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Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 7393
Registered: 07-2006
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, July 14, 2008 - 10:25 am: | 
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Double Vision: The Race Issue Revisited
July 14, 2008
-By Mark Dolliver
While few people would deny that race relations are better than when Obama was a child, opinion data show that black and white Americans don't see eye to eye on the degree to which things have changed.
Writing just over 100 years ago, W.E.B. Du Bois famously declared that "the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line." Now, with polls indicating the U.S. is as likely as not to make Barack Obama its president, it's clear the line has blurred. But does the problem remain?
While few people would deny that race relations are better than when Obama was a child, opinion data show that black and white Americans don't see eye to eye on the degree to which things have changed. Like people on a blind date that isn't quite panning out, black and white Americans have out-of-sync impressions of how well they're hitting it off. And, inevitably, this yields differences in how they react to advertising that seems to suggest we've already reached a post-racial promised land.
It's not that we live in a country where people of different ethnicities lack for interaction with one another. An ABC News/Washington Post survey last month asked respondents of each race whether there's anyone of the other race whom they consider "a fairly close personal friend." The numbers saying "yes" were high enough to make you think those beer commercials showing jolly mixed-raced groups might not be so fanciful after all. (Think of this spring's Coors Light spot in which a white guy ditches his girlfriend to go help his black pal "vent," which turns out to mean getting together to drink beer.) Ninety-two percent of black and 79 percent of white respondents said they do have a fairly close friend of the other race.
Nor is this an exclusively upscale phenomenon. Ruy Teixeira, whose affiliations include that of senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and who has written extensively about the white working class, makes the point that blue-collar white and black Americans simply rub shoulders more than they used to do. "Whites can't wall themselves off the way they once could," Teixeira says.
Seeing different realities
Still, the greater incidence of interracial amity doesn't mean that white and black Americans see the same reality when they think about race. A Gallup poll timed to this year's Martin Luther King Jr. holiday offers evidence of the split perspective. White respondents were far more inclined than their black counterparts (46 percent vs. 29 percent) to agree that most or all goals of the civil-rights movement have been achieved. Last month's ABC News/Washington Post poll found a similar pattern (see chart below) when asking about race relations.
These broad differences reflect specific gaps in perception of how much bias black people face. We get a revealing glimpse of this from a Pew Research Center poll fielded last fall. While 67 percent of black respondents said black people almost always or frequently face discrimination in applying for jobs, 20 percent of white respondents said that's so. Fifty percent of black vs. 12 percent of white respondents said black people face discrimination at stores and restaurants. As for college admissions, 43 percent of black and 7 percent of white respondents said black applicants almost always/frequently face discrimination.
Thinking racially, or not
These disparities also reflect basic differences in racial self-perception. "African Americans have always had to think racially," says Darnell Hunt, professor of sociology and director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA. "That's not the case for white Americans. There's research showing that, by and large, on a daily basis whites don't think of themselves as a racial group. African Americans do. They're very conscious of race, of dealing with it on a daily basis." And it cuts across lines of class in the black community. "There's still a sense of a shared fate," he says.
Some of this sense arises out of shared experience on the receiving end of bias. In a June 2007 Gallup poll, 23 percent of black respondents said they'd been treated unfairly in the workplace in the past 30 days "because you were black"; 28 percent said the same about a store in which they were shopping and 20 percent about "a restaurant, bar or other entertainment place." No doubt some people sense slights that aren't really there. But the specificity of the question, with its reference to the prior 30 days, makes it unlikely we're dealing with a mass delusion that affects 20 percent to 30 percent of black people.
If some white people are insensitive to the travails of their black compatriots, some are very, very sensitive -- and proud of it. "There's now a kind of white person under 30 who thinks of himself as an 'honorary' black person [because he's so highly aware that] the playing field isn't level," says John McWhorter, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute's Center for Race and Ethnicity, and author of the just-published All About the Beat: Why Hip-Hop Can't Save Black America. "Quite simply, the 'playing field' issue means that blackness is thought of as a problem, which is not where we need to go." Moreover, he says, this sort of hyper-consciousness leads to such white people "thinking they can 'be' something that you cannot 'be' unless you were born to it."
