There's Only One Group Which Is Shifting American Politics to the Radical Left: White Liberals, "America's White Saviors"

Very interesting piece by Zach Goldberg at Tablet magazine.

Over the past decade, the baseline attitudes expressed by white liberals on racial and social justice questions have become radically more liberal. In one especially telling example of the broader trend, white liberals recently became the only demographic group in America to display a pro-outgroup bias--meaning that among all the different groups surveyed white liberals were the only one that expressed a preference for other racial and ethnic communities above their own...

In a recent Vox article based partly on the dissertation research I’ve been doing as a Ph.D. candidate in political science at Georgia State University, Matthew Yglesias described this ongoing transformation as "The Great Awokening." In Yglesias' account: "In the past five years, white liberals have moved so far to the left on questions of race and racism that they are now, on these issues, to the left of even the typical black voter. This change amounts to a 'Great Awokening.'" There is no simple or single explanation for how this process got started. It appears to be driven by an interplay of factors: preexisting tendencies among white liberals; a series of polarizing events like the police shooting of Michael Brown and subsequent riots in Ferguson, and the migrant crisis; the rise of millenials as a political force, and the explosion of social media and "woke" clickbait journalism. The years between 2012 and 2016 were a watershed for white liberal racial consciousness. But the seismic attitudinal shifts of those years have implications that go beyond race: They are also tied to a significant decrease in support for Israel and--perhaps more surprisingly--a rise in the number of white liberals who express negative attitudes about the perceived political power of American Jews.

Here's a pair of related findings. Seeking to determine if whites were more racist than any other race in America, the author surveyed members of all races to determine if, and to what extent, people preferred to deal with their own race than with other races.

The data did not find whites had more of a preference for whites than blacks for blacks and hispanics for hispanics -- in fact, it found that whites had less preference for whites than non-whites did for their own races.

Also note that special little finding about White Liberals in particular -- they are the only grouping to have a hostility, a marked anti-preference, for their own race.

This graph shows White Liberals' feelings about whites contrasted with whites of other political persuasions:

Remarkably, white liberals were the only subgroup exhibiting a pro-outgroup bias—meaning white liberals were more favorable toward nonwhites and are the only group to show this preference for group other than their own. Indeed, on average, white liberals rated ethnic and racial minority groups 13 points (or half a standard deviation) warmer than whites. As is depicted in the graph below, this disparity in feelings of warmth toward ingroup vs. outgroup is even more pronounced among whites who consider themselves "very liberal" where it widens to just under 20 points. Notably, while white liberals have consistently evinced weaker pro-ingroup biases than conservatives across time, the emergence and growth of a pro-outgroup bias is actually a very recent, and unprecedented, phenomenon.

The author points out that while White Liberals might hate most whites, they love White Liberals a whole heckuva lot. Example: White Liberals are now more liberal than most non-whites in many areas. White Liberals are only part of the Democrat coalition, nothing like a majority -- and yet, obviously, it's this group of White Liberals that sets policies on the left.

They just ignore what their non-white allies want.

Consider, for instance, that black and Asian Democrats and liberals are significantly more supportive of restrictive immigration policies and less positive toward racial/ethnic diversity than their white counterparts. Black and Hispanic Democrats and liberals are more sympathetic toward Israel than the Palestinians (likely due in part to the fact that they tend to be more religious). They are also more likely to part ways when it comes to contemporary social and gender-identity issues, including views of the #MeToo movement. In all, though they do converge on some issues, the attitudes and policy preferences of the woke white left are unrepresentative of the "marginalized communities" with whom they are supposed to be allies. And as woke liberals play a leading role in party politics, the Democrats, who are increasingly defined by their embrace of diversity and progressive stances on issues of racial justice, appear to do so, at least partly at the direction of a small white elite.

posted by Ace of Spades at 12:22 PM

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