{"id":1452,"date":"2008-09-24T11:11:06","date_gmt":"2008-09-24T11:11:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2008\/09\/24\/i-lived-in-manh\/"},"modified":"2008-09-24T11:11:06","modified_gmt":"2008-09-24T11:11:06","slug":"i-lived-in-manh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2008\/09\/24\/i-lived-in-manh\/","title":{"rendered":"OBAMA AND RACE: THE LESSONS OF DINKINS AND BRADLEY"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Dinkins_campaign\"<\/a>
\nI lived in Manhattan in 1989 when David Dinkins<\/a> ran to become the first African-American mayor of New York, challenging an entrenched but increasingly unpopular Ed Koch<\/a> in the primary, then defeating  Rudy Giuliani<\/a> in the general election.  In that race, Dinkins was far ahead in the polls but didn’t win by much.  Here’s how Adam Berinsky<\/a> of The Monkey Cage<\/a> describes it:<\/p>\n

I
\nexamined data from a 1989 New York City Mayoral election. There, the black
\ncandidate David Dinkins held a fourteen- to eighteen-point advantage over his
\nwhite opponent Rudolph Giuliani in polls taken only days before the election,
\nbut ended up winning the race by less than two percentage points. Correcting
\nthe polls using statistical techniques that accounted for the \u201cdon\u2019t know\u201d
\nimproved the predictive power of those polls. Clearly, some people who said
\nthey didn\u2019t know how they were going to vote in fact did know \u2013 they just
\ndidn\u2019t want to tell us.<\/strong><\/em><\/o:p><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\n\"Tom_bradley\"<\/a>
\nThe same thing happened earlier, in 1982, to one of LA’s most popular, and first black, mayors, Tom Bradley, when he ran for governor of California.  The gap between the polls and the electoral results was so large that the phenomenon was named "the Bradley effect<\/a>."  Way ahead in polls right up to election day, Bradley lost decisively to George Deukmejian<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Obama_stars\"<\/a>
\nI’m so afraid that this presidential race may be tainted by some of the same behavior.  Of course I’m not covering new ground, just aggregating some good thoughts.  Listen to the work of the very wise Jill Miller Zimon at Writes Like She Talks<\/a>, in which she quotes Tim Wise’s "This Is Your Nation on White Privilege<\/a>."  The fact that that post generated some very heated comments speaks to the currency of this issue, right now.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Thanks to Ronni Bennett<\/a>, at Time Goes By, I discovered this piece <\/a>which she reposted today<\/a>.  I’m going to link to the original, with a hit-tip to Ronni.  The blog is called Happening Here?<\/a>, and the blogger Jan Adams<\/a>.
\nIn her post, she quotes another "awareness raiser" on the subject of
\nwhat is basically unconscious (or less conscious) racism.  Here’s a sample from her
\ncitation of a letter to the editor <\/a>in the Ft. Worth Star Telegram — itself quoted in Cafe Talk<\/a>, part of Talking Points Memo<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You can see from the number of links in this post that this is not a
\nnew topic.  But today, as I re-read these racism essays, looked at the
\npolls and remembered that Chuck Todd<\/a>,
\non MSNBC, responded to a question about the "bubba factor" with "Yes,
\nit’s real.  To counter it Obama has to go in with at least 48 points
\nbecause he’s not going to carry the undecideds." (That’s probably a
\nparaphrase but it’s what he said.)  — as I read and listened, I was
\novertaken by a real sadness.  After the Democratic convention an
\nenormous number of Americans, more than a plurality, responded to
\npollsters that the Obama nomination made them proud to be American. (anyone having this citation, please let me know.  I know that I read it, but not where.)  Clearly we all understood the historic importance of this candidacy.  \n<\/p>\n

The question is, if we understand, will those who want to see that
\nhistoric landmark overtaken by an even larger one – that of the first
\nAfrican-American (…half, anyway) President – whose values,
\nideas, leadership ability, background, style, family and nature are so very attractive, prevail?
\nThe splintering of that not<\/em>-so-glass ceiling is a real possibility and
\nit is up to those who care to overtake the bubbas and the Bradley
\neffect and the Dinkins moment and the histories of Harvey Gant and
\nDouglas Wilder and all the others whose way was blocked by racial
\nattitudes and those who exploited them, to make sure that it happens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I lived in Manhattan in 1989 when David Dinkins ran to become the first African-American mayor of New York, challenging an entrenched but increasingly unpopular Ed Koch in the primary, then defeating  Rudy Giuliani in the general election.  In that race, Dinkins was far ahead in the polls but didn’t win by much.  Here’s how … Continue reading OBAMA AND RACE: THE LESSONS OF DINKINS AND BRADLEY<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27,7,9],"tags":[279,1200,1201,1197,1198,1202,166,1203,92,21,1196,1205,1026,1204,1199],"class_list":["post-1452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-affairs","category-life","category-politics","tag-barack-obama","tag-bradley","tag-bradley-effect","tag-david-dinkins","tag-dinkins","tag-doug-wilder","tag-elections","tag-harvey-gant","tag-obama","tag-politics-2","tag-race","tag-racial-politics","tag-racism","tag-rudy-giuliani","tag-tom-bradley"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4gBq8-nq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1452\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}