Stereotypes

Jumping off a Steven Medvic post, Phil Klinker rounds up data from the 2004 NES which shows that about half of white people think African-Americans are lazier than whites, almost 40 percent say that African-Americans are less intelligent than whites, and again about 40 percent of whites say that African-Americans are less trustworthy.

Think about the implications of that for, say, a black job applicant for a position for which there are also some white applicants who seem reasonably qualified. It'd be interesting to see something about the age structure of adherence to these stereotypes, or else a time series presentation of this information, so we could get a sense of how much things are likely to change over time.

Comments

The implication is an insanity of bitterness that burdens the lower rungs of the AA community. It is the epitomy of smug ignorance to frame it as ingratitude towards America as many conservative 'thinkers' do.

Posted by Northern Observer | July 17, 2008 11:12 AM

Also, someway of measuring relative to the level of diversity, e.g., what percentage of whites who regularly interact with African-Americans hold these beliefs, versus those who do not... geography, urban/rural breakdowns, etc.

Posted by Bryce | July 17, 2008 11:16 AM

An interesting thing about posts concerning racism on high-traffic blogs like this one is that you get posts refuted by other posts. You're going to get a bunch of people here saying that racism is a thing of the past, and that black people need to stop whining, or words to that effect; and then you're going to get a bunch of people who are enthusiastically racist, thus undercutting the opinion of the first group.

Posted by Freddie | July 17, 2008 11:24 AM

you're going to get a bunch of people who are enthusiastically racist, thus undercutting the opinion of the first group.

Enthusiastically racist? You think? I don't know of any regular commenters on this blog who might hold such attitudes.

Posted by James Gary | July 17, 2008 11:30 AM

The post is signed Phil Klinkner.
I suffer from this too on the rare occasions anyone links to me. But surely it's worse for you, Matt. How many ways are there of mis-spelling Yglesias?

Posted by James Wimberley | July 17, 2008 11:33 AM

Re: intelligence - I think a lot of people confuse performance on standardized tests with intelligence.

Frankly, I'm shocked so many A/A trust white people.

Posted by JB | July 17, 2008 11:45 AM

You don't need to speculate. The research is pretty solid that, given two job applicants with identical portfolios, the one is black, looks, black or even has a voice that sounds black will be less likely to get interviewed or get a job. A well-publicized study by Devah Pager a few years back showed that a white convict had better odds than an otherwise similar black with no criminal record.

Posted by CSF | July 17, 2008 11:49 AM

Well, for one, at least 2 of the 8 people on the Atlantic blogroll (McArdle and Sullivan) believe that black people are, ON AVERAGE, genetically dumber than whites (In McArdle's case she think they're also lazier). This is among urban intellgensia. I'm shocked the levels in the polls aren't higher.

Posted by rickm | July 17, 2008 11:51 AM

Enthusiastically racist? You think? I don't know of any regular commenters on this blog who might hold such attitudes.

Chris Ford definitely fits the bill. Some of his posts in the last few weeks have made this clear. I think he might even be willing to admit it.

Posted by mpowell | July 17, 2008 11:54 AM

mpowell, something tells me James was being sarcastic.

Posted by ajay | July 17, 2008 12:09 PM

what percentage of whites who regularly interact with African-Americans hold these beliefs, versus those who do not... geography, urban/rural breakdowns, etc.

From what I have seen those whites who regularly interact with A/A are more likely to hold these beliefs than those who don't. We also saw in the primaries that whites from states with very small A/A communities tended to support Obama. This is one of the flaws in multicultural theory.
Stereotypes can be exacerbated by close contact.

Also, while there is scientific evidence for the intelligence gap ON AVERAGE, it is quite possible for this to be true but for A/A to still be subject to discrimination when their qualifications are equal. This man http://www.jeremywariner.com/ for example has probably been told many times that he shouldn't try to run sprints competitively because black athletes ON AVERAGE are faster.

And as a white I can't believe anyone would say we are more trustworthy.

Posted by Just A Yahoo | July 17, 2008 12:23 PM

Yes, SomeThing tElls me VEry much that JameS wAs beIng sarcastic; empLoying what wE might call iRony.

Posted by Matt Weiner | July 17, 2008 12:32 PM

Hmm, but the problem is we can't use Affirmative Action, because white people will get super mad and it'll be a "distraction," and we can't have that. WHAT TO DO!!!

