Racist Americans
Well some research from Stanford University has produced results indicating that Americans are indeed racist – but only amongst Democrats!
No I am not making this up. Research was done by Shanto Iyengar, a professor of communications at Stanford University. Over 2,300 took part in a survey where they were shown pictures and descriptions of Hurricane Katrina victims and asked how much assistance they should get from the Government.
Now amongst Republicans, the amount given didn’t vary by the race of the person shown. But with Democrats, they would give $1,500 more to whites than blacks or other minorities.
Earlier research also has shown that Republican voters support tough treatment of criminals regardless of race, while Democrats support harsher measures when the criminal suspect was non-white.
Articles on this are in the Washington Post and The Australian.
This is a benefit of being on the right – we are more likely to judge people as individuals, not as part of groups.
UPDATE: Oh I do enjoy it when people bite at my more trollish posts. Rob Salmond has done a good analysis of the survey in the comments thread.
August 5th, 2006 at 10:34 pm
What a racist post! How it is I don’t know, but the left are about to explain it to me.
August 5th, 2006 at 11:13 pm
In the NZ Labour Party they have never given a Maori MP a “big” portfolio. Never finance, Deputy or Leader, never Social Welfare, Education, Foreign Affairs, Justice, Health. They take the vote and give one maori MP Minister of Maori Affairs and that is it in the 70 years of Labour Governments. That is what I call the soft prejudice of the New Zealand Labour Party.
August 5th, 2006 at 11:51 pm
What a racist lie! The left support all kinds of minorities!
Hezbollah, Hamas, Sendero Luminoso etc etc.
August 6th, 2006 at 6:51 am
Hi DPF,
As a professional pollster, what’s your opinion on the population that they based the study on?
August 6th, 2006 at 6:52 am
OK, so Shanto Iyengar and the Post have done an interesting experiment. After doing some digging, however, I’m convinced that the results are pretty hard to take very seriously, and especially hard to generalize to statements about the US in general (which DPF does in his first sentence). As Iyengar notes in the **original** Post article , the sample is only 12% Republican, 84% of the sample had completed a University degree, and the subject pool came mainly from Washington DC. This is a horrendously biased sample for making inferences about the political preferences of ‘Republicans” or “Democrats” generally, for three reasons.
First, the majority of Americans do not have a degree, and that majority is hardly represented at all in this sample. That is a huge problem.
Second, if you accept the claim that the sub-population of the US with degrees is skewed “to the white”, and that people with degrees tend generally to work and play mainly with other people with degrees, then the majority of those white Americans (both Republican and Democrat) who come into regular daily contact with African-American communities are basically excluded from the sample, and you would have thought that their inclusion would be important here.
Third, and possibly most important of all, the population of Republican voters who are most often accused of racism – poor, often uneducated GOP voters from mainly white southern and mountain west states – are also excluded, making it impossible to make serious claims about how GOP supporters in general react to racial cues.
So what **can** we take from this study? I think we can take one piece of information, which is indeed worrying to the American left: the liberal elite in DC has failed to heed its own warnings about racism, and exhibits residual racism in attitudes, thus also potentially in policymaking decisions. The GOP elite has learned from criticism at least to **say** the right things when it comes to race. Any statement that goes beyond this, such as DPF’s “Americans are indeed racist – but only amongst Democrats” goes well beyond where the data will allow. Also, whether the GOP elite has learned to **do** the right things is far more in doubt (look not only at the Hurricane Katrina stuff, but also the Ken Blackwell shenanigans in Ohio in election 2004, etc).
People sometimes accuse academics of being unremittingly negative with each other’s work, and not suggesting any concrete solutions. To avoid that criticism: What would a good study of racial attitudes in the US look like? Well first it would draw from a nationally representative sample (any pollster can tell you that), and second it would isolate, as far as you can, racial attitudes from all other factors. I put up a nascent version of such a study the last time this issue came up on kiwiblog (on the thread for “which party is he in?”), and to refresh people’s memory here is what I found:
“Here is evidence from the cumulative US National Election Study, funded by the National Science Foundation (www.umich.edu/~nes). Of course, they don’t have an “are you a racist” question, so we have to find the relationship by other means. I ran a simple regression looking at the relationship between a person’s party ID (higher scores indicate more GOP-leaning) and their feeling thermometer rating towards “blacks”. I restricted the regression to white respondents to get rid of possible identity bias in the regression, and to elections since the 1964 VRA. The results showed that as voters become more Republican, they rate blacks significantly (p [less than symbol] 0.001) lower than more democratic voters…The result also holds (GOP supporters like blacks less than do Dem supporters) if you use the **ratio** of the feeling thermometer rating towards blacks over the equivalent rating for whites, with the same group of controls and restrictions as explained above.”
