Inductivist

The last post was incomplete because we were unable to see the percentages of whites who could be considered racist. The General Social Survey did not label most of the numbers, but let's assume the 6 means slightly racist, 7 is somewhat racist, and 8 is considerably racist. 

You can see that 14.5% of white dropouts are at least somewhat racist. Compared this to those with graduate degrees: only 3%. So, as I wrote in the last post, anti-black racism is concentrated among white dropouts. Cold feelings towards a race of people is not good, but these are people at the bottom of society. They don't have the power to deny someone an education or a good job. They are nobodies, and yet who do elites love to hate more? 

Do white police officers dislike blacks?

Sociology textbooks regularly state as if it were God's Truth that the United States is a fundamentally racist country. Let's try something different and instead of maligning a whole country, let's actually look at data.

Between 2010 and 2014, the World Values Survey asked 88,042 people from 59 countries if they would object to having neighbors of a different race.  Here are the percent who answered yes by country:

Percent objecting to a neighbor of a different race

Azerbaijan  58.1
Libya  55.1
Palestine  44.0
Thailand  39.7
Lebanon  36.3
Turkey  35.8
Ecuador  34.5
S. Korea  34.1
Yemen  34.0
Georgia  32.1
Armenia  31.8
Malaysia  31.3
Kuwait  28.1
Kyrgyzstan  28.1
Iraq  27.7
Jordan  27.2
India  25.6  
Estonia  25.4
Cyprus  24.8
Romania  23.5
Belarus  23.1
Japan  22.3
Philippines  21.6
Nigeria  20.9
Ghana  19.9
Algeria  19.8
S, Africa  19.2
Hong Kong  18.8

All Countries  18.6

Russia  17.2
Tunisia  16.9
Ukraine  16.9
Pakistan  15.7
Germany  14.8
Uzbekistan  14.0  
Morocco  13.8
Singapore  12.6
Kazakhstan  11.2
Slovenia  10.9
China  10.5
Mexico  10.2
Peru  9.3
Zimbabwe  8.9
Qatar  8.8
Taiwan  8.4
Netherlands  8.2
Haiti  6.3
Chile  5.6
USA  5.6
Poland  5.5
Australia  5.0
Spain  4.8
Rwanda  3.5
Colombia  3.2
New Zealand  2.9
Sweden  2.8
Brazil  1.9
Uruguay  1.6
Trinidad and Tobago 1.5
Argentina  1.0

So, in a sample of 59 countries, the United States is the 12th most tolerant. The percent of Americans not wanting a neighbor of another race is less than one-third the world average. Liberals should be ashamed of themselves for indicting our country. 

Whites in general are accused of being notoriously racist, but you can see that Western societies tend to be the most tolerant.  The most intolerant regions are Muslim and Asian.

I don't know if anyone has put forward the hypothesis in some formal way, but I have run across the idea that while mistreatment by whites is common among blacks generally, it's REALLY bad in areas with few blacks. The reasoning seems to be that whites are very racist everywhere, but concentrations of blacks are able to push back and suppress the discrimination to some extent. By contrast, isolated blacks are more powerless and consequently have it really bad.

The General Social Survey (GSS) asked blacks, "How much discrimination is there that hurts the chances of blacks to get good-paying jobs?" Since there were only 152 respondents, I took the nine regions used by GSS and collapsed them into two: one high-black and one low-black category.
I also divided up the country into North vs. South under the assumption that the South is more racist.

Answers ranged from "a lot of discrimination" (4) to "none at all" (1) so higher numbers indicate greater perceived discrimination. Here are the means:

Mean perceived job discrimination

North High Black  3.56
North Low Black   3.38
South  3.29

The region with the greatest perceived discrimination is made up of parts in the north that have the most blacks. Contrary to the stereotype, there is no evidence here that the South is more racist--it scores the lowest. In the middle are low-black areas in the north. When I say north, I mean the mountain states and the west coast as well as the north proper. (You don't see a low-black southern region because there is no such place in GSS data.)

So GSS data contradict the view that black communities that are small, isolated, and surrounded by many whites have it really bad. Blacks think they have it better when their numbers are small.

