Hmmm: Racism and the Election - Anecdotes, Data & Questions

Clearly race is an issue in this election...you know it, I know it and McSame certainly knows it. Up until now there have only been anecdotes, such as those below by a couple of Ohio voters, to support the suspicions of racism.

"It's going to be tight," said Jack Lynch, 80, of Wesley, OH. "There's some folks around here, they wouldn't vote for a black man if he came walking across the water with Moses and Christ."

"I'm old and I would like to ask [the Obama campaign] how to convince my old relatives and classmates to vote for him," she said. "They're racist and they're prejudiced and they're going to vote for McCain."

Today the AP released a poll that shows the impact of racism in this election...

...the percentage of voters who may turn away from Obama because of his race could easily be larger than the final difference between the candidates in 2004 — about 2½ percentage points.

...Statistical models derived from the poll suggest that Obama's support would be as much as 6 percentage points higher if there were no white racial prejudice.

For a few weeks an email has been making the rounds of the internet that contains an article by Tim Wise, a prominent anti-racism writer and activist. Wise's article discusses how white privilege works in the US. If you haven't seen it, it is definitely worth a read. The questions below are a follow-up to Wise's article and raise quite a few very interesting points.

What if John McCain were a former president of the Harvard Law Review?
What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class?
What if McCain were still married to the first woman he said "I do" to?
What if Obama were the candidate who left his first wife after she no longer measured up to his standards?

What if Michelle Obama were a wife who not only became addicted to pain killers, but acquired them illegally through her charitable organization?
What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard?
What if Obama were a member of the "Keating 5"?
What if McCain were a charismatic, eloquent speaker?

If these questions reflected reality, do you really believe the election numbers would be as close as they are? This is what racism does. It covers up, rationalizes and minimizes positive qualities in one candidate and emphasizes negative qualities in another when there is a color difference.