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David Sirota is a political journalist and nationally syndicated newspaper columnist at Creators Syndicate. David writes about political corruption, globalization and working-class economic issues often ignored by both of America's political parties.

  • July 16, 2008 4:54 PM

    NYT's Egan Discovers The Race Chasm - Then Seems to Justify It

    The New York Times' Tim Egan - normally a pretty original writer who I'm a big fan of - today discovers the Race Chasm, about four months after it was first discussed and then debated all over the media:

    People who live in states with few blacks seem more open to the idea of a president who is not white. Perhaps race is more of an abstract, an ideal. The raw, sometimes tribal clashes of ethnic groups, where a long-ago slight can harden into a political attitude, seems less pronounced.

    Thus, Obama is ahead in Oregon, which has a black population of 1.9 percent, but is having trouble in Michigan, where 14.3 percent of the population is black and the white suburban diaspora has complicated views about race informed by black-majority Detroit. (emphasis added)

    That part in bold makes me wince, actually. He seems to be employing euphemisms that - whether deliberately or accidentally - seem to justify the racism inherent in the race chasm. For instance, he seems to be substituting the innocuous word "complicated" for the word "racist." Worse, he appears to be using the term "informed by" as a euphemism for the term "understandable considering." After all, "informed" implies that the racism they have developed from living near black-majority Detroit is merely a product of being objectively educated (a synonym for "informed") - and therefore, those racist views are supposedly understandable because they are the supposedly logical result of objective education, rather than prejudice.

    I'm not saying Egan is a racist, as this was probably inadvertent (and again, I am a fan of Egan's work). But when I read this passage, the phrasing really jumped out at me as yet another example of how racism can be so subtly woven into our language and our media.

    Posted by David Sirota
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    Tags: Race Chasm

Discussion

  • Chris V [TypeKey Profile Page] :

    The website http://www.electoral-vote.com/ tracks the various polls over time and aggregates the information into one, large electoral map. It is a useful tool to see what is going on at any given time across the nation.

    What I don't get is that the polls currently show the opposite of what Egan wrote. Obama is currently solidly ahead in Michigan, leading McCain by 8 percentage points. Yet in Oregon, Obama is doing worse, only leading by 3 percentage points - certainly within the margin of error.

    http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2008/Pres/Graphs/michigan.html

    http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2008/Pres/Graphs/oregon.html

    So, how do we explain this contradiction? Maybe the white suburban diaspora of Michigan is not so "complicated" after all. Maybe something other than "complications" have recently occurred in Oregon. Obama previously was doing better in Oregon. Does that mean that the whites in Oregon spontaneously got more "complicated" overnight? Or, can something else be occurring in both Oregon and Michigan?

    Boiling anything down to one dimension, such as race, oversimplifies reality. Yes, there are a lot of racists out there. I have met far too many in my travels across the US. But, I also met a far larger group of people who oppose racism with a strong intensity. Those people will pick who they think is the best candidate regardless of skin color.

    Posted on July 16, 2008 9:19 PM
  • Chris V [TypeKey Profile Page] :

    Egan tells a distorted story. Obama is ahead in both states. He's ahead of McCain in Michigan by 8 points, but only 3 points in Oregon.

    These point totals highlight the fact that boiling down the differences between Michigan and Oregon to the single dimension of race makes no sense whatsoever. Obama was previously doing better in Oregon. So, what happened? Did the people of Oregon suddenly become more racist? I doubt that. I also doubt that the people of Michigan became less racist.

    Even though Egan looks like he implied racism in Michigan without saying it, I do believe he was correct in what he actually wrote. The views of voters are more complicated than merely boiling down to race. Certainly, there are racists out there - I have met too many in my time. But, there are a far larger group of people who dislike the views of racists and work hard to minimize their effect.

    Posted on July 17, 2008 11:01 AM

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