Frequently I run into articles- arguing or just stating that conservatives are not, on a personal level racist. Apparently for example:

[O]ne would be foolish to deny the existence of racism within the Republican Party, but modern conservatives have clearly rejected racism, relegating it to the odd world of the “alt-right”.

(Source here)

As we will see though, openly racist attitudes are extremely common among conservatives and hardly ‘relegated’.

You might be wondering why bother tread this extremely well trodden ground? Frustration. I get sick of the commentator-class habit of making pronouncements about the way things are which could very easily be investigated by looking at data but aren’t. In commentator land, the tendency to call conservatives racist is psychoanalysed, critiqued as a symptom of polarisation, described as a form of tribalism and so on. Seemingly no one thinks to just look at the results of surveys of conservatives themselves to check whether maybe the critics who suggest conservatives are often racist might be right.

There are many arguments that conservative policies are structurally racist, but we will be focusing only on racism in the most direct sense- negative judgements of individuals on the basis of their race. We find clear evidence that an awful lot of conservatives are racist.

For our measure of racism we use percentage objecting to a close relative marrying a black person. While I’m sure someone will argue the toss, I’m not sure how any fair minded person could dispute that if you object to a relative marrying a black person simply because they’re black, you’re racist. For our source we’re using the General Social Survey. If you want to know more, or even conduct your own analyses, check it out here.

Extremely conservative white people are over four times more likely to say that they would oppose a black person marrying a close relative than extremely liberal white people:

Keep in mind that objecting to someone marrying a relative of yours is a pretty strong and blunt form of racism, it seems overwhelmingly likely that a lot of the remainder are also racists, just of a subtler shade. If 25% of conservative people are racist enough to admit to opposing their relatives marrying black people, the real percentage with racist attitudes has got to be substantially higher. I strongly suspect that the real figure is probably north of 50%, and keep in mind also this is just personal racism- not considering the structural effect of policies advocated for.

It’s not just a fluke or a one off for this variable either. 38% of extremely conservative and conservative white respondents say that black people are lazy(1) compared to 15% of Liberal and extremely Liberal respondents (note that the liberals don’t exactly cover themselves in glory either). We might think of 38% as a lower bound on the percentage of Conservatives who are racist.

And again, we have all sorts of reasons to think that the real figure is likely to be higher than this lower. Given 38% will admit to thinking that Black people are lazy in a survey, what is not being admitted, and what subtle forms might racism be taking?

So yeah, conservatism tends to be more racist in terms of the personal attitudes of its adherents than other political philosophies. I’m not suggesting that we end discussion and debate with conservatives here, it is possible to win people over from their racist beliefs, or the racist beliefs of others who support their ideologies. Winning over backwards and misled elements of the popular classes through patiently making a case will always be a strategic and moral necessity. Blinding ourselves to the relationship between conservatism and racism won’t help though.

To the people who keep arguing that conservatism doesn’t have a racism problem and that the very accusation is a form of polarisation, hysteria, outrage culture or extremism, I would suggest that there are times when no quantum of think-pieces can substitute for taking a minute to look at the data. You have access to a wealth of social scientific data, if you’re going to comment on society, you should look at it.

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(1): Give an answer of 5 or greater to the question are blacks hardworking where 4 is neutrality and anything higher is some shade of lazy.