The black/Hispanic divide
Of course, the divide between black and white people is no longer the whole story of ethnic tensions in the U.S. Though Obama is now polling well among Hispanic voters in general-election surveys, his lackluster showing in this constituency during the Democratic primaries drew fresh attention to long-standing strains between black and Hispanic Americans.
A poll released at the end of last year by New America Media (NAM) gave a detailed look at how the two groups (as well as ethnic Asians) regard each other, and it's not a pretty picture. Asked who they feel most comfortable doing business with -- white, Asian or black people -- a mere 3 percent of Hispanic respondents picked blacks, despite their proximity in many neighborhoods. (Sixty-one percent chose whites.) Asked whether they feel most comfortable doing business with white, Asian or Hispanic people, just 10 percent of black respondents picked Hispanics (47 percent chose whites). Forty-four percent of the Hispanic respondents agreed with the statement, "I am generally afraid of African Americans because they are responsible for most of the crime"; 51 percent of black respondents agreed that "Latin American immigrants are taking away jobs, housing and political power from the black community." A more mixed reading emerges from Pew polling last fall. When black and Hispanic respondents were questioned on how those two groups "get along," a lukewarm "pretty well" won a plurality of votes from both groups.
Richard Rodriguez, a contributing writer and editor at NAM, situates current Hispanic/black tension in a broader historical context. Immigrants have often made their way into U.S. society by setting themselves apart from black people, he says. "Hispanics are only the most recent immigrants who are tempted by this strategy." While antagonism between white and black people seems to skew toward older cohorts, the youthful composition of the Hispanic population creates a different pattern. "I have noticed Hispanic/black tension at all age levels," he says. At the same time, though, young people have a facility for multicultural mash-ups. "I often meet self-named 'Blaxicans' in a city like Los Angeles," he adds.
Rodriguez says the notion of "Hispanics" as a collectivity is artificial to begin with -- though it's turning into a more substantive reality. "America is lumping together all the races and classes and nations of Latin America and telling us we are 'Hispanics.' At first there is resistance from newcomers. But slowly, and especially among the young, there is a new sense of identity being formed," he says. Commerce plays a role in this, naturally. "For example, Spanish-language television makes a point, for economic reasons, of stressing the commonality of all Hispanics," Rodriguez points out. He adds: "Cuban and Mexican and Peruvian are alike in the eyes of Spanish-language advertisers on Univision."
The Obama factor
Indeed, pop culture is one of the two big factors stirring the ethnic pot in this new century. The other is politics. On the political front, the strong candidacy of Obama is at once a reflection of and potentially a catalyst for change in racial thinking. In an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll last month, 17 percent of respondents agreed "strongly" and 31 percent "somewhat" that "Race relations in America will improve if Barack Obama is elected president." (Twenty-three percent disagreed somewhat and 20 percent strongly.)
There's clearly a sizable white constituency that welcomes the prospect of an Obama victory as a sign that America has already become a post-racial society -- that the struggle of race is behind us. This sentiment also influences the way in which people react to popular culture, advertising included.
It's obvious to anyone who watches TV that the content of advertising has become more inclusive, and not just in the form of "black" versions of "white" commercials. We see easy-going interaction between the races in recent spots for everything from Miracle-Gro plant food and McDonald's Happy Meals to Levi's jeans.
David Lubars, chairman, CCO of BBDO North America, suggests advertising content is a pop-culture leader in its inclusiveness. "Advertising does a much better job of showing diversity and reflects the American fabric better than the movies or TV shows," he says. "You watch any evening of TV commercials, you see a great mix."
The Allstate campaign featuring actor Dennis Haysbert is a conspicuous example of advertising we likely wouldn't have seen a generation ago. Even as it has become common to see spots featuring black people as actors or celebrity endorsers, the Allstate campaign stands out for casting a black actor in such an authoritative role -- and for a brand people rely on to care for them when they really need it. So, what do viewers see when a commanding black man (already known for playing a U.S. president on Fox TV series 24) appears in this context? The answer may well depend on the viewer's race.
