Tolerance Over Race Can Spread, Studies Find

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: Tolerance Over Race Can Spread, Studies Find
By BENEDICT CAREY
Published: November 6, 2008

This was supposed to be the election when hidden racism would rear its head. There was much talk of a “Bradley effect,” in which white voters would say one thing to pollsters and do another in the privacy of the booth; of a backlash in which the working-class whites whom Senator Barack Obama had labeled “bitter” would take their bitterness out on him. But lost in all that anguished commentary, experts say, was an important recent finding from the study of prejudice: that mutual trust between members of different races can catch on just as quickly, and spread just as fast, as suspicion.

In some new studies, psychologists have been able to establish a close relationship between diverse pairs — black and white, Latino and Asian, black and Latino — in a matter of hours. That relationship immediately reduces conscious and unconscious bias in both people, and also significantly reduces prejudice toward the other group in each individual’s close friends. This extended-contact effect, as it is called, travels like a benign virus through an entire peer group, counteracting subtle or not so subtle mistrust....

Mr. Obama’s election notwithstanding, institutional and individual prejudice still infects many areas of modern life, all experts agree. And this year, worries about the economy may have trumped any persistent concerns about race.

Yet to the extent that race played a role at all, it seemed to break more in Mr. Obama’s favor than against him. In voter surveys, most of the 17 percent of white voters who said race played some part in their decision pulled the lever for Mr. McCain; but among all voters who took race into account, Mr. Obama won the majority.

“I’m a Republican, and for me to vote for Obama I had to have a certain level of trust, that he was going to do the right thing, that he wasn’t going to be small-minded, that he wasn’t going to take care of one group of people over another,” said Nelson Montgomery, 50, a white sales executive in Buffalo who lived in a black neighborhood in Houston early in his career. “What it came down to,” Mr. Montgomery said, “is that we’re so polarized right now, we’re only hearing from the fringe on either side, and we need more than anything to build trust. And I felt he could do that.”...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/us/07race.html?ref=todayspaper

[Stellabella]

1. Good for them. But:

This statement astonishes me:

“I’m a Republican, and for me to vote for Obama I had to have a certain level of trust, that he was going to do the right thing, that he wasn’t going to be small-minded, that he wasn’t going to take care of one group of people over another."

Come on, that's a description of Repukes. Republicans do the wrong thing, they are small-minded, and they take care of the rich white men over ALL others. Doesn't the guy realize that he's projecting?

[DeepModem Mom]

2. Good point. nt