Interviews with My Somewhat Racist Relatives

[Tuvok Obama]

Interviews with My Somewhat Racist Relatives
Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Ignore the Bradley Effect
by Brendan Kiley

I found this article in an alternative weekly Seattle newspaper, The Stranger. The author explains, based on informal interviews with his releatives in Virginia, why the so-called "Bradley effect" probably will not (assuming it has in the past) be a factor this time, for this candidate.

It's really worth your time to read the whole article. I've printed copies of this for Obama supporters at my college (including one instructor), and all of them said they enjoyed the article.

A couple of excerpts:

You can't really survey for the Bradley effect, since it's all about people saying one thing to pollsters and doing another thing in the voting booth. And racism is not monolithic. It has shades and nuances. But lately I've been wondering whether Obama's particular heritage—being a descendant of voluntary African immigration rather than a descendant of American slavery—will help him with the borderline bigots. Borderline bigots, the ones who are shy about being perceived as bigots, are the engine of the Bradley effect.

It just so happens that there are a bunch of them among my relatives, some of them openly racist (though they prefer the term "prejudiced"), who live in Suffolk, Virginia, in a town just across from the North Carolina border and right next to the Great Dismal Swamp.

For those who, like myself, are not familiar with the Great Dismal Swamp: the author is not being cute. That's the name of that body of water. If you want to get a picture of how deeply backwoods Brendan Kiley's relatives are, here's a look at the Great Dismal Swamp:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Dismal_Swamp

Back to the Kiley article (I found this description of the whites-only pool especially piercing):

My granddad lost a business to those fraught years. He invested a lot of time and money turning a raw piece of land into a swimming pool with a snack bar and picnic area. He and his family worked nights and weekends felling trees, excavating, killing copperheads, laying brick. When the pool opened in the summer of 1964, a century after Captain Thad was shot through the forehead, it was whites-only by default. Three years later, just when the pool was starting to turn a profit, a black family showed up to swim. My mother remembers watching granddad walk past the white bathers and talking quietly with the black family, telling them they weren't allowed in. It hurt him, my mother says—he didn't want to turn them away, but knew that if he hadn't, his white clientele would evaporate. The way granddad saw it, he had three choices: integrate the pool, keep it segregated and risk a lawsuit, or turn his back on years of family labor and close it. He wasn't willing to do the first, wasn't able to afford the second, so took the third—agonizing—choice.

My family's bitterness about the 1960s is not an abstraction. So when I called a few of them on the phone the other day to talk about Obama, their tone was less anxious that I'd expected. Most of them are conservatives—one uncle called this presidential contest "a race between two Democrats"—but they don't seem particularly concerned that a black man is running for president.

The author goes on to describe the way the attitudes of his "somewhat racist relatives" have evolved for the better over time...

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=697772


(edited for typo)

[asdjrocky]

1. Interesting stuff.

I've been in Ca most all my life and haven't experienced much of this.

Welcome to DU by the way! Glad you found us.

[Tuvok Obama]

2. It's like that in Washington, too

Every four years, our state tends to go for the Dem presidential candidate, and whatever racism you find here is likely to be couched and subtle (compared to the places where it's more in the open).

The author of this article, now living in Seattle among people whose ideologies are generally closer to his than are his own extended family's, got the added boost of finding out that things seem to be getting a little better for minority candidates in his home state.

[asdjrocky]

5. Many of us hope, and I imagine that would be all of us here at DU,

that we can one day reach that goal of being one nation. No red states, no blue states, the United States. And welcome again to DU, hope you stick around.

[Tuvok Obama]

7. That should be soon

They have Joe the Plumber and Caribou Barbie, and we have Barack Obama. Almost takes the fun out of winning.

[Fluffdaddy]

3. Nice insightful read. so much so.........I read it twice.

"Racism in the South is also changing, receding from the public sphere while staying in the private sphere. Meaning: You can keep your prejudice and still vote for a nonwhite politician. "If Colin Powell were running, I'd vote for him in a heartbeat," one of my aunts said. Then, later in the conversation, "I don't want any of my kids marrying outside their race."

Right on the money

[Tuvok Obama]

8. Speaking of the "Bradley effect" (your sig line)...

...here's something to consider (it's cut from part of a paper I wrote last week for my PoliSci class):

Kate Zernike's article on the "Bradley effect" lists several reasons why the theory may be inaccurate—the ideas that "those who refuse to participate in surveys tend to be less likely to vote for a black candidate," that respondents have no "incentive to deceive unless they are explicitly asked" if their support is based on race, that "reluctant participants significantly more likely to have negative attitudes toward blacks," to name a few—but she, along with every pundit, editorialist, and commentator I've read or heard speak on the subject, has failed to address the one factor that should, in the case of Barack Obama, render the Bradley effect irrelevant.

That factor is money. For any number of reasons, a respondent may choose to lie about who he intends to vote for, but it's a safe assumption that the same respondent will not send money to the very candidate he's lying about supporting.

Barack Obama's campaign is rolling in money right now, and has been since he announced his intention to seek the Democratic nomination for president. And the donations have increased as election day nears. An article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal states that "Sen. Barack Obama set a new record for presidential fund raising in September, with more than $150 million in contributions, allowing him to swamp Republican rival Sen. John McCain in spending on advertising and organizing in the final days of the campaign."

The average amount of these donations, according to the article, was $86. This is significant because it means the campaign is not dependent only on large donations by its most ideologically-fueled supporters. I'm no mathematician, but it seems to me that for every $2,300 donor (the maximum donation allowed by law), about 29 donors would have to give $10 each for the average to reach that $86 amount.

Of course, my equation fails to take into account a number of real-life factors, but the pattern is manifest: An army of Obama supporters are giving small amounts of money, which means not only that Obama has an army of supporters, but that the majority of these are, at best, middle-class wage earners—which means an extraordinary amount of average white people are hoping Obama will win.

[Fluffdaddy]

10. Thanks

[Laelth]

4. Welcome to DU!

The United States is a LIBERAL Country.

:dem:

-Laelth

[Tuvok Obama]

6. Thank you

[elkston]

9. Good article, but one passage pisses me off

This line from the aunt which contrasts Obama with slavery descendants infuriates me:

"Well I reckon there's a difference," she said. "Those still want to blame you and I for what happened to 'em. In reality, it was their own people who sold them into slavery for money. Their people did it to 'em. But if somebody came of their own accord, it might not bother him so much."

So it's OUR fault completely that we were denied freedom, had our families broken up, and even after that refused compensation to help us build futures post-slavery?

Yeah, we have a chip on our shoulder. We were treated like SHIT for decades and then when we were finally given LEGAL rights, expected to "catch up" with the rest of society in a generation. So while we are still working on that (and making progress), those that DO excel are still considered inferior, lazy, untrustworthy.

I certainly hope for a future where we are all judged as individuals and not chained to some past legacy. That goes for blacks and whites.

[political_Dem]

12. Thank you for saying this. I get so tired of bigoted folks trying to minimalize

what happened to us. :grr:

I think though it is their way of not wanting to discuss the warts of American society--especially when it has to do with the white community. After all, they want to play it as if the "past was the past" so they can keep their heads in the sand with all their prejudices.

I say that all of this must be discussed in order for America to heal.

[Tuvok Obama]

13. I think the author was still trying to describe the slow evolutionary process...

...of his racist relatives' attitudes in general.

I don't think he was putting that quote out there as a reasonable or acceptable way of thinking.

[BlooInBloo]

11. "prefer the term 'prejudiced'" - HAHAHAHAA!!!!