Are the Scots-Irish leading the way toward race consciousness?

I'm thinking that one way to measure an ethnicity's meaningfulness as a group is the extent to which they vote as a bloc. For example, why do blacks, whether wealthy or poor, urban or rural, religious or not, vote overwhelmingly Democratic? Because race is very important for them, and the vast majority see the Democratic party as best serving their interests.

The numbers shown below were calculated like this: 1) Look to see whether more of the ethnic group voted for Hillary or Trump; 2) subtract from that number the percent of all Americans who voted for that candidate; and 3) give a positive sign for those skewed toward Hillary and a negative sign for those skewed toward Trump. I included major racial and ethnic groups, and religions as well since they can also be cohesive groups (General Social Survey, sample size = 1,128).

Voting bloc index

Asian  46.5
White Southern Baptists  -45.0
White--American only  -43.3
Black   41.3
Puerto Ricans  32.2
Protestant Irish  -25.2
Scottish  -23.1
Southern Baptist  -22.0
Jewish   18.9
Mexican  17.5
Catholic Irish  -16.2
German  -14.1
Italian  -10.9
Whites  -9.9
Scandanavian  -9.4
English/Welsh   -9.2
American Indian  8.4
Slavic (non-Jewish)  -8.4
Episcopalian  -7.3
Catholic  -3.5
United Methodist   -2.9

Not surprisingly, non-whites tend to be the most ethnocentric. Asians include people whose families came from China, Japan, and India--they score even higher than blacks.

Hispanics and Jews are in the mid-range, but the striking numbers are for: 1) white Southern Baptists; 2) whites who say their ethnicity is American--Scots-Irish are likely to say this; 3) the Protestant Irish; and 4) Scots. The numbers for white Southern Baptists and for "Americans" are second and third highest on the list (!) and the scores for the other two groups are higher than that of either Jews or Mexicans.

I interpret this as an inchoate sense of identity. For other white groups or religious denominations, there appears to be weaker group cohesiveness. It's higher than zero for all groups, but the Scots-Irish seem to be leading the way on a path toward race consciousness.

Data: What percentage of Americans are "white nationalists"?

The General Social Survey asks respondents the following: "What about the number of immigrants from Europe? Should it be increased a lot, increased a little, left the same as it is now, decreased a little, or decreased a lot?"  People were asked the same about immigrants from Latin America.

These questions enable us to measure a preference for one group or the other.  I created a variable that ranges from 1 to 9 where 9 is a person who wants to increase immigration a lot from Europe and decrease it a lot from Latin America.  A person who scores a 1 wants a large increase from Latin America and a big decrease from Europe.  A person who wants the same level for both groups, regardless of the level, is given a 5, which indicates no preference.  All the other numbers indicate milder forms of preference for either one group or the other.  So let's show the results by race of the respondent:

Immigration preference (%)

Whites (n = 1,033)

Very strong European  0.1
Strong European  2.6
Moderate European  5.3
Mild European  8.7
No preference  77.1
Mild Latin  5.5
Moderate Latin  0.4
Strong Latin 0.2
Very Strong Latin  0.1 

I was pretty sure the most popular score would be "no preference," but there are small percentages of whites who do show a European preference.  It's 16.7% of whites that show at least a mild European bias, and I imagine there are more who were unwilling to admit the preference to an interviewer.  So conservatively speaking, we can conclude that 17% of whites could be classified as at least mildly Eurocentric.  Some might want to put a nastier label on it and say that 17% of whites are white nationalists or white supremacists.

Notice, too, that over 6% of white Americans have a Latin American preference.  Let's now turn to black respondents: 

Blacks (n = 191)

Very strong European  0.0
Strong European  1.6
Moderate European  4.2
Mild European  4.7
No preference  83.2
Mild Latin  4.7
Moderate Latin  0.5
Strong Latin  0.1
Very Strong Latin  0.0

Blacks are even more likely than whites to not have a preference, but 10.5% have a Euro preference, compared to only 5.3% having at least a mild Latin preference.  These numbers are not consistent with blacks viewing Hispanic immigrants as brothers in the fight against whites.

