[Brother of Karl]

I'm at least a little skeptical of any study of humans that tries to suggest a causative link rather than a correlational one. Correlation doesn't imply causation, and it's nearly impossible to factor in all relevant variables in a human study.

[Rich]

I want to protect the greatest gift the founders left us. That is the personal freedom to pursue happiness.

That's right, unless you were a Black slave, a native American, an indentured servant, a woman, a homosexual or one of the half a million people who were driven out of the United States during and in the aftermath of the revolutionary war in the terror that made Ferdinand and Isabella look like role models for multiculturalism and toleration.

Its strange cause in Britain we never had the beneficence of the founders, but nor did we have, a civil war (post 1776), Prohibition, Jim Crow, McCarthyism or the privileged of driving around at 55 mph for much of the seventies and eighties as you did in the land of the free. Its amazing what America achieved by talking endlessly about liberty, I mean what else did they have going for them apart from vast fertile agricultural lands, huge game, bison and fur reserves, vast fisheries, the easy transportation systems of the Eastern Seaboard, the Eastern rivers, the great lake system, the Gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi river basin and the Pacific coast, huge coal, iron and oil reserves etc etc, minimal external threats, the British ruls of law and one of the highest standards of living for the White people in the world at the time?

[Fraqtive42]

That's right, unless you were a Black slave, a native American, an indentured servant, a woman, a homosexual or one of the half a million people who were driven out of the United States during and in the aftermath of the revolutionary war in the terror that made Ferdinand and Isabella look like role models for multiculturalism and toleration.

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/pragmatic_ethics

How do you expect all ethical dilemmas to be resolved instantly after colonization/revolution? And why are you only referring to Britain after 1776?

[Arkady2009]

The conservatives I have spoken to seem to be outrage at the mere suggestion they are more racist and homophobic than liberals. Why? Its true. Consertatives are more likely to believe homosexual relationships are abhorrant, and are also more likely to have problems with different races.

[Drlee]

That's right, unless you were a Black slave, a native American, an indentured servant, a woman, a homosexual or one of the half a million people who were driven out of the United States during and in the aftermath of the revolutionary war in the terror that made Ferdinand and Isabella look like role models for multiculturalism and toleration.

Oh please. The adults are having a discussion here. Bring your A game or leave it alone. You make not valid point at all. That kind of argument might impress a high school kid but....

[Dr House]

There was discussion of race and jokes made, but like I said mean-spirited real racism, I can't remember any occasion where I saw it.

It mostly doesn't exist anywhere nowadays, due to the fact open racism is taboo. Nevertheless, San Franciscans do avoid the ghetto, and do make fun of Oakland (which is black-dominated), and do look down on the large black homeless population; which makes them roughly as racist as the average New Yorker. The difference is you guys openly promote tolerance, which makes you hypocrites.

I absolutely do not buy the concept that direct contact with other peoples and cultures reinforces racial boundaries. It is the exact opposite.

The evidence disagrees with you. That's all I have to say.

[Pants-of-dog]

The evidence disagrees with you. That's all I have to say.

The evidence I have seen agrees with grassroots1's claims.

[Dr House]

The evidence I have seen agrees with grassroots1's claims.

Why did Obama win Iowa and lose New York in the 08 primaries, then?

[Dr House]

The conservatives I have spoken to seem to be outrage at the mere suggestion they are more racist and homophobic than liberals. Why?

Because modern society perceives it as an insult; the accuracy of the claim is secondary (I don't think Dems would like being accused of that any more than Republicans do). In the 40s they'd have puffed up their chests at the suggestion.

[Pants-of-dog]

Why did Obama win Iowa and lose New York in the 08 primaries, then?

For reasons more complicated than the idea that ethnic diversity creates more racial tension.

[grassroots1]

For reasons more complicated than the idea that ethnic diversity creates more racial tension.

my thoughts exactly.

Nevertheless, San Franciscans do avoid the ghetto, and do make fun of Oakland (which is black-dominated), and do look down on the large black homeless population; which makes them roughly as racist as the average New Yorker. The difference is you guys openly promote tolerance, which makes you hypocrites.

People avoid ghettos because they don't want to be robbed. I haven't noticed this trend in all my life of people "making fun of Oakland" in the general sense you suggest. And some people look down on homeless people, others don't. It might be as racist as New York, who the fuck knows? This has nothing to do with my comment that real racism of the type Dave promotes does not exist in San Francisco,* and I never encountered it before I came to PoFo. I think this is a good thing and a sign of progress.

*edit: that is to say, I never encountered it.

It mostly doesn't exist anywhere nowadays, due to the fact open racism is taboo.

It does exist openly in many places in the United States.

[Dr House]

For reasons more complicated than the idea that ethnic diversity creates more racial tension.

Reasons like what? No one expected Obama to win the rural Midwest, because it's hickland and the general belief among academia is that racist = retarded hick. Yet he got all of it, and didn't get any of the urban, liberal and diverse Democratic strongholds on the East Coast and rustbelt.

[Drlee]

Could it be that poor people have at long last, come to realize that the republican party offers them nothing? It used to but not now. Obama trounced McCain with under $50K voters. (That was 37% on '08) By the way he beat McCain with over $200K voters too.

Until the 1936 election Blacks voted largely democrat. Then they voted for Roosevelt 71%. When truman won blacks self-identified as democrat by over 70% is a huge turnaround. Even then. Nixon got 32% of blacks and Eisenhower got 36%. Then Ronal Reagan+ began race bating and the trend continues. In 1964 Goldwater opposed the equal rights act and Johnson signed it into law in 1965. Since then no republican has gotten over 15% of the black vote. Now you know why. The republican party, my party, has been running toward white males and away from minorities and women for decades. Now it has come home to bite them in the ass. They sought to appeal to small minded people and have become a party of small minded people.

The republican party does not try to have a broad general appeal. It tries to gather under its umbrella, small but dedicated single-issue voters. It truely offers a divisive message.

[Dr House]

Could it be that poor people have at long last, come to realize that the republican party offers them nothing?

Uh, no. I was talking about the primaries. White Democrat voters nominated Obama in white rural states, but not in urban states with significant ethnic minorities.

[Pants-of-dog]

Reasons like what? No one expected Obama to win the rural Midwest, because it's hickland and the general belief among academia is that racist = retarded hick. Yet he got all of it, and didn't get any of the urban, liberal and diverse Democratic strongholds on the East Coast and rustbelt.

How should I know?

Tell you what, instead of shifting the burden of proof to me, where I would have to build an arguably realistic model of the entire US election dynamic and then defend it from you just to clarify a minor tangent, why don't you simply provide evidence for the causal relationship you claim exists?

The subject is whether or not ethnic diversity leads to more racism.

http://gpi.sagepub.com/content/6/1/76.short

Data for this longitudinal study were collected from over 2000 White, Asian, Latino, and African American college students. Results indicated that students who exhibited more ingroup bias and intergroup anxiety at the end of their first year of college had fewer outgroup friends and more ingroup friends during their second and third years of college, controlling for pre-college friendships and other background variables. In addition, beyond these effects of prior ethnic attitudes and orientations on friendship choices, those with more outgroup friendships and fewer ingroup friendships during their second and third years of college showed less ingroup bias and intergroup anxiety at the end of college, controlling for the prior attitudes, pre-college friendships, and background variables. Results are discussed in terms of the contact hypothesis.

So, the bolded phrase is basically saying that those folks who mixed with the other races ended up being less racist at the end of the study.

I think ethnic diversity leads to more opportunities for racist people to be racist, but I think it also leads to less racist people.