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How Does the Increasingly Diverse American Landscape Affect White Americans’ Racial Attitudes?
1700 words
Last month I wrote about how Trump won the election due to white Americans’ exposure to diversity caused them to support Trump and his anti-immigration policies over Clinton and Sanders. That is, whites high in racial/ethnic identification exposed to more diversity irrespective of political leaning would vote for Trump for President and not Clinton or Sanders. It is commonly said that more diversity will increase tolerance for the out-group, and all will be well. But is this true?
Craig and Richeson (2014) explored how the changing racial shift in America affects whites’ feelings towards the peoples replacing whites (‘Hispanic’/Latino populations) as well as the feelings of whites towards other minority groups that are not replacing them in the country. Interestingly, whites exposed to the racial shift group showed more pro-white, anti-minority violence as well as preferring spaces and interactions with their own kind over others. Moreover, negative feelings towards blacks and Asians were seen, two groups that are not replacing white Americans.
White Canadians who were exposed to a graph showing that whites would be a projected minority “perceived greater in-group threat” leading to the expression of “somewhat more anger toward and fear of racial minorities.” East Asians are showing the most population growth in Canada. Relaying this information to whites has them express less warmth towards East Asian Canadians.
In their first study (n=86, 44 shown the racial shift and 42 shown current U.S. demographics), participants who read the title of a newspaper provided to them. One paper was titled “In a Generation, Ethnic Minorities May Be the U.S. Majority”, whereas the other was titled “U.S. Census Bureau Releases New Estimates of the US Population by Ethnicity.” They were asked questions such as “I would rather work alongside people of my same ethnic origin,” and “It would bother me if my child married someone from a different ethnic background.” Whites who read the newspaper article showing ethnic replacement showed more racial bias than those who read about current U.S. demographics. Whites exposed to projected demographics were more likely to prefer settings and interactions with other whites compared to the group who read current demographics.
In study 2 a (n=28, 14 Dutch participants and 14 American participants, 14 exposed to the U.S. racial shift, 14 exposed to the Dutch racial shift), those in the U.S. racial shift category showed more pro-white/anti-Asian bias than participants in the Dutch racial shift category. Those who were exposed to the changing U.S. ethnic landscape were more likely to show pro-white/anti-black bias than participants exposed to the Dutch racial shift (study 2b, n=25, 14 U.S. racial shift, 11 Dutch racial shift). In other words, making the U.S changing racial/ethnic population important, whites showed that whites were, again, more likely to be pro-white and anti-minority, even while exposed to an important racial demographic shift in a foreign country (the Netherlands). Whites, then, exposed to more racial diversity will show more automatic bias towards minorities, especially whites who live around a lot of blacks and ‘Hispanics’. Making whites aware of the changing racial demographics in America had them express automatic racial bias towards all minority groups—even minority groups not responsible for the racial shift.
In study 3 (n=620, 317 women, 76.3% White, 9.0% Black, 10.0% Latino, 4.7% other race) whether attitudes toward different minority groups may be affected by the exposure to the racial shift. Study 3 specifically focused on whites (n=415, 212 women, median age 48.8, a nationally representative sample of white Americans). Half of the participants were shown information about the projected ethnic shift in America while the other half were given a news article on the geographic mobility in America (individuals who move in a given year). They were asked their feelings on the following statements:
“the American way of life is seriously threatened” and were asked to indicate their view of the trajectory of American society (1 = American society is getting much worse every year, 5 = American society is getting much better every year); these two items were standardized and averaged to create an index of system threat (r = .64). To assess system justification, we asked participants to indicate their agreement (1 = strongly agree, 7 = strongly disagree) to the statement “American society is set up so that people usually get what they deserve.”
They were also asked the following questions on how certain they were of America’s social future:
“If they increase in status, racial minorities are likely to reduce the influence of White Americans in society.” The racial identification question asked participants to indicate their agreement (1 = strongly agree, 7 = strongly disagree) with the following statement, “My opportunities in life are tied to those of my racial group as a whole.”
The researchers had the participants read the article about the impending racial shift in America and had them fill out “feeling thermometers” on how they felt about differing racial groups in America (blacks, whites, Asians and ‘Hispanics’) with 1 being cold and 100 being hot. Whites reported the most positivity towards their own group, followed by Asians, blacks and showing the least positivity towards ‘Hispanics’ (the group projected to replace whites in 25 years). Figure 2 also shows that whites don’t show the same negative biases they would towards other minorities in America, most likely due to the ‘model minority‘ status.
