McCain, Obama both face racial divide

Today the NY Times reports:

Americans are sharply divided by race heading into the first election in which an African-American will be a major-party presidential nominee, with blacks and whites holding vastly different views of Senator Barack Obama, the state of race relations and how black Americans are treated by society, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

The results of the poll, conducted against the backdrop of a campaign in which race has been a constant if not always overt issue, suggested that Mr. Obama’s candidacy, while generating high levels of enthusiasm among black voters, is not seen by them as evidence of significant improvement in race relations.

After years of growing political polarization, much of the divide in American politics is partisan. But Americans’ perceptions of the fall presidential election between Mr. Obama, Democrat of Illinois, and Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, also underlined the racial discord that the poll found. More than 80 percent of black voters said they had a favorable opinion of Mr. Obama; about 30 percent of white voters said they had a favorable opinion of him.

Nearly 60 percent of black respondents said race relations were generally bad, compared with 34 percent of whites. Four in 10 blacks say that there has been no progress in recent years in eliminating racial discrimination; fewer than 2 in 10 whites say the same thing.

And about one-quarter of white respondents said they thought that too much had been made of racial barriers facing black people, while one-half of black respondents said not enough had been made of racial impediments faced by blacks. ….

The rest of the Times’ story’s here.

Comments:

The Times’ story is headlined:

Poll Finds Obama Isn’t Closing Divide on Race

But if you read the story, you see that Sen. Obama does much better among whites on favorability and voter preference questions than Sen. McCain does on those same questions among blacks.

A headline like:

McCain, Obama both face race divide

would have much more accurately conveyed the poll results which – no surprise – found that on questions concerning the candidates, public issues and social perceptions, there were significant differences between the responses of blacks and whites.

I think the Times didn't use a headline like that because it wants the public thinking only Obama faces and is disadvantaged by a racial divide.