Thus when you use a nationally representative sample of white voters, you find that those who vote Republican like blacks less than those who vote Democratic. Predictably also, whites of all partisan stripes tended to rate whites higher than other groups. So if you define attitudinal racism as something like “differences in attitude or affect based on race” then this sample provides some evidence that, over the US as a whole, GOP voters are more racist than Democratic voters.
August 6th, 2006 at 6:58 am
Wow. Rob Salmond’s post wins the thread. It’s better than the originating post as well.
DPF, any plans to do a followup post and cite Rob’s points? Or edit this one?
August 6th, 2006 at 7:20 am
The Democratic Party has a long history of rascism against blacks in the South and had political dominance there. That may have shifted to the Republicans who now seem to have strong support in the South. But the so called liberal elite in NZ and other countries may have an intellectual commitment to non rascism using PC language etc. But the Labour Party in NZ which has had so much political support from maori – exclude maori fromm all the key decision making roles in Government and have done so for the 70 years of Labour Governments.
August 6th, 2006 at 7:41 am
DPF, remember that post a few months back when you reassured yourself that you weren’t a hack because you took a reasoned and non-partisan approach to some political issues?
You might want to reconsider that if you’re going to post rubbish like this.
August 6th, 2006 at 9:42 am
It all depends on the question you are trying to answer of course.
NES breaks down the attitudes to races into a number of questions from hardworking to trustworthy to “too much influence” to intelligent income disparity etc.
I wonder how those compare with the standard “How would you rate: whites/blacks?”
Personally I don’t think it would make sense to me if someone said “how do you feel about whites/blacks” – after pushing I might answer in a way not independent of demographics. One could argue if the answer to that would be relevant to how we are using it here.
For example if more blacks are poor and more poor male people are criminals and a person is “more wary” of black people (as a whole – but only poor looking male ones) is that person racist?
That would probably create ”richness” to racism connection and possibly more importantly, a no contact with poor people to “not racist” conenction! Which would probably be a GOP vs. Dem connection in as far as GOP is for lower taxes less social welfare etc.
Anyway I (like most people) would be very surprised if those people who ARE very racist did not decide NOT to vote democrat partly because many blacks vote democrat (and Jews to) and thus if that party won their influence might be greater (e.g. the “too much influence question). So such a racist voter would tend to vote against that party.
This might mean that normal republican voters could be exactly the same in terms of racism (possibly even less) explaining these sorts of results in educated people in Washington BUT their results would be skewed by racist voters overwhelmingly going GOP.
> And second it would isolate, as far as you can, racial attitudes from all other factors.
You might not want to do this in practice because it depends on what you are trying to say. Probably one is trying to say “if I take a random democrat will be more racist than a republican” (I presume that is what DPF wants to know) as opposed to “if two twins were taken at random and one was turned into a republican and the other a democrat…”
August 6th, 2006 at 9:53 am
That’s Rob, for the outstanding analysis.
August 6th, 2006 at 10:32 am
In light of this, DPF, I am finding your references to ‘left’ and ‘right’ on this blog kind of simplistic. The biggest nanny govt of all time was a National government under Muldoon (at which time there was a universal family benefit -ie all families were also beneficiaries) and the most right wing govt was the Labour govt that followed with Douglas and Prebble later going on to form ACT. Our current Labour govt is a centrist one, hence the involvement of both Dunne and NZ First. Your concepts of ‘left’ and ‘right’ are out of date or at least do not apply in an MMP environment.