So the researchers showed that by making the racial shift important, that led to more white Americans showing negative attitudes towards minorities—specifically ‘Hispanics’. This was brought about by whites’ “concerns of lose of societal status.” When whites begin to notice demographic changes, the attitudes towards minorities will change—most notable the attitudes towards blacks and ‘Hispanics’ (which is due to the amount of crime committed by both groups, and is why whites show favoritism towards Asians, in my opinion). Overall, it was shown in a nationally representative sample of whites that showing the changing demographics in the country leads to more negative responses towards minority groups. This is due to the perceived threat on whites’ group status, which leads to more out-group bias.
These four studies report empirical evidence that contrary to the belief of liberals et al—that an increasingly diverse America will lead to more acceptance—more exposure to diversity and the changing racial demographics will have whites show more negative attitudes towards minority groups, most notably ‘Hispanics’, the group projected to become the majority by 2042. The authors write:
Consistent with this prior work, the present research offers compelling evidence that the impending so-called “majority-minority” U.S. population is construed by White Americans as a threat to their group’s position in society and increases their expression of racial bias on both automatically activated and selfreport attitude measures.
Interestingly, the authors also write:
That is, the article in the U.S. racial shift condition accurately attributed a large percentage of the population shift to increases in the Latino/Hispanic population, yet, participants in this condition expressed more negative attitudes toward Black Americans and Asian Americans (Study 3) as well as greater automatic bias on both a White-Asian and a White-Black IAT (Studies 2a and 2b). These findings suggest that the information often reported regarding the changing U.S. racial demographics may lead White Americans to perceive all racial minority groups as part of a monolithic non-White group.
You can see this from the rise of the alt-right. Whites, when exposed to the reality of the demographic shift in America, will begin to show more pro-white attitudes while derogating minority out-groups. It is important to note the implications of these studies. One could look at these studies, and rightly say, that as America becomes more diverse that ethnic tensions will increase. Indeed, this is what we are now currently seeing. Contrary to what people say about diversity “being our strength“, it will actually increase ethnic hostility in America and lead towards evermore increasing strife between ethnic groups in America (that is ever-rising due to the current political and social climate in the country). Diversity is not our “strength”—it is, in fact, the opposite. It is our weakness. As the country becomes more diverse we can expect more ethnic strife between groups, which will lower the quality of life for all ethnies, while making whites show more negative attitudes towards all minority groups (including Asians and blacks, but less so than ‘Hispanics’) due to group status threat. The authors write in the discussion:
That is, these studies revealed that White Americans for whom the U.S. racial demographic shift was made salient preferred interactions/settings with their own racial group over minority racial groups, expressed more automatic pro-White/antiminority bias, and expressed more negative attitudes toward Latinos, Blacks, and Asian Americans. The results of these latter studies also revealed that intergroup bias in response to the U.S. racial shift emerges toward racial/ethnic minority groups that are not primary contributors to the dramatic increases in the non-White (i.e., racial minority) population, namely, Blacks and Asian Americans. Moreover, this research provides the first evidence that automatic evaluations are affected by the perceived racial shift. Taken together, these findings suggest that rather than ushering in a more tolerant future, the increasing diversity of the nation may actually yield more intergroup hostility.
Thinking back to Rushton’s Genetic Similarity Theory, we can see why this occurs. Our genes are selfish and want to replicate with out similar genes. Thus, whites would become less tolerant of minority groups since they are less genetically similar to them. This would then be expressed in their attitudes towards minority groups—specifically, ‘Hispanics’ as that ethny will most likely to become the majority and overtake the white majority in 25 years. This is GST on steroids. Once whites realize the reality of the situation of increasing diversity in America—along with their status in the country as a whole—they will then show more negative bias towards minority out-groups.
All in all, the more whites are exposed to diversity in the social context as well as the reality of the ethnic demographic shift in 25 years will be more likely to show negative attitudes towards all American ethnies (though less negative attitudes towards Asians, dude to being less criminal, in my opinion). As the country becomes less white, so to will the whites in America become less tolerant of all minorities and start banding together for pro-white interests—showing that diversity is not our strength. This, in reality, is exactly what liberals do not want—whites banding together showing less favoritism towards the out-group. However, this is what occurs in countries that increasingly become diverse.
Diversity in the Social Context
1950 words
Diversity is, supposedly, “something that is our strength“. How ever, a lot of people who live in ethnically and racially diverse communities don’t seem to think that way. “White flight“—that is, fleeing an area once it becomes diverse—is prevalent in America. If “diversity is our strength”, then why do whites “flight” out of neighborhoods that become ethnically diverse? Diversity is only good insofar as minorities get better social programs and societal structure. When whites move in, blacks move in then whites move out. Blacks then follow whites to their new areas and the process begins anew.
From the article cited above:
“People know what is a white suburb and what is a black suburb,” Lichter says. “Whites are still attracted to those suburbs that are white.”
Why are whites still attracted to suburbs that are white? Because we want to congregate around others that are like ourselves, genetically similar others. When diversity increases, crime increases; when diversity increases, social trust decreases. This phenomenon is the focus of this article.
