I’m sure it was motivated by politics. To the barricades!
The only thing presented (unless I missed it; always possible) is an op-ed piece that describes in very general terms two sets of polls, without reference to the specific questions, the cross-tabs, the margins of error, or anything that would allow me to credit them.
You know, they call it “Political Science,” but it’s not a science at all. “The Tea Party is motivated by racism” cannot be falsified the way that Special Relativity or Natural Selection can. No conclusion on politics, or even the motivations of individuals, can be. Why should this particular claim be capable of meeting the standard of a scholarly scientific journal?
Race has never been insurmountable when there’s a mutual political cause.
As mentioned repeatedly few people have claimed the entirety of the Tea Party is racist, just that they have a large racist component. I think they’re far more anti-intellectual than they are racist, but that said, it’s a year til the election. Going to second base in the back of the Monte Carlo is different from getting engaged; the boy they take home to mother will probably look a lot different.
It’s even possible a few of them will think of “What would 9-9-9 do to my own finances?” for themselves. There are perhaps even a few who will listen to his comments on gays and think “But that’s choosing to act on his own ignorant prejudices over all reliable evidence, so what would that mean for…” and realize this could be a bad thing even for non gays- doubtful but possible. If not, Cain will shoot himself in both feet 9 times before the first primary; he’s an Opening Act from way back, not the headliner.
Watch it - you can’t say that word outside the pit!
An interesting question. But here’s where we come down to a fundamental principle of SDMB debate, which is that, at a very basic level, we’re just a bunch of guys arguing on a message board. We’re not political scientists. We’re not sociologists. We’re not opinion-setters.
So if I use the anecdotes and things I experience in my own life to come to a conclusion about something, I’m willing to at least tentatively put forward that conclusion, argue for it, and defend it, without a rigorous scientific analysis. And I expect you to do the same in the other direction. Now, it’s nice when one or both of us can start quoting actual scientific studies that might help resolve our dispute, and I think that if we’re arguing in good faith we’d both agree that, at least in the ideal, scientific studies trump our personal experience. But if we can’t ever even express opinions without having the scientific studies to begin with, then the SDMB is going to be a boring and empty place.
For example, I remember that right after Palin was picked by McCain, there were a bunch of anti-Palin threads, and then you were vocally upset about the amount of anti-Palin sentiment. Had you actually at that point done a statistical analysis of some sort, where you had literally counted threads and words, and come up with mathematical models, to actually prove that the number of anti-Palin threads was some number of standard deviations higher than expected? Of course not! It would have been ridiculous to expect you to.
(Note: this touches on another issue that comes up a lot in SDMB debates, which is comparing the way people act on the SDMB to how some public figure acted… ie, “you guys are complaining when Glenn Beck/Michael Moore did X, but here on the SDMB, you guys do Y all the time, and Y is like X”. As I said above, I’m happy to come to tentative conclusions and argue for them without real evidence or proof, because I’m just a guy on a message board. So yes, I think there are lots of racist elements to the tea party, as described in my thesis a few pages pack, and I will post that on the SDMB for all the world to see. But if I were a nationally known radio host or columnist or documentary film maker, I’d like to think that I wouldn’t just publicly state that opinion without actual studies or evidence or at least a much more comprehensive description of my thought process…)
That’s the Bradley Effect you’re predicting. It’s debatable whether it still exists though.
I’m just puzzled why Bricker thinks racists wouldn’t vote for a black guy. Ignore anecdotes about racists with black friends or who sleep with black women, just look at the realm of electoral two-party politics and rampant LOTEism. People vote the opposite of their stated interests all the time. If you’re anti-war, favor UHC, or want less draconian drug laws it’s impossible not to. Or the segments who vote against their own economic self interests on purpose.
And of course you zero in on the sideshow. If you want the data, it’s here :
Or you can view in handy bar graphs here, with the most relevant tab pre-selected for you :
The fact is that your OP’s premise is hopelessly flawed because, in essence, Racism Does Not Work That Way.
Answer honestly : Do you believe a white person who holds racist beliefs will not vote for a black presidential candidate, except under exceptional circumstances? This is a yes or no question, hedging will be disregarded.
The questions in your link are:
If you’re relying on the answers to show racism, I absolutely reject your premise.
No.
OK, I accept your premise for the moment: supporting Cain doesn’t mean a thing as far as evidence that they are racists.
So what does? Without much contradiction, the charge that the Tea Party, or significant portions thereof, are racists has been made on this board many times.
What is the evidence for that charge?
Yes… in MPSIMS, I’d agree that this is precisely the sort of rigor that should prevail.
But no – not in GD. In my view, if you can’t defend a proposition beyond “I’m just a guy on a message board…” using “…anecdotes and things I experience in my own life…” then it becomes a shouting contest, with many more voices on the left than on the right. I expect to be able to hold people in GD to a certain level of rigor. If I can’t, then this place is simply an echo chamber, with the voices from the left louder and more numerous, and seemingly the winners by virtue of their volume and number.
Hardly the model for the claim that we’ve been “fighting ignorance.”
It’s better evidence than you’ve got. And there are some relevant questions on other tabs about Obama himself, and Immigration that are additionally suggestive.
Excellent! Then you acknowledge that your OP, as written, proves nothing. So that makes me wonder why you posted it, given that you don’t believe what you wrote it to suggest. A less charitable soul might think it was a disingenuous position simply designed to provoke people.
