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Is America Ready for an African-American President?
Ioana Patringenaru | April 30, 2007
This weekend, Sen. Barack Obama and six other presidential
candidates took their campaigns to San Diego, where
the California Democratic Party held its state convention
this year. A few days earlier, UCSD political scientist
Zoltan Hajnal had been trying to answer a question
that inevitably comes to mind when discussing Sen.
Obama’s bid for the presidency: “Is America
ready for an African-American president?”
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| Zoltan Hajnal |
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During a talk at the UCSD Faculty Club, Hajnal said
he believes the answer is yes. He also believes Obama’s
main rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, might have a better
shot at the nomination and the presidency. But no
matter what happens in the primaries and the general
election, Hajnal and other UCSD political scientists
agree that Obama’s candidacy shows voters’
perceptions of candidates’ race have undergone
a dramatic shift.
“There is a transition between race and ethnicity
going on,” said Samuel Popkin, professor of
political science.
In California, voters are used to minority candidates running for office, political scientist Thad Kousser pointed out. Former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley ran for governor twice. More recently, former Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante ran for the job and Los Angeles elected its first Hispanic mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa. “I think this may make race less of a story in California than in other parts of the country,” Kousser said.
The research
Nationwide, 94 percent of voters say they would vote
for a qualified black candidate, said Hajnal, speaking
Wednesday during the last meeting of this year’s
Social Sciences Supper Club Series. But ask a slightly
different question and you will get a dramatically
different result. Only 54 percent of white Americans
say white voters will support a black candidate, regardless
of their qualifications. “We’re kind of
muddled,” is how Hajnal puts it.
According to Hajnal, many academics have argued that Americans aren’t ready to break the race barrier when they elect their next president. That school of thought points out that 70 to 90 percent of white voters typically vote for a white candidate in bi-racial contests. In addition, 80 percent of all black elected officials were elected in constituencies where blacks make up the majority of voters. Other scholars, though fewer, argue that America is ready. Exit polls show that whites are just as likely to support black candidates if you control for some basic factors, such as party affiliation and campaign spending, Hajnal said.
Hajnal, author of “Changing White Attitudes toward Black Political Leadership,” argues that academics on both sides of the debate have been asking the wrong question. We shouldn’t ask whether race matters, he said. We should ask when it matters.
The History
The first black candidates to run as challengers faced a united and mobilized white community, Hajnal said. White voters were afraid black elected representatives would favor their black constituents and redistribute resources to benefit them. “In the first contest, the election is all about race,” Hajnal said.
But after black challengers were elected, the picture changed dramatically. When they run again as incumbents, they almost always win and about half of white voters support them. What happened? White voters’ opposition melted away as black leaders took office and their fears failed to materialize. White voters learned there was little difference between black and white political leaders, Hajnal said. Today, about 40 percent of Americans live in areas represented by black mayors or black governors. And the rest of us have learned from that experience too, Hajnal said. “Most of us know that black leadership doesn’t have negative effects,” he added.
What does this all add up to? America is probably ready for a black president, Hajnal said. “We have too much experience to have the fears we had before,” he said.
Blacks have taken on leadership roles in the military, corporations and sports organizations, Popkin pointed out. In fact, the military deserves quite a bit of credit for changing the way Americans perceive race, he added.
Obama
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| Sen. Barack Obama |
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But political scientists disagree about how much
Obama is viewed as a black candidate. No one thinks
about him the way they think about a rapper or about
the Rev. Al Sharpton, also a former presidential candidate,
Popkin said. “There’s a sense that he’s
not from a different world,” he added.
Obama is very different from previous black presidential
candidates, like Sharpton and the Rev. Jesse Jackson,
who held more extreme views, said Gary Jacobson, a
congressional expert at UCSD. The Illinois senator
is running a mainstream campaign and has proven that
he can win in a white-majority state, Jacobson pointed
out.
Obama’s background is complex. His mother is
white and his father is Kenyan. But Hajnal and Kousser
said they believe Obama will ultimately be viewed
as a black candidate. “Race in America is about
social identity rather than genetics and it’s
clear where he is,” Kousser said.
Obama’s best bet is to take the subject of
race out his campaign, Hajnal said. He should also
emphasize an even-handed track record, he added. Hajnal
also said he believes a large majority of black voters
will supportObama, despite Clinton’s connection
to many black leaders.
Obama and Clinton
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| Sen. Hillary Clinton |
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Clinton, however, might still come out on top, Hajnal
said. Gender matters less than race among voters and
there are fewer negative stereotypes about women than
about blacks, he said. That difference can be measured
in real life, he added: 25 percent of elected officials
in the United States are women; 1 percent are black.
But Popkin pointed out that Clinton isn’t your
run-of-the-mill female candidate. In other words,
she’s a polarizing figure, Jacobson said, while
Obama remains undefined for many voters. “They
can project all their hopes onto him without having
them tested by reality,” Jacobson said.
For now, Clinton leads Obama in California polls,
Kousser said. But she might not do as well in early
primaries taking place in small states. “To
compete in the New Hampshire primary you’ve
got to be great in person,” Kousser said. “That’s
why John Edwards is going to do well in Iowa. That’s
why New Hampshire is going to be a stumbling block
for Hillary.” |
