According to this TV special report a lot of democrat there refused to vote on him because he’s black: http://www.france24.com/en/20081020-democrats-seek-sell-obama-heartland-audiences-usa-vote-2008
This article is also revealing
http://www.thetimes.co.za/PrintEdition/Article.aspx?id=865960
34% of the population in Oklahoma voted on Obama, only Wyoming was lower (33%)
Guess that answers your question so Wyoming is racist huh? Seriously do you honestly believe everything you see in print?
Is Hawaii the least racist state in the USA?
"Virginia Senator Jim Webb, a “blue dog” conservative Democrat who wears his Scots-Irish heritage proudly, went to new lengths to belay the doubters when he introduced Obama at a rally in the state’s rural southwest on Friday. "
He’s a “blue-dog democrat”= He wasn’t going to vote for a Liberal Democrat no matter what skin color.
You have to find us voters who would have voted for a white man with Obama’s platform, but voted for McCain instead, just because of skin color.
I doubt there are many.
Oklahoma voted Republican by almost identical amounts in 2004 and 2008. The difference was a few hundred votes. In Wyoming, Obama actually did a little better than Kerry did. So it’s basically impossible that racism was a significant factor in either state. There are racist idiots everywhere, it’s sad but true. To single out these two states looks dead wrong, though: they’re just strongly Republican.
McCain won Idaho by a huge amount, but less than Bush. That also goes for Utah. It’s hard to identify where race is a factor in any place, but it looks like there were not many such places this year. The idea of racist Democrats turning away from Obama was much-discussed for months, but on balance it never materialized.
Good point, unless dudes think that voting against John Kerry is racist.
Liberal Okie checking in.
Yes, there is some racism here, but I don’t think it’s any worse than many other areas, particularly rural ones. Please note that the Times article had similar quotes from people in many other states.
It is ugly, though. Please remember to point to these articles anytime someone tries to make the idiotic suggestion that racism no longer exists because we elected a black President.
What we do have is lots ‘n’ lots of “God, Guns, Gays” voters who vote Republican no matter what. Even the Democrats. There’s a lot of 'em that I’m not sure why they’re registered Democrat, it must just be habit.
The last Democratic Presidential candidate to win Oklahoma was LBJ in '64. The last one before that was Truman in '48. (Prior to 1948, Oklahoma tended to choose Democrats for President.)
We do elect a fair number of Democratic governors and state legislators, though. They’re conservative Democrats, but they are Democrats. We’ve even sent Democratic Senators and Representatives to Washington!
I would note that this does create one advantage for living here. In the past year, I remember seeing one (1) !! presidential campaign advertisement. Neener-neener! 
ETA: If Obama had chosen to campaign in OK like he did in some of the other states, those numbers would probably be quite different. I think there were a lot of people here that could have been convinced he was a better candidate, but there was no money or support for the campaign here. We just don’t have enough EC votes to interest candidates.
The fact that Obama2008 got about as many votes as Kerry2004 says nothing about the relative prevalence of racism in OK.
What it says is that party loyalty is more important to most OK Dems than any racist feelings they may have.
Besides, for all we know most of the dyed-in-the-wool, mad-dog racists are Republicans who would’ve voted McCain no matter who he ran against. (which would also match my own anecdotal observations!)
Oklahoma has a strong anti-Mexican element, I assumed that’s what you were referring to.
John Kerry’s wife is African (of Latin descent), & he’s of Austrian descent.
Stinking Austrians, coming in here & stealing our politics!
That’s not the whole story, though: In most states, Obama significantly outperformed Kerry (which should be unsurprising, given that Obama won and Kerry didn’t). If most of the country, on average, thought that Obama was significantly better than Kerry, but Oklahomans, on average, only thought he was about as good as Kerry, then that indicates that Oklahomans have a lower regard for Obama for some reason.
Now, race isn’t the only possible explanation for this. It might also be, for instance, that Oklahomans don’t want to elect a President who hasn’t served in the military. But race is one possible explanation.
