Webloggin » From the Shut The Hell Up Files - Another Bullcrap AP Article: ‘Racial misgivings of whites an Obama issue’

Update: Personally I don’t know what Allahpundit over at Hot Air is talking about on this one. I looked at the poll inside and out and he claims that it is depressing. Sure, it is depressing anytime someone makes a decision about someone based on their color. But based on the results it seems to me that the AP is reading what they want into it.

One of the biggest inferences in the poll is that if Barack Obama loses it will have occurred because of racism. This is what the Democrats and their supporters in the media have been telling us for months. In fact the racism aspect was something I believe the Democrats thought they could use to their advantage.

If anyone is surprised that a segment of the population is racist then they quite simply are either too good hearted and naive or they simply haven’t gotten out much. Furthermore, this notion that whites as a whole are in some unique group is simply a lie. Even the AP-Yahoo poll itself noted the following:

On the other side of the racial question, the Illinois Democrat is drawing almost unanimous support from blacks, the poll shows, though that probably wouldn’t be enough to counter the negative effect of some whites’ views.

The Standford study is a different story. It tracked a number of people over many months. I can’t ascertain the objectivity of the study or the methods used because we are only seeing the wave 6 Q&A part of the study that I imagine is a different group of people. Nonetheless the study uses techniques that we have seen before.

The poll also used a technique aimed at measuring what psychologists call “affect misattribution.” This involved showing faces of people of different races quickly on a screen before displaying a neutral image that people were asked to rate as pleasant or unpleasant. Studies have shown that people consciously or unconsciously transfer their feelings about the photograph to the object they are rating.

The study organizers make what they call educated guesses and then attribute a number that is supposed to be weighted for accuracy based on other studies. This isn’t science in my mind. We don’t even know what exactly constitutes neutrality in the base images. I’m thinking Kreskin here.

We can however look at the wave 6 answers and find some interesting results.

First is the demographics, 41% are unemployed, 82% make less than $75,000 per year, 61% less than $50,000 per year, 84% live in a city, a majority live in the south (36%), 73% have no children, 78% were over 29 years of age and 69% were white.

If I had to guess I would imagine that this poll was designed to create a skewed result, especially considering the emphasis on the south and midwest (considered unsophisticated by left wing liberals). Relatively low income, no children and a full 4 out of every 10 surveyed being out of the workforce.

It’s All About The Numbers

And the numbers don’t really support the thesis in my opinion. Put aside the bogus sympathy question because I think it is a silly to ask white people how much sympathy they feel for blacks. This isn’t the 1930’s.

In total most of the questions seemed to have been answered pretty evenly. 84% of whites surveyed said that the color of Barack Obama’s skin made no difference to them, 68% said they admired blacks, and only 8% said they disliked blacks in general. 2% of whites also said they disliked whites, go figure.

So the thesis part of wave 6 comes down to some questions that are a bit on the leading side.

For instance:

Irish, Italians, Jewish, and other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up, blacks should do the same without special favors.

This is perhaps the biggest bullshit question there is. You see what they are doing, pitting blacks against the world with a nonsensical tidbit of crap that is prejudiced in and of itself. Who says that Irish, Italians, Jewish, and other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up more or less than blacks? Talk about leading the witness.

The pollsters proceed with a whole list of pre-determined list of prejudicial statements that are conjured up in the mind of Standford elitists that believe this is how racists talk. Planting the seed perhaps but surely a form of baited questions. All of this falls under the “affect misattribution” umbrella.

Here’s another:

It’s really a matter of some people just not trying hard enough; if blacks would only try harder, they could just be as well off as whites

I love question rac14. Think about it for a minute.

RAC14. How much of the racial tension that exists in the United States today do you think blacks are responsible for creating?

Now when I hear that question I don’t think about blacks in general, I think about the race hustlers like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan. I think about all the bogus claims like Jena 6, Tawana Brawley, OJ Simpson, etc.

Nonetheless that won’t stop the pollsters from taking liberties with the answer and concluding that the white respondents are talking about blacks in general.

Finally, but not least, over 90% of whites polled thought there was at least a little discrimination that held blacks back. Hardly damning against whites.

Bottom line for me is that the AP and team Obama are hoping to stir racial tensions to get those sympathetic and guilty to the polls. Don’t buy it.

You can see the complete survey results here and see a cross section of the answers by whites here.
Original article below:

To call the writers at AP stupid would likely be a compliment; giving them more credit than they deserve. Despite the fact that blacks are polling for Obama at greater than 90% it is whitey that is “bigoted” and racist.

Conveniently casting aside FACTS like the most damning one where Barack Obama launched his political career from the living room of two Anti-American terrorists the AP race hustlers pulled out an “exhaustive” Stanford survey that says whites view blacks as “”lazy,” “violent” or responsible for their own troubles”.

There are double standards and then there are lies and pure caca.

Message, whitey is out to keep a black man from the White House. The same whitey that has been attacked from the pulpit of Barack Obama’s church for 20 years if not longer.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Deep-seated racial misgivings could cost Barack Obama the White House if the election is close, according to an AP-Yahoo News poll that found one-third of white Democrats harbor negative views toward blacks - many calling them “lazy,” “violent” or responsible for their own troubles.

The poll, conducted with Stanford University, suggests that the percentage of voters who may turn away from Obama because of his race could easily be larger than the final difference between the candidates in 2004 - about 2.5 percentage points.

Certainly, Republican John McCain has his own obstacles: He’s an ally of an unpopular president and would be the nation’s oldest first-term president. But Obama faces this: 40 percent of all white Americans hold at least a partly negative view toward blacks, and that includes many Democrats and independents.

More than a third of all white Democrats and independents - voters Obama can’t win the White House without - agreed with at least one negative adjective about blacks, according to the survey, and they are significantly less likely to vote for Obama than those who don’t have such views.

Such numbers are a harsh dose of reality in a campaign for the history books. Obama, the first black candidate with a serious shot at the presidency, accepted the Democratic nomination on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, a seminal moment for a nation that enshrined slavery in its Constitution.

“There are a lot fewer bigots than there were 50 years ago, but that doesn’t mean there’s only a few bigots,” said Stanford political scientist Paul Sniderman who helped analyze the exhaustive survey.

The pollsters set out to determine why Obama is locked in a close race with McCain even as the political landscape seems to favor Democrats. President Bush’s unpopularity, the Iraq war and a national sense of economic hard times cut against GOP candidates, as does that fact that Democratic voters outnumber Republicans.

The problem with the AP, besides being a collection of communist loving anti-American maggots, is that they have a near of monopoly on their market. You can’t protest them or refuse to buy their crap because they stink it up everywhere through syndication.

At least the AP put the blame in the Democrats own back yard:

Lots of Republicans harbor prejudices, too, but the survey found they weren’t voting against Obama because of his race. Most Republicans wouldn’t vote for any Democrat for president - white, black or brown.

This article is a repetitive theme and it is intentional. The Democratic Party didn’t have a candidate that could run on his record or accomplishments so they turned to the next best thing; an inexperienced junior Senator that held the most important quality they figured they could use to polarize the electorate, his skin color.

Sorry, not working. Democrats should look hard at those who pretend to be their allies. Don’t tow the line and you are a racist; a bucnh of small minded hicks that only vote on skin color alone.

To say that the article is insulting is an understatement. But that sums up the AP quite easily; insulting to our intelligence.