I came across a fascinating study the other day (hat tip to Ed Brayton over at Dispatches from the Culture Wars). There has been a good deal of research suggesting that racism has a biological element–several studies show the amygdala lighting up in reaction when a person of a different race appeared, for example. However…
“In a paper that will be published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, Eva Telzer of UCLA and three other researchers report that they’ve performed these amygdala studies–which had previously been done on adults–on children. And they found something interesting: the racial sensitivity of the amygdala doesn’t kick in until around age 14.
What’s more: once it kicks in, it doesn’t kick in equally for everybody. The more racially diverse your peer group, the less strong the amygdala effect. At really high levels of diversity, the effect disappeared entirely. The authors of the study write that “these findings suggest that neural biases to race are not innate and that race is a social construction, learned over time.”
The upshot of the study, at least as I understood it, was that humans do have strong “tribal” instincts, but the preference for ones own tribe is not based on any particular characteristic. It’s enough to be different–the nature of the difference is irrelevant. That’s the bad news. The good news is that, with sufficient diversity while we’re young, the differences that divide us, that bring out our tribal instincts, can be overcome.
That “nature versus nurture” argument just gets more and more complicated….
Richard Mourdock and Mike Pence have been having some problems the past couple of days trying to downplay their enthusiastic participation in the GOP’s War on Women–explaining that they really, truly love female incubators…er, women. (We just need to remember why their God put us on this earth…)
So it may be timely to remind ourselves that the War on Women (and its attendant dishonesty) isn’t limited to matters of reproduction.
For example, I see where the Romney/Ryan ticket is explaining its lack of support for the Lilly Ledbetter Act by claiming the legislation isn’t really about equal pay for equal work. No sireee. It’s just an effort to enrich those awful, terrible, liberal trial lawyers.
A couple of days ago, on ABC, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a leading Romney surrogate, argued, “[J]ust because they call a piece of legislation an equal pay bill doesn’t make it so. In fact, much of this legislation is, in many respects, nothing but an effort to help trial lawyers collect their fees and file lawsuits, which may not contribute at all whatsoever to increasing pay equity in the workplace.”
Paul Ryan, Romney’s running mate, said something very similar last week, criticizing the proposal as being little more than “opening up the lawsuits and statute of limitations.”
Romney allies have justified their opposition to the Lilly Ledbetter Act on these grounds for months. Pete Hoekstra, who is running for U.S. Senate in Michigan, called the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay law “a nuisance.” Another Romney surrogate said the law is little more than “a handout to trial lawyers.” Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) agrees–of course, he approved and signed legislation repealing Wisconsin’s equal pay law, so that shouldn’t come as a surprise.
There’s just one little problem with this effort to pretend that their problem isn’t with women getting treated equally. As it happens, trial lawyers–no matter how clever–cannot collect a fee unless and until they win the case.
Let me put this in language even non-lawyers will understand. Trial lawyers generally take cases on contingency. That means that unless they win the case, neither they nor the client will see a penny. Contingent fee arrangements, whatever their defects, give people access to the justice system who could not otherwise afford a lawyer. Contingent fee arrangements also provide a powerful incentive to lawyers to take only “meritorious” cases–no lawyer in his right mind wants to spend months or years on a case that’s a likely loser and won’t pay a dime. (Even when the lawyer thinks a case is very solid, there is always a substantial risk of losing. As I used to tell my clients, going to trial is always a crap shoot, no matter how strong a case you think you have.)
So–if we follow the argument being made by the Romney camp, they oppose the Lilly Ledbetter Act because lawyers who win cases–by proving that their clients were denied equal pay for equal work–will make money.
But they aren’t against equal pay for women. No siree. If you want to give all your employees who are doing the same work the same pay, why that’s fine. But if you don’t, you shouldn’t have to worry that the big bad trial lawyer will come after you.
They aren’t against equal pay for us girls. They’re just against providing a remedy to those of us who get shafted.
Just like they aren’t for rape. They’re just against allowing a woman who gets pregnant as a result do anything about it.
They may not be humane (or even human), but you have to give them credit: in this, at least, they’re consistent!
Richard Mourdock has a problem. Unlike his ideological clone, Mike Pence, he has a tendency to tell the truth. About 45 minutes into the Senate debate, he was asked about his pro-life beliefs, and whether those beliefs included an exception for rape and/or incest.
In the course of the explanation Mourdock suggested that rape should not be an exception to a ban on abortion, since rape pregnancies are themselves the will of God.
“You know, this is that issue for that every candidates for federal, or even state office, faces. And I, too, certainly stand for life,” said Mourdock, after both Democrat Joe Donnelly and Libertarian Andrew Horning had identified as pro-life, though Donnelly also stated his support for an exception in cases of rape. “I know there are some who disagree, and I respect their point of view. But I believe that life begins at conception. The only exception I have, to have an abortion, is in that case of the life of the mother.”
Mourdock then seemed to choke back tears, and continued: “I’ve struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize that life is that gift from god. And even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.” (Emphasis added.)
I hope some enterprising reporter–assuming we still have a few of those left–asks the Republican gubernatorial candidate whether he agrees. On the record.