There are many that argue that the so called ‘left’ in the US has been suppressed. The Green Party (http://www.gp.org/position/2005_electionreform.shtml), which is a true ‘left’ party is not able to participate because the republican/democrat thing is so well entrenched and lined with corporate money. In terms of ideology both republican and democrats probably lean to the right. Neither would survive without considerable corporate investment and this usually brings with it a right wing price tag.
August 6th, 2006 at 10:33 am
Rob, there’s a few problems with your “So what **can** we take from this study?” conclusions.
If the liberal “elite” shows this degree of racism then one could argue, like you have done with poor white Republican voters, that non-elite Democrat voters will be even more racist.
I draw the exact opposite conclusion as to who has learned to merely say the right things. That’s what the liberals in this study show – they will no doubt express all the right attitudes but when it comes to walking the walk that’s a different matter.
There is the stereotype of the bleeding heart liberal, of the person who wears their heart ostentatiously on their sleeves. It’s a stereotype based to a degree on reality. The number of times I’ve met white middle class liberals who say all the right things but who I wouldn’t trust an inch to do right by anyone else.
August 6th, 2006 at 12:27 pm
Whoo hoo, attack the messenger!
NEVER would of thought of that one. What an orgional tactic.
Keith win’s. If you need 18 paragrpahs to say something you’re usually fos.
August 6th, 2006 at 12:37 pm
oh..murry…(fair comment from you…as you never ignore the validities of any messages..and just attack the messanger..eh..?..)
but didn’t you read the update by dpf..?
he tells us the original post was just a (ahem) ‘trolling’ exercise…
gee..dpf..maybe a little smiley face..?…or something to let us know when this is happening..?
this self-admitted ‘trolling’ by you..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
August 6th, 2006 at 2:53 pm
Thought I’d also add two comments revealed on the click-through:
Now amongst Republicans, the amount given didn’t vary by the race of the person shown.
Indeed, though Republicans gave less to everyone than Democrats gave to minorities. The author calls this ‘principled.’
Earlier research also has shown that Republican voters support tough treatment of criminals regardless of race…
Earlier research by the same author, and perhaps using the same questionable methodologies.
August 6th, 2006 at 6:07 pm
I now respond to vrious comments. Please excuse misspellings – I have been at the bar. Also, I will not comment further on this (or anything) for about 2 weeks as I will be out of email contact.
DPF / mark / Polemic: Thanks for the props.
GeniusNZ: 1. If there are **some** racists who become GOP voters for that reason, but not all GOP voters are racists, as you appear to claim, this is still a big problem, because GOP politicians rely on the racist vote to **turnout** (they can rely on the racist vote, but can they rely on the racists to vote…) in order to win elections, and therefore GOP politicians need to pander to those racist voters, possibly / probably with racist policy.
2. My own analysis, using the NES, answers exactly the question you want answered, ie. if you take a random GOP voter and a random Dem voter, which one is more racist (the answer is the GOP voter). Thue is because my analysis reports simply means for white voters of different partisan stripes without a battery of control variables.
Nil Morrison: You say “If the liberal “elite” shows this degree of racism then one could argue, like you have done with poor white Republican voters, that non-elite Democrat voters will be even more racist.” Please see my own analysis, posted as part of my original comment, which shows that in reality the exact opposite is true. Also your third paragraph, which you spport with no evidence whatsoever, goes against almost all conventional wisdom regarding modern debates over race in America.
Tim Barclay and Murray: As always, thank you so much for playing. Tim: Why don’t you tell us about the comparative record of the two parties in terms of **delivering** policy benefits for our historical ethnic underclass? Murray: Somebody who bans or pseudo-bans (see your intro to last week’s Friday Free for All) Phil U from commenting on a blog simply because he is Phil U doesn’t have much credibility criticising others for shooting the messenger.
That is it. I am done. Enjoy your week.
August 6th, 2006 at 7:18 pm
Rob, thanks for the response.
I didn’t make my first point very clear, it should read “…that non-elite Democrat voters will be even more racist than elite Dems”. Which on second thoughts isn’t a problem for your conclusions.
As for my second point, the support that I am calling on is the study under discussion. And here I do draw the opposite conclusion to you.
What this study shows is that Reps set a low bar but stick to it irrespective of race. Whereas Dems set a higher bar which they don’t stick to when it comes to blacks. My contention is that this is because liberals tend to like to appear liberal but do not act it when it comes to the crunch.
