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Thread ID: 10951 | Posts: 12 | Started: 2003-11-06
2003-11-06 01:35 | User Profile
[url]www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-3353550,00.html[/url] Race Seen As Factor in Miss. Elections
Wednesday November 5, 2003 11:16 PM
By SHELIA HARDWELL BYRD
Associated Press Writer
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - They had all the ingredients to become Mississippi's first black politicians elected to a statewide office since Reconstruction: strong resumes, party backing and money to lure voters.
But state Sen. Barbara Blackmon, a lieutenant governor candidate, and Gary Anderson, a candidate for state treasurer, both lost Tuesday, and some observers say their skin color factored into the outcome.
Rickey Cole, chairman of the Mississippi Democratic Party, said the GOP's tactics in this election season harked back to ``Nixon's Southern Republican strategy to make subtle winks and nods to white racism in the South.'' Both Blackmon and Anderson are Democrats.
Blackmon got just 37 percent of the vote against Republican Lt. Gov. Amy Tuck, who got 61 percent.
Race wasn't the only factor at work. Beating an incumbent is always an uphill battle, and some analysts said Blackmon lost votes when she asked Tuck to join her in signing an affidavit swearing she had not had an abortion.
Blackmon's misstep - she was widely criticized in newspaper editorials for the abortion dare - may have hurt her ability to take advantage of criticism of Tuck for getting a millionaire attorney to back $510,000 in loans for her in 1999. Tuck repaid the loans, plus interest.
Still, some observers say race played a large role in the result. Leslie B. McLemore, a political science professor at Jackson State University, cited Tuck's declaration of support for Mississippi's state flag and its Confederate battle emblem.
I think that sent all kind of signals across the state,'' he said.She was clearly appealing to that right wing conservative vote across the state.''
Anderson, the state's former fiscal officer, lost to a political newcomer, Republican Tate Reeves. Reeves won 52 percent of the vote, while Anderson had 46 percent. They were competing for an office left open by the retirement of the four-term Democratic incumbent, Marshall Bennett.
Blackmon and Anderson lost despite the fact that Mississippi has a black population of nearly 37 percent and nearly 900 black elected officials on the county and local levels. It is also not uncommon for blacks to be elected to statewide office in the South.
Nearly 100,000 more votes were cast in Tuesday's election than in the governor's race four years ago, the most ever in a race for the state's top elected post. The previous record was set in 1995.
The turnout - and visits by high-profile Republicans like President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney - appears to have helped lift former Republican National Committee chairman Haley Barbour to victory over Democratic Gov. Ronnie Musgrove. Barbour, who had said for months that a high turnout would help him win, got 53 percent of the vote.
In his victory speech, Barbour said he wanted to build a racially and politically diverse administration. Among those behind him on stage, in clear view of television cameras, were several black supporters.
Cole says Barbour and the rest of the GOP played upon race from the beginning of the election season.
Barbour often wore the a state flag lapel pin. In stump speeches, Barbour and Tuck told cheering crowds that they supported the state flag, which voters chose to keep in 2001 over the protests of blacks and whites who found it offensive.
In May, Barbour called the Head Start program a godsend'' but added:Some of those kids in it would be better off sitting up on a piano bench at a whorehouse than where they are now.'' He was criticized for the remark by some black community leaders, who said Barbour was insulting the mothers of poor black children.
McLemore said " there is no excuse for this to happen in 2003.'' He said Tuck and Barbour used race in a blatant manner.
Jim Herring, chairman of the Mississippi Republican Party, said the GOP emphasized the flag to highlight the differences in the candidates. He said it was unfair to accuse the GOP of race baiting.
"We need to get past all of that. The truth of the matter is that the Democrats nominated people from the extreme left wing of their party,'' Herring said.
Cole said the Democrats failed to win over the crucial swing vote.
There was a heavy Republican turnout. There was an equally heavy Democratic voter turnout, but the swing voters, the people who claim they vote for the person and not for the party, were the ones that made the difference,'' he said.Those swing voters did not vote for the two African-American candidates.''
