Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Black Friday: 4 Years Later, Race Is Still Issue for Some Voters
Lets get it crackalackin' up in here today!
STEUBENVILLE, Ohio ? This is the land of die-hard Democrats ? mill workers, coal miners and union members. They have voted party line for generations, forming a reliable constituency for just about any Democrat who decides to run for office.
But when it comes to President Obama, a small part of this constituency balks.
?Certain precincts in this county are not going to vote for Obama,? said John Corrigan, clerk of courts for Jefferson County, who was drinking coffee in a furniture shop downtown one morning last week with a small group of friends, retired judges and civil servants. ?I don?t want to say it, but we all know why.?
A retired state employee, Jason Foreman, interjected, ?I?ll say it: it?s because he?s black.?
For nearly three and a half years, a black family has occupied the White House, and much of the time what has been most remarkable about that fact is how unremarkable it has become to the country. While Mr. Obama will always be known to the history books as the country?s first black president, his mixed-race heritage has only rarely surfaced in visible and explicit ways amid the tumult of a deep recession, two wars and shifting political currents.
But as Mr. Obama braces for what most signs suggest will be a close re-election battle, race remains a powerful factor among a small minority of voters ? especially, research suggests, those in economically distressed regions with high proportions of white working-class residents, like this one.
Mr. Obama barely won this county in 2008 ? 48.9 percent to John McCain?s 48.7 percent. Four years earlier, John Kerry had an easier time here, winning 52.3 percent to 47.2 percent over George W. Bush. Given Ohio?s critical importance as a swing state that will most likely be won or lost by the narrowest of margins, the fact that Mr. Obama?s race is a deal-breaker for even a small number of otherwise loyal Democrats could have implications for the final results.
Obama advisers acknowledged that some areas of the state presented more political challenges than others, but said that the racial sentiment was not a major source of worry. The campaign?s strategy relies in large part on a strong performance in cities and suburban areas to make up for any falloff elsewhere among Democrats in this or other corners of Ohio.
The Obama campaign aggressively monitors any racial remarks made against the president, but officials rarely openly discuss Mr. Obama?s race. The president released his birth certificate last year in an effort to quell a growing controversy about whether he is a United States citizen. He said last month that race in America was still ?complicated.?
?I never bought into the notion that by electing me, somehow we were entering into a post-racial period,? Mr. Obama said in an interview with Rolling Stone.
?I?ve seen in my own lifetime how racial attitudes have changed and improved, and anybody who suggests that they haven?t isn?t paying attention or is trying to make a rhetorical point,? he said. ?Because we all see it every day, and me being in this Oval Office is a testimony to changes that have been taking place.?
Researchers have long struggled to quantify racial bias in electoral politics, in part because of the reliance on surveys, a forum in which respondents rarely admit to prejudice. In 50 interviews in this county over three days last week, 5 people raised race directly as a reason they would not vote for Mr. Obama. In those conversations, voters were not asked specifically about race, but about their views on the candidates generally. Those who raised the issue did so of their own accord.
?I?ll just come right out and say it: he was elected because of his race,? said Sara Reese, a bank employee who said she voted for Ralph Nader in 2008, even though she usually votes Democrat.
Did her father, a staunch Democrat and retired mill worker, vote for Mr. Obama? ?I?d have to say no. I don?t think he could do it,? she said.
But the main quarrels Democratic voters here have with Mr. Obama have nothing to do with race. They include his opposition to the Keystone pipeline, an environmental stance they say will harm this area, whose backbone, the Ohio River, is lined with metal mills and coal mines.
And the economy, on the rise nationally, is still stuck here. About one in three residents in Steubenville live in poverty, double the national rate. Shale gas, which has begun to bring profits to some counties in Ohio, has yet to take off here, and downtown is a grid of empty storefronts behind dusty glass.
?The big word was ?change,? but there?s not been much of that,? said Christopher Brown, a union leader in Steubenville, who said more than 200 of his members were still out of work. ?Members are saying, ?What has President Obama done for us?? ?
