Public opinion polls indicate that white liberals feel more warmly toward other races than they do toward their own, which seems unusual.
Political scientist Eric Kaufmann cited the following survey data in an article in the New York Times. It’s on a scale with 0 as completely unfavorable, 50 as neutral and 100 as completely favorable.
Black Clinton voters
85 percent favorable opinion about their own race
59 percent favorable opinion about other races.
White Trump voters
80 percent favorable opinion about their own race
69 percent favorable opinion about other races.
Black Trump voters
77 percent favorable opinion about their own race
72 percent favorable opinion about other races.
White Clinton voters
70 percent favorable opinion about their own race
80 percent favorable opinion about other races.
Now you can’t say that white Clinton voters are self-hating, because they have a favorable opinion about their own race. And you can’t say that black Clinton voters are “reverse racists” because they have a favorable opinion of non-black races.
Note also that none of the four categories of voters has a net unfavorable view of other races. That’s important, because I’m pretty sure this wouldn’t have been true 50 or 60 years ago.
But it’s interesting that the white Clinton voters are the least favorable toward their own race and the most favorable toward other races, while black Clinton voters are the reverse.
Kaufmann wrote in his New York Times article—
Since 2012, white liberals have moved considerably left on questions related to race, reflecting both a campus- and online-driven cultural awakening that has accelerated in response to Mr. Trump.
On the American National Election Study’s scale measuring how respondents feel about a group — white liberals are warmer toward minorities than their own racial group.
[snip] This has happened as liberal thought has changed its focus from class to identity issues since the 1960s.
During the civil rights era, African-Americans rallied strongly behind racial liberalism, which was a communal issue. But the connection between race and racial ideology has weakened considerably: People of color are not the driving force behind most of today’s forms of racial liberalism.
I think he underestimates the amount of both open racism and unconscious racial prejudice in the USA. And I don’t think the change in white liberal thinking is a response to Donald Trump’s election. If anything, Trump’s election is a reaction to the change in white liberalism that began about five years ago.
∞∞∞
Here is more polling data about divergences among white liberals, blacks and Hispanics, gathered by a political science professor at Georgia State University named Zachery Goldberg.
The following two charts reflect opinions of self-identified liberals among all three groups
So differences of opinion between white liberals and white conservatives are greater than the differences of average opinion among whites, blacks and Hispanics as a whole.
LINK
Americans Are Divided by Their Views on Race, Not Race Itself by Eric Kaufmann in the New York Times.
Tags: Black Democrats, Eric Kaufmann, Public opinion polls, White liberals, Zachary Goldberg
Phil Ebersole's Blog 
April 4, 2019 at 11:34 am |
The pattern you speak of has been observed your years among liberals. There is social science research that indicates this is something inherent to the liberal psyche, not merely something of recent appearance.
But as a liberal-leaning white, I must admit that I’ve become much more intolerant of bigotry as time goes on. I’m not sure if that is because I’ve fundamentally changed or because bigotry has become more overt.
https://www.wired.com/2010/09/kill-whitey-its-the-right-thing-to-do/
“They offered some other scenarios too, about collateral damage in military situations, for instance, and found similar differences: Conservatives accepted collateral damage more easily if the dead were Iraqis than if they were Americans, while liberals accepted civilian deaths more readily if the dead were Americans rather than Iraqis.”
https://www.nationalreview.com/2010/09/politics-empathy-john-zogby-zeljka-buturovic/
“We see that liberals and progressives are more sympathetic toward animals and foreigners than are conservatives and libertarians. Conversely, though not to the same extent, conservatives are more sympathetic toward soldiers and babies than are progressives and liberals. Criminals, drug addicts, and the homeless are again more “popular” among progressives and liberals than among conservatives and libertarians.
“Sympathy here is a relative term. Absolutely speaking, progressives and liberals are very sympathetic towards babies and American soldiers, for example. It is only when sympathy is compared between different groups that significant differences emerge. For very conservative voters, American soldiers are on the top. For progressives, soldiers share fourth place with foreigners.”
