Christopher Parker, a political science professor at the University of Washington, agrees with Oprah Winfrey that racism may be part of the backlash against President Barack Obama — but with a caveat.
"I would never dare say that it's all about racism, that racism is dispositive. I would never say that because I don't think that's true. And it's not empirically true," Parker told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV."
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Winfrey had said: "There's a level of disrespect for the office [of president] that occurs, and that occurs in some cases and maybe even many cases because he's African-American."
"As far as what's going on right now with [Obama's] approval ratings, of course, some of that has to be attributed to what he said about people being able to keep their insurance and then in fact not being able to keep their insurance," Parker said.
"However, it's really glossed over by folks on the right in that the insurance policies that they're going to get [are] actually better. Now, that doesn't make me lose sight of the fact that it didn't really happen that they were able to keep their policy. So, I'm disappointed in that myself."
Parker is co-author of
"Change They Can't Believe In: The Tea Party and Reactionary Politics in America."
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