As for race, he said, ?It?s not on the front table, it?s in the back seat.?
Just how far back is a question no one can definitively answer. ?Race in America is always a work in progress,? said Clement A. Price, a professor of history at Rutgers-Newark. ?It?s often a proxy for social anxieties, such as this long recession, joblessness and the war abroad.?
Stephanie Montgomery, who is black and a graduate of Franciscan University in Steubenville, said her race came up so often in her job search in this area that she developed a technique for recognizing when it was happening. The sign: when warmth on the phone turns cool in person, and ?they lose eye contact with you.?
?You almost need a corporate environment to get a fair shot,? she said while standing at a job fair in the Steubenville mall. She said that she did not vote for Mr. Obama in 2008 because she preferred Mr. McCain?s more conservative platform, but that Mr. Obama seemed to be a lightning rod for criticism, in part because of his race.
?He?s everything they hate,? she said, referring to ultraconservatives. ?An affirmative-action baby. Got the Nobel Prize without deserving it.?
Many who raised race as a concern cast Mr. Obama as a flawed candidate carried to victory by blacks voting for the first time. Others expressed concerns indirectly, through suspicions about Mr. Obama?s background and questions about his faith.
?He was like, ?Here I am, I?m black and I?m proud,? ? said Lesia Felsoci, a bank employee drinking a beer in an Applebee?s. ?To me, he didn?t have a platform. Black people voted him in, that?s why he won. It was black ignorance.?
Louis Tripodi, a baker in Steubenville who voted for Mr. Obama, blames talk radio and Republican rhetoric for encouraging such attitudes. ? ?He?s a Muslim, he?s a socialist, he?s not born in this country,? ? he said. ?It?s got a lot to do with race.?
Race has also helped Mr. Obama. It increased voter turnout among blacks in 2008, and some younger voters said it was part of why they voted for him. But now that history has been made, it is less of a pull.
?It was kind of like a bandwagon that a lot of young people jumped on because it was history,? said Dee Kirkland, a 22-year-old working in a pizza shop in nearby Yorkville. ?It was a fad to like him,? she said, adding that ?race shouldn?t hinder you, but it also shouldn?t help you.?
Mr. Obama still has a number of enthusiastic supporters here. Diane Woods, the owner of Pee Dee?s Brunch and Bar, a diner in downtown Steubenville, described him as ?regal, and presidential,? and said she would vote for him again because ?when he talks, it makes sense to me.?
The fact that race came up at all in 2008 ?really showed how divided we still are,? she said, cooking eggs one gray morning last week. ?Blacks came out to vote for the first time because he was black, and you had all these whites saying, ?Oh, there?s another vote from some drug addict.? ?
Mr. Corrigan, who supports Mr. Obama, said he believed that the president would ultimately win this mostly Democratic county but that it would be very close, a prediction he said was underscored by a recent flurry of Republican visits. Rick Santorum came here twice during his campaign, and Gov. John R. Kasich, a Republican, gave his annual address here this winter.
?It?s going to be a nail-biter,? said Mr. Brown, the union official.
Re: Black Friday: 4 Years Later, Race Is Still Issue for Some Voters
I'm not surprised at all. But I tend to believe most people are kind of racist
They're also not in the south. Bazinga!
I didn't know that black ignorance had a voting card.
Race aside, I always laugh when people assert that no one voted for Obama because he's black. Sure, that's not what won him the election and it's not some huge amount of people but they exist and not in tiny numbers.
I also think that Herman Cain had a point underneath all his stupidity, that if Obama had come from a more how shall we say, stereotypical black upbringing, he would not be in the White House. That's just another reason this whole post racial deal is some bullshiit.
Click me, click me!
No, but there seems to be a recurring theme on this board that Republicans/conservatives are the racists who won't vote for Obama.
Mid-west, same dif.
Yup but we all know that the union member voting block isn't exactly black folk friendly.
Click me, click me!
I know that. It was a sarcastic remark because the idea is so unbelievably stupid.
ETA: I think there were only a few people who mentioned this, and then KateAggie brings it up whenever someone says something bad about Republicans which just makes it worse.