There’s so much fabrication floating around the internet, it’s hard to trust anything you read–especially as the election draws closer. So when a Facebook friend posted an article from a source I didn’t recognize, my first inclination was to categorize it with the various paranoid fantasies of “dirty deeds” and “voter fraud” that have grown thicker than ragweed this election cycle. The article claimed that Mitt Romney’s son Tagg, and other members of the Romney family, are part owners of Ohio’s voting machines–specifically, those supplied by Hart Intercivic.
A search of Snopes turned up nothing, pro or con. Google, however, was more accommodating, as were a few Facebook friends. The story was corroborated by several sources, among them Politifact and that noted left-wing publication, Forbes. Forbes reported that Hart Intercivic is largely owned by H.I.G. Capital, that H.I.G. Capital employees hold two of the five board seats–and both of them have made direct contributions to Romney’s campaign. Tony Tamer, the firm’s founder, is a major bundler for Romney, as are three other directors of H.I.G. In fact, H.I.G. is Romney’s 11th largest contributor. And to top it all off, H.I.G. has shared business interests with Solamere Capital, owned by…Tagg Romney.
Election experts have long warned that electronic voting machines are vulnerable to hacking; that’s one reason many jurisdictions have begun insisting on a paper trail. (I’m told some European countries have recently gone back to paper ballots in order to reassure voters of the legitimacy of election results.) There are all sorts of reasons why this latest bit of news is disquieting: the centrality of Ohio in our electoral vote system, the persistent accusations of irregularities in that state’s vote in 2004, and the increasingly brazen efforts by Republicans to suppress minority votes.
It began with so-called “Voter ID” laws, purportedly aimed at in-person voter fraud, a largely imaginary problem. As some unguarded comments by GOP operatives have confirmed, the real aim of such laws is to suppress the votes of elderly, poor and minority Americans–those most likely to lack the documentation, transportation and/or resources needed to obtain the necessary ID.
The Voter ID efforts have been accompanied by persistent measures to restrict voting–to limit early voting periods, and refuse to authorize satellite voting sites, and generally to make exercising ones franchise as inconvenient as possible, again on the theory that such measures would be most likely to discourage lower-income voters who tend to skew Democratic.
In the past week or so, there have been reports from swing states of other shenanigans: in Florida, Republican operatives were caught trashing registrations; in several other localities, robo-calls have been made to minority voters “reminding” them to vote–on November 8th. (The election, of course, will take place on November 6th.) Then there were the billboards in minority neighborhoods, featuring a judge’s gavel and the text “Voter Fraud is a felony—up to 3 1/2 years and a $10,000 fine.” Those appeared in Cleveland, Columbus and Milwaukee. (Clear Channel has now responded to community outrage and begun taking them down; however, much of the harm has been done.)
I’m sure there must be places where the Democrats are engaging in similar tactics, and they certainly have done so in the past, but reports of Democratic chicanery haven’t surfaced in this election cycle. My sense is that these are the sort of tactics used by folks who smell defeat–who realize that winning will require a bit of “fudging” here and there, and for whom winning is more important than playing fair and square. This year, despite the close national polls, that best describes the Romney/Ryan team.
Their faux concerns about voter fraud are an example of what psychologists call “projection.”
One of the more prestigious political science journal just published an issue devoted to prognostications about the upcoming Presidential election. A variety of academics used their favored forecasting methodologies, and predicted the likely winner. The results ranged from “comfortably Obama” to “very, very close” to one “Romney by a nose.” (I’ve noted that “scientific” methods are a lot more accurate after the election has occurred.)
The problem with forecasting models is that they rarely take into account elements like likability; heretofore, they have not had to confront massive spending by SuperPacs, either. And even the scholars who employ them hedge their bets.
One element that was not measurable before 2008–and has now been measured–is the influence of race, as in the race of the candidates. Any sentient being knows that much of the anti-Obama animus is race-based (the “birthers” and people convinced that the President is a Muslim are so obviously substituting those charges for the N word). What has been unclear is the extent to which that racism motivates votes. In that journal’s issue on the election, one article analyzed data from the 2008 election, and concluded that his race had cost Obama five percent of the vote–that is, that Obama’s percentage of the popular vote would have been five percent higher had he been white. The author of that article forecast a slightly better result this time around; according to his calculations, racism will “only” cost Obama three percentage points this time around.
Of course, in a very close election, three percent is enough.
A lot of folks are in denial about the extent to which race influences attitudes about the President. They shrug off the more obvious indicators, like the guy in the photo taken at a Romney rally, whose tee shirt read “Put the white back in the White House.” I have friends whose unease with the President is pretty clearly based upon his “otherness,” but who don’t recognize or admit to themselves that such feelings are a part of their political calculus.
If we are inclined to dismiss the influence of racism, a look at Gallup’s polling may serve as a wake-up call. Gallup has been an “outlier” lately, showing Romney five or six points ahead in the popular vote. When you look at the internals, you see an interesting phenomenon: in Gallup’s numbers, Obama holds modest leads in the Northeast, Midwest and West. Romney leads in the South–by twenty-two points.
Maybe we shouldn’t have fought the civil war–and just let the South go.