2003-11-06 07:28 | User Profile
We were just talking about Haley tonight. His fraternity is the most "elite" at Ole Miss, but it includes the occasional Kluxer. We'll see how much he cares about Mississippi and how much he cares about himself.
2003-11-06 10:17 | User Profile
I'll be keeping an eye on him, but based on his work on the national stage, I don't expect much.
2003-11-06 13:13 | User Profile
Odd, isn't it, how the governmedia only get upset that "race" might be a factor in political contests when Whites are the beneficiaries? Hey, they don't think that "race" is a dirty word when negroes elect negro politicians, or when the "hispanic vote" puts mestizos in office, do they? It's only when White people vote for their own interests that "race" is supposed to be a taboo.
2003-11-06 17:08 | User Profile
"But state Sen. Barbara Blackmon, a lieutenant governor candidate, and Gary Anderson, a candidate for state treasurer, both lost Tuesday, and some observers say their [B]skin color[/B] factored into the outcome."
For me it was the splayed nose, thick lips, and kinky, wool-like hair. I never vote skin color. That's just racist.
2003-11-07 02:52 | User Profile
People like Barbour aren't any better than Ted Kennedy in my book. Come on people, how many times are we going to fall for this stuff?
2003-11-07 16:13 | User Profile
The double standard on race in America is that you can't mention it unless it benefits the candidate from a "minority" background. To my mind, that's quite destructive.
2003-11-11 01:50 | User Profile
[url]http://images.somethingawful.com/inserts/articlepics/photoshop/10-10-03-games/overseer07_rape.jpg[/url]
2003-11-11 20:16 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Craig Smith]The double standard on race in America is that you can't mention it unless it benefits the candidate from a "minority" background. To my mind, that's quite destructive.[/QUOTE]
The dam may be about to burst. Strong links between IQ and national/racial prosperity were reported as news in the London Times yesterday -- after twenty months of the media trying to suppress mention of them.
TIMES (10 xi) CARRIES NEWS OF IQ AND THE WEALTH OF NATIONS
At long last, Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen were allowed to make a mark with their March 2002 book 'IQ and The Wealth of Nations.' The ending of the book's 20 months of virtual suppression probably came about because two favourable reviews were due out in the December edition of the journal Heredity ââ¬â part of the Nature stable, so giving Times Online Education Correspondent Glen Owen adequate cover if he ran into flak from colleagues. The longer, print version of the article hopelessly confused 'Prof. Lynn' with 'Prof. Flynn', so that should have helped ensure further coverage once the Times moved to untangle the mess. The full version wheeled in British media babbler Oliver James, a clinical psychologist, to say "The IQ test is heavily culturally conditioned." But, by and large, Lynn/"Flynn" and Vanhanen were allowed a field day; and James decently told the Times that Lynn himself was "kindly and unbigoted." (A useful graphic for the article linked national IQ and prosperity around the globe ââ¬â though it forgot to give its legend for the light-blue-coloured c. IQ 80 countries of the Middle East.) I tried to ââ¬Ëjoin the debateââ¬â¢ in Times2 with the following contribution.
