Let me start off by saying that this statistic made makes me sick to my stomach:
One in four Clinton voters and about one in 10 Obama voters said race was an important factor in their vote.
As Sullivan notes, one can only imagine how many more were unwilling to admit it. Appalling, right?
But then I started thinking, then looking around, and it wasn’t long before I had put this together:
(Apologies for my ongoing inability to insert a real table.) The left-hand chart, of course, is the CNN exit polling (scroll to page four) from 95% white, 67% pro-Clinton West Virginia on Tuesday. But on the right we have the polls (again, scroll to page four) from 34% black, 56% pro-Obama North Carolina a week earlier.
It’s the first pair of boxes that’s really the most interesting to me, since it was the “Did race matter?” question that really got my juices flowing in the first place. The way that Sullivan, and I, and I think just about everyone else interpreted that original statistic was as showing that these white West Virginians were just too racist to bring themselves to vote for a black candidate. And that’s right on the mark, of course: just look at the way that Clinton’s share of the vote rises, and Obama’s drops, as the overwhelmingly white West Virginia voters give the candidates’ races greater importance. But now look at North Carolina: almost the same percentage of voters put race among the important factors, and here it was Obama’s share of the vote, and not Clinton’s, that was higher than it was among the rest of the population. Why don’t we call this racism, too?
There is, however, no doubt that pro-Clinton West Virginians gave race a bigger role, or at least were more willing to admit that they gave race a role, in deciding their vote than the pro-Obama North Carolinians, and this is borne out in the second question: while only 64% of Obama voters in North Carolina pointed to race as an “important” factor in their vote, a full 81% of Clinton voters in West Virginia were willing to say this. And this seems to show that race played more of a role in Clinton’s victory yesterday than Obama’s a week before.
But a look at the third pair of boxes makes it clear that we shouldn’t jump to such a conclusion. For more than a quarter of North Carolina’s African-American population – 9% of the total population, but 26.5% of the 34% of the voters who were black – told pollsters that race was important to them: a significantly greater percentage than the 20.5% of West Virginia’s (and 12.9% of North Carolina’s) white population who said the same. And this statistic was no outlier: in Indiana, for example, 12.8% of white voters but 29.4% of black voters named race as an important factor, and in Pennsylvania 15% of whites and 26.7% of blacks said the same. West Virginia, in other words, was a state where race mattered more to white voters than it had in these other states, but the percentage of white West Virginia voters who admitted that was still considerably lower than the percentage of black voters who’d said the same in each of these other states.
Where exactly does this take us? Aside from reinforcing the fact that American voters are startlingly polarized among racial lines and reminding us that Obama’s triumph is not (yet) the “post-racial” achievement that many have hoped it will be, they also suggest some quite fundamental questions about the politics and psychology of race:
- In the first place, why do we – and I mean to include myself here – think of the overwhelming support of black voters for Obama (N/A in WV, 91% in NC, 89% in IN, 90% in PA, and so on) as a case of harmless and unremarkable identity politics, while we treat the considerably less heterogeneous preference of white voters for Clinton (67% in WV, 61% in NC, 60% in IN, 63% in PA) as evidence of racism?
- One natural way to answer this question is to suggest that black voters’ preference for Obama is rooted in what we might call “positive” racism – they think his color is a good thing – while white voters’ preference for Clinton has a more “negative” side – they are voting for Clinton because they dislike Obama’s race. Is this true? Should it make a difference?
- Does the fact that African-Americans have much more of a history of unfair treatment at the hands of white Americans than vice-versa account for these trends? Does it excuse them?
That’s just the tip of the iceberg, of course. Let me stress that I don’t mean these questions rhetorically: as I indicated, I count myself among the number who fall into exactly the pattern of thought described in the first of these questions, and the purpose of this exercise has emphatically not been to come up with excuses for bigotry. I think, though, that anyone who wants to accuse white West Virginians of a morally problematic racism without doing the same for the vast majority of African-Americans has got to have something significant to say about all of this. Race does matter, but it cuts both ways.