Posted by tomemos | July 17, 2008 12:33 PM

Do you know how these questions were asked? I think there's a difference between asking whether African-Americans are lazier/less intelligent/less trustworthy inherently or in practice.

In terms of inherent characteristics (the Bell Curve notwithstanding), I don't think there's any reliable evidence that suggests a substantial difference either way. In practice, there could be. I think most would agree that poor people, on average, are lazier/less trustworthy/less intelligent than rich/middle class people. There are sociological reasons for this. Certain characteristics show a correlation with income level. Since African-Americans are disproportionately poor, doesn't that mean, on average, that they are lazier/less intelligent/less trustworthy? Is it racist to say so?

I think there's a big difference between considering individuals and considering averages. While calling an individual less intelligent because of his race is obviously racist, it's not necessarily racist to say that one race, on average, develops less intelligence due to sociological reasons. It might even be a reason to rethink some of our education policies.

Posted by Wes | July 17, 2008 1:09 PM

Do you know how these questions were asked? I think there's a difference between asking whether African-Americans are lazier/less intelligent/less trustworthy inherently or in practice.

In terms of inherent characteristics (the Bell Curve notwithstanding), I don't think there's any reliable evidence that suggests a substantial difference either way. In practice, there could be. I think most would agree that poor people, on average, are lazier/less trustworthy/less intelligent than rich/middle class people. There are sociological reasons for this. Certain characteristics show a correlation with income level. Since African-Americans are disproportionately poor, doesn't that mean, on average, that they are lazier/less intelligent/less trustworthy? Is it racist to say so?

I think there's a big difference between considering individuals and considering averages. While calling an individual less intelligent because of his race is obviously racist, it's not necessarily racist to say that one race, on average, develops less intelligence due to sociological reasons. It might even be a reason to rethink some of our education policies.

Posted by Wes | July 17, 2008 1:11 PM

it's not necessarily racist to say that one race, on average, develops less intelligence due to sociological reasons.

Is it racist to say that some fraction of those differences may be due to diffeences in genetics as well? I know that a lot of people believe this constitutes racism, but I don't think so.

We know that genetic differences cause some races to digest milk better than others, to live at high altitudes better, to be better protected from the sun, etc etc. Believing these things to be true doesn't make someone a racist.

I would say that beliefs about one race being "superior" to another in some area are racist beliefs only if they are based on emotion and not supported by the evidence. If the current evidence is suggestive and not conclusive, then reasonable people may simply disagree in good faith about how that evidence should be interpreted.

Posted by Jim W | July 17, 2008 1:25 PM

That certainly sounds reasonable. It only becomes racist when people use it to justify treating individuals differently because of their race.

Posted by Wes | July 17, 2008 1:36 PM

From data in that link, it doesn't really look that bad to me. The question was on a scale ranging from -6 to +6. Answering a "0" meant exactly average. If you just look at -1, 0, and 1 (where people believe the differences are slight or nonexistent) you come up with these numbers:

Whites who think blacks and whites are equally (or nearly equally as) hardworking: 73.7%
Blacks who think blacks and whites are equally (or nearly equally as) hardworking: 86.89%

Whites who think blacks and whites are equally (or nearly equally as) intelligent: 78.61%
Blacks who think blacks and whites are equally (or nearly equally as) intelligent: 88.15%

Whites who think blacks and whites are equally (or nearly equally as) trustworthy: 79.05%
Blacks who think blacks and whites are equally (or nearly equally as) trustworthy: 83.45%

One particularly interesting thing about the numbers: for whites, there's a fairly big jump between percentages for -1 and +1 answers. That is, there's a fairly large number of people who think that whites are just barely smarter, less lazy, and more trustworthy. But for blacks, there's not that much of a difference between the -1 and +1 percentages. A given black is almost as likely to believe that whites are slightly smarter, etc., as they are to believe that blacks are slightly smarter, etc.

This is what I take away from that: there's a relatively small number of hardcore racists, both white and black. There are slight differences in the mainstream, with opinion skewing to believe that whites are slightly smarter etc. than blacks. This last sentence is true not just among whites, but among blacks as well. One would expect people to over-rate their own ethnic group, but this is not the case, possibly because some blacks have bought into the stereotyping.

So yeah, the results aren't all that alarming, and basically intuitive.

