Beautiful country though.

I love how Chyme has upped his takes since Covington. Who would let us know about those centrists if not for him?

Based on my research, it is the literal epicentre of racism in America.

That map is strange to me. I'm in a deep blue area (Burlington, VT), but it's on the border with a deep red area (Albany, NY). I would have imagined the areas to be culturally similar (maybe "similar" is the wrong word, but not so different that we're on the complete opposite sides of the spectrum)

Rust Belt and coal country leads in the racism against black people category.

I guess Texans search for ******** and ***** more than the N-word.

Rhode Island’s more racist than the florida panhandle??

Yeah, and Rochester and Buffalo NY more than much of the deep red conservative mountain west?

I thought it was consensus that upstate NY is super racist.

I don't know if that's such a good way to measure. Like places where there are very very few Black people scoring well there don't necessarily mean they are less racist than some of the more integrated areas that score badly.

What are the units of area on that map? Some of the clumps cross state boundaries.

Seems unlikely that clumps congressional districts are that homogenous. IE - there would be a spot of red in a sea of blue, etc.

Montana (has no data for part of it) is 0.26% Black. Looking at the list it struck me how racist Mississippi is. It's 36% Black. Black people vote almost 90% Dem and yet it's a solid GOP state.

Yeah Mississippi is a basket case.

But i will say in general that from my experience racism in the South is different from racism in a place like Montana with no blacks.

In the South, both races have had to live in close proximity for 400+ years. So the racism is more genial on it's face (or something) - and only really expressed behind closed doors - otherwise you'd have endless confrontations. Whereas in Montana or like rural Oregon especially for some reason - you get the hardcore nutjobs who make up all kinds of fantasies about people they never interact with.

A typical gas station conversation in the South might be some goateed white guy who you know damn well has a MAGA hat at home, joking around with some black guy in line about something. Both sides know who the other is - but are comfortable enough in their own skin - and most importantly familiar enough with seeing people who look like each other - to just BS through it.

Whereas a black guy shows up in a gas station in rural Oregon and everyone is terrified he's going to rob the place.

Growing up in the midwest I'd put us somewhere in the middle of that - where we always are. Moderation to the extreme.

I'm obviously generalizing. But you get the idea at least.

looks really scientific.

So one of the (many) problems with that is that it's based on Google searches for the n-word, which means that parts of the Deep South that have a lot of African-Americans are going to score better, because a big chunk of the population isn't going to be searching it at all.

That said, I'm pretty surprised that where I grew up (northern Delaware) is bright red. I'm actually wondering if areas where it's not socially acceptable to use the n-word in public at all are getting more Google searches than places where people say it out loud when black people aren't around. That could explain some of this, too.

I think the points made about people who are polite on the surface and racist underneath are definitely important to keep in mind with this stuff, as well.

Good point - a more accurate map would be "white people searching the n-word" which isn't really possible - although google probably knows but they'd never release it.

I think a much more accurate map is something like racist tweets:

This map definitely matches a lot more with what I would have guessed before seeing the other one. To further refine it, one would want to consider that Georgia, Louisiana and Florida are skewed by big metropolitan areas and thus the rural areas there are likely just as racist (or almost as racist) as Alabama and Mississippi.

I think a more accurate map is something like this

You know I supported Abe Lincoln when he wouldn't let the South secede. But now I'm starting to think he should have just let it happen.

The only material differences between rural NY/PA and the deep south are accents and climate.

If the US had done that I have no doubt it would have been necessary to build a wall along the Mason-Dixon Line to keep them out.

Runaways? Ya for sure. Both sides would have wanted it.

This is basically just a map of population density.

What's with the random dot in Cancun?

Plus, if we go by the Politics v8.8 definition of racist, only a few of those tweets count.