Race and the elections....part 2

Well, soon after I posted my thoughts on racism in the elections, I came across this article in the NY Times. While I did not fact-check the numbers presented in the NY Times article, I found the findings reported here very interesting. Thought I’d share some of the key findings with you.

The article talks about “racism without racists” and about “aversive racists”. A small percent of the electorate – about 5 to 10 percent – will openly not vote for an African American. This group is generally conservative, votes Republican, and would not vote for a Democrat, no matter who the Democratic candidate is.

The interesting group is the so-called “aversive racists” who are white Americans who overtly do not consider themselves to be racially-biased, and may even support affirmative action. But they sub-consciously have a racial bias against African Americans. And this racial bias manifests itself in interesting ways! Take a look:

When presented with black and white candidates with identical qualifications and experience (same folder of credentials, sometime presented as white and sometimes as black candidate), whites recommended hiring the white candidate more often than the black candidate.
The above issue becomes more prominent when the candidates are borderline qualified for the post. When dealing with borderline candidates with identical credentials, whites recommended white candidates 76 percent of the time, and recommended black candidates only 45 percent of the time.
When witnessing a black person in distress (say a seizure of some kind) in public, whites did not discriminate in calling for help when there are no other witnesses. However, if there are other bystanders – a situation where individual responsibility is not front-and-center – whites would call for help 75 percent of the time if the victim was white, but would call for help only 38 percent of the time if the victim was black!
So it’s going to be interesting to watch TV election night! News networks call the various states based on exit polling. How are voters going to deal with this “aversive racism”????


www.azjewelrystore.com
www.gizmocentral.com