Posted by Tel | July 17, 2008 1:49 PM

Except that (a) the "races" as usually discussed in the US, are not biological but political constructs; (b) historically, people who research differences in intelligence by race routinely consciously or unconsciously "adjust" their research to prove their favorite race is superior and other races are inferior; (c) Any difference found in this research is so small compared to the diversity within the "races" that it is cruel and counterproductive to use it to negatively judge indviduals, and (d) the people who constantly fuss over this point always want to use the findings to harm, not help, the people they find inferior.

Please refer to Stephen Gould, etc. for implications of the above details on the sad history of this dreary topic.

Overall, whatever good the "race" researchers claim to be trying to do, the only consistant result of their research is to encourage cultural racists and to deprive the victims of cultural racism of legal protection and opportunities to overcome the wrongs done them.

Posted by Berken | July 17, 2008 2:23 PM

(a) the "races" as usually discussed in the US, are not biological but political constructs

You can define race in a variety of ways. Since you seem to be advocating protections for the victims of cultural racism, I can only assume that you, too, have some way of determining whether someone is or is not a member of some disadvantaged group. For example, you can use self-classification (fairly standard, not least because it's easy). Or you can look for a basket of genetic markers and try to estimate ancestry percentages, the way various (rather dubious) DNA testing outfits do.
In either case, it's still of interest to measure average attributes and outcomes for these groups.

(b) historically, people who research differences in intelligence by race routinely consciously or unconsciously "adjust" their research to prove their favorite race is superior and other races are inferior

I'm sure there are cases of this, but it's unlikely to be universal. In any case you would have to wonder why the (mostly white) researchers on these matters consistently assign higher average IQ to various Asian populations.

cruel and counterproductive to use it to negatively judge indviduals

The better your own ability to interview, test or evaluate someone, the less rational it is to rely on stereotypes and prejudice. For example, the armed forces can afford to be colorblind because they have a very nice battery of tests (the AFQT) that they can use to evaluate applicants.

Overall, though, the average black person is not as smart as the average white. The main argument these days seems to be about whether there are significant genetic contributions to this. Trying to open a front where you pretend that we actually can't determine whether blacks or whites are (currently and on average) smarter is funny in a way - but even those who believe that the differences we see are entirely environmental (lead poisoning, legacy of slavery, poor environments, less breastfeeding and on and on) don't normally try to stake out this position. The best measures of intelligence we have (AFQT, IQ tests, SATs, GREs) all indicate that there is currently a gap. Even if it's not innate it borders on ludicrous to pretend it doesn't exist at all.

Posted by bbartlog | July 17, 2008 4:13 PM

I would argue that the differences in the average individual members of different races are so minimal that it's never rational to rely on stereotypes and prejudice. Stereotypes tend to wildly overestimate these differences.

Posted by Wes | July 17, 2008 4:31 PM

Matt,

You know perfectly well that the reason stereotypes are stereotypes is because they are statistically true.

Posted by Steve Sailer | July 17, 2008 4:40 PM

Humans are adept at categorizing everything we encounter. This is usually done automatically and unconsciously. I think stereotypes are a symptom of this tendency. Clinging to stereotypes in the presence of contradicting information is certainly irrational, however using stereotypes when there is no other information available is the rational thing, provided the stereotypes themselves are accurate.

This is basically Bayesian reasoning. Substitute "prior probabilities" for stereotypes, and "posterior probabilities" for your revised beliefs once more detailed information is obtained.

Posted by Jim W | July 17, 2008 4:42 PM

You know perfectly well that the reason stereotypes are stereotypes is because they are statistically true.

Are Jews greedy, Steve? Conniving? Weak and emasculated?

Posted by Freddie | July 17, 2008 5:18 PM

Now, let's talk policy. Good public policy would make it easier for individuals to distinguish themselves from their group averages. Unfortunately, the general policy trend has been in the wrong direction.

How can a black applicant for a bank teller job show he's, say, smart enough to do the job?

The most obvious way is for the bank to give a standardized test to all job applicants, just as the military makes everybody who wants to enlist take the AFQT and most top colleges make everybody who wants to be a student take the SAT or ACT, all of which correlate to a high degree with IQ tests. Unfortunately, the 1991 Civil Rights Act, encoding the 1972 Griggs v. Duke Power Supreme Court decision, erected a lot of roadblocks to the use of standardized tests by businesses.

