Inductivist

Our elites are sick.

I made the mistake of watching a CBS News story of how Gala apples are now passing Red Delicious as America's number 1 apple. I was pleased because Gala's are great, and I've always hated Red Delicious -- mealy and too sweet.

Then like an OCD patient who has to wash his hands 100 times a day, the journalist had to turn this amusing story into a moral message: Red Delicious represents 1950s White America where only one uniform color was valued. Galas represent 2018 America where a variety of colors -- read: fewer whites -- makes a superior apple.

Our elites need Zoloft, and I need some Pepto-Bismol.

A study of Rutgers undergraduates revealed an interesting dynamic. To promote equality, many psychologists claim that teaching people multiculturalism -- emphasizing ethnic differences -- is more effective than focusing on color-blind messages. In this study, students exposed to multicultural rather than color-blind information were more likely to report "essentialist" opinions; that racial differences are real, biological, and unchanging.

This makes sense. If we emphasize that racial groups are different in important ways, it's not surprising when people assume the differences are natural. It takes a lot of mental gymnastics to develop the view that differences are somehow real and a big deal, but are nothing more than social constructions. Evolution had produced a brain that assumes that what you see is what you get. And it's basically correct.

So if this study is valid, multiculturalism is ironically helping those of us who want to convince the public that group differences are partly biological. Liberals, I thank you.  

In this new study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers report that whites implicitly associate multiculturalism with exclusion. They are less likely to see it as being something they are a part of. Whites with a high need to belong are less attracted to multicultural organizations. I interpret this to mean that socially independent whites are more enthusiastic about organizations that devalue their race. Overall, whites as a group do not buy the propaganda that multiculturalism is inclusive.

Just when I begin to develop some hope that America might be able to survive the ethnic diversification of the country, some Lefty moron throws cold water. This Asian UCLA professor tells the crowd of DREAM Act activists that they will someday replace the old white men in Congress. So did the crowd, in defense of a color blind America, boo him? On the contrary: the quiescent audience burst into cheers as the words "old white men" were uttered.

My approach on this blog is limited because surveys capture the attitudes of the average person. But history is driven by elites, and all too many of them want whites to take their rightful place at the bottom of American society. All this talk of equality and justice for all is just a smokescreen. It's about power and domination for these people, pure and simple.

Many ordinary people might have benign intentions, but they are easily manipulated by demogogues. Race-baiting and racial politics as methods to advance politically are such powerful temptations, I'm afraid the country is going to become increasingly dysfunctional. 

General Social Survey respondents were asked to estimate the percent change in population of various ethnic groups over the next 25 years (e.g., Hispanics, Asians). Then they were asked: "When you think about these changes in the racial and ethnic make-up of the country in the next 25 years, do you think they will be a very good thing for the country (1), a good thing (2), neither good nor bad (3), a bad thing (4), or a very bad thing (5)?"  The numbers are the scores assigned to each answer. Here are the means by the ethnic group the respondent belongs to:

Mean "ethnic change will be bad" score (N = 1,318)

Scottish 3.14
Swedish 3.11
Italian 3.06
German 3.05
Irish 3.04
French 3.04
English/Welsh 3.02

All Americans 2.94

Polish 2.90
Russian 2.83
Jewish 2.81
Amerindian 2.75
Black 2.71
Chinese/Japanese 2.67
Filipinos 2.62
Mexican 2.57
Puerto Rican 2.45
Asian Indian 2.20

I'm not surprised. Whites have higher means, while non-whites tend to think change will be good for the country. The difference between Americans of Scottish descent and Asian Indians is 1.15 standard deviations--a very large difference.

Here are some correlates for whites :

Correlation with "ethnic change is bad" score

Age .13
Education -.19
Church attendance -.01
Conservatism .14 


So older, less educated, and more conservative whites are more likely to think that ethnic change will be bad for the country.

A reader in the last post on ethnocentrism rightly suggests that people might get confused by my analysis. It showed that, for whites, believing that your ethnicity is important to who you are is (weakly) associated with cooler feelings toward other groups.

The largest negative correlation is Jews toward whites which could be interpreted to mean that Jewish folks like whites less than other groups. That is incorrect: the negative correlation means that Jewish ethnocentrism predicts cooler outgroup feelings better than other ethnocentrisms. In other words, when it comes to disliking others, there is a sharper difference between ethnocentric and non-ethnoncentric Jews than their counterparts in other groups. The correlation says nothing about average levels of coolness. Here is the mean coolness score toward whites listed by one's ethnic group.


