White Americans did NOT elect Obama.

This myth won’t die:

But not everyone buys that script. Mona Charen, a conservative columnist for the National Review, challenges that view with this question: If more white Americans feel like an embattled minority, why did they elect President Barack Obama?

“Did they become racist after electing the first black president?” she asks.

Charen says the United States today is “incredibly tolerant and open.”

White Americans did not elect Obama. Most White Americans (55%) voted for McCain. Obama was elected by most Americans of color and a minority (43%) of White Americans.

Yes, the numbers can and do work like that.

Whites engage in more racist acts after declaring support for Obama, study finds.

How Obama could be bad for racial equality (BPS Research Digest):

Daniel Effron and colleagues presented dozens of predominantly White undergrad students with one of two scenarios that would reveal their favouritism towards White people: one was a hiring decision, the other related to the allocation of funds to communities. Crucially, the students were asked to make their choices about the hiring or funding either before or after they had declared whether they planned to vote for Barack Obama, in what was then the upcoming Presidential election.

Students who declared their intention to vote for Obama before making the hiring/funding decisions subsequently showed more favouritism towards White people than did students who made their decisions first. A third study showed this effect was particularly apparent among more racially prejudiced students.

“Our findings raise the possibility that the opportunity to vote for an African-American for President could have reduced some voters’ concerns about appearing prejudiced, thereby ironically increasing the likelihood that they would favour Whites in subsequent decisions,” the researchers said.

Racist bigotry is “predicted by a lack of interaction with people of other races.”

Racism (or what I would call racist bigotry, the most blatant kind of racism) is “predicted by a lack of interaction with people of other races”, according to Nate Silver’s TED Talk.

Americans of Color elected Obama. White Americans elected McCain.

Most White Americans voted for John McCain, while most Asian Americans, Latin@ Americans, Black Americans, and Other Americans voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama in the 2008 U.S. presidential election.

Some White Americans claim that Black Americans voted for Obama because he is black. That is, some White Americans think that non-white people have a “tribal” mentality and that they align with whoever looks the most like them. However, if we consider the fact that most White Americans voted for the white person, and that most Asian Americans, Latin@ Americans, Black Americans, and Other Americans voted for the black person, this hypothesis fails. A better explanation is that Barack Obama was the best presidential candidate, but most White Americans have a “tribal” mentality and aligned with the person who looks the most like them.

Related articles:

• Voters of Color: Unsung Heroes of the 2008 Election at Racism Review (hat-tip)
• Election showed nonwhite voters’ growing power at San Francisco Chronicle

Linus Torvalds supports Barack Obama.

Linus Torvalds, original creator of the Linux kernel, wants Barack Obama to be the President of the United States. In his blog post Black and white, Torvalds writes:

The reason I bring this up is that while I can’t vote, I did want to say publicly anyway that I really really hope that Obama will be the US president elect after Tuesday night. I realize it probably won’t come as a big shock to anybody (yes, I’m a socially liberal open source freak from Europe – so what would you expect?), and others will just be angry.

If anybody wants a reason for that, just watch (or listen to) Obama’s “Call to Renewal” keynote speech from 2006. It looks like it’s split into 5 pieces on youtube – the whole thing is about 40 minutes – but it’s worth it, just to hear something rare: mentioning religion in the US without being black-or-white.

[…]

There are other reasons, but that’s the one that originally made me hope Obama would take the democratic nomination. And what he has done since hasn’t changed that. He’s obviously smart and thoughtful, and he has a very interesting background that makes me believe that he really can see the other side not just when it comes to religion, but when it comes to international issues too.

Of course I’m biased (we all have our quirks), but I think it makes a difference to have actually lived in another culture. I suspect Obama understands the US better because he has seen something else, and has seen it from a wider background. He’s not a black and white person – and ironically, that is probably partly exactly because he is a black and white person in a totally different sense.