Are White Republicans More Racist Than White Democrats? (Part One)

A recent post on race elicited several highly defensive and steeped in denial remarks from two of the five people who actually read comments. As is usually the case with conservatives like these gentlemen, they quickly redirected the conversation to me, issuing imperial declarations originating from an unfortunately deep insecurity and an inability to admit fault.

I did take away one thing from their feedback, though, and that's the fact that a more detailed examination of just how exactly Republicans are more racist than Democrats was required. For the next few days, we're going to be taking a look at polling done by a few different outfits on this issue. The main ones are going to be the General Social Survey and Nate Silver's 538 site but before we take a look at the first question, let's examine a fundamental fact about Republican party strength. Take a look at this map.

131 electoral votes come from the Old South and you'll note that today these are solid red states through and through. In the 2012 election, the popular vote in these 12 states was roughly 18 million people which is just shy of a third of the Republican votes in that election. Suffice to say that the South represents a substantial portion of the GOP base.

Given these facts, it's not surprising we see data like this.

A couple of interesting things to note. There are still plenty of white Democrats who have a problem with race. Sadly, some are in my family and, again not surprising, they are from the South. I also think it's interesting to note the uptick after Barack Obama got elected. Conservatives like to downplay the president's race but that's like my 12 year old son trying to downplay his black teeth when I ask him if he got into the Oreo cookies.

The positive to this graphic is that the trend is downward. Much of this has to do with old, white people dying off and taking their bullshit with them. Most people under the age of 40 don't have the same views on race as people over 40 do. Go even younger and it gets even better. We can thank our education system and its commitment to diversity and sensitivity on race for that sea change:)

So, it's clear from this graphic that more Republicans than Democrats think that black people are more lazy than hard working which is a classic racial stereotype. Given that a substantial portion of the GOP base is from the South, this myth about black people is likely more prevalent in those 12 states and drives the number higher for Republicans.

(Postscript: I suspect that this post and the ones on race that follow are going to cause a few bowels to be blown. I'm going to request that when commenting on this and future posts in this series, please offer a counter argument (if you disagree) that is based in reason and leaves me out of it.  I won't ban or delete any comments that are Markadelphia obsessed as they essentially illustrate avoidance and denial of reality thus leading to confirmation of my assertions here. But I at least wanted to offer my usual five commenters the chance to really focus on the evidence presented here and post a true counter argument complete with their own assertions. 

After all, they repeatedly claim that they are superior to me in several ways. Now's their chance to prove this to be true:))