Mean coolness score toward whites

Filipino 3.53
Amerindian 3.49
Black 3.36
Chinese 3.21
Asian Indian 3.10
Scottish 2.90
Swedish 2.80
English/Welsh 2.78
Russian 2.77
Mexican 2.77
German 2.71
Irish 2.52
Puerto Rican 2.43
Polish 2.28
Jewish 2.28
Arabic 2.12

Asians, Amerindians, and blacks like whites the least. The difference between the Filipino and Jewish means, for example, is eight-tenths of a standard deviation--a big difference. But even Filipinos--the coolest group--have a pretty warm average. Respondents could give any answer between "very warm" (1) and "very cool" (9), so 3.5 is still pretty warm.

As a follow-up to the last post, I regressed agreeing that one's ethnicity is important (ETHIMP--GSS data) on a list of variables that seemed predictive when looking at the bivariate associations. 

The table displays the results. I included p-values since so many of them are just shy of the .05 cutoff. You can read p-values as the chance that the relationship between the predictor and ETHIMP is actually zero.

Believing there should be a law against marriage between blacks and whites is the only independent variable significantly related to thinking one's ethnicity is important. It also has the largest beta. Older people, those living in the South, political conservatives and people who are religious fundamentalists are more ethnocentric (but not significantly so). Gender and church attendance, on the other hand, have high p-values so there is a good chance they are unrelated to the dependent variable.

The results here are stronger here than in the last post probably because the measure of ethnocentricism is more normally distributed. Although the model explains little variance in ethnocentrism (R-squared is only .056) it does suggest that if Americans are encouraged to adopt multiculturalism for themselves, it will take the form of what you would imagine emerging from the South: one that is racialist and conservative.

I found evidence that Jewish Americans as a group are not hypocritical over issues of ethnocentrism. The table above reproduces the ethnocentrism scores I calculated in the earlier post. Groups with above-average scores I labeled "ethnocentrics". Groups with scores below the mean are called "individualists."

Next, I found this question:  "Some people say that it is better for America if different racial and ethnic groups maintain their distinct cultures. Others say that it is better if groups change so that they blend into the larger society as in the idea of a melting pot. Here is a card with a scale from 1 to 7. Think of a score of 1 as meaning that racial and ethnic groups should maintain their distinct cultures, and a score fo 7 as meaning that groups should change so that they blend into the larger society. What score between 1 and 7 comes closest to the way you feel?"

The means are shown in the right column. Those above the mean are categorized as "multiculturalists," while those below are labeled "assimilationists."  All the groups, including Jews, are consistent. What Jews tend to favor is a society where ethnic traditions are maintained. They are ethnocentric multiculturalists.

So where does that leave so many Americans whose families have been here for many generations, with ancestors from several different countries, who belong to no particular ethnic group? You can see that most white Americans are individualist assimilationists, but that attitude seems so 1950s.

If the country follows the route favored by many Jews and other minority groups, the natural path for these other folks is to organize as white Americans NOA--not otherwise allied. These people have no culture, history or heritage other than a white American one. The country does seem to be headed in a multicultual direction, especially when you consider massive Hispanic immigration mixed with a multiculturalist elite, but I don't think an America with tens of millions of tribalist white people is quite what multiculturalists have in mind.


UPDATE: Oops--I missed that Americans of Polish and French descent are individualist multiculturalists.

Coulter is always fun:

It cannot be said often enough that the chief of staff of the United States Army, Gen. George Casey, responded to a massacre of 13 Americans in which the suspect is a Muslim by saying: "Our diversity ... is a strength."

As long as the general has brought it up: Never in recorded history has diversity been anything but a problem. Look at Ireland with its Protestant and Catholic populations, Canada with its French and English populations, Israel with its Jewish and Palestinian populations.

Or consider the warring factions in India, Sri Lanka, China, Iraq, Czechoslovakia (until it happily split up), the Balkans and Chechnya. Also look at the festering hotbeds of tribal warfare -- I mean the beautiful mosaics -- in Third World hellholes like Afghanistan, Rwanda and South Central, L.A.

"Diversity" is a difficulty to be overcome, not an advantage to be sought. True, America does a better job than most at accommodating a diverse population. We also do a better job at curing cancer and containing pollution. But no one goes around mindlessly exclaiming: "Cancer is a strength!" "Pollution is our greatest asset!"