OK, since the OP wants a falsification of the notion that the Tea Party is significantly motivated by racism: A good first step would be for them to give a coherent reason why they dislike Obama, other than his race. Most Tea Partiers, if you ask them why they dislike Obama, will tell you something that simply isn’t true. They don’t actually dislike him because he raised their taxes, because he didn’t. They don’t actually dislike him because of the bailouts, because that was Bush’s policy, not his. Some of them will tell you that they dislike him because he was born in Africa, which is both untrue and racist. If we’re faced with overwhelming evidence that they dislike Obama, and they lie about their reasons whenever they’re asked about it, what else can we conclude but that their real reason for hating him is something reprehensible?
No, it’s not better evidence than I’ve got. It’s evidence of nothing. Those questions can be answered either way without racism.
No, I don’t. I believe it’s unlikely for a racist person to vote for a black presidential candidate, and the more racist the person, the more unlikely the vote.
So when the favored candidate of a given group is black, that makes it less likely that the group is racist. Not impossible, of course. But less likely.
Has this question been asked?
I’m not a Tea Party member, and I don’t hate Obama, but I can provide many reasons I dislike his presidency.
It seems to me a major item upon which the Tea Party rests its ire is the health care proposal. As a more general principle, it seems to me that they dislike his philodophy of “spreading the wealth around,” believing instead that people should keep what they earn and not be forced to give up some of their earnings to people who didn’t earn them.
This is not a racist viewpoint, and I contend that that it’s exactly what motivates their dislike of Obama.
Why do you believe that, if asked, they wouldn’t say that? Where is the evidence for your claim that they would rest their dislike on the grounds you mention?
I think you’re excluding the middle here.
There’s a wide area between, on the one hand:
Max: The tea party are racist!
Bricker: No they’re not!
Max: I SAID, THE TEA PARTY ARE RACIST!!!
Bricker: NO THEY ARE NOT!!!
and, on the other hand
Max: Well, this 2010 peer-reviewed study clearly demonstrates, in chart 15a on page 20, that cohorts who self-identify as one of 7 identified groups demonstrated in our earlier work to have a 64% correlation with what is broadly defined as the “Tea Party”…
That is, we can debate using logic and knowledge and (whenever possible) actual provable fact, without holding every claim up to a usually-unreachable level of proof. Just in the current situation, for instance… I have reasons to believe that there is racism in the tea party, but I can’t either prove or disprove it with the data I have at hand, and have no practical way to go out and gather that data. Should I just never bother expressing that position?
(Oh, and by the way, I’m curious… suppose that instead of Obama, a white man with identical positions but a “normal” American background had been elected. Do you believe, and obviously all you can do is guess here, that the Tea Party would be the same as it is in reality?)
Fair point, but…
No, you should… but look at how the standard shifts. Be honest: a year ago, had I predicted that a black man would be the first choice for president by the Tea Party, would you have agreed? Or would you have said that was highly unlikely, given their racism?
But now it’s happened, and rather than admitting – using the same sort of general anecdotal and experiential bases for an opinion – that, ok, maybe they aren’t quite so racist as all that, I’m instead hit with demands for rigorous polls and studies before my position can be accepted.
Your position is a fair one. We CAN argue points based on less rigor than peer-reviewed studies or careful representative sample polls.
But not if only one side gets to do it, and the other side is held to that more exacting standard… right?
In all fairness, this piece of news should have everyone who’s using the “I just think” standard saying, at a minimum, that this means something, even if it’s not rock-solid proof. But as Richard Parker noted upthread, even though the position was reached with anecdotal and experiential data, it seemingly can’t be dislodged the same way.
Yes. Absolutely. Look at the right-wing hatred Clinton engendered. Look at the dollars spent, the fact that he was actually hung on a perjury trap that took millions of dollars and tens of thousands of man-hours to create. And that despite the fact that the perjury was over an issue that was utterly foreign to the original investigation, it spawned an impeachment.
Clinton is, by all accounts, white. Of COURSE the Tea Party would be manifestly similar if Barack Obama had been Barry O’Hara… if Barry O’Hara had proposed the same health care plan and wealth-sharing rhetoric.
I applaud your determination to uphold rigorous GD standards. But demanding such rigor from only the Left seems a bit, well, unbalanced to me. Generally this board regards OPs as having a particular obligation to present solid, evidence-based assertions, and that hasn’t been the case here.
It is also not simply a matter of the Left beating on poor Bricker for his flawed premise. I’m confident I’m not the only centrist who’s remarked upon its gaping holes.
But it hasn’t happened. To suggest it has is as much of an exaggeration as suggesting all Tea Party members are racist. What happened was in a given snap shot poll, without ANY consequences, a plurality of those Tea Party supporters indicated they preferred Cain to the other candidates. That’s a very different thing.
Now, if that translates to actual votes in the primaries, I’ll reassess my view that the TP is heavily populated with racists. But all this does is suggest it might not be as heavily populated with racists as I thought.
Stawman, Bricker. I didn’t say that one needed 100% uniformity in behavior of a given group in order to justifiably discriminate for or against its members. The percentage threshold required to make such distinctions is a function of the consequences of not discriminating. Like when Jesse Jackson said, “There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery. Then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved…”, he validly discriminated in favor of being alone at night with a white person not because ALL blacks are muggers, but just because a black is more likely to be one than a white or asian.
Another simple example:
At MIT, I happily assumed African Americans were as qualified as any other student (which I’ve subsequently learned is patently false given the consistent ~300 point mean SAT difference between AA and white males) when it came time to choose lab partners as the ramification of my being wrong was just a lower grade. On the other hand, I would advise against my daughter choosing a black boyfriend given the potential consequences if her character assessment is wrong: the odds of a black man giving her an STD or raping her her are many times higher than for a white man.