Week 5 reading response 1

In the article “Skin-Deep: What Polls of Minorities Miss” David Bositis takes us into the, recently, all to familiar world of opinion polling. Since the presidential and before that the primaries, elections tens of thousands of Americans have been asked inundated with opinion polls. Polling has become a “must have” tool for everyone from news pundits and cable news networks to lobbyists’ and other groups. David Bositis brings us into this world but with an all too jarring perspective, that of the minority poller. Bositis makes the point that often time’s minorities are misrepresented demographics in many pools and generally are subject to small sample sizes. He states numerous examples where even in the best of situations (for the minority group to be well represented) often other factors such as language barrier arise to skew the results. Bositis makes the argument that not focusing on minority groups appropriately, for any motive or circumstance is not only unethical but also very misleading as minorities tend to have different viewpoints compared to the majority “Caucasian” voters.

Bositis arguments come through crystal clear; he feels that because these groups are often misrepresented their views and interests are being behind upheld by the public at large. It’s obvious from these views that Bositis is an activist for minority rights; however, this also polarizes the issue he’s trying to protect. The reader of this article isn’t offered any other statistics about what percentage these minorities in each study represent in each of their home demographics. While it’s true that this may be a legitimate issue Bositis fails by not providing a background for any of his examples, “what percentage of the population sampled in that region was a minority?” Perhaps these samples were taken fairly as a statics formula. Regardless, his intent is clear, he feels that misrepresentation of minority group can only serve to continue to hold back the interests and opinions of all underrepresented groups.