Obviously, everyone knows that every president thus far has been a white male. Females are gaining an equal stance in the workplace, and minorities
I want to know what you dopers think of the political and racial climate in America and the overall acceptance level of a non-white male prez, when, or if, it should happen, and if you believe that currently there is equal access to the office for women and minorities.
Also, I’d like to know if you think (not hope) that this will happen in say, the next 30 years.
Just to start things off, I feel that we will have a non-white male prez in the next 30 years, but I don’t know how he or she will be received and if that person will be able to get much done.
Doubtlessly, it will be a monumentous occasion in American history.
right after I’m elected and institute my own private strip club in the white house, all white politicians’ credibility will be shot. THEN we’ll have a non-white president.
The perspective I have from here is actually quite interesting – please help me out with how valid it might be.
It is starting to look - after the settling down of the first few months – almost as if the US has joint-Presidents. Colin Powell seems not only in charge of everything non-domestic but is also the main policy maker in that area.
He’s certainly looking and sounding very ‘Statemanlike’ and appears a steady hand on what was a very shaky diplomatic beginning for this Administration.
Very interested in any American views, though.
A most intriguing and shrewd man is Mr Powell.
My vote would have to be for Colin Powell but then again he considered running in the last election and refused (can’t say as I blame him). Still, if any black man has a chance to be president in the very near future, I’d say it’d have to be Powell.
That said I’d be scared to death for any black president. You can count on there being some nutcases out there gunning for him (literally gunning for him). I imagine that is true of any president but unfortunately I think it’d go double for a black man or woman (or perhaps any minority).
Sorry if this changes the subject too much…just ignore it if it does:) My roomate and I were discussing this the other day. He thinks that we will have a white female president before we have a male minority president. Any thoughts?
At a guess I would say that is probably true. Unfortunately I think there is more unreasoning hatred out there towards minorities than there is towards women. In addition, among western countries, we’ve seen Margaret Thatcher as Primer Minister of Great Britain so there is already a chink in that wall.
However, today Colin Powell is the only candidate, when looking over the field of potential minority and female candidates, who would seem to have an obviously serious shot at the presidency.
My favorite schenario is that Rice replaces Cheney as VP in 2004 (due to his heart) and then she is elected Pres in 2008.
I must admit that this is more wishful tuinking than realistic prognostication. She appears to hae the brains, the training, the drive and the charm to do the job.
IMHO there are more people looking to vote for a minority candidate - fellow minorities and whites looking to feel like non-racists - than there are people who will not vote for a minority. So that gives a minority a leg up. The problem minorities have in getting elected President is that many of the more prominent minority politicians have risen to prominence by relying on a core of fellow minority support. This causes them to be identified strongly with minority interests and hinders their electability. The sole reason for the tremendous popularity of Colin Powell is that he is a minority who has achieved his prominence in a race neutral manner, which gives him the best of both worlds.
But even Powell would lose a lot of his popularity if he had to actually take stands on controversial issues.
I don’t know. I think Americans still think of leaders as “masculine”. I don’t have any specific numbers, but I’m sure the glass ceiling for women getting to CEO still exists, and I’m afraid that when this analogy is applied to the presidency it becomes well, real thick glass. It is sad to think that many Americans would vote for male candidate x solely because he’s a male, but that is the reality of it.
As far as male minorities go, I’d say blacks are more well-represented politically speaking. It seems to me that there would be a black prez before an asian or hispanic one. But then again, hispanics are the fastest growing segment of the US population, so who knows what could transpire in the next 30 years?
Powell seems to be the best shot right now, yes. But will Hillary C. run in '08? The Clintons are very popular with minorities anyway, aren’t they?
I don’t know who in specific, but I do believe that the first non-white male will probably be a conservative republican. The reason being that if a viable minority runs then he/she will get the minority vote and a substantial amount of conservative and republican vote. This is why I think Hillary Clinton won’t be prez but Powell has a shot.
If the OP is asking about whether a non-white President would be generally accepted, then I think the answer is a resounding ‘yes,’ and that is already true today. Colin Powell could have been elected in 2000 had he chosen to run.
The problem is that any black politician is going to be wary about running for President because he (or she) knows that he might well be targeted for assassination by some racist nut-job.
The overwhelming majority of Americans would be accepting, but there will always be some whacko out there who poses a threat. Because of this, I think any black politician who had a real shot at winning would think twice (as Powell did) before seeking the office.
So are you saying that the only reason most whites would vote for a minority candidate for president is “to feel like a non-racist”? Help me out here Izzy, I’m not trying to bully you, I’m just trying to understand.
And Blinking Duck, what the hey makes you think that any minority candidate automatically has the minority vote? I’d say Colin Powell would have a pretty damn tough row to hoe with black voters, who associate him with George W. Bush. And black conservative Republican Alan Keyes would not have a shot in hell with black voters.
Powell is pro affirmative action and pro abortion rights. Even without race as a factor, I highly doubt that he could have secured the Republican nomination and if he did, a bunch of Republicans would have voted for an independant candidate much, much farther to the right.
Once you add race … I personally think that Americans are a lot more racist than most of you are willing to give them credit as being. And even though they may have liked the idea of looking inclusive at party conventions, a great number of people in both major parties would never seriously consider voting for a black guy. Another case of really, really thick (and not all that transparent) glass.
My guess is that it will be at least 30 to 50 years, at the very earliest, before we have a minority president. And when it does happen, it’ll be a conservative, white/hispanic man.
All I know is that several public opinion polls circa 1999 showed Powell beating any of the other available candidates in a head-to-head matchup. Maybe Americans are less racist than you seem to think.
Polls showed that people liked Powell in 1999. Whether or not, American voters still would have liked him once he started campaigning is another matter.
All of us like ideals, but once you see the real person up close different opinions can be formed.
In 1982 people thought Tom Bradley would easily be elected governor of California, but he was edged out by the extraordinarily uncharismatic George Deukmejian. It’s still never been determined if race was a factor. If it were 2002, Bradley would likely beat Deukmejian by a wide margin.
However, Tom Bradley is dead, so he’s probably not a viable candidate.
Ah, but if they had stopped liking him after campaigning started, it would have been because they found that they disagreed with him on the issues, would it not? I mean, they already knew he was a black man at the time they expressed a preference for him in 1999. The process of campaigning wasn’t going to alter his race. The fact that he was leading in the polls, no matter how preliminary those polls were, suggests that most Americans would have no hesitation in voting for a black man if they thought he were the best candidate.
Furthermore, if Powell had run against Gore, I can assure you that you would have seen the seemingly anomalous result of a black man carrying most if not all of the states comprising the former Confederacy. (I say seemingly anomalous, because most Southerners are not blinded by racism as many non-Southerners seem to think. They would have voted for Powell because he has two features Southerners love: a military background and a moderate-to-conservative political philosophy.)
Well you’re ignoring a major stumbling block here in your analysis.
Beauty race polls early on often reflect either very superficial opinions or in the case of race, it appears a bit of saying what the pollee thinks the pollster wants to hear. I recall recent studies finding a significant % difference between actual “white” voting behaviour in re black candidates and polled behaviour ( referencing here beyond the margin of error). That is, there remains a significant difference between words and actions in re race for some electorally important portion of the population.
I rather think you are being dangerously naive about the status of race in the American psyche. The “unsaid” in my experience looms large, and I have found that the gap between words and action on the part of my fellow pale faces is often enormous.
