This is the most striking of a set of trends for answers given to race questions by white Republicans and Democrats.
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Tick tock motherfuckers!
Let’s not be the monsters we hate.
Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?
Let there be snark.
It’s the corruption, stupid.
We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.
Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?
You can’t love your country only when you win.
When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?
I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.
rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius
Come on, man.
White supremacy is terrorism.
I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.
So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.
“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”
Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.
Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.
Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.
Peak wingnut was a lie.
“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”
When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.
Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?
Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.
deep
Ugh… so I guess that bump in the Democrats line is the 2010 elections?
Betty Cracker
I’m very surprised it’s as low as it is, particularly among Republicans. I would have guessed it was over 50%.
satby
I’m with Drum, I blame the Fox effect for the rebound too. In fact, I think a careful analysis of the data would match the rise of the Faux Noise machine as the dominant “news” source for a lot of people.
schrodinger's cat
Same story is being played out in the Indian elections, except replace black people with Muslims and lower caste people. Human beings suck, especially the god bothering right wing variety.
Wag
@Betty Cracker:
Perhaps a companion survey of elected officials would reflect your perception. Perhaps the average GOP voter is more enlightened than the people they vote for?
Bill Arnold
How large are these surveys? I.e. what’s the margin of error for the red/blue lines?
(Not a rhetorical question; i couldn’t tell from a quick drilldown.)
TG Chicago
To me the most striking thing is the bump among white Dems shortly after the elections of Clinton and Obama.
The only reason I can think for that is that when Democrats come into power, Republicans always complain that the deficit is suddenly the MOST SERIOUS PROBLEM EVER and the media amplifies that idea. Even Democrats end up buying into it, so they start worrying about too much money going to minorities.
Anybody actually paying attention knows that Republicans don’t really care about the deficit. They just use deficit scaremongering to blunt the ability of empowered Democrats to get anything done. And it works! Very frustrating.
Villago Delenda Est
@schrodinger’s cat:
The god bothered have their suckitude and meanness cranked up to 11.
Villago Delenda Est
@Wag:
One would hope that this would be true for those in say Louie Gohmert’s district, but then again, there’s the entire Sarah Palin fan club of doofus marks.
boatboy_srq
GOTea response: “Hell, we paid for’em, shipped’em here at our own expense, fed’em, clothed’em, set’em free (when we were forced to), and they’re uppity enough to want MORE?!?!!!!11!1!”
/snark
@Betty Cracker: @satby: there’s a definite Fox Effect, component, and likely a Gud Patriotic Hetero Caucasian Xtian Real Ahmurrcan component as well.
schrodinger's cat
@Villago Delenda Est: Exactly, the entire focus of right wingnuttia’s religiosity is to prevent other people from having a good time.
schrodinger's cat
I am going to India this coming week and am dreading meeting some of my god bothering relatives by marriage and acquaintances, think of them as the the Indian version of the Fox-Wingnut.
C.V. Danes
Part of this is certainly due to the “Fox Effect” or whatever. But I wonder if some of this is due to a diminishing group of highly polarized conservatives who care to label themselves as “white republicans.”
Villago Delenda Est
I’ll never understand how the Rethugs are “the party of fiscal responsibility” when every last one of them over the past 34 years has exploded the deficit through irresponsible tax cuts, wild spending on ‘defense” and utterly illegal wars, and bailing out banks that have been grifting like there’s no tomorrow (which is actually true for MBAs).
scav
@schrodinger’s cat: So long as it’s recognized that their “a good time” also often involves some of those others “eating” anything more involved than insufficient gruel, heavy on the insufficient.
Aspasia
Ta-Nehisi Coates has made a useful distinction between “brutish” and “elegant” racism. His essay on the difference between open bigotry and more common expressions of white supremacy is worth reading in light of these findings: http://www.theatlantic.com/ta-nehisi-coates/
ruemara
The real question is, why are blacks so divisive? /snark.
