New study suggests the obvious: Many republicans are incredibly racist

In recent years, social scientists have tried to find out whether important decisions are shaped by subtle biases. They've studied recruiters as they decide whom to hire. They've studied teachers, deciding which students to help at school. And they've studied doctors, figuring out what treatments to give patients. Now, researchers have trained their attention on a new group of influential people — state legislators.

Christian Grose, a political scientist at the University of Southern California, and graduate student Matthew Mendez wanted to see if state legislators were equally responsive to their constituents. For part of their experiment, the researchers sent emails to 1,871 legislators in 14 states with large Latino populations, asking the politicians what kind of documentation they needed to vote. They randomly assigned legislators to get the emails, but some emails came from a man named Jacob Smith, and others came from a man named Santiago Rodriguez.

"No one had really looked at sort of what underlies legislator behavior," Grose says. "Is there the possibility that legislators' own biases regarding race and ethnicity might rear their heads and that legislators might ignore Latino constituents more than white constituents?"

NPR's social science correspondent Shankar Vedantam dug into the study. Here are some highlights with some additional context.

Interview Highlights

On the study's findings

There was a difference, and the difference had a partisan tinge to it. Democrats responded about the same to both names, but Republicans were more likely to respond to the man with Anglo name rather than the Latino name. ...

Grose told me that he and Mendez decided to look a little bit deeper at the data and they found something very interesting. In many ways, the difference was less between Republicans and Democrats and more between some Republicans and other Republicans.

The researchers analyzed whether the Republicans in these states sponsored or co-sponsored voter ID laws. Now these are laws that are designed to reduce voting fraud. Critics of these laws have said that they disenfranchise minorities and others who are trying to vote for Democrats. Grose said that there was very strong correlation between Republicans who had failed to respond to the Latino constituent, and the ones who sponsored such laws.

"Republicans who support voter identification are different than those Republicans who did not support voter identification," Grose says. "Among those Republicans who did support voter ID laws, the Latino constituent was very unlikely to receive a response from their elected official. The difference was almost 40 percentage points, which is just one of the largest gaps I have ever seen."

Researchers say it may be possible to temporarily reduce racial biases.

An implication of the study is that the same bias that caused legislators not to respond to a Latino constituent also drove them to sponsor voter ID laws ... but let me put it into context in a couple ways. The first thing is, lots of legislators — both Republicans and Democrats — did not get back to either Jacob or Santiago. So if a legislator is unresponsive, it does not automatically mean that he or she is biased.

Second, this research does not establish cause and effect when it comes to voter ID laws. It's fair to say the Republicans who sponsored such bills seem to be biased when it comes to responding to the Latino name versus the Anglo name.

But we don't know if that bias is what prompted them to sponsor the voter ID laws. That might be an inference, that might be a correlation, but it's not a proven fact.

boards of FL wrote:http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/10/13/329581400/whats-in-a-name-it-could-matter-if-youre-writing-to-your-lawmaker

In recent years, social scientists have tried to find out whether important decisions are shaped by subtle biases. They've studied recruiters as they decide whom to hire. They've studied teachers, deciding which students to help at school. And they've studied doctors, figuring out what treatments to give patients. Now, researchers have trained their attention on a new group of influential people — state legislators.

Christian Grose, a political scientist at the University of Southern California, and graduate student Matthew Mendez wanted to see if state legislators were equally responsive to their constituents. For part of their experiment, the researchers sent emails to 1,871 legislators in 14 states with large Latino populations, asking the politicians what kind of documentation they needed to vote. They randomly assigned legislators to get the emails, but some emails came from a man named Jacob Smith, and others came from a man named Santiago Rodriguez.

"No one had really looked at sort of what underlies legislator behavior," Grose says. "Is there the possibility that legislators' own biases regarding race and ethnicity might rear their heads and that legislators might ignore Latino constituents more than white constituents?"

NPR's social science correspondent Shankar Vedantam dug into the study. Here are some highlights with some additional context.

Interview Highlights

On the study's findings

There was a difference, and the difference had a partisan tinge to it. Democrats responded about the same to both names, but Republicans were more likely to respond to the man with Anglo name rather than the Latino name. ...

Grose told me that he and Mendez decided to look a little bit deeper at the data and they found something very interesting. In many ways, the difference was less between Republicans and Democrats and more between some Republicans and other Republicans.

The researchers analyzed whether the Republicans in these states sponsored or co-sponsored voter ID laws. Now these are laws that are designed to reduce voting fraud. Critics of these laws have said that they disenfranchise minorities and others who are trying to vote for Democrats. Grose said that there was very strong correlation between Republicans who had failed to respond to the Latino constituent, and the ones who sponsored such laws.

"Republicans who support voter identification are different than those Republicans who did not support voter identification," Grose says. "Among those Republicans who did support voter ID laws, the Latino constituent was very unlikely to receive a response from their elected official. The difference was almost 40 percentage points, which is just one of the largest gaps I have ever seen."

Researchers say it may be possible to temporarily reduce racial biases.

