"Is Race Part of Anti-Obama Fervor?" - vote your opinion

[uu_mom]

Is Race Part of Anti-Obama Fervor? I can't believe that currently the category with the most votes says that there has been no racism:
How much of a role do you think race plays in opposition to President Obama?
None 45%
A lot 36%
A little 19%
Racism is subconscious and many studies point out that children learn it at a young age. This is a recent

Comments

[anonymous]

Well, I'll read up on the Richards case, though spewing racist remarks and then denying you are a racism, is called lying, in my book. Not subconcious. And I think, in the Katrina crisis, the difference lay in what it was people were taking, as in; people taking food, clothes or medical supplies were simply surviving. People taking televisions and hi-fi's? They're looting. In the case of a bag of course it's hard to tell. Irregardless of that, however, I do not believe that you can apply "Survivor" labels to white people, and "Looter" labels to black people, and NOT realise that you had done so. That's plain unrealistic. If there was racism in those news reports, then the reporters knew full well they were doing it.

As to the Harvard test, it's as unscientific as licking a cat to see what colour it is. Far too many variables that can very easily effect the results. Ive gotten four different results from that test so far.

Racism is certainly part of people's lives, it's an all too commen blight on humanity, but that does not mean that people can be racist without being aware of it.

[uu_mom]

It's easy to rationalize that racist acts aren't racist at all in spite of our history in this matter. Snopes posts two cases from Katrina which are suspected cases that either can't be proven or have other explanations: http://www.snopes.com/katrina/photos/looters.asp
http://www.snopes.com/katrina/photos/whatswrong.asp

I'm going to Wacan.org to discuss this with you more.

[anonymous]

Well unfortunatly until someone invents a mind-reading device it's pretty much impossible to tell what someone's motive really is. Last I checked though, we ran on the "Innocent until proven guilty" basis present in all civilized societies.

The two links I have some issues with; The first link uses one news company in it's first photo, and a different in it's second. I'm sure both had plenty, so why use different sources? I'd give the link far higher credibilty had it demonstrated that the SAME PEOPLE described black people as "looting" and white people as "finding". But it doesn't. It demonstrates that one group of people described atleast black people as looting. It might also have described white people as looting, but we aren't shown that.

The second link simply doesn't provide enough information to draw a proper conclusion.

As you say though, let's take this to WACAN.

[uu_mom]

Since you're from the UK, you may not be familiar with what happened after Katrina. For me this wasn't necessarily evidence of racism - as you say it was two differerent photographers, but possibly an institutional racism in the media - it's easier to call an African American a looter & a white person a finder - it's more socially acceptable. Can't you see how it might appear to someone who had this kind of thing happen repeatedly all their life? The shops were abandoned, the people had been there for five days since the floods so they were hungry and even the cops were taking food from the grocery stores - context is important. Some went in the shops & some "found the food floating around". There were also reports of police looting, but that didn't get out much. See this amateur video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7Kc1sBntXI and this report which shows mostly black people, but there were white, too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xN2DmtIm6Qo
Here's a white official complaining about the problem, though the media mostly showed black people complaining: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxETg1WcTrQ
but African Americans suffered the most since the low-lying areas were more poverty-stricken areas & they got help last. Racism is perpetuated through the media. In my primarily African American community, that has changed a lot, but there still is the disparity of more poor black people and more black people in prison and black children in public schools not getting a good education.