I’ve written several times recently about how the issue of race has affected the presidential campaign. Much of the conventional wisdom, on which many of my posts are based, is that Whites who hold racist views would never consider voting for Obama. However, as CBS News reports, a new study argues that “racism” not so cut and dry and that quite surprisingly, many Whites who hold racist views actually support Obama:

The poll asked voters whether they agreed with the statement that “African Americans often use race as an excuse to justify wrongdoing.” About a fifth of white voters said they “strongly agreed.” Yet among those who agreed, 23 percent said they’d be supporting Obama.

“This result is reasonable if you believe that race is not as monolithic an effect as we might easily assume,” Franklin said, noting that 22 percent of those who “strongly disagreed” said they’d be supporting McCain. . . .

Some argue that elements of Obama’s story and persona make him specifically acceptable to voters who hold broadly negative views of African Americans. “Not all whites associate the generic African American with Obama,” said Ron Walters, an aide to Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaigns. “They give him credit for having half a Caucasian ancestry, and give him credit for his education, and give him credit for his obvious ability to take complex subjects and parse them.” . . .

“Obama’s personality – his speech, his look – he provides [white voters] with a non-threatening way to move forward on this issue, and that’s a very positive development,” said David Waymire.

Those last two paragraphs that I quoted above are worth highlighting. They suggest that while many Whites hold racist views of African Americans, they don’t see Obama as a “typical” African American — he is not uneducated, or on welfare, or a street criminal like what they tend to see in the media.

Instead, they see Obama as “not like the rest of them” — he breaks the mold of their traditional, stereotypical image of Blacks.

In fact, my guess is that many Asian Americans have probably been in situations in which Whites may be criticizing Asians/Asian Americans but will turn to them and say, “But you’re not like them — you’re different.”

Obama seems to be in that position. Combined with economic concerns being at the topic of the list for many White voters, that may explain why so many Whites who would otherwise have quite racist views of Blacks are willing to support Obama.

So the question becomes, is this situation good or bad for American society? Does the fact that so many “racist” Whites see Obama as an “exceptional” Black mean that the glass is half full or half empty?

To be honest, I’m still thinking this through. In the meantime, let me know what you think, and whether that means American society is becoming less racist, or just more of the same kind of racism.

My wife and I just finished watching the second debate between Obama and McCain and I feel compelled to write about what I thought was the one moment that stood out the most for me in the entire debate — when McCain called Obama “That one.”

McCain seemed intent on belittling Obama all night, which by itself is very disrespectful and juvenile. But it was about halfway through the debate and McCain was talking about environmental policies when he said something to the effect, “You know who voted for the Bush-Cheney energy bill? That one!”

Excuse me?!? “That one?!?”

Mr. McCain, please tell us what exactly did you mean by calling Senator Obama “That one?”

Here’s my guess — deep down, McCain really wanted to call Obama “That boy” or even worse, “That nigger.”

In other words, calling Senator Obama “That one” goes way beyond being impolite or even condescending — it was downright racist.

We all know no one wants to openly talk about the undercurrent issue of race, but whether we like it or not, race has stuck its head into the campaign in so many ways — from recurring references to Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s comments, to lingering beliefs that Obama is really a Muslim terrorist, to outright and direct incidents of racial discrimination against Obama’s campaign.

It’s within this context that we might begin to understand where John McCain is coming from, and some of the unconscious motives he may have had for referring to Obama as “That one.” We know that he is trailing in almost all polls and that he is slowly watching his claim to be our next President slip away.

And we also know that when people feel cornered and threatened, they become desperate, and when they become desperate, they revert to basic emotional instincts — like believing that his opponent is nothing more than a glorified house slave, certainly not worthy of being on the same social level as him, or even being a “real” American.

What else could he have meant by calling Obama “That one?”

In case you did not already know, there has been much discussion about John McCain’s use of the racial slur “gooks” when he used that term back in the 2000 presidential campaign in talking about his North Vietnamese communist captors when he was a prisoner of war: “I hate the gooks. I will hate them as long as I live.”

So in other words, McCain has a history of racial prejudice. It is also clear from watching his interactions in Obama’s presence that he clearly has a lot of contempt for Obama. I’m sure much of it has to do with the adversarial position they’re in as competitors to be the next President. But ultimately, there is a racial component to his contempt as well — that he, as a White person, is getting beat by a Black person.

In a desperate fight for political survival, just like his desperate fight for his physical survival almost 40 years ago, he has apparently showed us his true colors by derogatorily dehumanizing Obama and calling him “That one.”

On the national level, Asian Americans comprise “only” about five percent of the country’s population. However, as demographers point out, Asian Americans tend to be highly urbanized and concentrated in a handful of states, such as California where they constitute 10% of its population.

With this in mind, Asian Americans have the potential to be an important “swing vote” constituency. In other words, with the presidential campaign between Obama and McCain being so close, such constituent groups may be able to help “swing” the election in favor of one of the candidates — if the group can be organized to vote overwhelmingly for one candidate.