What bothers me is that foreign readers may see these stories and think the attitudes of a few fringe racists are representative of the entire U.S. population, particularly if they forget to consider that relatively few people live in the interior states, just as they might think that Republicans won all the major contests from looking at a county-by-county electoral map, which is almost entirely red except for some blue spots in metro areas around the country.
IIRC, TR in 1907 refused to let OK into the US as long as it had a white supremacist clause in the state constitution. The GOV of OK was so upset that the grudge carried on to TR’s cousin, FDR.
Further, you have to remember that OK was established after an attempt at forming an Indian-majority state in the western sector of the state. So race has always been close to the surface in OK politics.
Isn’t Oklahoma considered a part of the Bible Belt and the “capital” for evangelical christianity with RHEMA Bible Training Center, Kenneth W. Hagin, Oral Roberts etc
seams to me that the people in this state is a mixture of people that “dislike niggers” and/or believes that the earth was created 6000 years ago
The others don’t have as much of a character assassination quality, however, so evidence would be called for. Your theory is possible, so is redtail23’s comment about Obama’s lack of effort in that state. Oklahoma’s culture may be such that the commonalities between Bush and McCain outweighed the differences, and it may be that demographics changed in a way that helped McCain.
Most foreigners are in two camps anyway. Either ‘USA, USA!!!’ or 'Those boarish Yanks, they try to have culture but just can’t, and they’re racist and they make generalisations and they’re fat and uncouth" etc. IMVHO American anti-black racism is bound up with your class system. The criticisms I hear here of a ‘skanger’ (redneck Irish urbanite) are nearly identical to the criticisms I hear of black people in the US.
I think you are spot on, at least with regard to Oklahomans. I submit as evidence the large and growing prejudice against “mexicans” in Oklahoma. It’s in quotes because the average Okie lumps all South and Central Americans in with people from Mexico.
The arguments I hear advanced against these folks sound nearly identical to the complaints that anti-black racists have used for years in the US. To wit: ‘they’ are lazy, don’t contribute to society, leech off of the healthcare system, are criminal, loud, drunk, or drug-addled, are welfare cheats, have lots of kids that ‘we’ have to pay for, etc.
Low socioeconomic status seems to correlate well with having these sort of (wrong, deleterious, mean-spirited) sentiments being spread about a particular group by the bigots, regardless of race.
An interesting aspect of this ugliness is an undercurrent of anti-Catholic bias that occassionally creeps in. Catholicism here is strongly associated with the lower social classes, with Evangenicals holding most of the power. While it is not rare to hear people openly denounce or mock Catholics, it is far more common to hear that sort of thing in conjunction with criticism of ‘mexicans’.
You mean to say the most WHITE racist. Black people can be racist too. Many black people voted for Obama because he’s black. If you’re talking about racism in general you would have to include all the voters who voted for Obama because he’s a minority, NOT because they like his campaign.
This form of racism is rarely talked about. But if you look it’s prevelent. For instance, you can find many cities with black mayors and blacks form a minority of the population. On the other hand it’s difficult to find cities with a white mayor when blacks form a majority of the population. Gary Indiana is one of these that had a white mayor.
Remember racism works both ways, and Obama used his race to win. Had he been a white guy, he wouldn’t have beaten Hillary. The fact is blacks voted for Obama because of the color of his skin and that gave him the edge.
Of course people don’t want to face that idea. They prefer to think only whites can be racist. But if you vote for someone based on the color of his skin, you’re a racist.
Given that a majority of the voting U.S. population just voted in Barack Obama, foreign readers will be quite sure that they are not “representative of the entire U.S. population”. Mot of them will be aware of some racist people in their own countries, too, so they are unlikely to think that the U.S. is significantly worse on this.
This. The times I’ve driven through Oklahoma, it struck me as being EXTREMELY conservative, even though I didn’t have many prolonged conversations with anyone. Lots of Jesus fish on bumpers, personalized license plates with religious themes, huge roadside crosses, and the like - they really seemed to like their Jesus in Oklahoma.
I didn’t pick up racism, though. My impression was that Oklahoma seemed to be a bit more tolerant than other states, given its Native American heritage, and election of J.C. Watts.