Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (563762)	4/29/2010 11:26:12 AM
From: longnshort	Respond to of 1586783

"Asked if blacks should work their way up "without special favors," as the Irish, Italians, and other groups did, 88 percent of supporters agreed, compared to 56 percent of opponents" so 44% of non tea party people think blacks can't make it with out help from whitey ....hmmm sounds racist

To: tejek who wrote (563762)	4/29/2010 3:24:50 PM
From: Taro	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1586783

Now, please help me out: What's your point? /Taro

To: tejek who wrote (563762)	4/30/2010 12:20:17 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1586783

'Racially Resentful' Dissecting the latest bogus tea-party poll. By JAMES TARANTO (Note: We'll be off fishing Friday, returning Monday.) They won't give it up. "Are Tea Partiers Racist?" asks a Newsweek.com headline, apparently written under the mistaken impression that this hackneyed charge is still provocative. The subheadline reveals that the story doesn't even speak to whether the tea-party movement is racist but rather makes a more modest claim: "A new study shows that the movement's supporters are more likely to be racially resentful." Well, what do you expect? If politicians and media personalities want to stir up resentment around the question of race, what better way than by badgering people with false accusations of racism? It turns out, though, that the study doesn't even demonstrate what it purports to. Here is the claim, as described by Newsweek: A new survey by the University of Washington Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race & Sexuality offers fresh insight into the racial attitudes of Tea Party sympathizers. "The data suggests that people who are Tea Party supporters have a higher probability"--25 percent, to be exact--"of being racially resentful than those who are not Tea Party supporters," says Christopher Parker, who directed the study. "The Tea Party is not just about politics and size of government. The data suggests it may also be about race." We know this is going to be hard to believe, but the University of Washington Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race and Sexuality, which immodestly goes by the acronym Wiser, has an ax to grind. According to its mission statement, its purpose is the "examination of issues of social, economic, and political exclusion and disadvantage of marginalized minority populations in the United States." When the institute refers to "marginalized minority populations," it hardly need be said, its definition does not include dissenters against the party that currently holds political power. Rather, it understands "marginalized minority populations" as meaning certain racial, ethnic and sexual-orientational subpopulations--including at least one subpopulation that includes the president of the United States! Marginal indeed. When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. A group whose purpose is to see the world in terms of race is going to collect and structure its data in such a way as to show that whatever it is studying is "about race." And yet the claim of "racial resentment" turns out to be baseless. The institute's "2010 Multi-State Survey on Race and Politics" covers seven states. Survey participants were asked what they think of the tea-party movement; those who "strongly approve" were cast as "true believers"; those who "strongly disapprove," as "true skeptics"; and those whose opinions were weak or neutral as "middle of the road." To gauge their racial attitudes, they were asked whether they agree or disagree with the following statements: • "Irish, Italians, Jewish, and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same without special favors." • "Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class." • "Over the past few years blacks have gotten less than they deserve." • "It's really a matter of some people not trying hard enough; if blacks would only try harder they could be just as well off as whites." "True believers" were most likely to agree with the first and last of these assertions and to disagree with the middle two. The opposite was true of "true skeptics," with "middle of the road" indeed producing consistently middling results. So what does this tell us? We'd say it's fair to characterize the first and last assertions as representing politically conservative views about race and the middle two as expressing liberal ones. The more that one sympathizes with the tea parties, then, the more likely one is to assent to conservative views on race, and to reject liberal ones. Wow, stop the presses! As for the claim that conservative views on these questions reflect "racial resentment," however, the survey provides no evidence one way or the other. It did not plumb the emotions of the participants, who were given a prepackaged assertion and permitted only a binary response. It's possible that agreement with a statement like "Blacks should do the same without special favors" reflects a resentful spirit, but it could also reflect a respectful one--a confidence that blacks are as capable as anyone else. When Parker asserts that tea-party sympathizers are "racially resentful," then, he is imputing to them his own emotional reactions to the questions. The entire exercise illustrates only that political liberals are predisposed to believe that politically conservative views on racial matters are the product of resentment. It would not surprise us if this belief is true in some cases, but by conflating viewpoint and motive, this survey merely presupposes what it purports to prove. online.wsj.com