The irony, of course, is that the reason objective written cognitive tests are out of favor legally is because any valid one (i.e., one that predicts performance better than random guessing) has "disparate impact" on some legally protected group: on average, blacks and Hispanics do worse on average than Asians and whites on any and all predictively valid cognitive tests. Inevitably, though, this legal bias against written tests makes it harder for the black and Hispanic exceptions to this tendency to prove they are exceptions.

What about attesting to the applicant's work ethic and honesty? Personal references are an obvious tool here. Unfortunately, court decisions in recent decades have made many people worried about giving out negative evaluations, so they have become less useful.

So, the usual outcome is that employers are pressured by fear of discrimination lawsuits by the government to impose crypto-quotas on themselves and take the highest scorers on tests in each protected minority. This has some advantages, but, of course, it just reinforces stereotypes, since the protected minorities on the job are both more numerous and less productive than if hiring was colorblind.

The common alternative is to throw out objective measures such as tests and impose credential-based hiring -- i.e., you must be a college graduate to apply for this job. The federal government has largely gone over to this since the junking of the federal civil service exam (the superbly validated PACE) for reasons of disparate impact in 1981. Not surprisingly, the quality of the federal workforce has been in decline.

Posted by Steve Sailer | July 17, 2008 5:46 PM

OT: mpowell, did you work for a huge west coast aerospace firm in a past life? Just curious to see if it's that small of a world.

Posted by cmholm | July 17, 2008 7:58 PM

"half of white people think African-Americans are lazier than whites, almost 40 percent say that African-Americans are less intelligent than whites, and again about 40 percent of whites say that African-Americans are less trustworthy."

This pretty well establishes that the Bell Curve is correct, since 50 percent of white Americans are obviously projecting their laziness onto blacks, 40 percent are obviously less intelligent than blacks, and 40 percent are obviously less trustworthy than blacks.

These percentages establish that 40-50 percent of whites are fucked up.

The Bell Curve posits that fifty percent of the population are dumber than the other fifty percent. This is obviously correct.

What we have here is another "Duh!" moment.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | July 17, 2008 10:19 PM

"From what I have seen those whites who regularly interact with A/A are more likely to hold these beliefs than those who don't. We also saw in the primaries that whites from states with very small A/A communities tended to support Obama. This is one of the flaws in multicultural theory.
Stereotypes can be exacerbated by close contact."

That connection is not exactly valid.

Obama had strong support in Dem primaries were blacks were either non-existent or existent is very sizable minorities. So he won whites in a lily-white state like Iowa but he also won whites in states with very significant AA populations, I believe Georgia was one example.

The reasoning brought to mind would be Obama won whites in states where blacks simply weren’t there or they were in enough numbers where whites had learned to live with them. It was states in-between, like Pennsylvania, where he had trouble.

Posted by Raindog | July 18, 2008 1:59 AM

Obama had strong support in Dem primaries were blacks were either non-existent or existent is very sizable minorities. So he won whites in a lily-white state like Iowa but he also won whites in states with very significant AA populations, I believe Georgia was one example.

I'm not sure if this is true. I thought that, on average, his white support declined as the AA population increased, and so the inverted-U support was due to adding a declining white support curve to a curve representing an increasing number of AA voters. Whether or not this was the case in the Dem primary, it will certainly be true in the general, as white support for Obama will be lowest where there are the highest AA populations, in the South.

Posted by Jim W | July 18, 2008 9:10 AM

We also saw in the primaries that whites from states with very small A/A communities tended to support Obama.... Stereotypes can be exacerbated by close contact.

Non sequitur; you haven't shown that whites in states with large A/A communities are in close contact with those A/A communities. To do this you at least would have to look at county-level A/A communities, or something like that.

To pick a random case, Luzerne County in Pennsylvania (Wilkes-Barre) voted for Clinton 75-25. It's 97% white. If the residents of Luzerne county have some sort of animus against African-Americans, it's not because they're in contact with them on a daily basis.

A more convincing explanation I've seen for why state-level A/A populations matter is that in states with high A/A populations, intrastate politics can involve stirring up the resentments of rural whites against (often black) city dwellers.

Posted by Matt Weiner | July 19, 2008 3:08 PM

...or competition between mostly white rural people and blacker urban populations, if you (yes, you, you're the only person reading this) don't like the lack of agency in the "stirring up" formulation.

Posted by Matt Weiner | July 19, 2008 4:49 PM