Other Races (n = 77)

Very strong European  0.0
Strong European  7.8
Moderate European  3.9
Mild European  6.5
No preference  68.8
Mild Latin  10.4
Moderate Latin  2.6
Strong Latin  0.0
Very Strong Latin  0.0

You actually have a higher percent of people from other races showing at least some Euro bias than whites: 18.2% to be precise.  Slightly over two-thirds report no preference, while 13% have a Latin preference. Keep in mind that many of these "other race" are Hispanics.  I would have expected more people from this group to show favoritism to other Latinos.

Overall, there is a noteworthy number of people from each race who are more favorable to immigration by whites than immigration by Hispanics (or at least less unfavorable). So if these people are indeed white nationalists, then we have white nationalists of all colors.

Predictors of closeness to whites among whites

GSS respondents were asked how close do they feel toward whites. Limiting the analysis whites, I regressed the answers onto a list of predictors. Here are the results (sample size = 2,806):

Standardized OLS coefficients

Female .09*
Age -.03*
South -.02
Size of place .02
Education .02
Income .05*
IQ -.07*
Church Attendance .08*
Jewish .01
Conservatism .00

*statistically significant

Much of this surprises me. Being from the South or a small town is unrelated to liking whites. So is years of education or level of conservatism. Jews like whites better than others at the bivariate level, but the relationship becomes non-significant in the multivariate analysis.

What predicts greater closeness to whites is: being female, being younger, having more income, being less intelligent, and more church attendance. The gender finding replicates other research that has found that women have more race affection than men. Who would have guessed that younger people feel more affection for whites than their elders?

Although all of the predictors are weak, gender, religiosity, and IQ are comparatively the strongest. Why am I not surprised that smart people like whites less? IQ exerts an effect while education does not. Interesting.

Racial solidarity and psychological health

The MIDUS Study asked people how closely they identify with their race. Answers ranged from "very strongly" to "not at all." I correlated the answers with various psychological measures about how often you felt a certain way in the past 30 days:

Correlations

Whites (sample size = 3,530-4,354)
Sad -.02
Hopeless -.01
Worthless -.01
In good spirits -.01
Peaceful .00
Felt belonging -.02
Felt proud -.05
Felt confident .02

All emotions are unrelated to race loyalty. Your first reaction might be that there is not enough variation in white identity to allow a correlation: few whites identify with their race. I was surprised myself at the distribution:

Percent who identify with race

Very closely 46.2
Somewhat close 36.1
Not very close 8.2
Not at all 9.5

All I can say is, wow.  I say wow because the GSS has led me to believe that whites don't care about race. When asked if they identify with their ethnic group versus just being an American, 95 percent of whites answer just American. But when asked about race identity without opposing it against an American identity, 82 percent of whites say yes (very close or somewhat close). A very different picture. Anyway, getting back to the previous issue, there is plenty of variation here.

Perhaps the absence of correlations is due to the fact that white consciousness is currently stigmatized. Let's look at blacks:

Blacks (sample size = 141-225)
Sad -.04
Hopeless -.04
Worthless .06
In good spirits .13
Peaceful -.08
Felt belonging -.07
Felt proud .09
Felt confident -.01

Basically the same story. According to MIDUS, there is no psychological payoff to racial solidarity.

More on ethnicity and voting among whites

In the comments of the last post, The Cold Equations raises a good point that region should be controlled in a model of how whites vote. Here are the results with region added to the model (all the regions are being compared with New England, chosen as the reference group because it is a particularly blue region):

Logistic regression coefficients

English .39*
Scottish .16
Scots Irish .17
Dutch 1.18*
German .57*
Swedish .35
Income .09*
Town size -.01
Mid-Atlantic .27
East North Central .61*
West North Central .35
South Atlantic .95*
East South Central .84*
West South Central .1.28*
Mountain .75*
Pacific .28

*statistically significant


Even after adjusting for region (and income and population size), Americans of English/Welsh, Dutch, and German descent are significantly more likely to vote Republican, compared to other whites. Implicit ethnicity at work? 

White ethnic groups more likely to vote Republican than whites in general

Looking at GSS data, I noticed that there were a few white ethnic groups who were more likely than whites in general to vote for Bush in 2004 (the most recent year available): English/Welsh, Scottish, Scots-Irish, Dutch, German, and Swedish. Why?