Diversity in the Social Context
The purpose of this tonight is to talk about diversity in the social context. Diversity can be anything from diversity in politics, to diversity at school, diversity in the workplace, and diversity in the neighborhood, to diversity at Church etc. Robert Putnam analyzes neighborhoods (keep that in mind before extrapolating this to other settings, research is only applicable to what is studied) to discover the side effects of diversity—including race and ethnicity.
From the abstract of his paper:
Ethnic diversity is increasing in most advanced countries, driven mostly by sharp increases in immigration. In the long run immigration and diversity are likely to have important cultural, economic, fiscal, and developmental benefits. In the short run, however, immigration and ethnic diversity tend to reduce social solidarity and social capital. New evidence from the US suggests that in ethnically diverse neighbourhoods residents of all races tend to ‘hunker down’. Trust (even of one’s own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer. In the long run, however, successful immigrant societies have overcome such fragmentation by creating new, cross-cutting forms of social solidarity and more encompassing identities. Illustrations of becoming comfortable with diversity are drawn from the US military, religious institutions, and earlier waves of American immigration.
Diversity is shown to not be conducive to a strong, trusting, altruistic and cooperative society both scientifically and the real world. However, Putnam does say that creativity, economic growth, “young immigrant workers (both documented and undocumented) (pg. 140-1) and:
New research from the World Bank has highlighted yet another benefit from immigration, one of special relevance to the Nordic countries that have long played a disproportionate role on issues of global development. This new research suggests that immigration from the global South to the richer North greatly enhances development in the South, partly because of remittances from immigrants to their families back home and partly because of the transfer of technology and new ideas through immigrant networks. So powerful is this effect that despite ‘brain drain’ costs, increasing annual northward immigration by only three percentage points might produce net benefits greater than meeting all our national targets for development assistance plus cancelling all Third World debt plus abolishing all barriers to Third World trade (World Bank 2005; Pritchett 2006).
So economically and creatively speaking, he says, diversity “immigration and multicultural diversity have powerful effects for both sending and receiving countries” (pg. 141). What about the effects of diversity on social capital?
Putnam says:
Across workgroups in the United States, as well as in Europe, internal heterogeneity (in terms of age, professional background, ethnicity, tenure and other factors) is generally associated with lower group cohesion, lower satisfaction and higher turnover (Jackson et al. 1991; Cohen & Bailey 1997; Keller 2001; Webber & Donahue 2001).
• Across countries, greater ethnic heterogeneity seems to be associated with lower social trust (Newton & Delhey 2005; Anderson & Paskeviciute 2006; but see also Hooghe et al. 2006).
• Across local areas in the United States, Australia, Sweden, Canada and Britain, greater ethnic diversity is associated with lower social trust and, at least in some cases, lower investment in public goods (Poterba 1997; Alesina et al. 1999; Alesina & La Ferrara 2000, 2002; Costa & Kahn 2003b; Vigdor 2004; Glaeser & Alesina 2004; Leigh 2006; Jordahl & Gustavsson 2006; Soroka et al. 2007; Pennant 2005; but see also Letki forthcoming).
He also shows that within experimental game settings such as the prisoner’s dilemma, people who are dissimilar from one another defect more with this being seen from Uganda to America. Across companies in the Union army, the greater the internal homogeneity of the group, the higher the desertion rate.
Why does this occur? Because we tend to favor people who are genetically similar to ourselves; even, of course for things like marriage and divorce, to speed-dating. This is Rushton’s genetic similarity theory in action, developed from Dawkins’s (1976) book The Selfish Gene.
In the book, he talks about “replicators and vehicles“; a replicator is “anything in the known universe of which copies are made”, while a vehicle is the organism itself. Basically, we’re just meat, bones, genes trying to replicate. We’re only 10 percent human (great book) and 90 percent bacteria!!! We’re driven by our genes to reproduce copies of said genes since against the worldwide variance, the average similarity between people within a single population is on the magnitude of second cousins.
This is how ethnic genetic interests arises and why some people are more ‘racist’—that is, ethnocentric than others. Ethnic genetic interests causes people to congregate in neighborhoods with genetically similar others. Putnam’s work corroborates Rushton’s genetic similarity and shows the cause for white flight and less social trust within and between groups/ethnies/races.
Replicators, vehicles, genes, and EGIs/GST, is why Putnam found negative social consequences with diversity in the social context in regards to social trust in neighborhoods.