Glen Owen and the Times deserve serious congratulation for bringing out the news of Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen's scholarly work -- effectively suppressed in the mainstream media for 20 months since its publication in March, 2002. IQ and the Wealth of Nations provides impressively reliable IQ estimates for many countries and shows a really strong link between IQ and prosperity (not the feeble correlation of .30 found in so many social-scientific studies). (The basic data used are made available on the internet by Matt Nuenke. More on the methods and resulting data is available from Lynn & Vanhanen themselves.) Naturally some will wish to believe that prosperity is causal to IQ, so they should note that IQ predicts increases in prosperity from earlier baselines. For example, of the world's 21 countries which steadily tripled their Gross Domestic Product from 1983 through 1990 and 1993 to 1996, not one was on the African mainland (where IQ averaged roughly 75 around 1980); by contrast, of the 27 countries whose GDP decreased by 50% or more, no less than ten were African (Angola, Burkina Faso, Congo, Guinea-Bissau, Libya, Madagascar, Somalia, Sudan, Zambia and Sao Tome & Principe). Twenty-one (mainly favourable) ââ¬Ëcustomer reviewsââ¬â¢ of what may prove a 'book of the century' can be found on the internet at Amazon Books. The four reviews at Barnes & Noble are highly favourable. Three supportive reviews appear at Social Sciences Web (which especially queries the failure of leftists to discuss or reply to the volume). Another very favourable review ââ¬â accepting the book as showing the causal impact of a nationââ¬â¢s IQ -- by economist-turned-sociobiologist Ed Miller (Univ. New Orleans) was published in Occidental Quarterly (Winter 2002/3); Canadian differential psychologist Philippe Rushton was equally accepting in his 2003 review for Personality & Individual Differences; and ââ¬Ëhuman biodiversityââ¬â¢ guru Steve Sailer loved it (in the internet anti-immigration magazine VDare and in the conservative organ Free Republic). A summary in French including a reply by Lynn to criticisms is provided by educator Philippe Gouillou. A summary and the basic data are provided for Spanish speakers by Roberto Colom. Coverage in Swedish comes from economist-philosopher Gunnar Adler-Karlsson. Correspondents discussing the fraudulence/incompetence of Franz Boas declared L&Vââ¬â¢s book ââ¬Åunchallenged.ââ¬Â Lynn and Vanhanen's work has quite possibly sounded the death knell for modern 'politically correct' denials of the importance of IQ, race and nation. Sincerely, -- Chris Brand, Edinburgh.
Now is probably the time for a big push for public race realism about IQ, educational levels, crime, AIDS etc. The left has deployed every imaginable covert censorship for 15 years now; the universities have been largely a fief of the liberal-left, and any staff of other persuasion live in fear. It is perhaps now time for the right to get off its knees and get real.
Sincerely, -- Chris Brand, Edinburgh.
Chris Brand, Psychorealist, author of THE g FACTOR (Wiley DePublisher, 1996). (The 2000 edition is available FREE at [url]http://www.douance.org/qi/brandtgf.htm[/url].)
LATEST NEWS: [url]http://www.crispian.demon.co.uk/indexlatest.htm[/url].
2003-11-12 06:12 | User Profile
I dunno what damp log some of these people have been living underl; US politics has become RACE politics. Every election, the choice is: Who is most like your own group and who will further the aims of your own group? That's just sheer biological survival and reality.
2003-11-13 00:57 | User Profile
[QUOTE=crispian]The dam may be about to burst. Strong links between IQ and national/racial prosperity were reported as news in the London Times yesterday -- after twenty months of the media trying to suppress mention of them.
IQ and the Wealth of Nations provides impressively reliable IQ estimates for many countries and shows a really strong link between IQ and prosperity (not the feeble correlation of .30 found in so many social-scientific studies). (The basic data used are made available on the internet by Matt Nuenke. More on the methods and resulting data is available from Lynn & Vanhanen themselves.) Naturally some will wish to believe that prosperity is causal to IQ, so they should note that IQ predicts increases in prosperity from earlier baselines. [/QUOTE]
Thank you for the article. I'm going to seek your out your website if the URL is in your profile.
To me, this issue comes down to our view of materialism: either we are wholly material entities, and thus our genetics and environment determine our potential, or, as in the eyes of some middle-eastern religions, we are "souls" within material entities, and therefore we can transcend our raw potential through sheer willing.
However, in my view, the fundamental question is whether or not we dilute our own genetic stock with ANY outsiders, something I find repellent as it conflates with our assimilation by a generic, all-three-races-in-one group such as is found in the middle east. Since that already exists, I see no reason to duplicate the experiment, especially considering what a wasteland the middle east has made itself.
(Another popular of mixed race are Mexicans, who often resemble browned Asians or middle easterners in both phenotype and cultural expectation.)
2003-11-13 00:58 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Acorn]I dunno what damp log some of these people have been living underl; US politics has become RACE politics. Every election, the choice is: Who is most like your own group and who will further the aims of your own group? That's just sheer biological survival and reality.[/QUOTE]
Well stated, in my view. I think RACE politics come into question because American politics are essentially egalitarian, and race is the most recent way to express egalitarian sentiment ("pity," for you alert Nietzscheans, Schopenhauerians and Hitlerians out there).