News: Most racist places in America

Guero

The most racist places in America, according to Google

Where do America's most racist people live? "The rural Northeast and South," suggests a new study just published in PLOS ONE.

"Google data, evidence suggests, are unlikely to suffer from major social censoring," Stephens-Davidowitz wrote in a previous paper. "Google searchers are online and likely alone, both of which make it easier to express socially taboo thoughts. Individuals, indeed, note that they are unusually forthcoming with Google." He also notes that the Google measure correlates strongly with other standard measures social science researchers have used to study racist attitudes.

For the PLOS ONE paper, researchers looked at searches containing the N-word. People search frequently for it, roughly as often as searches for "migraine(s)," "economist," "sweater," "Daily Show," and "Lakers." (The authors attempted to control for variants of the N-word not necessarily intended as pejoratives, excluding the "a" version of the word that analysis revealed was often used "in different contexts compared to searches of the term ending in '-er'.")

Interestingly, on the map above the most concentrated cluster of racist searches happened not in the South, but rather along the spine of the Appalachians running from Georgia all the way up to New York and southern Vermont.

MORE: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...ing-to-google/

HausOfGerard

I thought this was common knowledge.

Blue Jeans

I live in less than average

Guernica

Quote:

Where do America's most racist people live? "The rural Northeast and South,"

well yeah. The south doesn't even need to be explained and some places in the northeast are heavily populated by white people and there's not so much minorities (think of places like connecticut or vermont, etc.) so they're more likely to use racist language and think that it's acceptable

Haus

Is it just me or is this a really stupid way to test racism? There are many flaws I could think of.

bleuwaffle

That's because racism is strongly aimed at Latinos in the South.

50thStateofMind

lol this is news?

Su-Barbie-A

*Blatantly racist

Quote:

Originally posted by Blue Jeans

I live in less than average

But you prove that is false

Haunter

Quote:

Originally posted by Su-Barbie-A

*Blatantly racist

But you prove that is false

fff

Kamil24

I'm surprised that everything bordering Ontario is red

Callisto.

Southern white people are the most apologetically racist people ever and they literally don't care because they think they're being real or whatever.

dannyboy

I mean, rap songs use the N-word all the time, so people could just be searching for some rap lyrics.

lpd446

Texas?

Guernica

Quote:

Originally posted by Kamil24

I'm surprised that everything bordering Ontario is red

people don't realize how rural some of the northeast really is. I live in upstate new york and while I live closer to a city, the futher north you go towards canada the more rural it gets and some places it's almost like you're in the south tbh, there's a lot of hicks up here

NX127

Google search volumes for the N word? Really?

What about some "N word"s and their racism against others? What about Indian, or Middle Eastern minorities, who face by far the most racism and hate by literally everyone? Was any of that taken into consideration while making that map?

BlooRiverAnimal

Quote:

Originally posted by dannyboy

I mean, rap songs use the N-word all the time, so people could just be searching for some rap lyrics.

Blue Jeans

Quote:

Originally posted by Su-Barbie-A

*Blatantly racist

But you prove that is false

What?

EdgeOfAddiction

Sarah Palin isn't enough data?

Callisto.

Quote:

Originally posted by NX127

Google search volumes for the N word? Really?

What about some "N word"s and their racism against others? What about Indian, or Middle Eastern minorities, who face by far the most racism and hate by literally everyone? Was any of that taken into consideration while making that map?

I can't deal.

Jay Fenty

Not the NorthEast being one of the most racist regions.

Not Jersey being More than average