald Trump’s rapid rise to the GOP’s presumptive nominee?
Many of you will say, “Duh!” But still, it helps to have the science to prove it.
Of course, racism isn’t the only reason some people vehemently disagree with and dislike the president. They’re always telling us it’s really because he's a Muslim. And a Kenyan. And a communist/socialist or worst of all, gasp—a damn dirty Democrat—and that it has nothing to do with him being (half) African.
Yeah, sure. Nothing at all to do with that one teeny, tiny, irrelevant factor. There isn’t a single racist left in the GOP or in America. They've all just miraculously—poofed! Hello thin air, how’s the weather where you are?
Yeah, but yet another recent study conducted at Stanford confirms the impact of the kind of shading the McCain campaign attempted on potential voters.
The research team interviewed volunteers who they separated into two groups. One group was shown photos of celebrities which included a photo of Obama with digitally lightened skin. The other group saw the same photos, but with an image of Obama with darker skin.
Among 255 white subjects, people shown the darkened picture of Obama were almost twice as likely to say that they support the Tea Party when questioned by researchers.
“The result suggests that some white Americans are more likely to oppose Obama solely because of the shade of his skin,” wrote the Post’s Max Ehrenfreund. “For them, the reality that someone with a dark complexion occupies the nation’s highest office could be a source of unease.”
This precise correlation is exactly what we were repeatedly told was not the core impetus for the tea party movement, whose proponents merely wanted to “take their country back.” Then there’s Trump, who only wants to “Make America Great Again” (because it’s clearly so un-great now with that blacky black black Obama as president).
There are even specific cases where families have been torn apart over this very issue.
“I’d known for a while that my mum was open to the idea of Trump as her candidate,” Perry writes. “My dad has been a Trump supporter from the beginning.” Perry has lived in Australia for the last seven years and communicates with her family primarily via Facebook, but they don’t talk about politics.
Perry says that she never uses Twitter, but was disturbed by what she found when she visited her mother’s account. “Hateful memes, ugly language, and appearance-based attacks, targeted at Hillary Clinton, stacked up,” Perry wrote. “And not just hateful, but off-topic and malicious calling Hillary ‘ugly,’ ‘old’ and ‘screechy.’ An ‘unlikeable old bag. The ‘woman card’ stinks!’ my mother wrote. My mother! A college instructor! She should know better. She’s no internet troll. Is she?”
That’s when she remembered the words she grew up hearing. “After the Obama election, my mother had said to me: ‘You know, I think I only voted for Obama to prove to myself that I wasn’t racist.’ I walked away from that conversation,” Perry continues.
So her mother, who regularly used epithets at home like “wetbacks” or “beaners” for the Latinos she taught English to, voted for Obama to prove to herself she wasn’t racist. But when Trump came along, she went all in.
Putting a face on the struggle for immigrant families didn’t stop derogatory names like “greaseball,” “wetback,” “spic” or “beaner” from being used Perry’s house, however. “That’s what we called Mexicans,” she wrote for the Sydney Morning Herald.
…
She says she has walked away from many political conversations, choosing to ignore them and shrug it off as nothing more than talk. But [the pro-Trump tweeting] was a whole new level and one she couldn’t ignore it any longer. “I commented on my mum’s tweet and asked her if she’d really written those words. Her response: “(American Flag emoji) You don’t share my beliefs, and you don’t have to. (smiley face emoji).”
This type of situation may explain why Trump was endorsed by David Duke. It might also expalain how and why white supremacist William Johnson was named as a Trump delegate in California, even though a “database error” had prevented his name from being removed. Or how an Islamophobic pastor was also included as a delegate.
This is not a boating accident. There’s a reason racists flocked to the tea party, why they flock to Trump, and why he and other GOP politicians continue to pander to them.
McCain attempted to exploit this, but Trump has taken it to new depths—especially with his most recent claim that some of the most dangerous places on earth are Ferguson and Oakland.
In his continuing efforts to "put America first," presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump named three U.S. cities when asked about the most dangerous places he’s ever been in an interview published Wednesday.
Reporter Robert Draper spoke with Trump for The New York Times Magazine and asked the billionaire about the most dangerous place he's ever been, after Trump balked at the idea of having to go to Iraq.