My guess would be that perceived discrimination is affected a great deal by exaggeration, a phenomenon that gets magnified among large concentrations of blacks.

UPDATE: This hypothesis of large numbers magnifying the perception of discrimination doesn't work for the South which has many blacks but scores the lowest on discrimination. A reader suggested that progressives encourage blacks to see mistreatment, but some low-black areas contain many liberals: the West Coast, New England, Minnesota. I wonder if the perception of bias depends on how one is treated when applying for a job. Southerners and perhaps many people in low-black areas might have a softer touch than employers in places like Chicago or Detroit. Discrimination is typically an ambiguous thing. People are not going to admit that they're not hiring you because they don't like blacks, so people have to rely on cues. A brusque manner could be interpreted as bias.

General Social Survey respondents were asked, "Do you feel in any way discriminated against on your job because of your race or ethnic origin?"  Here are the percentages (in red) of blacks who answered yes for various years (sample size = 1,031):
















America is supposed to be a fatally flawed country because of its deep, omnipresent racism.  It's supposed to be so awful, some people call for a fundamental restructuring--perhaps socialism will fix it.

And the number of blacks who perceive or claim job discrimination (discrimination is hard to be sure about, and some are certainly wrong)?  A whopping 7.7% in the latest year polled.

Gimme a damn break.

Despite decades of militant effort to root out racism in America, blacks continue to be concentrated at the bottom rungs of society.  Now we all walk on egg shells when it comes to race, so where is the supposed hatred that is keeping blacks down?  To save the argument, liberals have shifted and now claim that racism isn't cross-burnings and lynchings; it's sneaky.  It's so sneaky, you can't even find it. It's like the Devil: invisible but powerful.  It's either hidden in institutional arrangements, or whites are simply faking their goodwill. 

There is clear General Social Survey (GSS) evidence that contradicts the view that whites don't talk or act so racist, but the same hatred still lurks in their hearts.  I've long argued that one of the few survey measures of racism that has some validity asks participants how warmly they feel toward blacks.  At least it's better than BS measures like whether you support racial preferences or not.

GSS participants were asked the warmth question in 2002.  Look how mean "coolness" increases with age for southerners (blue) and northerners (red):

   









People in their 20s would have been born in the 1970s, those in their 30s in the 1960s, etc.  People aged 70 and above are noticeably colder than those in their 20s.  It's about one-half of a standard deviation difference. And even the elderly group averages a "warm" response.  A five would be neutral, but a four is positive.  Even whites born in the South in the 1920s like blacks.  The US is a racist country?  BS.  Just the opposite.

Notice how young southerners are a little colder than northerners, but the two regions converge and even flip among the oldest group. In other words, elderly northerners like blacks less than elderly southerners do.

Anyway, I think even most liberals would admit that whites act better now than they did in the 1950s, which is all anyone should worry about anyway.  Who cares what's in someone's heart as long as they treat you well?  But if we are worried about private sentiments, there is a significant difference between younger and older Americans.  (Of course, I'm assuming people develop their feelings when young and then tend to hold on to them throughout adulthood. It is possible that people are warmer when young and get colder as they age.)

By the way, I'm trying to figure out why my cohort, those born in the 60s, appear to be colder than those who are both younger and older.  I was in college during the Rodney King riots in 1992, and it did make an impression on me.  But I was a liberal, so I found myself making excuses for all the destructive behavior.  Perhaps all the violent crime of the late 80s and early 90s left its mark. 

If someone complains that America has not done enough to stigmatize racism, you tell them this:

Jeffrey Dahmer killed, mutilated and ate many victims, and nine of them were black. When prosecutors asked him if he had something against blacks, he answered, "Whoa, whoa, slow down! Yes, I killed, mutilated, and ate a lot of black guys, but I did it because I LIKED them. I may be a lot of things, including a cannibal, but I am NOT, I repeat, NOT A RACIST!!!" (True story, I just paraphrase.)

This new meta-analysis of 214 studies and more than 90,000 participants found that adolescents who perceive more racial discrimination tend to be more depressed, distressed, aggressive, sexually risky, drug abusing, and they have more deviant friends. They have poorer self-esteem, lower academic motivation and achievement. In other words, they are the problem kids.