An implication of the study is that the same bias that caused legislators not to respond to a Latino constituent also drove them to sponsor voter ID laws ... but let me put it into context in a couple ways. The first thing is, lots of legislators — both Republicans and Democrats — did not get back to either Jacob or Santiago. So if a legislator is unresponsive, it does not automatically mean that he or she is biased.

Second, this research does not establish cause and effect when it comes to voter ID laws. It's fair to say the Republicans who sponsored such bills seem to be biased when it comes to responding to the Latino name versus the Anglo name.

But we don't know if that bias is what prompted them to sponsor the voter ID laws. That might be an inference, that might be a correlation, but it's not a proven fact.

PACEDOG#1 wrote:

boards of FL wrote:http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/10/13/329581400/whats-in-a-name-it-could-matter-if-youre-writing-to-your-lawmaker

In recent years, social scientists have tried to find out whether important decisions are shaped by subtle biases. They've studied recruiters as they decide whom to hire. They've studied teachers, deciding which students to help at school. And they've studied doctors, figuring out what treatments to give patients. Now, researchers have trained their attention on a new group of influential people — state legislators.

Christian Grose, a political scientist at the University of Southern California, and graduate student Matthew Mendez wanted to see if state legislators were equally responsive to their constituents. For part of their experiment, the researchers sent emails to 1,871 legislators in 14 states with large Latino populations, asking the politicians what kind of documentation they needed to vote. They randomly assigned legislators to get the emails, but some emails came from a man named Jacob Smith, and others came from a man named Santiago Rodriguez.

"No one had really looked at sort of what underlies legislator behavior," Grose says. "Is there the possibility that legislators' own biases regarding race and ethnicity might rear their heads and that legislators might ignore Latino constituents more than white constituents?"

NPR's social science correspondent Shankar Vedantam dug into the study. Here are some highlights with some additional context.

Interview Highlights

On the study's findings

There was a difference, and the difference had a partisan tinge to it. Democrats responded about the same to both names, but Republicans were more likely to respond to the man with Anglo name rather than the Latino name. ...

Grose told me that he and Mendez decided to look a little bit deeper at the data and they found something very interesting. In many ways, the difference was less between Republicans and Democrats and more between some Republicans and other Republicans.

The researchers analyzed whether the Republicans in these states sponsored or co-sponsored voter ID laws. Now these are laws that are designed to reduce voting fraud. Critics of these laws have said that they disenfranchise minorities and others who are trying to vote for Democrats. Grose said that there was very strong correlation between Republicans who had failed to respond to the Latino constituent, and the ones who sponsored such laws.

"Republicans who support voter identification are different than those Republicans who did not support voter identification," Grose says. "Among those Republicans who did support voter ID laws, the Latino constituent was very unlikely to receive a response from their elected official. The difference was almost 40 percentage points, which is just one of the largest gaps I have ever seen."

Researchers say it may be possible to temporarily reduce racial biases.

An implication of the study is that the same bias that caused legislators not to respond to a Latino constituent also drove them to sponsor voter ID laws ... but let me put it into context in a couple ways. The first thing is, lots of legislators — both Republicans and Democrats — did not get back to either Jacob or Santiago. So if a legislator is unresponsive, it does not automatically mean that he or she is biased.

Second, this research does not establish cause and effect when it comes to voter ID laws. It's fair to say the Republicans who sponsored such bills seem to be biased when it comes to responding to the Latino name versus the Anglo name.

But we don't know if that bias is what prompted them to sponsor the voter ID laws. That might be an inference, that might be a correlation, but it's not a proven fact.

Maybe blame the people that elected them which would be people of all race, creed, and colors?

Wordslinger wrote:

PACEDOG#1 wrote:

boards of FL wrote:http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/10/13/329581400/whats-in-a-name-it-could-matter-if-youre-writing-to-your-lawmaker

In recent years, social scientists have tried to find out whether important decisions are shaped by subtle biases. They've studied recruiters as they decide whom to hire. They've studied teachers, deciding which students to help at school. And they've studied doctors, figuring out what treatments to give patients. Now, researchers have trained their attention on a new group of influential people — state legislators.

Christian Grose, a political scientist at the University of Southern California, and graduate student Matthew Mendez wanted to see if state legislators were equally responsive to their constituents. For part of their experiment, the researchers sent emails to 1,871 legislators in 14 states with large Latino populations, asking the politicians what kind of documentation they needed to vote. They randomly assigned legislators to get the emails, but some emails came from a man named Jacob Smith, and others came from a man named Santiago Rodriguez.

"No one had really looked at sort of what underlies legislator behavior," Grose says. "Is there the possibility that legislators' own biases regarding race and ethnicity might rear their heads and that legislators might ignore Latino constituents more than white constituents?"

NPR's social science correspondent Shankar Vedantam dug into the study. Here are some highlights with some additional context.

Interview Highlights

On the study's findings

There was a difference, and the difference had a partisan tinge to it. Democrats responded about the same to both names, but Republicans were more likely to respond to the man with Anglo name rather than the Latino name. ...

