This Isn't 1982, Idiot

I was told about another talking-head Larry King show, where Carole Simpson (some of you may remember her as the first black woman to anchor ABC news back in the late 1970s/early 1980s) was on babbling about how white people won't vote for Obama because of the Tom Bradley effect.

Now, for those who don't know, the Tom Bradley effect is simply the instance where voters tell pollsters they'll vote for one candidate, and then the voters vote another way. In that particular case, Tom Bradley was a black California politician who logged a jillion poll survey yeas, especially from white voters, but lost because they presumably voted for his opponent. Although it could've been that they just didn't go vote.

At any rate, the media blabbermouths are trying to dredge all this up about Obama so they can pigeonhole him as "the black guy," when it's evident that people care more about what he's saying. I just don't understand these folks who will not move out of the 1950s. They speak about the Bradley effect, while clearly overlooking recent history: Deval Patrick was elected GOVERNOR of Massachusetts in 2006 by a landslide. I guess they attribute it to Massachusett's huge black population - all 5% of them! And what of Wellington Webb in Denver? Elected 3 times in a row as mayor. Or Willie Brown in San Francisco? Places that are chock-full of white people who got off their rumps and voted for black candidates over and over and over again. I wonder how they explain that when floating the Bradley Effect?

Or perhaps people are voting for "the Black guy." A group of Stanford law students did a very simple, yet powerful, activity: they gave 'grades' to law firms based on the "face" the firm presented to the public. When the law students walked into the firm for interviews for summer internships they examined one key factor: did they SEE diversity when they walked in the door? They did this exercise because there was a really interesting research project conducted by Fortune magazine about millenials (aka Gen Y; those born from 1980 to 1994) and what motivates them in the workforce.



The number one thing they said was that they must SEE diversity when they walk into the office, not just in the mailroom or answering phones, but at the decision-making tables. The fact that "seeing diversity" logged as the number one thing the respondents stated to a FORTUNE MAGAZINE survey was big big news. The write-up of the research only reflected what anybody with eyes can see in the census reports - the population has shifted already. Barely into the 2nd decade of the 21st century HALF of those entering the workforce for the first time will be of color. So who's voting for Obama? The open-minded parents and older siblings of these kids; the friends of their families.

To GenXers and Millennials, Obama isn't merely "the black guy." He has meditative rhetoric and even-handed stances - a marked change from the knee-jerk politics of the last 60 years. It's as if America has been on auto-pilot since it's inception. Everyone non-white or non-American is somehow anti-American. Make no mistake: McCain is a war pig set on fighting "the commies," "the terrorists," "the Mexicans" or whomever suits his backers' needs, and Hillary will too because she's backed by similar forces.

Younger voters don't want to hear all that crap. They're friends and children of immigrant families and come from multi-cultural experiences. They read international news. They know that "everyone" is not an enemy. And let's not forget that Obama is not just black, he's bi-ethnic: the child of a black man and a white woman, raised by his grandparents, without knowing his father, and has an Indonesian sister. A bona fide "other" category. He's lived in states and countries that most Americans haven't even seen. These halfwit pundits shouldn't gloss over white awareness or underestimate Obama's appeal. The face of America is changing, and so its "face" must change too.