Politicians Are Racist Against Blacks, Even ‘Republican Blacks’

Here’s an important news update for all the Alan Keyes and Clarence Thomas types who for some reason believe that acting like super-crazy white wingnut Republicans will magically win over white racists: Doesn’t work, never has, never will. White racists despise black people no matter what — and you’ll find the most unrepentant white racists running the Republican Party. Political scientists at Yale tested this obvious truth by sending emails from “a putatively black or white alias” and then tabulating how many black-sounding names got replies from legislators compared to the same email sent by a white-sounding name. Even self-described Republican constituents were ignored by Republican lawmakers when those constituents had stereotypically black names. And white politicians from both parties were more likely to ignore the “black e-mailers” than the “white e-mailers.” So, if you’re a person of color in this country, please keep planning that Total Revolution, because that’s the only (slim) chance at actual racial equality here in America.

Daniel Butler, a professor of political science at Yale University, led the research project and found this:

The results of our experiment show that the black alias receives significantly fewer responses than the white alias. Further analyses of the heterogeneous treatment effects by the legislator’s party and the experimental groups that signal partisan affiliation show that legislators’ strategic partisan considerations can at best explain only a portion of the observed differential treatment in favor of the white alias. We then explore an alternative explanation for the discrimination that we observed — the race of the legislators themselves. White legislators of both parties discriminate against the black alias at nearly identical, statistically significant rates, while minority legislators do the opposite, responding more frequently to the black alias. This suggests, as many have argued, that the race of elected officials significantly affects how well minorities are represented. Our results also suggest that race remains a significant barrier to equality in the American political system.

Unfortunately, there is no evidence that having a minority president leads to any increased fairness or opportunity for minority Americans … unless there are some minority Americans running Wall Street firms, somewhere. [Yale.edu]