Of course, all these liberal researchers assume that racial discrimination is driving victims to negative behavior. It's more likely that disagreeable, cynical, suspicious, and hostile people interpret ambiguous interactions as racist, buy into the message that their society is oppressive, and at the same time they have more emotional and behavior problems than trusting, agreeable people.

This is a huge analysis conducted by researchers who seem very concerned with the well-being of adolescents. All racial groups are studied here... except whites. The possibility of white teens suffering from racial mistreatment doesn't seem worth even looking into. Not in 214 studies. Whites are the oppressors, after all.

Of course, the reader who is paying attention may accuse me of being suspicious and cynical for suggesting that anti-white discrimination exists. Well, I never claimed to be a sweetheart.  

Does ignorance or familiarity breed racism against blacks?

To answer this question, I correlated how cool a white person feels towards blacks with the percent of the population in their region that is black (General Social Survey data). The correlation across nine census divisions is .48--a strongly positive correlation.

In other words, whites who live in areas with more blacks--an indication that one has had more actual experience with blacks--tend to feel cooler toward them.

The data suggests that familiarity breeds contempt, not affection. 

 

Using General Social Survey data, I calculated the correlation between conservatism and feeling cool toward blacks. It's practically non-existent--a trivial .07. Next, I correlated a correlation between liberalism and coolness toward conservatives. It's large--.45.

To put this in plain English, conservatism does NOT predict hatred for blacks, but liberalism STRONGLY predicts hatred for conservatives.

In a recent post, I found that race predicts political orientation more strongly than does income for many minority groups. It seems to me that the race/politics link, adjusted for the influence of income, is an indication of the importance of race to that particular group.  If members always look at issues through the lens of their racial group, they will tend to vote in the same way and will vote Democrat, regardless of how wealthy they are.

Based on this line of reasoning, here is a ranking of the most race-loyal, race-conscious (if they were white, the term would be race-ist) minority groups.

Race-consciousness ranking
1. Blacks
2. Mexicans
3. Jews
3. Asian Indians
5. Puerto Ricans
6. American Indians
7. Chinese
7. West Indians
9. Japanese
10. Arabs

Not surprisingly, blacks are the most race-conscious group, but it's interesting that West Indians are much less so. Since Jews are white, you might not expect them them to be ethnocentric at all, but they outrank many nonwhite groups.

Asian Indians are quite race-conscious, as are Mexicans and Puerto Ricans (to their own group, not to the fake category of "Hispanic"). Despite being non-white, Chinese and Japanese Americans seem to be less uptight about race. Arabs are even less ethnocentric. (Keep in mind that many of these Arabs are Christians.)

The GSS asked respondents how warmly they feel about: 1) whites, 2) blacks, 3) Hispanics, and 4) Asians. Answers ranged from very cool to very warm. I correlated answers for whites. The mean correlation is .63. While there is substantial range--from .45 for white-white to .81 for Asian-Hispanic--the main story here is that if a person dislikes one group, he tends to have comparatively cool feelings for all groups, even his own. I found the same basic results when I limited the analysis to the black sample or a sample of those of some other race.

We can construct a typology here for all races. Roughly half feel warmly toward all races. Thirty percent or so are neutral toward everyone. Fifteen percent like their group but dislike everyone else, and five percent can't stand anybody. The consistent attitude for various groups leads me to think one's disposition toward groups is a personality trait. It's probably related to one's attitude toward people in general: trusting and warm versus suspicious and hostile.

As a follow-up to the last post, let's do multiple regression to see which factors predict feeling cool toward blacks (sample size = 958 whites):

Coolness toward blacks (standardized OLS coefficients)

Age .088*
Sex -.096*
Size of place -.036
South .025
Education -.011*
Income -.027
Church attendance -.105*
Political conservatism .082*

*p < .05, two-tailed

So cooler feelings are associated with being: older, male, less educated, less religious, and more conservative. Population size, income, and being from the South do not matter.