With that in mind, the 80-20 Initiative is one such group that is founded on this exact principle — to organize Asian Americans into a “bloc vote” that ideally, could deliver at least 80% of the Asian American vote (hence their name) to a candidate that they endorse. Unfortunately, the 80-20 Initiative has had its critics and earlier this year, faced a barrage of criticism for perceived bias against Obama, before they ultimately endorsed him for President.

At any rate, the 80-20 Initiative has just come out with the results of a poll they conducted on presidential preferences among Asian Americans. In an email sent to their mailing list (but yet to be published on their website), they note:

If the election were today, Asian Americans nationwide favor Obama over McCain by a 3.4 To 1 ratio or by 77% to 23%. The margin of error in this 80-20 poll is +/- 10%. . . . The questions used in polls 1) and 2) were sent to a random sample of Asian Ams. whose attitude towards 80-20 is unknown but who are almost all registered voters.

The 80-20 poll also notes that six percent of respondents said that they were not registered to vote, 42% were registered as Democrats, 14% registered as Republicans, and 38% registered as independents or undeclared. These numbers correspond with other data that show Asian Americans have shifted more towards Democrats over the years.

With the upcoming election between Obama and McCain likely to stay tight all the way down to the wire, potential bloc vote groups such as Asian Americans may be poised to have a sizable impact on its outcome — if we can continue to build a consensus and unity.

The presidential campaign is in full swing, but as I’ve written about before, the question of race has been bubbling slightly beneath the public surface for about a year and a half now, ever since Barack Obama first announced his candidacy to be our next President.

For example, there have been blatant examples of the influence of race — several incidents in which racism has reared its ugly head in regards to his campaign, but also more subtle ones — a recent CBS News article notes that “Obama’s support would be as much as 6 percentage points higher if there were no white racial prejudice.”

But one particular aspect of this issue that hasn’t really gotten much attention is the topic of White Privilege. For those who aren’t familiar, White privilege is basically the idea that Whites have an invisible and taken-for-granted set of advantages and rights that no other racial/ethnic group has. It’s also a touchy subject because for someone who’s White, it’s very hard to recognize but easy to deny.

To try to illustrate this concept as it applies to the presidential campaign, writer and activist Tim Wise has written an absolutely brilliant post at the Red Room blog that must be read in its entirety to be fully appreciated. Nonetheless, here are some excerpts:

For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

White privilege is when you can call yourself a “fuckin’ redneck,” like Bristol Palin’s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you’ll “kick their fuckin’ ass,” and talk about how you like to “shoot shit” for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.

White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don’t all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you’re “untested.” . . .

White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was “Alaska first,” and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you’re black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she’s being disrespectful.

White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do–like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor–and people think you’re being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college–you’re somehow being mean, or even sexist. . . .

White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government . . . and everyone can still think you’re just a good church-going Christian, but if you’re Black and friends with a Black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you’re an extremist who probably hates America.

Yes, Tim’s post is very liberal and very partisan. But in my humble opinion, also absolutely right on the money.

It finally exposes this uneasy social undercurrent that people of color have known about for a while, but that most Whites will not acknowledge even exists — why some acts, when committed by high-profile Whites, get excused and even praised, but when similar acts are committed by people of color, get criticized and ridiculed.

In other words, Tim Wise’s piece lays out the fundamental reality of the American racial landscape — much of the U.S., its people, and its social institutions, are still in deep denial about how insidious racism still is today and how it continues to be firmly but quietly embedded in how we as Americans live our lives on an everyday basis.

And in November, it will play a subtle but significant role in influencing who many of us will choose to be our next President.

I’m sure all of you have seen it by now — The New Yorker’s July 21, 2008 cover featuring Barack Obama and his wife Michelle, for an article entitled, “The Politics of Fear”:

I’m sure you’ve also heard and seen the controversy that the cover has sparked. As a pragmatist, I can understand the Obama campaign’s negative reaction to the cover — even though it and the associated article satirizes the persistent and ignorant rumor that Obama is secretly an undercover fundamental Muslim terrorist, images are more powerful than words, and they fear that such an “in your face” image will only legitimize such a rumor.

But on the other hand, as a person of color who has dealt with stereotypes and racial ignorance for my entire life, I think the cover is brilliant. Mona Eltahawy actually captures my reaction and thoughts on the cover just about perfectly:

What was it but stupidity that left so many Americans gullible to right-wing “accusations” that Obama was that turban-wearing, Osama Bin Laden-loving Muslim on the magazine’s cover, bumping fists with his militant, rifle-toting wife Michelle as the American flag burned in their fireplace? . . .

This Muslim, at least, was relieved to see the stupidity lampooned so starkly. But as soon as I began to revel in the caricature, a little dismayed hand wringing began.

Because now the very people who were offended by right-wing accusations about Obama were acting offended by a cartoon lampooning those very same right-wing machinations. It is as if America has gone mad, or worse, gone brainless.

At a dinner-table conversation in Mumbai a couple of weeks ago, Sanjay – an architect and businessman – turned to me quite earnestly to proclaim, “Americans are inherently stupid. How do you live with them?”

