Racist Americans

Well some research from Stanford University has produced results indicating that Americans are indeed racist – but only amongst Democrats!

No I am not making this up. Research was done by Shanto Iyengar, a professor of communications at Stanford University. Over 2,300 took part in a survey where they were shown pictures and descriptions of Hurricane Katrina victims and asked how much assistance they should get from the Government.

Now amongst Republicans, the amount given didn’t vary by the race of the person shown. But with Democrats, they would give $1,500 more to whites than blacks or other minorities.

Earlier research also has shown that Republican voters support tough treatment of criminals regardless of race, while Democrats support harsher measures when the criminal suspect was non-white.

Articles on this are in the Washington Post and The Australian.

This is a benefit of being on the right – we are more likely to judge people as individuals, not as part of groups.

UPDATE: Oh I do enjoy it when people bite at my more trollish posts. Rob Salmond has done a good analysis of the survey in the comments thread.