Racial Conflicts In The 2012 Election

Even after the passing of the Fifteenth Amendment, African Americans were “disenfranchised in the South by intimidation and electoral trickery, including whites-only primaries, rigged literacy tests, and poll taxes” (Patterson 2011, p. 180). The Freedom Riders rode through the South, enduring harassment and imprisonment to encourage other African Americans to vote. Voter turnout in African American communities is greatly encouraged. Personally, coming from an African American family, I was strongly encouraged by my parents and grandparents to vote when I was of legal age. My family instilled the importance of voting in me at a very young age. Although voter turnout among African Americans is still fairly low, in the 2008 presidential election African Americans had the second highest voter turnout, behind non-Hispanic Caucasians (African Americans, n.d.). Race can influence voter turnout because with African Americans specifically, although rates are getting better, they are still not high.

The article explains the author reasons on why America is “racial democracy” and how much of problem it is. The authors Jason Stanley and Weaver first explain where America has gotten their ideas of liberty “Though the liberty of moderns is more familiar to Americans, it is in fact the liberty of the ancients that provides the fundamental justification for the central political ideals of the American Democratic tradition.” The purpose of the author’s explaining this is to later show how America has turned away from their idea which is liberty and how it now became a “racial democracy”.

Race in America has always been extremely controversial. From people of color struggling to being counted as citizens, to the Black Lives Matter movement today. My initial stance on Race in America was that race generally does play a factor in today’s society. My original score was a 3.8. The majority of my answers I put “Disagree” or “Neither Agree or Disagree”. This meant that I was unsure or there were contributing factors to my answer. As I read the articles and listened to my fellow classmates my position on Race in America changed.

The United States presidential election of 1992 was held on November 3, 1992, the three major candidates were Republican George H.W. Bush, Democrat Bill Clinton, and third party Independent Ross Perot. This was one of the most crucial impacts from a third party candidate ever seen in American history. During this time period the public had concern for the federal budget debt, many constitutes of the Democratic and Republican had feared that both Bush and Clinton would lead us into further debt, this allowed multi-millionaire Ross Perot to rise to the rankings. Ross Perot was an industrialist independent who had experience as the head of multiple corporations as well as involvement with public affairs for over thirty years. Perot focused his

Additional factors, in contrast, appear to have been less strong in this election than one would assume. Estimates of voter turnout indicate that African Americans cast ballots at unprecedented rates in the 2008 presidential election. Barack Obama was considered the first Black major party presidential nominee, and this would be no surprise. This text is a clear example of African Americans being heightened with interest, efficacy, and a sense of racial identity due to the candidacy of Barack Obama the main factor contributing to the surge in Black voter turnout.

Racial resentment among white voters was particularly convinced by the Republican political strategy that stoked white racial resentment to win elections. “Trump’s campaign can best be described as hateful and the Southern Strategy, by keeping people separated which is how the Republican Party has deployed for a half-century to shore up its support in the states which is mostly rn by racial resentment and white solidarity,” Republicans fueled voters, with lies, racism, and division leading up to the 2016 election.

The Presidential race has turned violent early on in the race this year. This is not the first time that violence has broken out during the Presidential races, instead they have happened through most of history. The violence has happened in all parties that are running in the past and it makes a difference in how the situations are handled. There has been a change since Obama took office towards politics and activist in the United States. “The new culture of physical disruption on the activist left stems partly from disillusionment with Barack Obama. In 2008, Obama’s election sparked unprecedented excitement among young progressives” (Beinart, 2016). During the current campaigns the violence began, but none of the nominees wanted to acknowledge