Then Manique, a Sri Lankan woman, joined the conversation to tell us that during a visit to the United States a few years ago, someone actually asked her if they had bread in Sri Lanka. I asked her, half-jokingly, if it was the same American who asked my dad at an Athens hotel over dinner years ago whether we had fruit in Egypt.

More than just shocked amusement, these incidents show why all of us would vote for Obama if we could. He would never ask us if we had bread or fruit in our countries.

Obama is much like us.

He has travelled. He has lived abroad. He has family in several countries. He has a different script for what an American is. He is an American who is comfortable as a citizen of the world.This is what makes the right-wing, “secret Muslim” accusations and the stupid gullibility surrounding them all the more ludicrous and imperative to lampoon – just as Blitt does in the New Yorker.

Those howls of “offensive” and “tasteless” flung at the New Yorker suggest to me Blitt’s ability to lampoon not just the right wing but even some on the left who have promoted fears about Obama.

Wasn’t it Hillary Clinton’s campaign that leaked pictures of Obama in Somali traditional garb looking just like that crazy figure on the cover of the New Yorker? And didn’t Clinton herself suggest that white, working-class America wouldn’t vote for black, hyper-educated Obama?

Wasn’t it The New York Times which published an op-ed by a right-wing commentator that was ignorant and embarrassing: It claimed that Obama wasn’t Muslim enough and would be hunted by Muslims because he had abandoned the faith of his father – an atheist, by the way.

Just as we were amused at how confounded Americans are that we, too, have bread and fruit in our countries, the Obamas confound because they don’t fit within simplistic boxes meant to keep them securely in their place. They’re not at all the black stereotype, and it seems to scare the hell out of some Americans. . . .

[The New Yorker cartoon] touches on a fear of the world changing much too fast for many Americans to keep up. It ridicules an America that is being left behind, grappling with quaint notions of Muslims in regulation turban and white robe and militantly angry black women. And whether other countries have bread or fruit.

We, the children of a post-colonial world, don’t fear an Obama Planet. It has been our world for a long time. We’re happy finally to see the growing success of one of our own.

Mona Eltahawy is absolutely right — whether Americans like it or not, the world and American society are changing. With this in mind, if gullible Americans — and some liberals — don’t adapt, they will get left in the dust.

In the realm of racial/ethnic relations, sociologists consistently observe that certain beliefs — let’s even call them stereotypes — can take on a life of their own and attain a level of “legitimacy” that defies logic and rational thinking.

In the context of the presidential campaign between Barack Obama and John McCain, one persistent belief/stereotype is that Obama is a Muslim, when in fact he is a Christian. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being a Muslim of course, but certain extremists are using this stereotype against Obama and suggesting that if elected, he will somehow turn the country into a fundamentalist Islamic state.

To shine some light into the nuts and bolts of how such outlandish perceptions can become so widespread, two authors have written an op-ed piece in the New York Times that illustrates the social and biological workings of this process:

The Obama campaign has created a Web site to dispel misinformation. But this effort may be more difficult than it seems, thanks to the quirky way in which our brains store memories — and mislead us along the way. . . For example, you know that the capital of California is Sacramento, but you probably don’t remember how you learned it.

This phenomenon, known as source amnesia, can also lead people to forget whether a statement is true. Even when a lie is presented with a disclaimer, people often later remember it as true.

With time, this misremembering only gets worse. A false statement from a noncredible source that is at first not believed can gain credibility during the months it takes to reprocess memories from short-term hippocampal storage to longer-term cortical storage. As the source is forgotten, the message and its implications gain strength. . . .

Even if they do not understand the neuroscience behind source amnesia, campaign strategists can exploit it to spread misinformation. They know that if their message is initially memorable, its impression will persist long after it is debunked.

In other words, when it comes to controlling information and what is perceived to be “true” or not, the link between biology and society becomes a very powerful tool for both sides to exploit and manipulate. This is in line with Joseph Goebbels’ (Nazi Germany’s Minister of Propaganda) famous quote, “If you tell people a lie often enough, eventually they will start to believe it.”

With that in mind, we should also recognize that these days and through such media as the internet and various blogs, social networking sites, and other forms of mass communication, such misinformation can be spread quite easily and effectively.

In the past, liberals have not been quite as skilled in these respects. With this in mind, I hope this time we’ve learned our lesson and can better respond in asserting facts over stereotypes.

I received the following announcement from the well-respected Asia Society about a series of short videos they’ve produced on preferences for the upcoming presidential election among Asian policy leaders:

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At the Asia Society’s 36th Annual Williamsburg policy conference in Bali, Indonesia, key Asia-Pacific leaders were asked to discuss the US elections and to comment on their preferred candidate.

Over 80% of all Asia-Pacific leaders interviewed expressed a preference for Barack Obama, arguing that he would be best for US foreign relations and would send a positive, hopeful message to the world.

Check out all the responses to “If Asia Could Vote in the US Elections” and a companion feature, “One Piece of Advice to the Next US President.”

Both videos are quite interesting and offer good information and advice for how our next President can maintain and develop closer ties with our Asian neighbors, many of whom are poised to take on a more prominent role as we move forward into the 21st century.