Obama Yey, Larry Summers, Ney, Bradley Effect is What We Say

So can we now agree that we should never consider the possibility that the Bradley effect will stop a nonwhite candidate from winning? How obnoxious was all of that discussion? Even Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow discussed the Bradley effect as possibly preventing an Obama win. I must pause from my Bradley effect rant to say:

BY THE WAY_ YEAHHHHHHHHHHH AMEN THAT OBAMA WON. WE CAN NOW CLOSE GUANTANAMO AND START REBUILDING OUR LOST DEMOCRACY. THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO HELPED ELECT BARACK. LET'S NOT LET UP EITHER-- NO DEREGULATORS LIKE LARRY "GIRLS CAN'T ADD" SUMMERS AS TREASURY SECT, PLEASE! SPEAK UP AT CHANGE.GOV (SEE "SHARE YOUR VISION" AND "SHARE YOUR STORY").

Ok, I'll stop yelling now. But seriously, what a wonderful win. I was so concerned that the right wing cabal of the Republican Party would go for steal #3. I can't believe we turned out in numbers greater than the stealers could match. Or maybe McCain just does not have the same pull as Bush--not the same kind of powerful family. No Yale connections. No Skull connections. Even with all of that vote flipping in W VA and Tenn, the purging in Colorado, we still did it.

Another post-election btw: what the heck happened to CA with gay marriage? And AZ and FL? Let's not blame nonwhites for this--plenty of white folks voted for prop 8 in CA and the AZ and FL versions too. We have to regroup on this issue and clearly articulate this as a civil rights issue. Cindy M.--I totally agree with you on this, and so do most pundits I hear on the postmortem of 8. Can you imagine if there were a prop that said "same race only" to marry, harking back to anti-miscegenation laws? I guess we need another Loving v. Virginia ruling. Will a post-Obama court allow for this? We need lots of public history lessons too.

At least there was no GLBTQ-ophobia "effect" in these elections. So yey, Silverton, Oregon!

Speaking of -phobic effects, back to the Bradley effect rant:

What is useful about the Bradley effect is that it is actually a great example of how we talk about racism. It's not "our" problem--its theirs. We would not not vote for a candidate because he is African American, but others would. In face, others would also tell pollsters they would when they wouldn't. The Bradley effect, which pundits have used to explain Mayor Bradley's gubernatorial loss in 1982, posits that other people are racist to vote for a black candidate and are so self-conscious (self-loathing?) about their racism that they would lie to pollsters about it.

Now, the Bradley effect has been exposed as a fallacy, even by those closest to the Bradley v. Deukmejian campaign. See an interview w/ columnist Dan Walters and articles by Deumkmejian pollsters V Lance Tarrance Jr. and Ken Khachigian.

But the Bradley effect is worth remembering for how it demonstrates how we speak, and therefore, as George Lakoff would argue, how we think about racism. It's not we who are racist, but they who are.

We need to own our own racism, folks. Isn't it a form of racism to say--well, those other people are so racist, they'd never elect a black president?

Media effects studies scholars have a term for this--it's called "third person effect" and it refers to a theory W. Phillips Davison suggested back in 1983 (in Public Opinion Quarterly), shortly after Bradley lost to a white Republican.

Third person effect is that tendency to believe others are more persuaded by a message than you are. A person operating under the third person effect thinks, "violence effects other people, but not me." Third person effect explains wild-seeming stock market swings (anticipating others will buy or sell, so you jump in beforehand), grocery stores that sell out before a storm (those other people will go mad and buy everything at Kroger's...better get out there now and stock up). So third person effect can set off a self-fulfilling prophecy, you see?

At the very least, the theory suggests that people who say "that guy is too racist to vote for Obama, but I will" are speaking a form of racism too. These days, the third person logic frames acceptable ways of speaking about racism. A taboo, racism is more comfortably discussed in the third person--passive tense even better. The speaker stands guiltless but appears to really care...

See?

What do you think?
(last btw: Nigel: "Roco" is pronounced "Row-co")