A team of researchers at the University of Maryland recently published a paper comparing where in the country people do Google searches for the n-word and the mortality of black people in those same areas.What they found was a high correlation, which shouldn’t be surprising as it has been found before. So what does this actually mean?
The study authors were careful to clarify that they could not conclude that an area’s racism directly caused the deaths of black people — just that the two things they measured were strongly associated. But what [researcher David] Chae did feel comfortable concluding, given his research in the context of established knowledge, is that “racism is a social toxin that increases susceptibility to disease and generates racial disparities in health.”
Not exactly breaking news, but the more studies that make this common knowledge, the better.
Team Blackness also discussed Bernie Sanders entering the presidential race, more dumb things out of Ben Carson’s mouth, and a Texas high school bans sex education and suffers from a chlamydia outbreak.
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shawn
dumbest. “study.” ever.
boatboy_srq
But because the researchers can’t absutively posilutely state with 1500% certainty that racism kills black people, wingnuts will pooh-pooh this research because “it’s just a theory.”
/snark
mai naem mobile
Why would you Google the.n-word? I don’t get it. I’ve never googled.it.and.I’m pretty sure I’ve never googled any racially.offensive.term.
Tone in DC
That outbreak of the STD at the school where they banned sex ed has a particularly serendipitous karmic resonancy (hey, I’ll wax prose in purple if I wanna, don’t care how bad it is).
Dude was sooo on the money years ago – “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”
/end rant
Felanius Kootea
I did have concerns about how the authors decided that googling the n-word was a proxy for racism but the linked article shows that this type of linking has been done before and was significant in showing (Dem?) areas where Kerry won in 2004 but Obama didn’t in 2008. The authors also left out variants like “nigga.” I have to go read the actual paper itself but I can’t say I’m surprised that there would be a correlation between racism in an area and poor health in people who are targets of racism in that area.
Tree With Water
“Not exactly breaking news, but the more studies that make this common knowledge, the better”.
It’s always breaking news to someone, some people never got the word in the first place, and it takes some people longer to wise up than others. Some people never do, of course, but fun facts about America always bear repeating..
Myiq2xu
Ahem:
So, two BJ posts in two days about a chlamydia epidemic that wasn’t.
boatboy_srq
@Myiq2xu: Wow. Three pages of Google results to get to the first mention of this. That’s persistence.
So, because even the local outlets were suckered, and were even able to interview the school board member (who did not dispute any part of the story), the Juicetariat are all suckers because there’s nothing to see here and no reason to believe such an obvious fabrication. Got it.
Southern Beale
In that vein, the Hispanic owners of a BBQ joint in Colorado decided, as a joke, to have a “White Appreciation Day.” And then Twitter lost its shit.
Cervantes
@boatboy_srq:
Three pages? Surely that depends on the search you run. Try this, for example.
scav
Different audio for those in search: Alistair Cooke Memorial Lecture: 8 May 2015
Cervantes
@Felanius Kootea:
One of the authors is local and I know he does good work.
If you do take a look at the paper, you’ll see an interesting map.
catclub
@Tone in DC: They did not ban sex ed. They banned sex education that included education on anything except abstinence.
Karen S.
@Southern Beale:
I think the owners of that barbecue joint might be trying to become the next “martyrs” who get a GoFundMe page for knuckle draggers to throw money at.
Eric U.
@Cervantes: I thought it was a really interesting study. My takeaway was that the rest of us don’t know the racist search terms that southerners use. Or they don’t bother because they can get racism by the buttload any time they want. My understanding is that the new ‘N’ word in the south is “Democrat” — and no, I’m not kidding
gene108
@Cervantes:
Would be interesting as to how it corresponds to African-American population distribution in the country, i.e. were areas with higher AA populations getting more ‘n-word’ searches.
Germy Shoemangler
@mai naem mobile:
Maybe the racists are trying to figure out how to spell it, so they don’t look dumb on social media?
Arclite
I’m just gonna leave Key and Peele’s Negrotown sketch right here for y’all.
Cervantes
@gene108:
The linked Vox article shows the map. The original is here.
villageidiocy
Saw a National Geographic special on stress a while back “Stress: Portrait of a Killer”. The was lots of interesting info re: social status and health strongly correlating. Mentioned a study about differences in health for folks in the NHS in Britain, where presumably everyone gets good basic care. Different ‘classes’ had differing lifespans, even after controlling for all other factors. Also stuck with me: African-american women have worse outcomes for pregnancy, even if they were situated in the middle class.
Steeplejack
@Cervantes:
I believe Boatboy_srq meant three pages to get to the story about the outbreak never happening, not the outbreak itself.
Your suggested search now brings up that story on the second page for me.
Myiq2xu
@boatboy_srq: The story was “too good to check”. JC and the BJers jumped all over the first story because you WANTED it to be true. Your hatred makes you blind and gullible.
I, on the other hand, was immediately suspicious, so I did some checking. I was right. You all were wrong.
As usual.
WereBear
@mai naem mobile: That staggered me, too. Why google a racial slur? Like you don’t know what it means!
Heck, every week or so I run across something I wish I didn’t know. And I wasn’t looking for it!
WereBear
@Myiq2xu: Why in the world would you be immediately suspicious? It’s well known that areas which insist on abstinence sex ed have higher rates of STDs. Google that up, why don’t you?
Cervantes
@Steeplejack:
Yes, and my point was that one can’t really use N = “number of pages before X shows up” as a metric of X’s relevance because N is a function of many things.
For example:
Yes, I wasn’t suggesting that search on its merits but just to show that N varies.
When I ran that search, N was 1.
Plus, to go back to the original comment: even if something shows up only on the third page of your search results, you can’t conclude it’s not real — only that it’s outnumbered, so to speak, and the latter is a very poor measure of truth or relevance.
Not that I’m telling you anything you haven’t already thought a dozen times.
Steeplejack
@Cervantes:
Your original comment—
—seemed to indicate that the “it didn’t happen” story would be much higher in the results. But the search—“crane chlamydia”—was so generic that I thought there might be a chance you had misunderstood Boatboy_srq.
Perhaps if you had explained the points you made in this comment in your original comment things would have been clear.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Myiq2xu:
Not necessarily, dipshit. Crane lies on the county line. It is also 20 miles or so from another county line. As these cases were reported from the county, there is a significant chance that other cases were reported from other counties.
also, you’re a smug asshole, so there’s that.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo):
“outbreak in surrounding counties as well”
And MyIq2xu is still an asshole.
Cervantes
@Steeplejack:
You’re welcome.
rikyrah
this is water is wet news
Steve
Can’t wait for the lynch doj investigation to conclude racism exists in the Baltimore police department that is 68 percent black and arresting a population that is 68 percent black
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Steve:
Baltimore PD is 43% black. 63% black population. Aside from being wrong, do you have a fucking point?
ETA: only 25% of Baltimore PD officers live in the city. So that’s a thing. 12% of baltimore’s white officers live in the city.
Steve
Lol! Point is the findings of the doj are predetermined irrespective of the facts. It will show blacks get stopped or arrested more so naturally it must be a racist police force. Headed of course by a black commissioner in a city with a black mayor in a city where the majority of the residents are, well black. We don’t have a racist cop problem in America we have a criminal problem. And that extends to blacks and white criminals as well.