Villago Delenda Est
@schrodinger’s cat: The very idea that someone, somewhere, is having fun drives them batshit. It’s like the gay sex…they can’t stop thinking about it.
Tommy
@Villago Delenda Est: It is a very strange thing. My parents are Republican. They have more money then they can spend. I kid you not, they think they should be taxed more, not less.
I like to think they are realist. They look at me. Or my brother and his kid. They often throw money at us (which is nice I might add) wondering why day care costs so much. Making sure their grand kid has a trust fund for college. Or all the money my mom gives to groups that are against violence against women in any way.
I am like you are liberals and don’t even know it.
But as you might guess I don’t push that hard. I think I tell them keep doing what you are doing.
BTW/Update: My parents are working class folks. They got their money, well when my grandfather passed away. He never helped them. Could have but didn’t. My parents openly say we can help you or your brother. We won’t make the mistake your grandfather made. We got money now and we’re going to spend it.
schrodinger's cat
@ruemara: These are the same people who also blame women for their own misogyny. Kick down and kiss up seems to be their motto.
MomSense
@boatboy_srq:
Pat Buchanan pretty much wrote a piece saying exactly that with the addition of providing the means for Christian salvation. He wrote it back in March of ’08 or thereabouts.
schrodinger's cat
@Villago Delenda Est: The Indian god botherers vegetarianism is based on the same principle, apparently eating spicy food or meat is exciting hence the godly only eat vegetarian food without any onions and garlic.
dubo
I’m not sure I agree that Silver’s survey is the relevant data… I think it’s more relevant if (as I charge to be the case) despite having “similar” numbers of racists, the GOP spends much more time devising and promoting racially-charged views and policy to COURT that minority
cat
That data is really very noisy. IMO it looks like a few % of the racist democrats left for the republican’s or died off. There’s been no significant change in 30+ years. How depressing.
Betty Cracker
@schrodinger’s cat: Really? Wow. At least our homegrown wingnuts appreciate Cajun cuisine!
satby
@schrodinger’s cat: Your relatives are Jains?
Edited to add: some of my friends there are and I stayed with them for several days.
Tommy
@schrodinger’s cat: I want to write a long post to tell you how jealous I am you are going to India for an extended time. Of all the places in this world I’d like to visit, India might be at the top of the list. My best friend is from Pakistan (well his parents). Goes back each year and he tells me I need to come with him. Usually hops over to India for a few days.
scav
@cat: There is the hidden change that the white anything proportion has been declining, plus the hidden sting of what the “white, other” crowd are getting up to. This might be the reflection of a party stiffening into a racist jealous of the good of others platform, not exactly a surprise.
schrodinger's cat
@satby: No my husband’s family, are ultra Orthodox Tamil Brahmins.
Jains are strict vegetarians and don’t eat anything grown underground because they believe in non-violence or ahimsa.
Actually for most people their vegetarianism is not a well though out response but is tradition, something that their parents did. And not eating onions and garlic is rare among Hindus but such people do exist. Most people just give up onions and garlic during holy days (kinda like Lent).
ETA: MIL is very religious but politically she is quite liberal.
rikyrah
Thursday, May 1, 2014
Meanwhile In Kansas…
Another week, another Republican governor under investigation for corruption and abuses of power. This time it’s Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, who is in a heap of trouble with the FBI over funneling business to his former chief of staff’s lobbying company to profit handsomely from the state’s Medicaid privatization scam.
http://zandarvts.blogspot.com/2014/05/meanwhile-in-kansas.html
rikyrah
@Tommy:
I can’t explain to you how this made me smile. I have my own issues with parents who could help their children, children really out there trying to make it, and won’t. pisses me off.
NorthLeft12
@Tommy: My father and mother felt similarly regarding their money [more my Dad than my Mom]. My Dad was a self made millionaire, who “loaned” us large chunks of money every few years or so, but would forget to cash half the interest checks I gave him. He eventually forgave all his loans to me and my three other siblings when he retired.
