The most racist places in America, according to Google

[ErikJ]

&w=1484

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/04/28/the-most-racist-places-in-america-according-to-google/?postshare=7781430242128505?link=mktw

Where do America's most racist people live? "The rural Northeast and South," suggests a new study just published in PLOS ONE.

The paper introduces a novel but makes-tons-of-sense-when-you-think-about-it method for measuring the incidence of racist attitudes: Google search data. The methodology comes from data scientist Seth Stephens-Davidowitz. He's used it before to measure the effect of racist attitudes on Barack Obama's electoral prospects.

[Data suggest Republicans have a race problem]

"Google data, evidence suggests, are unlikely to suffer from major social censoring," Stephens-Davidowitz wrote in a previous paper. "Google searchers are online and likely alone, both of which make it easier to express socially taboo thoughts. Individuals, indeed, note that they are unusually forthcoming with Google." He also notes that the Google measure correlates strongly with other standard measures social science researchers have used to study racist attitudes.

This is important, because racism is a notoriously tricky thing to measure. Traditional survey methods don't really work -- if you flat-out ask someone if they're racist, they will simply tell you no. That's partly because most racism in society today operates at the subconscious level, or gets vented anonymously online.

For the PLOS ONE paper, researchers looked at searches containing the N-word. People search frequently for it, roughly as often as searches for "migraine(s)," "economist," "sweater," "Daily Show," and "Lakers." (The authors attempted to control for variants of the N-word not necessarily intended as pejoratives, excluding the "a" version of the word that analysis revealed was often used "in different contexts compared to searches of the term ending in '-er'.&quot

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[Xipe Totec]

1. By odd coincidence...

http://www.censusscope.org/us/map_nhblack.html

[Buzz Clik]

5. can you explain what you think you're seeing?

[Xipe Totec]

7. I think that what I see is that racism is more prevalent in areas where there is a mixed population

It skews the numbers when areas that are predominantly white claim not to be racist, when in reality they've never had any experience in a mixed race population. Their attitudes are hypothetical, not actual.

ETA:

For example, according to the map, Texas is not racist.

I find that hard to believe based on personal experience.

[Buzz Clik]

11. I agree with that in some ways, with important exceptions.

The western edge of Louisiana, spilling over into east Texas, is nasty for the racism thing, and the minority concentration is highish. But, the highest densities of minority population in the South (running along the Mississippi River and the heart of Appalachia) are orange in their racism rating, not red. The very worst strip of red (racism) runs through Ohio, Pennsylvania, NY, and southern New Jersey does not coincide with the highest density of minorities.

[Xipe Totec]

12. True. It does not coincide, it parallels.

If the mixed race population is high enough, racism drops.

Perhaps.

There is hope in that.

[1939]

14. Much of the dark blue is "out of sight, out of mind"

A lot of the dark red is not in areas where black percentages of the population are high.

[seabeyond]

2. my place, more than average. no surprise. nt

[we can do it]

3. Link not working

[ErikJ]

4. Fixed

thanks. That link popped up on its own as part of the copy pic url.

[we can do it]

18. Thank you, want to pass it on.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

6. Why would anyone be searching on the n-word?

[hifiguy]

8. Maybe they don't know how to spell "Stormfront" or "Klan."

[Comrade Grumpy]

9. "Why are n*****s so damn lazy?"

That kind of shit.

[Hutzpa]

10. I'm always reminded of a Gandi quote that states the following

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, and then you win"

[JaneyVee]

13. Highly skeptical.

[B2G]

15. Cue the North Easterners

Explaining why this is wrong because the south is so fucked up.

Lol.

[cherokeeprogressive]

16. Seems to be a large northeast component... n/t

[treestar]

17. the guy who wanted to make an all white town in ND

I guess didn't know it was not a racist place.