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kalikshama -> RE: What do you expect from a bunch of mouth-breathers? (3/11/2012 10:12:55 AM)
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Are white liberals abandoning the president?
A Nation writer worries that an "insidious form of racism" explains their criticism of Obama. I don't see evidence
...Perry doesn’t mention any white liberals by name, nor cite polls showing a decline in support for President Obama among white liberals (as opposed to white voters generally, where his approval rating has dropped sharply). But her piece touched a nerve because of the widespread perception that white liberals are, in fact, abandoning the president.
I’m not sure how to argue with a perception, which is by definition subjective, but I’m going to try, because this is becoming a prevalent and divisive belief. When I say Melissa Harris-Perry is my friend, I don’t say that rhetorically, or ironically; we are professional friends, we have socialized together; she has included me on political round tables; I like and respect her enormously. That’s why I think it’s important to engage her argument, and I’ve invited her to reply.
I couldn’t find any polls measuring “white liberal” support for President Obama, but it’s safe to say many white liberals are disappointed in the president. I think Harris-Perry is wrong when she generalizes about two things: that white liberal disappointment is due to “the tendency of white liberals to hold African-American leaders to a higher standard than their white counterparts” (which she calls “a more insidious form of racism”), and that it’s likely to lead to white liberals “abandoning” Obama in 2012.
In the absence of poll data on white liberal attitudes toward the president, Harris-Perry compares Obama’s current approval-rating woes to the resounding reelection of President Bill Clinton in 1996. Despite Clinton’s failure to pass healthcare reform, a signature Obama achievement, as well as his not so liberal record on NAFTA, “don’t ask, don’t tell” and welfare reform, she says, white liberals stuck with Clinton, yet they are threatening to ditch Obama. She concludes: “If old-fashioned electoral racism is the absolute unwillingness to vote for a black candidate, then liberal electoral racism is the willingness to abandon a black candidate when he is just as competent as his white predecessors.”
But her Clinton-Obama comparison, while provocative and sometimes interesting, has a lot of practical problems.
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