He is a great believer in the value of money being in its use to do good for family and friends and society in general, not in its accumulation. He used to be a neo-socialist, now I think he has shifted a lot farther to the right than I believed possible. We don’t talk politics by mutual consent, but he is still a good guy.
Villago Delenda Est
@rikyrah: They can’t help themselves when they get close to that cookie jar, can they?
Tommy
@rikyrah: My mom and dad are rock stars. My brother had a major health issue. Grandfather could have just wrote a check. He didn’t. Mom started her own business to pay for it. I recall then I was like 10 working with her to make money. There is something said for that ……
I get working, not having this gave to you. I do.
The best thing ever. I don’t have any kids. Just Katie (my brother’s child). My dad has a PhD. I have an MA. Katie, and she is five, has a fund where she can go to any school she wants. Paid for. 100%. I wish others had this, best thing ever.
amk
@schrodinger’s cat: brahmins are minuscule percentage here and orthodox brahmins are still more minuscule. Your luck that you got handed the latter card.
satby
@schrodinger’s cat: I did not know that! I thought only Jains didn’t eat root vegetables.
I asked my friends in India (former co-workers, so a good mix) about the elections, stating I found them confusing though I was trying to learn about the parties and platforms. One of them responded that they find the elections confusing too!
But I’m sure it will be nice to go for a visit, see the old places, friends, and family. Knowing it’s just a visit should help ;) Enjoy!
NorthLeft12
Regarding the above graph, I was interested [but unsurprised] to note that the Repub high point was just before the election of St. Ronald, and the low point was midway through his reign.
A real shocker that.
legion
Just like we’ve always said – you don’t have to be a racist to be a Republican, but if you _are_ a racist, you’re probably a Republican…
NorthLeft12
@Tommy: I never got why people would not readily help their immediate family monetarily. I have been in a good position the last ten years or so to do that for my daughters, and it always makes me and my wife feel as if it is the best possible use of our money.
Belafon
Democratic opinion ticks up when the economy is bad, and republican opinion ticks up when a Democrat is in office.
Gene108
@schrodinger’s cat:
There are very few Indian vegetarians, who eschew garlic and onions anymore. If there are, I have not met them.
Of course the vegetarians are mostly Brahmins, but this does not equate to right-wing US god botherers because plenty of non-Brahmins can be conservative and Brahmins can be liberal.
There really is not a good way to make a one-to-one analogy between the US and India, in my opinion.
You think Modi will get in any trouble for the speech he gave that violated election rules? Charges are filed, but I think he may pay fine at worst. I doubt he will see jail time.
? Martin
@Betty Cracker:
Nah. Lots of Republicans think that Clarence Thomas needs another tax cut.
Hob
@NorthLeft12: And the second lowest point was halfway through the GWB years; seems like they thought both Reagan and Bush knew exactly how to solve that “problem”.
Belafon
@Gene108:
Plenty of Christians are liberals, and plenty of atheists are conservative.
RSR
I’d point out that Obama’s rise to prominence really began in earnest at the 2004 DNC speech.
srv
These graphs tell me we live in a post-racial society.
schrodinger's cat
@amk: Their luck that they got me! Rama! I iz not eben Tamil.
My husband who I met as a grad student is a non-believer, I had no idea till it was too late (wuz already in lubs) how conservative his family was.
1s
On the “spending too much money on black people” graph, a note:
As of 2012, this index stood at 27 percent for white Republicans and 19 percent for white Democrats. So there’s a partisan gap, although not as large of one as some political commentators might assert.
27%…fancy that…
Another Holocene Human
@rikyrah: Go, Holder, go!
Roger Moore
@schrodinger’s cat:
Some Buddhists also reject all alliums because they think they excite the passions. This turns out to be incredibly handy for people with an intolerance to onions and garlic, because they’re used in almost everything.
schrodinger's cat
@Gene108:
Husband kitteh’s ultra-orthodox Grandpa who passed away a couple of years ago.