Following the Second World War, the United States experienced a period of activism for the sake of providing basic human rights to whites and people of color alike until the early 1970s. This period was recognized as the Second Reconstruction, which primarily paved the way to end discrimination against African Americans and give them the freedom and equal rights whites had become entitled to as the country’s citizens. Due to the growing tension and unrest triggered by the segregation of people of color from white establishments, blacks and other minorities were cornered into a state where they had little choice but to seek ways to improve the treatment they receive. Daniel Martinez HoSang defined racial liberalism as the idea that the government would play an active role in ensuring the end of racial discrimination because it defied the “American Dream” of disregarding “religion, race, ethnicity, and national origin” when discussing the people’s rights (13). Therefore, the existence of racial liberalism arguably served as the catalyst that brought discriminatory and unequal issues on black people to the forefront of society. Racial liberalism essentially led to the Civil Rights Movement which advocated for the end of segregation and the subsequent Black Power movement which empowered blacks to take matters into their own hands in an act of self-determination. Despite the varying successes that marked the period, however, the consequences of the unpopular decisions of a

For centuries, many political and civil rights activist have taken a stance against the growing racial tensions that have persisted with in the United States. Even though the racial problems facing this country today are not as transparent as in the past, the underlying prejudice still remains. For instance, President Trump's campaign used disapproving religious and racial views to gain support which subsequently escalated the already strained racial relations. Even though political elections are anonymous in the eye of the public, society has shaped anyone out who voted for Donald Trump to essentially be Caucasian. Therefore, this presidential election has caused for any progress regarding racial relations to be questioned due to the blatant

The election of Barack Obama to the Presidency of the United States has generated a lot of discussions and debate on the current racial affairs in the United States. Many assume that Obama's presidency ushers a new era post-racial America. So, I decided to read a few recent articles on the topic. The first was by Time Wise where he reflects on "denial and reality" in response to the question "what is post-racial?" (Wise, 2012). Wise's article is depressing because not only because he leaves no doubt, by bringing up strong qualitative and quantitative arguments, that the whole idea of post-racial America is a chimera, but because he makes it hard to believe post-racial America can be achieved at all.

Every presidential election in the United States is different, but what makes this election stand out more than others? The candidates, obviously. But more importantly, it’s the economic and cultural issues that intensify this 2016 election.

After slavery got abolished people that were white had opinions of free and voting African Americans. Few accepted them as equal and free. Although some white Americans welcomed them, others used people’s ignorance, racism, and self-interest to sustain and spread racial divisions. Hence the African Americans were treated as a second citizen and kept to a lower level. The Southern States where most black African Americans lived started enacting literally tests, tax polls, elaborate registration systems, and all-white democratic parties to exclude black voters.1

The election of President Obama marks the most noteworthy political accomplishment for African Americans in the United States during the post-civil rights revolution, thus bringing about a change in the country’s social and political landscape that was steeped in racial discrimination since the founding of this great nation. Because social and political conditions are subject to constant change, President Obama’s

The data analyzed for this research is derived from a 2014 University of New Orleans Survey Research Center poll as well as election results data from the 2014 US Senate election in Louisiana. The Louisiana Secretary of State’s office produces post-election statistical data for both election totals and Early Voting, broken down into demographic categories of: race, age political affiliation and gender. Election cycle data used for this study are the Louisiana Congressional general election stages in 2008, 2010, 2012, and 2014.

This study was done with a subsection of data from American National Election Studies (ANES), which included adults that were sampled across the nation. Their responses to the questions were randomly chosen. Multiple analyses were ran on the categorical demographics given: race, political party and gender. We are running all of these tests below to find out if symbolic racism and fondness of Obama are related. There were 191 females and 159 males, for a total of 350 participants. Subjects were represented by 40.9% Democratic party, 20.6 Republican Party and 31.1% Independent party. The participants were broken down into four ethnic groups: 28.0% African American, 56.9% White, 2.0% multiple races, and 12.9% other. Subjects answered questions related to their preference on Obama on a scale from 0-10, 0 being strongly dislike and 10 being strongly like (M = 5.47, SD = 2.78) and questions pertaining to symbolic racism on a scale from 1-5, 1 being strongly agree and 5 being strongly disagree (M = 3.31, SD = .98), these two variables are considered continuous. The questionnaire was reliable at a Cronach’s Alpha level of .72. Which indicates that is has relatively high internal consistency, which is a measure of how well the items on the test measure the same construct or idea. Considering we have high internal consistency it is safer to assume we can trust that our overall test is measuring the concept of interest.