The “Slavery Effect”

 

The University of Rochester has completed a study of the racial attitudes of Southern whites, showing what they call the “slavery effect.”  While I don’t dispute the results of the study – Southern whites having more contact with black people have more realistic views of them – I do take issue with the scope of the study, the measurements used, and what the results prove.

Compare these two maps: the one at the very top is the distribution of black slaves in 1860 and the one just above this paragraph is the distribution of blacks in America today.  Notice that they’re pretty much identical; what the University of Rochester measured wasn’t the “slavery effect,” but the “living-around-black-people effect.”  The two are related in that blacks tended to stay in the area after they were freed, and thus the maps have a high correlation, but they are not the same thing.  It is disingenuous of the study to claim causation from something 150 years ago when there is a current factor that is just as likely, if not more so, of being the root cause.  I want to see the racial attitudes of Northern whites around Detroit, Flint, Cleveland, Baltimore, Chicago, and other Northern cities with high and vibrant populations compared to Southern areas of similar percentages.  I bet the results would be very comparable.  Considering that Rochester itself is over 40% black, I bet the results from their hometown would be rather embarrassing for them.  As it stands now, this is merely another beat-up-on-the-South bit of Yankee propaganda.

Next, what are the measurements the study used to determine the level of racism and racists?  Klan membership, lynching, cross burning, white-on-black crime?  Nope.  The study used three measurements: 1) whites who are Republicans, 2) whites are opposed to affirmative action, and 3) whites with racial resentment.   The third one is fairly ambiguous, but based on the character of the first two, it’s probably related to the trend of whites increasingly viewing anti-white racism as a bigger problem than anti-black racism in America.  Thus, to be counted as a racist in the study, one has to be a white person who is an anti-affirmative action Republican and thinks black-on-white crime is a problem.   That’s setting the bar very low, and strengthens my assertion that the attitudes of Northern whites in high-diversity areas would be comparable to those of Southern whites.  Additionally, this once again shows that for white people, there is no middle ground.  Either you are gung-ho, 100% supportive of your people’s dispossession, or you are a racist.  That being the case, embrace the label and fight for your people; trying to be a cowardly “moderate” will just get you called names anyway, without doing anyone any good.

Finally, I’m sure the results of this University of Rochester study will be used to support things like more diversity training, slave reparation, anti-racism laws, and the like, but what this study really shows that if you want to cut down on negative racial attitudes and racial discord, then you should be pushing for racial separation.  Contact with diversity is the surest way to come to dislike it.  This is why the question of whether multiracialism will explode in America is not a question of “if” but “when.”  The more success they have in spreading diversity around, the bigger the backlash against it.  The ideology is self-defeating.

 

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