Googling Anti-Obama Racism
His conclusion: "Add up the totals throughout the country, and racial animus cost Mr. Obama 3 to 5 percentage points of the popular vote."
That's more than enough to turn a close election around. But you know what? Almost anything is. Unmentioned by the author's unusual study, for example, is how much of a difference prejudice against Mitt Romney's Mormon faith could cost the Republican candidate in the election.
And, even presuming Stephens-Davidowitz's study is accurate, the good news for Obama and the nation, in light of our turbulent history with race, is that the bad news isn't worse.
Racially charged Web searches are clustered right where any knowledgeable observer would expect them to be, in areas Obama's campaign has little reason to expect to win.
Topping the list, for example, is West Virginia, whose Democratic primary voters recently startled the nation by giving 41 percent of their votes to a white convicted felon instead of the incumbent president.
Other high-ranking voting regions included western Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio, upstate New York and southern Mississippi — areas known for small, rural American towns where Sarah Palin books sell big, whether anyone actually reads them or not.
In other words, the Google-based racism index, even if it is accurate, tells us what we already know. Parts of the country don't like Obama for racial reasons, and those citizens may marginally outnumber the voters who prefer him because of his biracial background. Either way, Obama faces a tough contest this election season, especially if such nonracial issues as the economy don't swing his way.
With that in mind, the most hopeful sign for the nation's racial future is not how much race matters in this contest, but how little.
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E-mail Clarence Page at cpage(at)tribune.com.
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