Not strictly true, Kashmiri Brahmins eat meat, Bengali Brahmins eat fish and meat, so do some subcastes of Maharashtrian Brahmins. Many Gujaratis and Marwaris are vegetarian irrespective of caste. Of course Jains.
As for political leanings, what you say is true about individuals, see my comment above about my MIL. But BJP’s Hindutva ideology is Brahminism on steroids, not surprising since the leading intellectual lights of the RSS were Maharashtrian Brahmins.
Rules are for little people. Slap on the wrist, at most.
Another Holocene Human
You really have to follow the link and look at all the graphs.
Silver misses the boat, though, which is that GOP-identified are overwhelmingly white and Dems come from every ethnicity. That is why racist white people form a pretty insignificant constituency within the national Dems. (Regional mileage may vary.)
Also saw an interesting graph recently showing that the states where whites flipped the hardest from D to R over Obama were in Western Mormon and Christian identity areas, OK/Texas, and the deep South. West NC, SW VA. The Appalachian states, WV, KY, TN did not shift as much as I thought, except for an area of Southern KY. Northern GA is part of the mountains, but it did shift. Only a few counties in FL and not Central FL but the Panhandle and the “South GA” area between Tallahassee and Jacksonville but not including either metro. This was based on exit polls.
Another Holocene Human
If you want to vomit, check this out:
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/are-white-republicans-more-racist-than-white-democrats/
Scroll down to the “lazy” graph. Cry into your vomit.
This reminds me of the old saw about what they call a woman in the office who acts like a man. Jack Welch is “hard-working”, Michael Jordan is “lazy”. We could go on all day. Be a giant bounder and steal everything that’s not nailed down and whites will laud you as a hero–if you’re a white man. But it doesn’t matter how good you are at what you do (*cough* Barack Obama) if you’re Black–whites will call you a fraud and a sham.
schrodinger's cat
@satby: About the elections, its the inept and corrupt (Congress) against the horrific who promise economic nirvana (BJP). At this juncture, the third party candidate is a freak side show.
I had written a brief primer about the Indian elections here.
I am not a big fan of the Congress ineptitude and nepotism but I think it is the lesser evil.
schrodinger's cat
The real reason to go to Mumbai/Bombay in summer, to eat the most delicious mangoes in the world.
satby
@schrodinger’s cat: Thanks, I’ll go look at that.
proterozoic
This is somewhat misleading/cherrypicked – if you look at the original 538.com article, all but this one chart show negligible differences in racial attitudes between Dems & Repubs… and even for this chart, authors offer a huge caveat that it might reflect general GOP dislike of social spending, given that there was also a huge disparity in support for school spending in general, regardless of race.
schrodinger's cat
Mohandas Gandhi’s assassin was an adherent of the Hindutva ideology and a member of the RSS. Their poisonous ideology has been around for at least a hundred years. Indians by and large had been immune. Until the early 90s BJP was a fringe party.
Bill in Section 147
@Villago Delenda Est: I have been finding this true for individual Republicans as well. They have squandered the savings from irresponsible tax cuts, wildly spent on stupid survivalist weapons and systems for ‘defense” and hand-over more than they can afford to grifters promising easy solutions to non-existent, fear-based problems.
Gene108
@schrodinger’s cat:
By the 1990’s there was a general push for a national opposition Party to Congress.
The Janata Dal tried to fill the role under VP Singh, but could not hold the coalition together for a full term.
The BJP got handed the reins in 1996 and that coalition lasted all of two weeks, when Jayalalitha* withdrew her support.
The BJP managed to make it through a full term a couple of years later, when they came back to power.
* Leader of the AIADMK, one of the two major parties in the state of Tamil Nadu.
ETA: I think a lot of the BJP support and staying power is to have a viable opposition Party to Congress, more so than an endorsement of RSS ideology.
schrodinger's cat
@Gene108:
I agree but Narendra Modi definitely strikes me as a true believer.
ETA: Most people are ignorant about the Sangh and their activities.
