Ohio State political scientist Thomas Wood tried in 2017 to measure the relationship between Americans' presidential votes and how they scored on the "symbolic racism" or "racial resentment" scale, which Wood described as a way to uncover "racial attitudes among respondents who know that it's socially unacceptable to say things perceived as racially prejudiced."This scale is controversial, because some of the statements it asks people to evaluate—such as "Over the past few years blacks have gotten less than they deserve"—could elicit the "wrong" answer for reasons unrelated to prejudice or resentment. The underlying problem was highlighted when surveys found substantial numbers of African Americans endorsing the purportedly racist positions, leading some social scientists to call for giving the measurement a less loaded label. At best, the scale measures whether people attribute racial disparities to structural barriers or individual failings.But whether or not the people who score higher on the scale are racists, it seems fair to say that the people who score lower on the scale are racial liberals. So what did Wood find?For Wood, the big takeaway was that "we've never seen such a clear correspondence between vote choice and racial perceptions" in three decades of these surveys: The higher you landed in the scale, the more likely you were to vote Republican. But as Musa al-Gharbi pointed out in a critique of Wood's work for The American Sociologist, this ignored the direction those Republicans were moving in. According to Wood's own data, al-Gharbi noted, whites who backed Trump over Hillary Clinton were "less racist than those who voted for [Mitt] Romney. The same holds among whites who voted for Clinton as compared to those who voted for [Barack] Obama." Again, voters in both parties were getting more racially liberal; it's just that Democrats went further.
Trump voters were also more tolerant than earlier Republican voters of gays, lesbians, and pretty much all the social liberal things. America has just been moving in that direction, they suggest. Reason writers and editors are libertarian, of course, so for them that's an almost unmitigated good thing. "Time and again, once-vivid fights have receded, as with same-sex unions, or disappeared almost entirely, as with interracial marriage."
Interesting debate question: ‘Are you less racist than you were four years ago?’
It sounds like "Are you still beating your wife?"
ReplyDeleteWell, are you?
ReplyDeleteIt's an invitation to Maoist self-criticism, I guess, but it doesn't have to be. You could review your writings and thoughts and try to sort out, privately and for yourself, if you find that you are less inclined to resentment; or less likely to view gay/lesbian/trans* stuff as a problem.
The scale is controversial anyway, and I don't know that you should put much weight on it. I know I was very suspicious of gay marriage when it was novel, as it seemed reckless to play with the basic terms of one of the fundamental structures of society. I was against it, quite firmly; but we did it anyway, and now I don't see that it worked out that badly. Mostly I don't think the experiment lived up to my concerns about it. So maybe there's an example of one person, me, shifting towards a more libertarian position than I had once.
Let's say arguendo that I am now more racist. How would anyone know, and how would anyone measure it?
ReplyDeleteBingo- who measures?
DeleteI don't know. The scale as he describes it works only one way reliably; it's not helpful going up, but he thinks it's fair going down. So if you were going up, you couldn't appeal to it as a measuring stick.
ReplyDeleteUltimately the way we talk about this stuff doesn't make a lot of sense. Can you be less racist than someone who doesn't believe in race? Possibly, if he's right; the racial resentment score might be lower for the guy who absolutely believes in race than the guy who thinks it's a nonsense concept. In that case you'd have someone who was committed to the idea of race-based analysis being less racist than the guy who rejected the idea that there was any such thing as race at all.
I'm sure some people would say it makes me more racist but I definitely have a stronger belief that "systemic racism" is grifting hogwash than I did four years ago.
ReplyDelete"The underlying problem was highlighted when surveys found substantial numbers of African Americans endorsing the purportedly racist positions, leading some social scientists to call for giving the measurement a less loaded label."
ReplyDeleteThe left's answer to that is that black people can't be racist. Only people with power in our society can be racist, and since black people don't have power, they can't be racist.
By the current standard, "Do you judge Harris a dangerous nincompoop?" I am clearly now an irredeemable racist.
ReplyDelete