Discuss.
Filed under: politics
John, it seems like you’re equating racial preference – I happen to prefer one race but I have nothing against others – with outright racism: I both prefer my race, dislike other races, and take active steps to actualize that dislike.
The crucial difference between blacks’ overwhelming support for Obama, and white working class support for Clinton, is that the former is – in all likeliness – not driven by the hostility and resentment that (by all indications) the latter is.
I think this little problem can be solved if you simply limit your definition of racism, since as it stands, it seems to include everything which isn’t some sort of sterile, generic “colorblindness.” Black voters preference for a black candidate (while not expressing any racial hostility towards the white candidate) isn’t the same as white preference for a white candidate which is motivated by hostility to the black candidate.
I do appreciate that distinction – it’s pretty much the one I was trying to make in my second bullet point. But are you really prepared to deny that a significant number of black Americans harbor feelings of “hostility and resentment” toward whites? (Really?)
Even if this were so, I’m not sure it would make all that much of a difference. I suppose I do think that liking someone for the color of his/her skin is better than disliking someone for such a reason, but the end result – preferring one candidate to another on utterly substance-free grounds – is the same.
I have no truck, by the way, with “generic ‘colorblindness’” (e.g.), and I do think it’s acceptable – though in this case mistaken – to argue that aspects of one candidate’s heritage or appearance make him or her a superior choice to the other. My objection is to using color – just color (or gender, or height, or weight, or attractiveness, or …), and nothing more – as a factor in how one votes (or hires, or fires, or befriends, or …). This is stupid and irrational, and it’s one of the greatest things that keeps democracy from functioning. That it can take more and less offensive forms, as you point out, doesn’t change its stupidness, nor – as I said – am I convinced that African-Americans’ pro-Obama tendencies are really as much a matter of mere “preference” as you say they are.
I do appreciate that distinction – it’s pretty much the one I was trying to make in my second bullet point. But are you really prepared to deny that a significant number of black Americans harbor feelings of “hostility and resentment” toward whites? (Really?)
I was thinking that just as I wrote it; I’m fairly certain that a fair number of African-Americans do harbor some significant hostility towards whites. But I’m not sure if that manifests itself in voting; the available research (I forget who authored this particular study) suggests that racial cues (implicit or explicit) are dramatically less effective with African-Americans as compared to whites.
Which to me at least, makes sense; the kind of racial resentment present among whites isn’t as prevalent among blacks, since blacks have needed whites in order to make meaningful inroads in society.
With regards to Obama then, even though I just said this, I don’t actually think its the case that African-Americans are voting for him in huge numbers because he is black. It’s certainly plays a part in their calculation, but it isn’t sufficient. Anecdotely, I know that most of my family members began as Clinton or Edwards supporters, and were at best, skeptical of Obama (and in some cases, had an open loathing of the man).
This bears itself out in the polling. Prior to Iowa, Clinton had a commanding lead among African-Americans, with most of the African-American political establishment lining up behind Clinton. Obama had to convince black voters of his viability – he did that with Iowa – and give them a reason to jump ship (and the Clintons did that in South Carolina).
If anything, Clinton has lost black voters more than Obama has gained them. Which has important implications for what you’re saying. When it comes to working-class whites, I think it is more likely that reluctance to vote for Obama is a product of latent prejudice or hostility, as opposed to a movement driven by contingent considerations (as I think the case was with black voters).
I’d be interested to see the study you’re talking about, though the theory you offer to explain the data seems to be quite a stretch. And while it is almost certainly true that Obama’s race was not sufficient for him to earn the support of (most) black voters, there is no doubt that it’s been a factor – just see the polling data I cited. Moreover, and more importantly, it seems to me that it would be a huge stretch to argue anything different in the case of white voters’ support for Hillary Clinton: if her opponent had been Clarence Thomas or even – shudder! – Alan Keyes, I imagine she’d have lost badly among the very same demographics that carried her yesterday.