I just read the NY Times article this morning which talked about Obama and how is candidacy isn't affecting the racial divide between blacks and whites. This doesn't surprise me at all. This divide is deep and has been developing over many generations. It's not something that is going to change overnight with one man's candidacy.
Sometimes I wonder who these pollsters call. When I read at the bottom of the article that the people who were polled were about 1300 white people and 200 black people, I thought to myself, well that's pretty skewed. Also, are these calls just random? And in all those calls, did they not get one Asian person or Hispanic person? As an Asian person, I always feel that these discussions about race always revolve around black and white. In this article, Hispanics were even mentioned as overwhelmingly for Obama. No mention of Asians. Asians voted overwhelmingly for Clinton in California--are they going to stay with Obama or go for McCain?
Included with the article is a graphic illustrating different questions asked of the interviewees about different racial issues. One of the questions is "Do you have a favorable opinion of Barack Obama?" It amazed me that in this poll, only 31% of whites had a favorable opinion and 31% were undecided or had not heard enough! Who were these pollsters interviewing? People who had been under a frickin' rock? They hadn't heard enough? Watch the news! Go on the Internet! Read a magazine! He's on the news everyday! He's been on the news everyday for over a year! I don't really trust these polls because they tend to contact an older population and exclude a younger population whose primary phone is a cell phone. I think if younger people were included in these polls, the results would be much different.
