Prometheus 6 highlighted this Gallup poll on people’s views on the Kobe Bryant sexual assault case. He represents my views on the poll very well when he says he’s not surprised by:
- USA Today and CNN found it necessary to hire Gallup to do a poll on people’s opinion on a certain basketball player’s legal travails
- That so many people have decided his guilt or innocence without hearing the first shred of evidence
- That the pollsters felt the need to break out the results along racial lines
- That the broken out results fell the way they did
But what really gets me is the fact that they didn’t break the results out along gender lines. How can you do a poll on a sexual assault case without doing that, given how men and women tend to see these things so differently. In my opinion, that makes the whole poll bogus. For all we know all the differences in the poll could be a result of gender and not race. But somebody apparently has another agenda to push. I told you the racial madness would kick in.
The other thing that’s a trip is that 25% of Blacks (vs. 6% of Whites) say the charges against Kobe are ‘definitely not true’, even without having heard the evidence. My people, my people…
I believe the 25% of Blacks whom you mentioned desperately want to believe that he could not possibly do what he is alleged to have done. For many Blacks (perhaps misguidedly), Kobe represents one of our last chances to have a high-profile public figure without apparent spot or blemish; especially understanding that we tend to be judged as a group and not as individuals when one of ours makes a mistake. Of course, the danger of idol-worship is in the almost inevitability of being let down by that idol. When will Black people and, for that matter, all people learn not to trust man (or woman) as heroes.
Good commentary from Tim Wise http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2003-08/02wise.cfm