I checked to see if perhaps income or small-town residency might explain the tendency. Here are the logistic regression coefficients (sample size = 1,773):

Logistics regression coefficients

English .53*
Scottish .22
Scots Irish .30
Dutch 1.23*
German .62*
Swedish .43
Income .10*
Town size -.01

*statistically significantly

Even after adjusting for income and population, Americans of English, Dutch, and German descent are more likely than other whites to vote Republican. (All groups have positive coefficients). I wonder if these people tend to be attracted to conservatism because it is more backward-looking, and many from the groups have American ancestors that go way back. They might feel a stronger connection because of having deep American roots to the Founding Fathers who are associated with limited government and conservative values.  Their voting tendencies might be subconsciously influenced by their ethnicity. One the other hand, perhaps its just the default position for Americans who have been completely stripped of ethnicity.

Happiness and ethnocentrism among whites

This graph summarizes GSS data on happiness and the importance of one's ethnicity among whites (N = 1,087):

You can see that whites who say their ethnicity is very important are more likely than other groups to be very happy (not statistically significant, however).

Multiculturalism, ethnocentrism, and racialism

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.

Among whites, liking your own race is associated with liking blacks

SDA 3.3: Tables GSS 1972-2008 Cumulative Dataset

Oct 24, 2009 (Sat 05:07 AM PDT)

Variables Role Name Label Range MD Dataset Row COLDTOBLACKS 1-3 2 Column COLDTOWHITES 1-3 2 Filter RACE(1) RACE OF RESPONDENT(=WHITE) 1-3 0 1

Frequency Distribution Cells contain: -Column percent -Row percent -N of cases COLDTOWHITES 1 warm 2 neutral 3 cold ROW TOTAL COLDTOBLACKS 1: warm 73.0 95.6 1,199 7.9 2.6 33 22.0 1.8 22 58.0 100.0 1,254 2: neutral 16.5 41.3 271 86.9 55.5 364 21.0 3.2 21 30.3 100.0 656 3: cold 10.5 68.7 173 5.3 8.7 22 57.0 22.6 57 11.7 100.0 252 COL TOTAL 100.0 76.0 1,643 100.0 19.4 419 100.0 4.6 100 100.0 100.0 2,162 Means 1.38 1.97 2.35 1.54 Std Devs .67 .36 .82 .69

Color coding: <-2.0 <-1.0 <0.0 >0.0 >1.0 >2.0 Z N in each cell: Smaller than expected Larger than expected

Summary Statistics Eta* = .43 Gamma = .71 Chisq(P) = 1,008.34 (p= 0.00) R = .42 Tau-b = .46 Chisq(LR) = 906.95 (p= 0.00) Somers' d* = .56 Tau-c = .32 df = 4 *Row variable treated as the dependent variable.

Allocation of cases Valid cases 2,162 Cases excluded by filter 9,720 Cases with invalid codes on row or column variable 41,161 Total cases 53,043

Datasets 1 /html/D3/GSS08 2 /html/Npubvars/GSS08

CSM, UC Berkeley

White General Social Survey respondents were asked how warmly they felt toward 1) other whites and 2) blacks. The cross-tab above shows the results.

The finding that really jumps out at you is that if you answer warm about one race, you are very likely to answer warm about the other. There is a strong tendency among whites to either like everyone or to dislike everyone.

Let's call those who dislike both blacks and whites Misanthropists, and those who like both Philanthropists. We'll call those who are neutral towards everyone Neutralists. To keep things simple, we'll label a white person a SWPL (pronounced "swipple") if they give a warmer answer for blacks than for whites. Racialists will be those who give whites a higher score than blacks.

It is clear from the table that the majority of whites are Philanthropists--55 percent to be exact. (Taking the cell totals, I get: 1199/2162 = .55. I calculate subsequent percentages the same way). Seventeen percent are Neutralists, and only three percent are Misanthropists.

Four percent of whites are SWPLs, and 22 percent are Racialists.

It is interesting that the observed pattern contradicts the image of whites who like their race. We're told that Caucasians who are pro-white hate non-whites, but the vast majority of whites who feel warmly towards other whites feel the same way about blacks. Philanthropists are by far the largest category. And even if we look at Racialists, a majority of them like whites and are neutral toward blacks (271 out of 466). Only 11 percent of whites who feel warmly about others in their race say they have cool feelings about blacks.