PPP's Southern polls about Interracial Marriage, Civil War and KKK

[Badger]

Legal, South, and NAACP. Look up HK Edgerton.

The man's a solitary kook, and paraded by neo-Confederates to "prove" there is nothing racist about their views and the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery. "See, its a black guy with us!"

Your point?

[Badger]

And among Georgia McCain voters:

51% support legal interracial marriage

43% are glad the North won

and 35% have a higher opinion of the NAACP than the KKK.

All three questions have huge undecideds among McCain voters, including 55% not sure whether they have a higher opinion of the NAACP than the frigging KKK.

NC's numbers aren't much better. In MS pluralities of McCain voters actually oppose legal interracial marriage and wish the Confederacy had defeated the USA in the Civil War. Positive feelings of the NAACP narrowly beat out the KKK by 20% to 14%, with a whopping 2/3 of McCain voters "unsure" which is organization is worse.

God I love southern Republicans.

[Badger]

I have a feeling many people would be uncomfortable answering this poll honestly.

Anybody who is uncomfortable isn't going to disclose the "bad answers." Being uncomfortable will not lead somebody to say they prefer the KKK to the NAACP or that interracial marriage should be banned. If anything, the questions and responses should make the pollster uncomfortable.

it depends on the expectations. it's conceivable that there are some places where saying KKK over NAACP, or at least staying neutral, could be considered the more socially acceptable answer - though that possibility isn't much more encouraging.

Yeah, the overwhelming majority--as in damn near all---of those "Neutral/not sure" answers can be safely considered to be from folks who very much believe the rasict views of the others, with just a tad bit of social control to keep then from admitting it to a stranger.

[Badger]

I have a feeling many people would be uncomfortable answering this poll honestly.

Anybody who is uncomfortable isn't going to disclose the "bad answers." Being uncomfortable will not lead somebody to say they prefer the KKK to the NAACP or that interracial marriage should be banned. If anything, the questions and responses should make the pollster uncomfortable.

it depends on the expectations. it's conceivable that there are some places where saying KKK over NAACP, or at least staying neutral, could be considered the more socially acceptable answer - though that possibility isn't much more encouraging.

Yeah, the overwhelming majority--as in damn near all---of those "Neutral/not sure" answers can be safely considered to be from folks who very much believe the rasict views of the others, with just a tad bit of social control to keep then from admitting it to a stranger.

how can you be sure? again, I don't know what the number of people are who don't know what the NAACP is, but I'd imagine there are quite a few.

Don't be niave, Shua. Even if there's a share of southerners (or any Americans) who aren't sure what the NAACP is, they damn well know what the KKK is. There shouldn't be any group short mabye of NAMBLA where any non-racist should think twice about which is "worse".

[Badger]

I have a feeling many people would be uncomfortable answering this poll honestly.

Anybody who is uncomfortable isn't going to disclose the "bad answers." Being uncomfortable will not lead somebody to say they prefer the KKK to the NAACP or that interracial marriage should be banned. If anything, the questions and responses should make the pollster uncomfortable.

it depends on the expectations. it's conceivable that there are some places where saying KKK over NAACP, or at least staying neutral, could be considered the more socially acceptable answer - though that possibility isn't much more encouraging.

Yeah, the overwhelming majority--as in damn near all---of those "Neutral/not sure" answers can be safely considered to be from folks who very much believe the rasict views of the others, with just a tad bit of social control to keep then from admitting it to a stranger.

how can you be sure? again, I don't know what the number of people are who don't know what the NAACP is, but I'd imagine there are quite a few.

Don't be niave, Shua. Even if there's a share of southerners (or any Americans) who aren't sure what the NAACP is, they damn well know what the KKK is. There shouldn't be any group short mabye of NAMBLA where any non-racist should think twice about which is "worse".

It would be more naive to place unquestioned belief in the poll results as accurate measures of people's ideas about racial issues. If someone were to ask me to compare the KKK to some group I didn't know about, am I to assume automatically that the two are not comparable? I don't think most people expect pollsters to ask people to choose between cows and cucumbers.  If people who say they are not sure about the question are racists, that doesn't speak well either of the half of non-white,non-black respondents in NC that gave that answer.  Are there a lot of racists down there? Sure. Maybe a lot more than some realize. But I think the interracial marriage question is a better measure of that.

So a poll about racial issues isn't a valid way to measure how people feel about race?