Race in the 2012 Election

 

The thing that is currently on the forefront of most Americans' minds is the 2012 Presidential election. With our nation's first black president currently in office, this year’s Presidential race is going to be unlike any other before it. Our nation made history in 2008 when we elected Barack Obama to office; will we do it again? The fact that we have one white and one black candidate leads to some conflicts in the races that have nothing to do with policies, healthcare, jobs, or the deficit... an article recently published in the Washington Post says that Mitt Romney is actually using race in a large way to gain votes. 


Race in the 2012 Election, Washington Post:http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/08/27/race-and-the-2012-election/


The article discusses how a large majority of the ads found on Mitt Romney's campaign site are related to welfare- 5 out of the total ten. There are four related to health care, one introducing Paul Ryan, but five that discuss welfare and Romney's plans for how to handle it. According to the article, the ads are puzzling for a number of reasons, the first of which is that welfare isn't really a problem in our society today. The second suggests that when a campaign focuses on one attack, it is almost always because research shows that there is a positive response to that attack. When a political scientist tested the ads and asked viewers questions he reported an interesting phenomenon- racial resentment affected whether people thought that Mitt Romney would help the poor and the middle class and African Americans and did nothing to stir up other attitudes, like a particular party affiliation. This strong racial element doesn’t mean that the ads are racist, but just that they work better with a racist audience…

Link to Mitt Romney's Official Campaign site videos: http://www.mittromney.com/videos

Because our current president is African America and is running against a white man, racial views and perspectives play an incredibly prominent role in this year’s elections. Racial allegiance is one thing that is being called into question- will white people vote for Romney simply because he’s white? Will minorities vote for Obama simply because he is African American? Does the race card in this election take away from the politics and the political goals? Are we actually losing some of the election’s integrity because people can’t get over the issue of race? A recent survey published by the American Psychiatric Journal says that the answer is a simple yes.

Survey on Race’s Role in the Election, American Psychiatric Journal: http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2012/08/presidential-election.aspx

Even those people who don’t think that they are racist or have certain racial ideas may not be aware that subliminally, they are. As long as the media has existed it has spouted racist stereotypes and promoted gender and ethnic inequalities. Even if we think that we are immune to these ideas or neutral towards the issue of ethnic differences, this study and others like it show that we are not. The subliminal messages that we have been receiving for years lead us to think differently, in ways that we aren’t even aware of.

As can be seen by the plethora of ads on Mitt Romney’s campaign site, racism definitely has an effect on how we view issues, even if we don’t know it.