Talk about spin! The headline of this article, and the articles emphasis on one statistic -- the plurality (43%) who think race relations have gotten worse under Obama -- while de-emphasizing the fact that both those who believe race relations have not changed (40%) and those who think they have improved (15%), taken together, constitute a MAJORITY who think race relations have not worsened under President Obama, are outrageously misleading. But there is an aspect of this that I find more troubling still. Funny, but I dont seem to recall polls asking this question during any other recent presidencies. There are several assumptions implied by the polling question itself, including: - that is is necessarily appropriate to poll this question merely because the current occupant is half black; - that President Obama, by virtue of being half black, bears some particular responsibility for the state of race relations, over and above that of his predecessors; - that President Obama, by virtue of being half black, is, or should be, possessed of some unique ability, as compared with his white predecessors, to significantly alter the state of race relations in this country; and - that a 400-year, fraught history of race relations in this country should necessarily improve or get worse by virtue of the country electing a half black President. These implicit assumptions, which arise as a result of polling this question during the Presidency of a black man when the same question has not typically been polled during the presidencies of white men, are all inherently racist in and of themselves. Worse, the outrageously misleading spin of the headline and of the article, along with the circumstances of the timing of polling this particular question, taken together with the implicit assumptions that inhere in the polling question, seem to suggest that responsibility for race relations rests primarily with the black community. All in all, this poll causes me to wonder about the motivations of those who thought it necessary or appropriate to even ask the question.
Posted on: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 21:39:00 +0000
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