The 5 (or more) Percent.

He believes that some percentage of whites—perhaps 5 percent or so, intent on being seen as less biased than they may be—will claim to support a nonwhite candidate when they actually do not.

[ Ronald Walters - Newsweek ]

For those of you who don't follow politics, many studies (as well as election results) have shown that black candidates poll 5 percent (some say the figure is higher. so I’m using the least conservative figure) higher than they receive votes. Many, like the professor quoted above, say that it because some white voters say that they plan to vote for black candidates when they intentions of doing so. Over the last year or so I’ve be fascinated by this. Not because the black politicians are not receiving the votes, but by why people, no matter their race, feel the need to conceal their real feelings about a certain candidate because of his/her skin color. I really want to know when this got started. Have the candidates been closing the gap outside predominately black areas? Some suggest they have. What are current campaigns doing to address this issue? Let’s face if they are not aware of it, they shouldn’t be running a campaign. More importantly have we become a society so obsessed to politically correctness that some voters are afraid of telling how to actually feel about a certain candidate? If that is the case we are doing so at our own detriment.

Let’s use Obama as an example (this is not an endorsement). If polls do not reveal that is he in fact trailing his white counterparts then his campaign does not have a chance to go an education campaign to address the concerns (assuming they are valid) of those people that comprise the 5 percent. As a result, he loses the election. Not only do we fail to make history, but would also fail, once again, to address deep-rooted racial issues in this country on a national scale using various news outlets and different mediums and without involving the evermore powerless NAACP (another organization I’m not a fan right now) and their stomp speech.

As I look to enter the political arena someday this is something I will continue to monitor.