Grose told me that he and Mendez decided to look a little bit deeper at the data and they found something very interesting. In many ways, the difference was less between Republicans and Democrats and more between some Republicans and other Republicans.

The researchers analyzed whether the Republicans in these states sponsored or co-sponsored voter ID laws. Now these are laws that are designed to reduce voting fraud. Critics of these laws have said that they disenfranchise minorities and others who are trying to vote for Democrats. Grose said that there was very strong correlation between Republicans who had failed to respond to the Latino constituent, and the ones who sponsored such laws.

"Republicans who support voter identification are different than those Republicans who did not support voter identification," Grose says. "Among those Republicans who did support voter ID laws, the Latino constituent was very unlikely to receive a response from their elected official. The difference was almost 40 percentage points, which is just one of the largest gaps I have ever seen."

Researchers say it may be possible to temporarily reduce racial biases.

An implication of the study is that the same bias that caused legislators not to respond to a Latino constituent also drove them to sponsor voter ID laws ... but let me put it into context in a couple ways. The first thing is, lots of legislators — both Republicans and Democrats — did not get back to either Jacob or Santiago. So if a legislator is unresponsive, it does not automatically mean that he or she is biased.

Second, this research does not establish cause and effect when it comes to voter ID laws. It's fair to say the Republicans who sponsored such bills seem to be biased when it comes to responding to the Latino name versus the Anglo name.

But we don't know if that bias is what prompted them to sponsor the voter ID laws. That might be an inference, that might be a correlation, but it's not a proven fact.

Maybe blame the people that elected them which would be people of all race, creed, and colors?

That's utter bullshit. If that was true why would the republicans work so hard to deny voters who happen to be brown or black? The conservatives -- including the thousands of Dixiecrats who became republicans when civil rights legislation took away many (but certainly not all) of the barriers that had prevented black voting -- have currently put-up "voting I.D." requirements specifically aimed at diminishing African-American voters, many of which (Texas, Wisconsin) have just been adjudicated as illegal by Federal Courts.

The facts are, racism is rampant in this country, and you republicans are doing your very best to hold off the votes of brown and black citizens whose numbers keep increasing -- in fact, as Obama points out -- by gerrymandering and pushing "voter I.D." laws, you are absolutely committing political suicide.

Which is absolutely fine with me. Go for it ... LOL

gatorfan wrote:It's an unfortunate truth that peoples personal experience influence how they look at other's. The study cited is a small sample of reality. If I am white and can't get my state or federal legislature rep's to answer queries it's not because of my "name" and unknown racial profile, it's because the slugs I write to are too damn lazy to respond. Racial issues exist regardless of ethnicity.

PACEDOG#1 wrote:There's nothing scientific about a slanted data set formulated to get an answer you want.

2seaoat wrote:Another life long Republican calling the "new" Republican Party racist.  It is.  I hated Dixiecrats and what they stood for as a kid, and I hate what they have done to the republican party.  It is like a leech which has connected to a host and is sucking the vitality of a once vibrant Main street business party, and made it the party of fear, special interests, and failure.

boards of FL wrote:

gatorfan wrote:It's an unfortunate truth that peoples personal experience influence how they look at other's. The study cited is a small sample of reality. If I am white and can't get my state or federal legislature rep's to answer queries it's not because of my "name" and unknown racial profile, it's because the slugs I write to are too damn lazy to respond. Racial issues exist regardless of ethnicity.

Not true.  Read the results of the study.  If your state legislator is a democrat, it won't matter what your name is.  If your state legislator is a republican, however, don't expect a response unless you have a name that sounds white.  And this is the case by a 40% margin.

2seaoat wrote:Just another episode of Things We Already Knew Proved By Science.


Amen!  notice the immediate false equivalency posted by a forum member who denies the science.  It is a knee jerk involuntary response which confirms the science......again and again.   There are scientific solutions......but heck.....its not that easy to have courage and be rational.....knee jerk is always an easy answer.

gatorfan wrote:

boards of FL wrote:

gatorfan wrote:It's an unfortunate truth that peoples personal experience influence how they look at other's. The study cited is a small sample of reality. If I am white and can't get my state or federal legislature rep's to answer queries it's not because of my "name" and unknown racial profile, it's because the slugs I write to are too damn lazy to respond. Racial issues exist regardless of ethnicity.

Not true.  Read the results of the study.  If your state legislator is a democrat, it won't matter what your name is.  If your state legislator is a republican, however, don't expect a response unless you have a name that sounds white.  And this is the case by a 40% margin.

Did you bother reading the poll results I linked? Doubtful, if you did you would realize racism is not a Republican, Democrat, White, Black or anything else issue. It's an issue that can be readily applied to any ethnic group or even political group.

The little "study" you posted is hardly "science", the results even indicate the weaknesses if you know how to read. Just like the poll I linked.

Are there Republican "racists"? Hell yes. Are there Democrat "racists"? Hell yes.

But you once again choose to ignore information that doesn't suit your view.

2seaoat wrote:Since when have you been "rational"?
When I rationally broke down your racist post.  I hit a nerve again.  If only the nerves would extend to the brain......but the proof is in the pudding.