Glidwrith
@NorthLeft12: Unless you’ve got parents that attach multiple strings – we’ll give you this if you do that – or expect that since they gave you money you are now obligated to them for the ‘favor’. Even better is when you don’t do what they want, then you are informed how your home/furniture are actually a family resource to be used as they please.
I believe there are many shades of gray in helping out the next generation. Major medical event? Job loss where you could lose the house? No problem. Out partying and charging up the credit cards, then figuring out you can’t pay them? Nope.
Steve Finlay
I’m an old marketing researcher, and there’s one other very likely interpretation of the red line that comes to my mind. I suspect that the population of white Republicans in 2004 was significantly different from the population of white Republicans in 2012.
If you obtained a good representative sample of white Republicans in 2004 (and this survey almost certainly did), it would probably have included a fairly large percentage of people who were reasonably enlightened about racism. But between 2004 and 2012, a rather large share of that subgroup probably saw that the party was losing its mind, and got out. If I remember correctly, some of the front pagers on this blog are among them.
So if you obtained a good representative sample of white Republicans in 2012, it would include a larger percentage of incorrigible racists than the good sample from 2004. Hence the red line goes up.
Bill Arnold
@Another Holocene Human:
Don’t know if you’re talking about these 2008 NYTimes electoral shifts maps but they are worth looking at. They are comparing Kerry vs Bush versus Obama vs McCain.
(They are ugly.)
NorthLeft12
@Glidwrith: Agree. I have had a few issues with some In-laws and money that have soured me, but my daughters are pretty tight with their money…..they just did not have very much when we offerred to help.
Steeplejack
@Aspasia:
Discussed here last night.
Samuel Knight
Few funny connections.
1) When some in the GOP happily admit to racism (almost as hard to poll about as sex), funny to see some Dems upset that a Democrat called Justice Thomas and Uncle Tom. Really you’re supposed to be polite when an appalling incompetent holds one of the most important posts in US jurisprudence? We’re supposed to worry about politeness when said Justice happily prevents potentially millions from exercising their right to vote.
2) Turns out you can get a much better read on a community’s attitudes when you ask “what would your neighbours think about X?” That’s how good pollsters get at the “Bradley effect”.
3) The key here is that a lot of the use of race is just a strategy. The Southern elite used race as a tool to blame others for a long time.
psycholinguist
Wow – look at 1980. Any of you other old farts that were around and listening during that first Reagan run, there it the outcome of “welfare queens” and “steak eating young bucks” The telling graph to me is to look at the progress of blacks into the middle class. Steady progress from Johnson to Carter, and then the bottom just falls out, and this graph kind of helps explain why.
BrianW
@satby: Haven’t seen their ratings, huh?
philadelphialawyer
@Wag:
“Perhaps the average GOP voter is more enlightened than the people they vote for? ”
Perhaps.
But perhaps people shy away from admitting what they really believe in this kind of survey.
And there are other ways of measuring as well. For example, Silver himself produced data that suggests that many folks who would “normally” (ie if race were not a factor, but all the other factors–age, class, religion, etc–are taken into account) have voted D in 2008 in fact voted R. And that suggests racism on the part of R voters.
And then there is the very type of incident that prompted the article in the first place, ie the Sterling and Bundy statements. When issues such as these arise, where do white Rs and Ds fall out? In my experience, it is white Rs who are more likely try to defend the racist comments and/or commenter.
And it is white Rs, not white Ds, who make the most absurdly and sickeningly racist remarks when more serious incidents arise. During the Zimmerman/Martin affair, who was most likely to not only say that Zimmerman should get off on his self defense claim (which, I suppose, can be considered a legitimate, non racist viewpoint), but to also add something along the lines of Martin “deserving” to die, asserting that he was a “gang member,” a drug user, and so on? Who would go even further, and start talking about Zimmerman being a “hero,” and having done a “public service” and so on? It seems to me that it is overwhelmingly white Republicans who say these things. NOT that all White Rs do so, but, among White folks who do say such things, most of them, by far, are Republican, not Democratic.