Saturday, October 24, 2020

Race trumps: Race, not social class, predicts 2016 voting

You often see the argument that the central political divide is social class, not race and ethnicity. If this were true, then we should see it in voting patterns. 

The General Social Survey asked participants who they voted for in 2016, and they also asked about annual income and race. The results below are estimates from a logistic regression model that predicts 2016 voting for President with income and race. The three racial categories are white, black, and other race. Whites are the reference category and so are omitted from the model (sample size = 1,360).













From the p-values (probability) you can see that, once you adjust for race, REALINC (inflation-adjusted income) does not significantly predict who you voted for in 2016. By contrast, blacks and people of other non-white races were less likely than whites to vote for Trump, regardless of one's social class. 

Race trumps.  

Monday, October 12, 2020

Who are the racists? Part 2

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? 



Sunday, October 11, 2020

Who are the racists? The General Social Survey knows all.

America's elites seem obsessed with the country's "racists" and seem to treat them like they are the National Socialist German Workers' Party that is going to power at any moment, if they're not already in power with Trump running the show. 

But exactly who are these racists, and why are they so scary?  The General Social Survey asked whites how warmly they feel toward blacks. This is one of the few decent questions asked by social scientists to get at anti-black racism. If you say you feel coldly toward blacks as a group, it's reasonable to call that racist.

The table below shows mean coldness for highest academic degree earned. The coolness scales ranges from "very warm" (1) to "very cool" (9). So whites overall feel warmly toward blacks. But notice how there is a pretty big gap between those with advanced degrees and those who dropped out of high school. The difference is over one-half a standard deviation--a sizeable gap. 

So, coolness toward blacks tends to be concentrated among lowest status whites. Progressives are supposed to have compassion and to seek for understanding of the negative qualities of the people on the bottom rungs of society. But not for racists. What do these dregs of society deserve? They deserve to be expunged.

 


Are gun owners mentally ill?

  Some anti-gun people think owning a gun is a sign of some kind of mental abnormality. According to General Social Survey data, gun owners ...