And here is the model for blacks feeling cool toward whites (sample size = 117):


Coolness toward whites (standardized OLS coefficients)

Age -.003
Sex .013
Size of place .239*
South .109
Education -.134
Income .077
Church attendance .106
Political conservatism .114

*p < .05, two-tailed


Living in a more populated area is the only significant predictor of coolness among blacks. The sample size is small, so if we ignore significance and focus on the size of the cooefficients, it looks like the following are associated with not liking whites: living in the South, less education, more income, more church attendance, and more political conservatism. Age and sex don't seem to matter. It's interesting that church seems to discourage racism among whites but encourage it among blacks.

I have a white friend who is married to a black woman. "Converts make the best zealots" certainly applies to this guy. He rants constantly that George Zimmerman proves that white racism is still alive and well. After reminding him that Zimmerman is Hispanic and that anecdote is the weakest form of  evidence, I bring out the big guns: the General Social Survey.

Respondents were asked in 2002 how warmly or cooly do they feel towards blacks as a group. Answers ranged from "very warm" (1) to very cool (9). Among whites (sample size = 2162), only 11.4% percent gave a cool answer (answers 6-9). Only 2.3% said "very cool." (Blacks were asked the same question, and 5.9% gave a cool answer for fellow blacks.)

Next, I calculated median education and income for whites giving cool answers. It is 12.0 years of school and the income range between $25,000 and $29,999. So whites that don't like blacks are, on average, uneducated, and they have low status jobs. They don't run anything and so are in no position to deny blacks jobs, etc.

While we're at it, 15.6% of blacks (sample size = 405) feel cool toward whites. Four percent answered "very cool." And the share of whites who are cool toward whites: 4.7%.

These are results from a new Gallup poll. Explain to me how conservatives are such bigots when they like a black man more than eight out of nine white candidates (or potential candidates). And Cain isn't even white on the inside like Obama. He's a real black man.

This table shows the mean scores of how warmly one group feels toward another, based on GSS answers from 1 (very cold) to 9 (very warm). The columns are the judging groups, while the rows are the target groups. "Whites" are "blacks" are non-Hispanic; "Hispanics" are "other race." "Asians" in the judging group are Japanese and Chinese Americans, but are simply Asians in the target group.

Going along the rows, you can see that Asians and Hispanics tend to be the best liked groups. I suppose this puts a tally mark in the plus column on the immigration question. Perhaps Asians and Hispanics tend to be inoffensive? Blacks are the least liked by everyone (except for blacks of course). Must be because whitey taught the others to hate.

Going down the columns, it is not clear who judges the harshest in general. Asian feelings towards blacks are comparatively cool, but they like Hispanics. Whites judge blacks more warmly than others do--white guilt perhaps--but they are comparatively cool on Hispanics and Asians. I see no evidence here that whites have a unique gift for disliking other races. Unless the race is whites--they have the lowest self-directed mean.

This study shows that stereotyping by whites drops if the environment is orderly. The implication for people wanting to increase the comfort level among races is conservative: you need to maintain a clean, safe living space. That means that cops, not graffiti, must seen as cool.

On the other hand, disorderliness may be an accurate and important signal of risk. It doesn't make sense to clean up an environment if it tricks people into being comfortable in an objectively dangerous place.

Another point: In one experiment, whites sat as close to a black confederate as a white one, as long as the scene was clean and orderly. Does this square with the whites-as-natural-haters meme that they would sit just as close to a strange black man as a white one?

H/T Jason Malloy

TGGP directs us to an excellent GSS study by James Lindgren which shows that redistributionists (liberals) are more racist, angrier, less altruistic, and less happy than anti-redistributrionists (conservatives):

In debates over the roles of law and government in promoting the equality of income or in redistributing the fruits of capitalism, widely different motives are attributed to those who favor or oppose capitalism or income redistribution. According to one view, largely accepted in the academic social psychology literature (Jost et al. 2003), opposition to income redistribution and support for capitalism reflect an orientation toward social dominance, a desire to dominate other groups. According to another view that goes back at least to the nineteenth century origins of Marxism, anti-capitalism and a support for greater legal efforts to redistribute income reflect envy for the property of others and a frustration with one’s lot in a capitalist system.


In this paper I expand and test the social dominance thesis using sixteen nationally representative General Social Surveys conducted by the National Opinion Research Center between 1980 and 2004. Because few questions of interest were asked in most years or of most respondents, the sample sizes used for analyses vary from 535 to 15,743.