“Brooklyn,” Trump replied, laughing. “No, there are places in America that are among the most dangerous in the world. You go to places like Oakland. Or Ferguson. The crime numbers are worse. Seriously.”
No, their crime numbers are not worse. Seriously.
The most dangerous city in the world is Caracas, Venezuela, with a murder rate of 119.87 for every 100,000 residents. There aren’t any American cities that are even in the top 10. St. Louis is the most dangerous American city at No. 15 with a murder rate of 59.23 per 100,000 residents, nearly half of Caracas’ rate. Next comes Baltimore (No. 19) with 54.98, Detroit (No. 28) at 48.89, and New Orleans (No. 31) at 41.44.
Neither Ferguson, which has had a murder rate of 9.5 per 100,000 over the last three years, or Oakland (19.5 per 100,000) are even included in the top 50.
So exactly what could be going on in Trump’s mind when making this fairly offhand comment to make him think that in those cities “the crime numbers are worse, seriously”? Even when you lower the scope just to cities that Trump himself has visited, are we supposed to believe that he’s been to Ferguson and Oakland but he hasn’t been to St. Louis, Detroit, or New Orleans? How do you even get to be that far off the mark?
Could it be that those two cities are known for being majority black and have had major controversies over police shooting victims such as Michael Brown, and riots over Black Lives Matter?
Does Donald Trump even think black lives (also) matter at all? Do his supporters?
We can only predict what future studies might reveal, but it’s a safe bet that the odds are against it.
Monday, May 23, 2016 · 3:07:32 AM +00:00 · Frank Vyan Walton
To address one issue brought up that it’s possible the McCain campaign didn’t deliberately darken these ad images specifically for racial reasons — a point which is mentioned in the first study — I would say of course that’s possible. It may have simply been an aesthetic editing decision or even just an attempt to create a “mood” with color correction without it necessarily being a sinister racial plot.
i’m open to the idea that this was not done with intentional malice.
However whether it was or not is essentially unproveble. We would need a member of the McCain campaign to come out and openly admit that this was a deliberate racial plot, and frankly when does that ever happen? Paula Deen and Donald Sterling still claim they didn’t actually mean anything “racial” with their actions and statements, not even her dressing up her black employees as slaves for a “plantation style dinner party” and his “don’t bring black guys to my games” shtick.
You’re pretty much not gonna get this kind of admission from a Tea Partier or Trump fan either, except for those like David Duke, the KKK, White-Supremacists, Neo-Nazis, Skinheads and others who’ve already made that kind of admission and are now rolling on the Trump Train full speed.
Here’s the thing, when you mention just the possibility that ANY, even a single solitary one of these people just MIGHT be the smallest amount -— r.a.c.i.s.t — they go ballistic.
They say it’s “playing the race card.” That it’s an attempt to distract from their “legitimate” issues. They say that they should get the benefit of the doubt on their potential racial animus even tho reams and reams of statistics and surveys continue to show their bias, but it can’t be proven in individual cases until they specifically admit it, which they wont.
A new survey by the University of Washington Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race & Sexuality offers fresh insight into the racial attitudes of Tea Party sympathizers. "The data suggests that people who are Tea Party supporters have a higher probability"—25 percent, to be exact—"of being racially resentful than those who are not Tea Party supporters," says Christopher Parker, who directed the study. "The Tea Party is not just about politics and size of government. The data suggests it may also be about race."
But Ok, fine — Let’s make them a deal.
You guys can get the benefit doubt until proven a racist, when you’re willing to give Mexicans, LGBT, Muslims and Black people the benefit of the doubt on being “Rapists, Drug Dealers, Pedophiles, Terrorists and/or Criminals” — despite the statistics which you continually get wrong — until you have specific proof beyond a reasonable doubt in. each. specific. individual. case.
And until you do have that specific proof you promise to SHUT THE FRAK UP about the subject.
I’m willing to do the same, but if you aren’t and continue to use surveys and statistics you barely understand to talk biased smack about minorities constantly presuming the worst about them, then we get to do the same about you guys.
Deal?
Your move.