Harvard professor: Americans are racist toward Obama

The data studied is not sufficient for its author to make this statement. He's essentially only looked at one side of the coin- how many votes did he lose. Yes, he also looked at the number of votes gained from blacks, but as has been mentioned this number is small. He does not look at the number of votes gained among whites. What number of the generally apathetic youth vote were due to wanting to participate in the history of electing the first black President?

Here's a thought.....run Biden. He's been part of the same policies so if it's racism that prevents Obama from being elected then problem solved!

I've studied at the feet of the Master.

Yes indeed Grasshopper.

The one single thing I intensely dislike about this president is is willingness to take a stab at the opposing party, sectors of business that don't fall in line with the democratic doctrine. In times past, the president left this unseemly behavior to his VP. But not only that, he campaigned AGAINST such behavior.

How ANYONE can be in Obama's corner after 3.5+ years of his tired and wornout schtick, is beyond me.

Americans overcame their racism enough to elect him.

http://www.hbo.com/#/real-time-with-bill-maher

I agree that he's smug and arrogant. I even agree with some of his stances but I can't stand his delivery. However, cancelled, he is not.

Yes, he was...

http://mediacrit.wetpaint.com/page/The Cancellation of Bill Maher's "Politically Incorrect"

He may have another show now but he was canceled.

Yeah, he has Real Time with Bill Maher now. I'm not sure if there's a difference. I haven't seen the new show, just the old one.

By the way, here's the person being accused of "playing the race card:"



And he's not a professor, he's a doctoral candidate.

He's still over-inflating his study results.

White guilt?

Could be.

You've all seen the bumper stickers that read

"If you voted for Obama in '08 to prove you're not a racist then you must vote against him in '12 to prove you're not an idiot."

Harvard ‘racism’ researcher neglected to disclose White House ties
By Josh Peterson - The Daily Caller 1:15 AM 06/15/2012

The Harvard researcher behind a recent study correlating 2008 election results with racially charged Google searches neglected to disclose ties to a former senior member of the Obama administration, The Daily Caller has learned.

Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, an economics Ph.D. candidate, lists on his C.V. — publicly available through his website — that he was the research assistant of Peter Orzsag at the Brookings Institution from August 2005 to August 2006. Set to graduate in 2013, Stephens-Davidowitz entered the Ph.D. program at Harvard in 2007.

Orszag, currently the vice chairman of Global Banking at Citigroup, headed the Office of Management and Budget as an Obama appointee between January 2009 and July 2010. He was also the director of the Congressional Budget Office from January 2007 to November 2008.

Whether this relationship between Stephens-Davidowitz and Orszag affected the outcome of the study, either directly or indirectly, is uncertain. Neither Stephens-Davidowitz or Orszag returned The Daily Caller’s request for comment.

“To my knowledge, Mr. Orszag has no idea of the contents of the study, nor do any of his former colleagues,” professor David Cutler, an adviser to Stephens-Davidowitz at Harvard, told The Daily Caller. “Seth wrote this paper at Harvard.”

Stephens-Davidowitz also thanked “three anonymous referees” along with various named sources in the first footnote of his study. Cutler, however, said that he believes Stephens-Davidowitz “appropriately thanks people who gave him advice on his paper.”

“Some people prefer not to be thanked, and he needs to respect their right to privacy,” Cutler added.

Using Google Insights for Search, Stephens-Davidowitz charted the percentage of searches between 2004-2007 that included the terms “nigger” or “niggers” to gauge racist sentiment. Google Insights for Search is a program made publicly available by Google to allow users to gain comparative insights into search terms in various markets since 2004.

“I choose the most salient word,” he wrote in an explanatory piece in the New York Times. “I do not include data after 2007 to avoid capturing reverse causation, with dislike for Obama causing individuals to use racially charged language on Google.”

He then compared his results against the 2008 election results in various areas, explaining that the “conditions under which people use Google — online, most likely alone, not participating in an official survey — are ideal for capturing what they are really thinking and feeling.” (Rx: There is absolutely no way to know what they are thinking or feeling from this, you only know what Google terms they searched. There is no freaking way to tell why they searched those terms. He doesn't even know the race of the people who searched those terms. For all he knows they could have been looking for hip-hop lyrics.)

He found that areas where Obama “underperformed” — West Virginia, eastern Ohio, western Pennsylvania, upstate New York and southern Mississippi — were the regions with the highest rates of racially charged searches.

“If my findings are correct, race could very well prove decisive against Mr. Obama in 2012,” Stephens-Davidowitz said.(Rx: Which is the conclusion he held before doing the study. There is absolutely nothing in the study that suggest it has any kind of predictive value in any future election.)

He also compared exit poll data between Massachusetts Democratic Sen. John Kerry from 2004 and Obama in 2008 to examine relative preference for each candidate by race.

“If states with high racially charged search were more likely to support Obama, independent of white’s racial attitudes, the effect would likely show up for both black and white voters in these states,” Stephens-Davidowitz wrote in the paper.

“Instead, there is no relationship between racially charged search and black support for Obama relative to Kerry; the relationship is entirely driven by white voters,” he continued.

In a footnote, however, he admitted to painting with a broad brush.

“Throughout this paper I refer to non-blacks, including Hispanics and Asians, rather imprecisely, as ‘whites,’” he said.(Rx: Does George Zimmerman know about this?)

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/06/15/h...d-to-disclose-white-house-ties/#ixzz1xsZO651i

This is a joke, right? He neglected to disclose that he is the former research assistant of a former member of the current administration? Do you disclose all of your internships on your research papers?

No, it isn't a joke. I disclose all potential conflicts of interest. If I did not the paper would not be published. If a conflict were found that was undisclosed the paper would likely be pulled from the journal. I published a paper a few years ago about medications that may prevent diabetes. Because one of the medications I discussed in the paper was marketed by a drug company that had bought ought a drug company that had bought out a drug company that I received $200 from for a continuing education program 15 years prior during my fellowship, I had to disclose that. In this case having ties to the administration is a conflict of interest that should have been disclosed.

This is nothing but a thinly veiled campaign document. They're setting up to cry "racism!" when Obama is booted from office.

How is this a potential conflict of interest given the parameters of the study?

Wow. Conservatives really are delusional and paranoid.

If you can't figure it out then I'm not sure I can help you.

1. I'm a classical liberal.
2. If Romney wins the election and no one claims it was because of racism then you can come on here, call me out, and I will gladly eat the crow.

Please. The article was grasping at straws and you know it. If that article came from the Left you'd be ripping it to shreds for the exact same reasons I am.[/quote]

If you say so.

We're dealing in hypotheticals now?