However, Putnam then says:
Diversity itself can only be conceived in terms of socially constructed identities. We saw that earlier when we were forced to define ‘diversity’ in our research in terms of the currently canonical four ethno-racial categories in the United States Census. However, how people are assigned by others to racial and ethnic categories has varied greatly over time and space. Thus, adapting over time, dynamically, to immigration and diversity requires the reconstruction of social identities, not merely of the immigrants themselves (though assimilation is important), but also of the newly more diverse society as a whole (including the native born). (159-60)
He then gives several personal anecdotes in which “races are socially constructed“. Just because people have misconceptions on race and what constitutes a race doesn’t mean that what matters—the underlying genetics which drives social distrust and other variables—aren’t the cause for lower social trust in genetically heterogeneous neighborhoods.
Putnam then said that his research was “twisted” to give a negative context for diversity, thus giving ‘racists’ ammo for their views. Showing the benefits to his research, he says that people have misconstrued what he said in his paper. However, Steve Sailer then says:
The story of how Putnam shelved his findings for five years while he tried to think up a pro-diversity spin to put on them is documented here:
Why would you wait 5 years to publish something that was positive? Even then, why would he attempt to derive a pro-diversity conclusion off of his work if it was so positive? Because ethnic/racial diversity, despite the positive variables he cites, has a negative impact on the neighborhood as a whole.
Dr. James Thompson posted today about the accuracy of stereotypes, citing a paper from physicist and HBDer Emil Kirkegaard and Julius Bjerrekær titled Country of origin and use of social benefits: A large, preregistered study of stereotype accuracy in Denmark in which they asked a nationally representative sample of the Danish population to estimate the amount of benefits people who were from 70 other countries were receiving. They state:
After extensive quality control procedures, a sample of 484 persons were available for analysis. Stereotypes were scored by accuracy by comparing the estimates values to values obtained from an official source. Individual stereotypes were found to be fairly accurate (median/mean correlation with criterion values = .48/.43), while the aggregate stereotype was found to be very accurate (r = .70). Both individual and aggregate-level stereotypes tended to underestimate the percentages of persons receiving social benefits and underestimate real group differences. In bivariate analysis, stereotype correlational accuracy was found to be predicted by a variety of predictors at above chance levels, including conservatism (r = .13), nationalism (r = .11), some immigration critical beliefs/preferences, agreement with a few political parties, educational attainment (r = .20), being male (d = .19) and cognitive ability (r = .22). Agreement with most political parties, experience with ghettos, age, and policy positions on immigrant questions had little or no predictive validity. In multivariate predictive analysis using LASSO regression, correlational accuracy was found to be predicted only by cognitive ability and educational attainment with even moderate level of reliability. In general, stereotype accuracy was not easy to predict, even using 24 predictors (k-fold cross-validated R2 = 4%). We examined whether stereotype accuracy was related to the proportion of Muslims in the groups. Stereotypes were found to be less accurate for the groups with higher proportions of Muslims in that participants underestimated the percentages of persons receiving social benefits (mean estimation error for Muslim groups relative to overall elevation error = -8.09 %points). The study was preregistered with most analyses being specified before data collection began.
Seems like this is what the propaganda of “diversity being our strength does”, have us lower our expectations for things that are obvious. This shows that ‘stereotypes’ are, more often than not, based on fact. Stereotypes arise because people of a certain group may be overrepresented in crimes and people’s negative average experience around others. They are clearly based on fact.This notion of stereotypes being wrong because they’re just prejudiced assumptions is wrong. Stereotypic thinking arises as a natural defense mechanism—a defense mechanism to keep the vehicle safe so the replicator can replicate. Everything we strive to accomplish, everything we do to have a good life is to attract a mate, have children and then take care of those who you are genetically similar to.
Western politicians should take note of this research and attempt to work immigration policy around the structure of the research (and ‘stereotypes’). The denial of human nature that has permeated the West has caused this nonsensical immigration policy. The denial of human nature, believing we are “blank slates” is another cause for this as well. Better known as “pathological morality and altruism“, this is the cause for the current cucking of Europe.
Everything we strive to accomplish, everything we do to have a good life is to attract a mate, have children and then take care of those who you are genetically similar to. Racial/ethnic diversity impedes this from occurring.
Robert Putnam waited years to publish his study, thinking of a way to spin it to show diversity being good, to show it as “our strength”. However, he published it (as any good scientist should do, regardless if they agree with their findings or not) and proved that, at least in the neighborhood context, diversity decreased social trust even showing desertion rates to be higher in heterogeneous groups. Kierkegaard’s paper shows that stereotypes are accurate (though the amount of benefits Muslims received was underestimated), confirming what is already known from general experience. Replicators are what drives ethnocentrism, “selfish genes” are the cause for people wanting to be around genetically similar others since genetically similar others share the numerous amounts of copies of the same gene. This gene-centered view of evolution is one of the many reasons why diversity is negative in the social context. Diversity is clearly not our strength, in fact, it negatively enhances our strength. Diversity in the social context is a net-negative for all races/ethnies in the long run.
NotPoliticallyCorrect 