But is Obama really a black man? He attended an elite college, University of Chicago, and before that an elite prep school in Hawaii. Before that, of course, the ordinary Indonesian equivalent of parochial schools in Indonesia, except the Muslim version. It's remarkable, really, that he has any sort of "black" quality to his voice, but he has a sharp ear. He has no heritage in the black experience in the US -- slavery, ghettoization, etc. -- his father was from Kenya, and left his wife when Barack was very small.

So the question in the survey may not really apply to him.

Obama is both black and white. He should appeal to both races, or all races.

Similarly, his sex appeal probably about equally affects males and females. He has the same sort of willowy charm as John Edwards.

Muslim father, Muslim step-father, routine Muslim upbringing in early years, but Christian thereafter -- similar covering of every base. Muslim identity is patrilineal, and tends to ignore post-facto apostasy, so Obama can be both. It's not a new method.

A man for all audiences? A bit chameleon-like?

So what -- a great many politicians try to do this.

For a multi-culti, globalizing society, who could be more appropriate?

Perhaps a college or prep-school boyfriend might appear to firm up his credentials in all directions.

Looks like the social scientists were right: racism is not dead, its just hiding.

Gee Noam, couldn't you have just told us what the study found? What a tedious video. I hate to be so lazy, but isn't that what you're here for?

Willowy charm?  John Edwards?

Actually, I found the video fascinating!  What a bright, young, articulate Phd candidate, eager to explain the intriguing results of his research.   It made the results of the research so much more real than if Noam had merely regurgitated them on paper.

GSpinks: The actual reality is somewhere between the antipodes of Dinesh "Racism is Dead" D'Souza and the Nation's fantasy that we are back in 1954. That leaves a lot of territory. It is so hard to quantify this phenomenon but there is no question that there is still (sometimes unconscious) racism afoot in the land.

Whrn ever I hear or see people talk or write about the "Bradley Effect", they seem to forget that Tom Bradley won the election day vote at the polls and it was an unprecidented absentee mail-in vote effort that swung the election to Dukmaijain.

FBC: I believe Obama graduated from Columbia University, then went on to teach law at the University of Chicago.

Noam -- considering that this research design isn't original to these students, I don't think this really qualifies as "truly ingenious".  The citation given in the paper for this "list experiment" is,

Kuklinski, James H., Michael D. Cobb, and Martin Gilens. 1997. "Racial Attitudes and the 'New

South'." Journal of Politics 59:323-349.

Bloggers like Mr. Schieber are getting lazier and lazier and have reached the point of not earning their salary.  It used to be that they had an original thought and then posted it on their blog.  Then they read someone else's original thought and abstracted the idea for their blog.  Now they're too lazy to do even that and simply provide a link to someone else's original writing.  In this instance, Mr. Scheiber links to a 39 page scientific paper.  He's not only lazy but has a lot of chutzpa as well.  

The "surprising result" was not at all surprising to me. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it basically that Dems are more likely to want to hide their racism than Repubs? Didn't we already know that? Repubs were more racist - no surprise there - so doesn't it make sense that it would be more socially acceptable to be racist for a Repub?

What I found more surprising was that more educated racists were less likely to want to hide it than less educated racists. I guess education means having more brazen confidence in your own choices, no matter how scorned by society.

And I was happy to see the video, and didn't need Scheiber to pre-masticate it for me.

If the gap is only 14%, then we aren't as bad off as I would have guessed.