A 48% disparity in positive job aproval rating between two groups, based solely on race, is very significant. That is exactly TWICE the disparity in black/white approval numbers that Bush had post-Katrina (when a whole lot of black people were calling him a racist). In 2007, President Bush’s numbers had a 24% disparity (32% of white people approved of him, 8% of black people did).

On the one hand, I do see where the black community would look to Obama and see a role model that they approve of and want to provide support for. In a culture where popular and iconic black figures who are positive role models are in short supply Obama has a unique place, especially as a very public husand and father (roles he does appear to excel at). So I’m sure this influences these types of polls to some degree, but still, this isn’t a poll about role models, it’s a poll about job approval.

Post election, even Republicans who didn’t vote for Obama were expressing a sense of pride at the milestone his election represented. Numbers like these certainly make one wonder if that pride, based on the assumption that we were finally moving beyond the issues created by America’s racist past, was misplaced.

His numbers with women are about to go screaming through the floor now that breast cancer detection is first up on the Death Panel’s agenda.

Its bothered me a while that the left’s “protected minority” groups are so much more likely to vote for one of their specific group members than anyone else, regardless of other factors. The idea of “best for the job” just doesn’t seem to matter as much if to far too many folks. They’re more concerned with “looks like me.”

Posted by huckupchuck1
2009-11-18 18:22:12

I suppose one explanation would be “he’s one of us” syndrome that causes minorities to band together in spite of the circumstances.

Another would be that the Democrats have done such a complete job of shackling Black America to the government that they actually do think he’s doing a good job.

I’d like to know what evidence anyone has that any of the black folks who approve of Obama’s job don’t actually approve of the job he’s doing?

I do not grok this sentence.

mightysamurai – Here’s one possible explanation that I haven’t heard mentioned: job approval ratings track with party identification. If a large number of black people are Democrats, then it stands to reason that the number of blacks expressing a positive job performance evaluation by a fellow Democrat would reflect this. Ditto for white people who are Democrats expressing a positive job approval rating for a Democratic President. I’d venture to say that white folk are pretty evenly divided in terms of party identification, hence the pretty evenly divided evaluations on Obama’s job performance. I’d suggest that the same pattern holds for Hispanics and Blacks. I’d also posit that if you take the percentage of white folks who identify as Democrats and measure their approval ratings of Obama, they’d probably be in the upper echelons, too, like their black and hispanic Democratic counterparts. And if you take the percentage of black and hispanic folk who are Republicans, their approval ratings of Obama will probably reflect trends like that of their white Republican counterparts. So, the explanation of the difference in this scenario would have very little to do with race, and much more to do with party identification.

C_T – The fact that you don’t understand the sentence is indicative of the ludicrousness of the claim being made by Hawkins. I think Hawkins is suggesting that black folk, when the say they are evaluating Obama’s job performance positively, aren’t really commenting on Obama’s job performance. They’re actually just commenting on Obama’s race. And that’s what I’m taking issue with. I’m saying that when people claim they are evaluating a candidate’s job performance (as opposed to skin color), we should give them the benefit of the doubt that this is exactly what they are doing.

RWNReader2 – Let’s see, every presidential election in the past 40 years has seen disproportionately larger numbers of support for Democratic candidates and presidents by the black community than by the white community, so how is Obama’s approval rating by the black community any different than that of Clinton or Carter or Johnson or Kennedy? That’s no secret. Heck even Hawkins recognizes this reality. Black folk support Democrats. I’m not suggesting that white people are being racist. In fact, I explicitly said that I think that when folks, irrespective of their race, say they are evaluating job performance, that’s what they are doing. I posited the argument that someone could claim that Obama’s job approval numbers would be higher among white folks if he were not black as a counterexample of what Hawkins is essentially doing. He provides no evidence at all to back up the claim that black folks aren’t pleased with Obama’s job performance but rather are pleased with this skin color. The fact that we’ve never had a black President before now makes me wonder how you can be so sure that white support for Obama wouldn’t be higher if he were white. In fact, there’s no evidence anyone could provide to refute or support this claim, much like there’s no evidence to support or refute Hawkins’s claim that it is racism that is explanation for the levels of black support for Obama.

A 48% disparity in positive job aproval rating between two groups, based solely on race, is very significant.

Perhaps, P_F, but in which way is it significant? Hawkins wants to claim that the significance is because black folks are racist in favor of a black President. But what’s to say that it’s not significant because white folks are racist against a black President? Or perhaps it’s some combination of both black and white racism in fairly equal measures? The fact is that if there is any significance here of racism in the disparity, we have absolutely no concrete, hard evidence as to which kind of racism it is.

Frankly, as I’ve proposed previously, I am inclined to think race factors very insignficantly into this disparity and that hardened partisan/ideological divisions factor more significantly. And we do have data from the Clinton presidency that would tend to support this.

mightysamurai – Here’s one possible explanation that I haven’t heard mentioned: job approval ratings track with party identification.

Except that they don’t. Blacks as a demographic vote about Democrat by about 80%, not 89%. They are giving Obama an unwarranted boost in approval solely based on race. Stop seeing only what you want to see and accept the facts in front of your face.

mightysamurai – And if you want to go down the road of racial breakdowns of voting patterns in Presidential elections, as opposed to job approval ratings, here’s some data from presidential elections since 1976 (www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/elections/presidential/presidential_election.html) which show the percent of the black vote for the Democratic Presidential candidate accordingly:

1976: 83% of blacks voted for Carter against Ford
1980: 83% of blacks voted for Carter against Reagan
1984: 91% of blacks voted for Mondale against Reagan
1988: 89% of blacks voted for Dukakis against Bush
1992: 83% of blacks voted for Clinton against Bush
1996: 84% of blacks voted for Clinton against Dole
2000: 90% of blacks voted for Gore against Bush
2004: 88% of blacks voted for Kerry against Bush
2008: 95% of blacks voted for Obama against McCain

That’s an average of 87.2% blacks voting for Democratic Presidential candidates. And even if you take out the Obama year, the average is still a high 86.4%. That’s about 7 points higher than the 80% you claim and much closer to the 89% approval rating that Obama currently enjoys among blacks.

So, in short, Obama did appear to get a slight bump that could be attributed to race, but his high levels of support among the black community are not all that much higher than other Democratic Presidential candidates, all of whom were white. And certainly the 89% job approval rating Obama is currently receiving among blacks fits very much within the range of black support and approval of Democratic candidates regardless of race.