UCLA's Hunt compares it to the differing ways in which black and white people viewed The Cosby Show and its very successful Huxtable family. White viewers saw an America that had moved beyond race "and it made them feel very progressive that they were inviting this African American family into their homes every week," he says. Black viewers enjoyed the show as well, "but it also didn't seem realistic to them. It was something on the verge of a fantasy. The feeling was, maybe we can look at this more as a goal than as a reality now." Something similar is likely going on in perceptions of Haysbert's Allstate commercials, he suggests. "Whites may see a post-racial society, while African Americans see it more as somewhere we'd like to go," he says.
To the post-racial promised land
Hadji Williams, a former copywriter whose 2005 book Knock the Hustle garnered attention in advertising circles, offers a sterner take on the whole genre of advertising that presents a post-racial Eden at which the country hasn't really arrived. "There's something kind of ironic about a 90 percent white industry presenting anything as 'aspirational' to ethnic consumers, most of whom they choose not to hire/work with, live near or associate with," he says. As for how consumers react to such advertising, he notes that "there are people from all ethnic backgrounds who see ads that reflect a 'post-racial' view -- the notion that we've gotten over race, as if being black is some sort of nuisance or social crutch -- as an aspirational fantasy. There are also those who are irritated by work that portrays the Grey's Anatomy world where race/ethnicity are never mentioned, much less discussed, as disingenuous and not based on the reality that most live in."
There's a multi-ethnic consensus, reflected in a recent Economist/YouGov/Polimetrix survey, that the topic of race attracts too much chatter. But as Williams says, this sentiment reflects a wide range of motives. "I think everyone wants to move on, but for different reasons -- some because they feel that being black is always going to be an uphill battle until it isn't, and others because they don't want to have an honest discussion about why it's an uphill battle," he says.
If advertising tends to present a comfortable notion that we're all leading the bourgeois good life together, the real-world economy is a perennial wild card in shaping the way ethnic groups get along. Will rising income inequality end up yielding more solidarity between working-class white people and their black counterparts? Teixeira has his doubts. "Solidarity along class lines has always been less strong in the U.S. than you suspect it should be," he says. His take is broadly in sync with the findings of a recent Newsweek poll of white registered voters. Asked whether "you feel like you have a lot of common interests with blacks in your social class," just 30 percent said they do; 49 percent said they have "some" interests in common.
Looking ahead, McWhorter suggests we're in a transitional phase in the way people feel about race as a national obsession. In the short run, "I suspect that where we are going is whites feeling ever more that it's time we blacks get over it, while an ever shrinking population of blacks continue hoping that whites will change their tune and 'wake up,' " he says. But this too shall (eventually) pass. "In about 50 years," he adds, "we will be so hybrid a nation that any idea of black-white relations as a major problem in need of address will seem archaic."
Black Spokesman” Title Still up for Grabs - GALLUP
http://www.gallup.com/poll/108805/Black-Spokesman-Title-Still-Grabs.aspx
Links referenced within this article
http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/agency/mailto:mdolliver@adweek.com
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Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 7394
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, July 14, 2008 - 10:53 am: |
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PRINCETON, NJ -- "Twenty-nine percent of Americans name Barack Obama as the individual or leader in the United States whom they would choose as their spokesman for race issues, but 49% name someone else and nearly a quarter produce no name.
. . . .
...consistent with Obama's efforts to downplay the racial symbolism of his candidacy, most blacks don't think of Obama as their racial spokesman. A total of 49% cite someone else (including 6% who name themselves).
. . . .
...more broadly, the poll suggests that black Americans see beyond race when thinking about Obama. By not heavily associating Obama with the "black spokesman" role (49% name someone else and nearly a quarter name no one), and by holding somewhat muted expectations for his ability to improve race relations, blacks seem to agree with the essence of Sharpton's commentary: Obama is more than "the black candidate for president"; he's a candidate for president who happens to be black."
Agreed.
I prefer Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Tavis Smiley and Minister Louis Farrakhan myself. Barack Obama is not the right voice to address Blk concerns imo at all. I see him as commander-in-chief, not Black-leader-in-chief or anything close. |
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