To all the Oreos: This post is for all the non-white Americans who are criticized for being dark on the outside and white on the inside. Maybe you don't speak Spanish, or you think that calling women bitches and ho's is stupid? Maybe you enjoy school and are proud of your good grades? Perhaps you're ambitious, but your neighbors accuse you of thinking you're better than them?

You feel like you have no identity? All these other guys call each other bro, but you don't feel part of that? Well, you do have an identity, but you just don't know it. It's called an American. It may not be a perfect badge to wear, but you could do worse. Trust me.

What might surprise you is that you and I are in the same boat. Like you, I have no people but America. And yes, if you think about it, that makes you and me brothers. That's got to be a painful thought--you and Ron playing on the same team. We Americans may be different. We may disagree about a lot of things. You might get mad, and God knows I do, but we're brothers, and we're in this thing together.

Widespread ethnic consciousness: The Houston Area Survey asked Hispanics (and Asians) if they think of themselves primarily as Hispanics (or Asians) or Americans. Here are their answers:


Hispanics--percentages (N = 823)

Primarily ethnic 50.5
Equally ethnic and American 31.2
Primarily American 18.2


Asians--percentages (N = 68)

Primarily ethnic 39.7
Equally ethnic and American 44.1
Primarily American 16.2

Fewer than 20% in each group see themselves as I see myself--an American. One-half of Hispanics don't even give their American identity equal weight. I'll cut them some slack because some of these folks are immigrants. On the other hand, this is Houston, a place not known as a multicultural vanguard.

Along with blacks, these two groups are getting large enough and powerful enough that they are on the verge of forcing me, a person who doesn't want to, to feel like he must mirror them and become a white man. It's simply defensive racial consciousness. An individualist patriot surrounded by herds of racialists gets stomped.

If this happens to guys like me, the elites who are behind this multiculturalism and the non-whites who happily embrace it will have no one to blame but themselves. They will have killed the goose that laid the golden egg.

And no, folks like me won't become barbarians; we'll simply organize and dominate in an explicit way, in contrast to the unintentional, spontaneous leadership we see today. And we won't feel the slightest twinge of guilt as we do it.

Old people don't like diversity: The other day, Steve Sailer wrote a VDare piece that included, among other things, the idea that many white college-age students long to get away from their boring surroundings to more ethnically diverse and thus more exciting environments. He then wondered in the comments section if a desire for diversity peaks during that age. Well, the General Social Survey doesn't interview children, but we can look at 18 plus. People were asked about the ethnic changes that will happen in the next 25 years, and their answers ranged from a very good thing (=1) to a very bad thing (=5). (Notice how everyone assumes the changes are inevitable, like they have already happened.) Here are the mean scores by age for whites:


"The growing diversity is bad" mean score--whites

Ages 18-25, 2.87
26-35, 2.91
36-45, 2.99
46-55, 2.95
56-65, 3.07
66-75, 3.25
76-85, 3.17


So, enthusiasm for diversity declines with age, especially from the mid-50s on. But I'm not sure if the correct interpretation here is that getting older turns you into a conservative, or if multi-culti messages have found fertile ground in impressionable youths. I suspect that the experience of having children turns many people's minds to safety issues, and what once looked stimulating now looks scary.

Welcome to multicultural America: As of two years ago, the bathroom I often visit on campus had nice, clean blue walls. Then, I began to see occasional gang writing here and there. My reaction was, "Gangs, at a university?!" (I really shouldn't be surprised: I have had former and current gang members in my classes). Over time, gangbangers wrote more and more, either to advertise themselves or to challenge rival gangs. Eventually, the walls were a mess of crossed-out graffiti.

Now, the latest trend. A couple weeks ago, some white guy finally got fed up with the bathroom's walls being turned into a giant scribble pad, and wrote: "F****** beaners." To which a well-endowed student responded, "Whoever said this can suck my big f****** Mexican c***." And today, the poetry continues with a "Get your a** back to Mexico, you f******* spic." I bet I can guess what's coming next: "This is our land, you f****** gringo. You get your a** back to Europe." (Do you think my dialogue sounds authentic?) As much as I enjoy the honesty of the john (I wish we could get this candor on the General Social Survey I analyze so much) I prefer clean walls. Welcome to multicultural America.

Update: I couldn't write this stuff. Today, I find that after two years, the walls have finally been cleaned. Did months and months of unsightly scribbling all over the place motivate a cleanup? No. Did the desire to take action against gang activity on campus motivate the cleanup? No. So what motivated it? Because someone wrote the word "beaner" on the wall.