Are conservative whites more racist?

15 Responses to Are conservative whites more racist?

1. John says:

   September 8, 2010 at 2:56 am

   I thought the “has most in common” column was interesting. Liberals are more likely than conservatives to see themselves as like blacks. No surprise there. I was a bit surprised to see that far more conservatives see themselves as like Asians than liberals. An “ice people” versus “sun people” alignment? But wait, conservatives are more likely than liberals to see themselves as similar to hispanics. I’m guessing a lot of these people are working poor and middle class. Both sides have similar feelings toward Jews. I don’t think many younger Americans have many hangups about Jews, and Jews are interbreeding with the rest of us anyway. It would have been interesting to have “Arabs” on the list.
2. Dog of Justice says:

   September 8, 2010 at 5:18 am

   Thanks to their Bering ice bridge origins, American Indians (and by extension, Hispanics to a lesser degree) are nontrivially similar to East Asians in temperament.
3. Underachiever says:

   September 8, 2010 at 6:31 am

   In answer to the question of the supposed implicit racism of whites in the Beck rally, Lawrence Auster said:

   “If there are hardly any nonwhites at conservative events, the obvious reason is that there are hardly any nonwhites who are conservatives. The nonwhites all on the left. So why are you criticizing conservatives for the fact that liberals are liberals? More to the point, why are you criticizing white conservatives for the fact that virtually all nonwhites reject conservatism? Why aren’t you criticizing nonwhites for being exclusively liberal? The fact is that whites are pretty evenly divided between liberals and conservatives. But nonwhites are virtually all liberal. Why aren’t you asking why this is so? Why aren’t you asking why nonwhites universally reject small government, individual responsibility, and traditional American patriotism?

   Again, you make monstrous insinuations against conservatives for being disproportionately white (which is not true, since whites are divided between conservative and liberal), while you decline to raise the slightest critical question about nonwhites for being almost exclusively liberal. If there is any ‘disproportionality’ or ‘exclusiveness’ here, it’s not among the whites, it’s among the nonwhites. But you treat the nonwhite liberals as victims, because they reject conservatism, which is something they have a choice about, while you accuse the white conservatives of being racists, simply because they are white, which is something they don’t have a choice about. In short, you are calling whites morally evil, simply because they are white. So YOU are the racists. YOU are the ones who paint people in hateful terms, because of their race. YOU are the ones who stir up hatred against a group, solely because of its race.

   Of course it doesn’t occur to a single white conservatives in America to ask these questions and put the left on the defensive, for reasons I’ve given many times.”
4. Another Dad says:

   September 8, 2010 at 6:42 am

   Razib i’m not quite sure where you were hoping the comments to go.

   To me the data were interesting — thanks. But also the data broadly supported thought that i — and apparently a lot of other folks — have that this “racism” thing is a religious belief for liberals; particularly the secular ones without a god belief. It’s how they know they are virtuous. Behaviorial differences unimportant.

   Generally on the “cheerleading” items the liberals were slightly less “racist”. But on the practical everyday, actual experience … not much difference.

   The one that was glaring, was the interacial marriage thing. Plenty of opportunity to proclaim virtue there … whereas actual SWPLs … pretty darn white! Interestingly that question had a larger lib\con \ Dem\Rep swing of the type you noted. I would guess that that’s the kind of deal where you pick up more lived experience, “real world” opinions from whites in south (with interaction) and working class Democrats (with mostly negative interactions — urban crime or school misbehavior) in the north. A bit more direct experience with blacks of more average stripe — not John McWhorter, not “my black friend from the office — and a more self-consciously tribal attitude as a result.
5. David Hume says:

   September 8, 2010 at 7:48 am

   Razib i’m not quite sure where you were hoping the comments to go.

   no expectations :=) #3 fits the bill, no need for originality when you can quote someone else! it’s fine, i agree with a lot of auster’s argument there though i think the guy has serious mental issues otherwise. i closed the *discover* thread because there wasn’t much originality going on. that’s the norm in political discussions. even i who don’t read many political blogs run into the same arguments over and over from the different sides.
6. Underachiever says:

   September 8, 2010 at 9:37 am

   If you want to understand where the two political sides are coming from, I highly recommend “A Conflict of Visions” by Thomas Sowell. It discusses how implicit assumptions about human nature affect our political outlook. Steven Pinker also wrote an article in the New York Times about what he calls the 5 parts to morality: fairness, harm, purity, community, and authority. He discusses how conservatives and liberals weigh the parts differently. Finally, I would recommend Steven Pinker’s “The Blank Slate”.
7. Polichinello says:

   September 8, 2010 at 1:29 pm

   I would expect conservative whites to be more “racist”* than liberals. As conservative wants to conserve they’re going to be aware of race and the instability that comes with interracial interaction. The numbers tend to show that, but not by the margins I would have expected.

   *The term is used so broadly that it includes harmless things like a racially biased preference for residence with one’s own race (See Bradlaugh’s past and frank musings on the topic) and eliminationists like the Nazis.
8. Le Mur says:

   September 8, 2010 at 2:20 pm

   Rather than hints, implications and penumbra (black neighbors, WTF?), why not just ask:

   Do you support discrimination based on race?

   Gallop, 2005
   Liberals 59%
   Conservative 32%
   Black 72%
   White 44%

   Move along, there’s nothing to here…
9. Le Mur says:

   September 8, 2010 at 2:22 pm

   The percentages above are for YES, support discrimination based on race.
10. Clark says:

    September 8, 2010 at 7:18 pm

    I was shocked the interracial marriage law belief was so high! And I say that after living in the south for two years. It’s depressing that so many still believe in that kind of thing. It does seem, given the conservative vs. Republican rate that a lot of these are old conservative Democratic southerners.

    It’d be interesting seeing these broken down further by age. Say over 40 vs under 40.
11. David Hume says:

    September 8, 2010 at 8:06 pm

    clark, 7% vs. 14%. remember these are for non-hispanic whites in the 2000s.
12. Polichinello says:

    September 8, 2010 at 8:53 pm

    OT: I wonder if blacks would have similar numbers when it comes to interracial marriage, given the way black females feel victimized by out-marriage.
13. David Hume says:

    September 8, 2010 at 8:56 pm

    for same years, for blacks, by age & sex

    males:
    4% vs. 8%

    females:
    3% vs. 10%
14. Polichinello says:

    September 8, 2010 at 9:02 pm

    Thx.
15. cynthia curran says:

    September 9, 2010 at 2:51 am

    Well, the left promotes class hatred. People don’t think this is bad, but remember Stalin had people turn against the Kuliks which tend to be peasants which were doing better than other peasants. Mao attack the educated which probably had a better income than many chinese peasants. Why is it hatred based upon race is wrong but hatred based upon class is ok.

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