On May 23rd, one day after @JoeBiden's comments on The Breakfast Club w/ @cthagod, I polled a diverse sample of Black & White Americans using TurkPrime to collect data to share w/my Intro to American Politics class. @peyton_k and I looked at the data and made the plots below.

First, let's look at how people felt about Biden's comments. Here, we plot reactions and perceptions by race and partisanship. Interestingly, Black Democrats in this sample are no more upset by Biden's comments than White Democrats. Who's most upset? Republican respondents.

There was also an item that asked how important it is that Biden chooses a Black woman as his running mate. Black Democrats think it is slightly more important than White Democrats in the sample (.38 scale points).

So, what is the take away from this exercise? I think it is a reminder of the strength of party identification and the role it plays in shaping people's reactions to all sorts of events, even when those events implicate other important identities, including racial identities.

Also, the open-ended responses suggest these Black respondents were not nearly as upset by these comments as the internet would have us think they were. Note the interesting differences btwn how bothered Black respondents say they were vs how bothered others thought they were.

One of my favorite open-ended responses from a Black respondent was "I understand what he was trying to say but he should've kept that in the drafts hunny"