So I think this study says more about the discrepancy between what liberals say and what they do. Which may not be conventional wisdom but that is what is being challenged by this study even given its limited applicability.
August 6th, 2006 at 9:20 pm
Rob Salmond, you sure talk alot but don’t say much
But anyway I think your point is that the Washington DC sample is not typical of the Southern States (and Western mountain states? don’t you mean the appalachian mountian? which are in central eatern states) where a lot of Republican voters would be more racist. Maybe so.
But wouldn’t Washington DC be a fair sample for the rest? That’s perhaps 70% of the US, as well as other countries such as NZ.
You raise a fair point about the sample, but at the moment it seems to be the best we have got
August 6th, 2006 at 10:23 pm
Right, one more go before I’m off.
Neil Morrison:
You: “What this study shows is…”
Me: My argument is that “what this study shows is” not much at all, because the sampling method is all screwed up. You and I differ because I am not willing to take this study’s conclusions, or the spin being put on them by the journalists at the Post and the Australian, at face value, whereas it seems you are prepared to do that.
Emmess:
You: “Rob Salmond, you sure talk alot but don’t say much”
Me: Speaking as an academic, thank you.
You: “…and Western mountain states? don’t you mean the appalachian mountian? which are in central eatern states”
Me: No. I mean western. They have the Rocky Mountains out there. They are quite big.
You: “But wouldn’t Washington DC be a fair sample for the rest? That’s perhaps 70% of the US, as well as other countries such as NZ.”
Me: No. A sample that is 12% Republican works **only** for DC. Not even Berkeley is 88% liberal. Also, in this sample 84% of respondents have a degree. That is biased for **everywhere**, even DC. Also, the basket of vocations that people have in DC (epecially among the degree holders) is vastly different than the basket of jobs held by people in other cities. So it is basically a bad sample all round.
You: “You raise a fair point about the sample, but at the moment it seems to be the best we have got”
Me: Well I did try to put forward my own study, based on (I think) a better sample and a better survey question, as part of my original comment. Was something wrong with it?
August 7th, 2006 at 5:33 am
Rob, I wasn’t aware that I was taking the study’s conclusions or “spin” at face value. I was making the case for a different conclusion that is the opposite of your “GOP elite has learned from criticism at least to **say** the right things when it comes to race.”
I think that the evidence in this study allows one to at least posit the thesis that it is elite Dems who have learnt to say the right things but who don’t live up to what the say their ideals are.
August 7th, 2006 at 8:29 am
“This is a benefit of being on the right – we are more likely to judge people as individuals, not as part of groups.”
irony intended?
August 7th, 2006 at 9:48 am
Llew – not at all. It is well documented that those on the right are more individualistic overall.
August 7th, 2006 at 9:52 am
Heh. I’ll take your word for it! I was just gently ribbing you because that statement itself, seems to be judging people as groups, not individuals. Or is that just me?
August 7th, 2006 at 5:33 pm
All this anti-american thing “racist Americans” started because of those horrible muslim scumbags who have no right being in any western nation in any case.
USA gives more aid to third world countries than all other nations combined, chew on that one!
August 7th, 2006 at 9:55 pm
Rob
> but not all GOP voters are racists, as you appear to claim
ha-ha I hope your not claiming all of them are!
Besides the core question is “what is racism”.
“how do you feel about blacks” could be considerably inferior to “would you donate money to help this person” in predicting some interpretations of “racism”. (Meanwhile you could argue it is the definition of racism – but I suggest the former is more important.)
Also it walks straight into Neil’s critique that liberals (admittedly a long bow to draw from such a specific sample) tend to know what to say but don’t do it. I.e. your sample IS better – but it doesn’t contradict that hypothesis. So all you can do is compare the likelihood of the above experiment being wrong with the likelihood that a group of people might be more likely to say something and less likely to do it.
llew,
hmm… I like your humor…
November 16th, 2006 at 12:05 pm
rascism is common among a lot of countries and here in new zealand rascism in scholls is the most common. fighting because some person said that somalians smell, or maoris never shower, white people are rich, or asians are all brainy. its stupid how would one small person be able to make a difference????