ON THE RACE ISSUE

“There is another factor at work in this year’s election that makes polls and predictions more unreliable than usual. That factor is race. Barack Obama’s string of victories in early Democratic primaries against far better known white candidates shows that large segments of the American population have moved beyond race. It is Barack Obama and his supporters who have hyped race, after his large lead in the polls began to shrink or evaporate, as more of the facts about his checkered career came out. Almost any criticism of Obama has been equated with racism, even if there is no connection that can be seen under a microscope. Barack Obama himself started this trend when he warned that his opponents were going to try to scare the public with various charges, including a statement, ‘And did I say he was black?’ McCain said no such thing. Palin said no such thing. But those who support Obama—and this includes much of the media—are acting as if they just know that this is the underlying message. Congressman John Lewis has likened Senator McCain to George Wallace. Congressman John Murtha has condemned a whole section of the state of Pennsylvania as ‘racists’ because they seem reluctant to jump on the Obama bandwagon. Senator Harry Reid has claimed that linking Obama to deposed and disgraced Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines is racist, since they are both black—as if the financial and political connection between the two does not exist. Much is being made of the fact that, in past elections, some white voters who told pollsters that they are going to vote for a black candidate did not in fact do so, so that a black candidate with a lead in the polls ended up losing on election day. This is supposed to show how much covert racism there is. It might instead show that people don’t want to be considered racists by pollsters because they are leaning toward someone other than the black candidate. In other words, the media themselves helped create the charged atmosphere in which some people give misleading answers to pollsters to avoid being stigmatized.”

—Thomas Sowell