I don't hear people saying that. I think probably the same number of people that voted for Obama because he is black equals the same number that didn't vote for him because he is black.
True.
From everything I've read, it seems that it really came down to turnout. Meaning, there were few, if any, people who would have otherwise voted Republican but voted for Obama instead solely because he was black. But there were a decent number of people who would have otherwise stayed home who actually went to the polls because Obama was black. At least that's how I understood the numbers.
I do think there were independents and more centerist Dems who could have been persuaded to vote for McCain but were caught up in the excitement of the ability to vote for a black president. That being said, I don't think there is a single person who voted for a platform they disagreed with solely because that platform belonged to a black man.
I think white voters agreed with enough of Obama's positions and the fact that he was black and they were doing something historic was icing on the cake. And I think black voters were going to vote Dem anyway.
So while I said what I did, I do think the effect was negligible.
Click me, click me!
would these same people have voted for Herman Cain because he is Black?
My guess is not.
IME, there were people who came out for Obama who wouldn't have voted in the first place, and a lot of that excitement to come out for him was from people who wouldn't otherwise have voted. There weren't that many people who voted for Obama solely because of his race. It was because he is Black and because they could get behind his policies.
I am the 99%.
Let me reply in a conservative / republican manner.
Firstly, how dare you call me a racist? Im not a racist, and none of my buddies are racist either.
Secondly, I am not going to respond to a thread that calls me a racist, except to say this, then storm out of the thread.
Thirdly,This was written by a totally bias source and I want to see the numbers. Which I will then discredit. Or ignore.
Fourthly, (puts on passive aggressive voice) "oh well, here we go again" and "what's the point of replying" and "you guys all paint me with the same brush and don't really understand" and "I didn't vote for it"
Fourthly (as Sisugal) "Obamcare is the reason. Obamacare and Solyndra"
And I am outta here....lolz Mclolzaton.
ETA Feel free to reverse all sentiment and players for the opposite side.
Them's fightin' words! We'll secede, dagnabbit.
You need more black 'friends' and talk to your company about hiring more black people so your ideas based on a few don't result in bs like this next time around.
Zuma Zoom
I guarantee that in our next open, non-incumbant election (probably 2016), a middle age-old white guy will win. And the president after that, as well, will be an old white guy.
Not that America's "not ready" for a black president (what does that even mean?) but that Obama was elected through a combination of factors that are unlikely to repeat themselves with another black candidate, or female candidate, or any candidate, really, any time soon.
He was elected not because people overcame his race, but in spite of some people not voting for him because of it.
40/112
For serious. I don't know any black people who can name at least one stance of the president!
Sure turnout was impacted. It was historic. At the time my precinct was overwhelmingly black and I waited in line for almost an hour. Many people had brought their children. It was historic and I think it's petty to complain about black people being excited to vote for someone who looks like them when white people have always had that
The Knot
The Bump
The Nest - Buying a Home, Money Advice, Decorating Ideas, Easy Recipes
Message Boards | Recipes | Blogs
Photos | Tools | Q & A
community
all boards
my blog
my photos
my boards
200+ Easy Weeknight Meals!
Green living: Eco-friendly tips & tricks!
Word
Zuma Zoom
You really think unsure black people would have voted republican is say Clarence Thomas was running? Black people have been voting democratic in droves for years now.
To be fair, it is not just KA that brings this up (I know I have and it is usually in response to knitty).
Yup.
Unsure or uninformed black folks either vote dem or stay home. Now I'm not saying black Dem voters are morons. I'm just saying that the only black folk who vote republican are the ones with very strong political opinions. Obviously, there are plenty of well informed, interested and active black voters who align with the dems and vote accordingly but there are very few black folks casually voting republican, trust.
Click me, click me!
Oh honey no. Bless your heart.
I vote republican in local races. The folks who run my city ain't s-h-!-t
Or strong religious opinions. I know more than a few socially conservative black Republicans. They vote on the social aspect mostly based on ultra conservative religious stances.
Zuma Zoom