Well, if you ask Dr. Earl Ofari Hutchinson he will tell you yes. In his report, "The Hutchinson Report: The ‘Nevada Phenomenon’ a Bigger Peril to Barack Obama than the Bradley Effect", Dr. Hutchinson concluded that the "Nevada Phenomenon" would be a bigger problem for Sen. Obama than the 'Bradley Effect'. In his report Dr. Hutchinson compares and contrast the different phenomenoms. He defines the Bradley Effect as the following:
The Bradley Effect is named after former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, who lost his bid for California governor to George Deukmejian in 1986, though Bradley had big leads in polls. Many white voters told pollsters and interviewers that they had no problem voting for an African-American, but once in the privacy of the voting booth voted for his white opponent. (Source)
He then goes on to define a different phenomenon that he thinks took place in Nevada this past week. This phenomenon deals specifically with Hispanic voters and how they were instrumental in getting Hillary over the proverbial hump to beat Obama in Nevada. He properly labeled this occurence as the 'Nevada Phenomenon'. He defines this phenomenon as follows:
The Nevada Phenomenon, by contrast, has nothing to do with the supposed penchant for white voters to deceive pollsters and interviewers on race. It’s the mix of wariness, fear, indifference and even hostility of the majority of Latino voters toward a black candidate. (Source)
Now the polls do support Hutchinson's claims. it would appear that the Hispanic voters have more affinity for Hillary Clinton than Barack Obama. Now if that is just because the color of his skin it's left unseen. There is a major rift between the African American commnunity and the Latino American community. Now what is the cause of this rift I am really not clear. I would hope it's not just about skin color since there is a large African diaspora in Latin countries. Now Hutchinson did back his claims by showing how major African Americans were in different political races and how Hispanics didn't support any of these candidates. The examples that he used were when Tom Bradley was mayor of Los Angeles and when David Dinkins ran against Rudy Giuliani for mayor of New York. Neither one of these candidates were able to sustain a considerable number of the hispanic vote even though they were successful politicians. He also went on to talk about other candidates, but those two were the ones that I thought were significant.
So my question to you today is why do you think there is such a rift between Latino Americans and African American?
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