“That study found that supporters of President Bush and other conservatives had stronger self-admitted and implicit biases against blacks than liberals did.”
“The analysis found that substantial majorities of Americans, liberals and conservatives, found it more difficult to associate black faces with positive concepts than white faces — evidence of implicit bias. But districts that registered higher levels of bias systematically produced more votes for Bush.”
TheStateOf . . . Race and Party. This merely confirms what we already know–white Republicans don’t like black people. But does the italicized language, above, show another point–are most white Democrats not as fond of black people? Or is the more accurate question, “are most white Democrats more fond of black people than most white Republicans?” In At Canaan’s Edge, the new book about the Civil Rights Movement, Taylor Branch points out that many of the white students and clergy that traveled to the South to support the Movement were ideologically similar to the blacks they were helping, but, at the same time, they were totally different in terms of personality and culture, such that the white students and clergy were scared or uncomfortable in the presence of the black people they had traveled thousands of miles to support. Of course this was a generation ago. Here’s a more recent story. I was in New York a few months ago to see some friends. I called one of my best friends, who happens to be white, and asked him to meet me at a culturally diverse bar in the Village. It just so happened that this night, the bar was about 75% black. My friend arrived about 10 minutes before I did, but when I got there, he was already gone. When I caught up with him, he said that he had looked in at the bar, but decided to wait down the street at a different (errr, white) bar. When I asked why, he came up with some b.s. answer about preferring the other bar blah blah blah. This friend is as liberal as they come. To this day, I tease him about it, but I think it’s indicative of the country to which we were brought. Rich’s thoughts: But what should we take from this study? Are the Republicans the big tent party they say they are? Even though this study clearly shows one party is more uncomfortable than the other, is the choice really half-a-dozen in one hand and six in the other? We couldn’t find a draft of the report online so we don’t know by how much more Republicans don’t like us. One final question: if the majority of those voting for Bush have an obvious bias against blacks, whose agenda do you think is being pushed more?
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