Saturday, March 24, 2012

Predictors of racism

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.

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous6:04 AM

    It's interesting that church seems to discourage racism among whites but encourage it among blacks.

    Only if you don't know anything about black churches these days... see rev wright.

    IMO the biggest point here is that elite blacks are more anti-white and elite whites are more pro-black.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous8:21 AM

    I'd title this post "predictors of feeling cool towards blacks".

    "Predictors of racism" would, you know, predict racism. Which is a much bigger topic than coolness towards blacks. It should predict all racism, including the much more common black racism.

    ReplyDelete

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