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April 4, 2019 at 11:52 pm |
“They offered some other scenarios too, about collateral damage in military situations, for instance, and found similar differences: Conservatives accepted collateral damage more easily if the dead were Iraqis than if they were Americans, while liberals accepted civilian deaths more readily if the dead were Americans rather than Iraqis.”
I guess that should bring a pox upon both their houses. Dead is dead and we are all equal to the worms.
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April 5, 2019 at 6:29 am
@Fred – “I guess that should bring a pox upon both their houses.”
Not really. As the data shows, liberals still put great value on American soldiers. It’s maybe that they thought the lives of American soldiers, when illegally and immorally invading other countries in wars of aggression based on lies, shouldn’t be valued over the lives of those being invaded.
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April 5, 2019 at 11:53 am
That is not my experience with the left and with the military. When I was young I was in the National Guard I had never seen combat. The most impressive thing I’d ever done was setting up communications for disaster prep in CA. It did not prevent a certain University government prof from ridiculing me in front of class for being a tool of the industrial military complex. Needless to say, I was pissed.
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April 5, 2019 at 9:15 pm
Ignorant people are found in all ideologies, classes, and professions/jobs. It’s good to remember that most people in most colleges come from the working class, not from the upper classes. And it’s equally good to remember that most people holding liberal views have never stepped foot on a college campus. Anyway, one could simultaneously be ignorant and be against wars of aggression. But I’d bring us back to the simple point that most liberals have a positive view of American soldiers, as the data shows. Just because American liberals don’t like to see foreigners killed, doesn’t mean they hate Americans. A single asshole professor isn’t representative of all well-educated people, not to assume that all well-educated people are liberals.
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April 7, 2019 at 8:47 am
I don’t know how typical Fred’s experience was, but he is far from the only one to report such an experience. I grant that assholes are more memorable than other people.
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April 8, 2019 at 6:50 am
How often have I seen the uneducated stay equally or more ignorant things about teachers and professors? On a regular basis. To be honest with you, in all my decades in a liberal college town, I’ve never once heard anyone criticize US soldiers. I’m not saying it never happens. It’s just not a common occurrence. I see stupid comments online, of course, but stupid comments online cover a wide range of views.
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April 8, 2019 at 7:00 am
I still find it odd that I’m in the position of defending white liberals. I wasn’t raised by white liberals, rather by conservative parents with a father who served in the military. And, though a liberal-leaning white myself, I’m far from being part of the notorious liberal class. I’m actually rather poor. Yet somehow I find myself defending white liberals against your speaking of them as militant and Fred accusing them as being anti-military.
I have plenty of my own complaints about white liberals, but they aren’t what gets repeated in the mainstream/corporate media. What bothers me about white liberals, specifically of the liberal class, has more to do with the likes of the school admissions scandal. I wish white liberals were militant and anti-military, but they inevitably fall in line with the status quo and vote for pro-war regressive politicians like the Clintons and Obama.
https://opensociet.org/2019/04/07/they-had-it-coming/
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April 8, 2019 at 8:18 am
As a related comment, my father was on a visit to Europe, maybe it was Germany. He was there for reasons related to his profession as a business management professor. I think it was a conference he was attending or something like that.
What still stands out all these decades later was the immense respect he received in the role of being a teacher. The people hosting him had a genuine sense of pride in and even strangers would show deference when they learned he was a professor.
He has never had that experience in the US for his entire career in academia that stretched from over three decades. Soldiers get a thousand times more respect in the US than do those in teaching professions. The military is the most respected institution in the US, and this includes among liberals as well.
Sure, there are some malcontents, such as myself, who are critical of the military-industrial complex. But we malcontents are usually a minority on the far left, not typically found among the respectable and comfortable liberal class.
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April 8, 2019 at 12:56 pm
Humans love to form groups. People with an interest in power use this to set people against each other. Left and right, to the extent the terms matter are equally vile in that respect.
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April 8, 2019 at 2:13 pm
Once that happens, even just once, do you see the harm it does to a peaceful agenda?
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April 5, 2019 at 11:01 am |
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