Polls show Obama's race might affect election; MU panelists weigh in

A panel of black MU administrators said race still matters in this election.

By Eva Dou

Published Sept. 26, 2008

Although Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has tried to downplay race in his presidential campaign, polls and an MU panel suggest the issue is still at the forefront for many voters of all races.

On Thursday at the Gaines/Oldham Black Culture Center, a panel discussed the role of race in this year's election.

"It's a historic milestone when a member of a group that has been historically despised and degraded and denied the basic rights of citizenship, when a member of that group could possibly hold the highest office in the land," former professor Jeffrey Williams said before an audience of about two dozen students in reference to Obama's bid for president. "If one individual achieves something, it points to the possibilities of the entire race."

But Williams, director of Access and Urban Outreach at the MU Office of Enrollment Management, said the optimism surrounding Obama's campaign contained "fault lines."

"At the same moment we're patting ourselves on the back that we've finally transcended race, it becomes more apparent that race still matters," he said.

Two polls released in the last week support his assertion.

An Associated Press-Yahoo News poll released last week concluded that two out of five white Americans have at least some negative views toward black Americans.

In fact, racial prejudice could take 6 percentage points from Obama, according to the poll, enough to tip the balance in a tight race.

"There's a penalty for prejudice, and it's not trivial," Stanford University political scientist Paul Sniderman, who helped analyze the data, told the AP.

Of the people surveyed, 2.5 percent said they might turn away from Obama because of his race.

"Unfortunately, some people are still harboring really centuries-old adages and notions about marginal populations," said panelist Nathan Stephens, director of the Gaines/Oldham Black Culture Center.

The AP poll surveyed more than 2,200 citizens from Aug. 27 to Sept. 5. To gather data, surveyors used methods such as flashing a series of faces of people of different races, followed by a neutral image, to discern latent prejudices.

The correlation between underlying attitudes and actions such as voting is still hazy.

Two-thirds of white Democrats who used words like "lazy," "boastful" or "violent" to describe black people also said they would give their vote to Obama over Republican candidate Sen. John McCain.

Williams said polls could be deceiving because some respondents do not accurately report their candidate pick.

"You have to take the 'Bradley effect' into account," he said, alluding to former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, who is black and lost his 1982 bid for California governor against a white opponent, despite being ahead in voter polls.

"If Obama is not significantly ahead in the polls, he may lose," he said. "People don't tell the truth when it comes to who they're going to vote for."

A second survey, released Monday by USA Today, ABC News and Columbia University, found general consensus across racial lines about the main issues the next president must tackle. But it found significant differences in cross-racial outlook on the election's likely outcome.

About 70 percent of people who are black expected Obama to win, while 50 percent of people who are white believed McCain would prevail.

Of the 13 percent of black people who said McCain would win, racism was the most frequently cited reason. But only 5 percent of the white people who expected McCain to win cited racism as the main cause.

During the forum, Stephens discussed the five areas the National Urban League uses to measure gaps between white and black communities: economics, education, health, social justice and civic engagement.

For the black community, Obama represents possibilities for change in these areas, though the responsibility lies largely with citizens to do something with those possibilities, Stephens said.

Paulette Orr, an MU pharmacy student who brought her 5-year-old son and 8-month-old daughter to the forum, said she is voting for Obama because of his health care policy and his views about the Iraq war.

"We live off triumphs," she said. "If Obama does not win, I will feel it like a slap in the face. But if he wins, he'll be breaking our barriers."