I first show that respondents who express traditionally racist views (on segregation, interracial marriage, and inborn racial abilities) tend to support greater income redistribution. Traditional racists also tend to oppose free-market capitalism and its consequences, wanting the government to guarantee jobs for everyone and fix prices, wages, and profits. Next, I report a similar pattern for those who express intolerance for unpopular groups on the fifteen Stouffer tolerance questions (regarding racists, homosexuals, communists, extreme militarists, and atheists). Those who express less tolerance for unpopular groups tend to favor income redistribution and oppose capitalism.

Then I present the results of six full latent variable structural equation models. The latent variables traditional racism (Model 1: r=.27) and intolerance (Model 2: r=.31) predict the latent variable income redistribution. Similarly, the latent variables traditional racism (Model 3: r=.33) and intolerance (Model 4: r=.36) predict anti-capitalism. Controlling for education, income (log), gender, and age (Models 5 and 6), the effects of the racism and intolerance predictors on redistribution and intolerance are reduced, but remain significant. Thus the preference against income redistribution, for example, is not just the result of income or education - rather, the data are consistent with racism and intolerance continuing to play a small, but significant role in explaining the support for income redistribution and anti-capitalism. The data are broadly inconsistent with the standard belief in the social psychology literature that pro-capitalist and anti-redistributionist views are positively associated with racism.

I then explore an alternative hypothesis, showing that, compared to anti-redistributionists, strong redistributionists have about two to three times higher odds of reporting that in the prior seven days they were angry, mad at someone, outraged, sad, lonely, and had trouble shaking the blues. Similarly, anti-redistributionists had about two to four times higher odds of reporting being happy or at ease. Not only do redistributionists report more anger, but they report that their anger lasts longer. When asked about the last time they were angry, strong redistributionists were more than twice as likely as strong opponents of leveling to admit that they responded to their anger by plotting revenge. Last, both redistributionists and anti-capitalists expressed lower overall happiness, less happy marriages, and lower satisfaction with their financial situations and with their jobs or housework.

Further, in the 2002 and 2004 General Social Surveys anti-redistributionists were generally more likely to report altruistic behavior. In particular, those who opposed more government redistribution of income were much more likely to donate money to charities, religious organizations, and political candidates. The one sort of altruistic behavior that the redistributionists were more likely to engage in was giving money to a homeless person on the street.

Evidence from sixteen national representative samples from 1980 through 2004 tends to suggest that Social Dominance Orientation has been in part misconceived. In the United States, segments of the academic community seem to have reversed the relationship between pro-capitalism and income redistribution on the one hand, and racism and intolerance on the other. Those who support capitalism and oppose greater income redistribution tend to be better educated, to have higher family incomes, to be less traditionally racist, and to be less intolerant of unpopular groups. Those who oppose greater redistribution also tend to be more generous in donating to charities and more likely to engage in some other altruistic behavior. The academic assumption that anti-capitalism and opposition to income redistribution reflect an orientation toward social dominance seems unwarranted.

Liberal researchers sometimes use opposition to racial preferences as a measure of anti-black racism. Is it a valid proxy?

The GSS asked respondents how close they feel to blacks on a scale from 1 to 9 and the extent to which the respondent supports racial preferences for blacks in hiring and promotions (1=strongly oppose, 4= strongly support). The correlation is a whopping .10--a trivial relationship (sample size = 3,577, whites only). Attitudes toward racial preferences among whites is a completely invalid proxy measure of racism.

There has been a lot of Internet buzz about the white UCLA student who complained about Asian student behavior on campus.  She has been trashed as a hater, and OneSTDV wrote about it on his blog.

Whites get called haters for anything and everything, but how do they actually stack up against Asians?

The GSS asked a sample of Americans how warmly they feel towards: 1) whites, and 2) Asians. Answers ranged from "not at all close" (1) to "very close" (9).  The mean for whites towards Asians is 6.25. The mean of Chinese Americans towards whites is 5.58, and it's 6.52 for Japanese people. The white and Japanese means are not significantly different, but whites like the Chinese significantly more than the reverse.