Bree, response 4/11

Treatment of African American political candidates in the media is obviously very different than that of white politicians. Though it's sort of an easy route to analyze some of the coverage concerning Obama, it's still very relevant and necessary.

This passage is from an article from CBS back in 2011 (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20121362-503544.html):

Pew found that Mr. Obama was the subject of negative assessments nearly four times as often as he was the subject of positive assessments. It found he received "positive" coverage nine percent of the time, "neutral" coverage 57 percent of the time and "negative" coverage 34 percent of the time.

Pew found that Rick Perry has received the most positive coverage of all the candidates, with 32 percent positive coverage. He was followed by Sarah Palin (31 percent), Michele Bachmann (31 percent), Herman Cain (28 percent) and Mitt Romney (26 percent.) Palin, a vocal critic of the media, ultimately decided not to seek the GOP nomination.

Those numbers are pretty staggering. Though we all know that numbers can be mangled and presented in twisted ways, these are pretty significant. I think we're all pretty fair in saying that it's a little strange that Palin received such praise, much of this is probably linked to her popularity as a mother and "blue collar" persona. Regardless, comments and coverage concerning Obama focuses much more on his race than his politics, just like the book states of over black politicians. But I'm not sure if white voters are fearful of lack of representation, or if it's just hatred...maybe it's even both. I know for certain that an apparent hatred appears in the news media, see conservative media coverage, as well as in social media. People are much more open about hating a politician because of his or her race over their actual politics, it's almost as if some people against black politicians perceive them as having no agenda at all, rather than disrupting "traditional" America. 

I'm not sure if we're cut out to immediately fix this. Or if it can be fixed. I'm reminiscent of Villanueva in that, here's the problem, but I'm not sure I have the answer.