Monday, September 09, 2013

A train experiment

Anthony Burrow, an assistant professor at Cornell University, has conducted an interesting experiment on Chicago trains.

He had a group of 110 volunteers ride on the trains and record their moods during the journey. The result was that psychological distress increased when people became a minority within the carriage regardless of what race the volunteer was.

In other words, people of all races felt discomfort being a minority:
Participants' negative mood heightened as the ratio of people from different ethnic backgrounds aboard the train increased, regardless of their own race and after controlling for various factors, such as an individual's personality, familiarity with metro trains and perceived safety of the surrounding neighborhoods.

This suggests that it is kinder and wiser to allow people to continue to live within their own ethnic groups. It is evidence as well that the "white privilege" theory of ethnic solidarity is false, as members of all ethnic groups, and not just whites, feel more comfortable when they are part of an ethnic majority.

7 comments:

  1. The conclusions of the study have been known and understood by man for millenia. It does not take a small study using significantly insignificant numbers of people to reach that conclusion.

    "White privilege" is not a theory (a theory must first be based upon a hypothesis). It is just another tool to use to batter and demoralise traditional white Western civilisation.

    Therefore the study is essentially irrelevant as it demonstrates what human society has known and understood for thousands of years. Human societies, in order to remain stable, must be based upon one ethnicity and one religion. And human societies have always treated the alien with suspicion and wariness.

    Given that "white privilege theory" is not a theory and that human distrust of aliens has been understood throughout history, then it is apparent that the concept of white privilege is just a scam played upon dumb white liberals to force them to give up their homes and positions.

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  2. Not sure exactly what tests you're using to determine what is or isn't adequate to qualify as a hypothesis.

    But the whiteness theorists start out with the idea that race shouldn't matter. So they then have to explain why race does, in fact, seem to matter. Their explanation then runs along the familiar lines that whites socially constructed concepts of race in order to uphold an unearned privilege vis-à-vis those who were excluded from this category.

    Anon, you and I obviously agree on some substantial issues. However, I suspect that your reluctance to allow whiteness theory to qualify as a theory and to treat it as simply a scam played on dumb white liberals is because you don't see the problems we have today as something that flowed, at least in part, from the application of liberal principles on society - principles that were held by our own intelligentsia/political class.

    A lot of trads go for the "outsiders with a Machiavellian agenda" explanation. Some of these explanations have some merit but one of the problems with them is that they put the power in the hands of shadowy outsiders rather than in the false ideas - ideas that can be contested - that are held within our own intelligentsia.

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  3. Anon, I know we didn't need this study to tell us what we and anyone with common sense already understood. But the fact is that the more empirical evidence like this there is that rubbishes the progressives' flawed assumptions, the closer we are to seeing political orthodoxy change.

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  4. I've removed a few comments. Once again, the thread seems to have been subject to an "intervention" of sorts by one or more people. I seem to have been correct though in suggesting that the interventionist(s) believes in "power in the hands of shadowy outsiders" - he/they claimed that all power was in the hands of a network of banking families.

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  5. I think Mark has made it clear before he doesn't want anti-semitic discussions or people trying to invoke the "you know who" argument.
    I think nearly all people are sick of it in the western world.

    This isn't an invitation for that topic either.

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  6. I've just deleted what has to be one of the pettiest, most off topic and pointless threads I've ever read.

    One commenter got it right when he complained that most of the comments in the thread were there to,

    heckle, derail and discuss semantics and meaning till the cows come home.

    If people were oriented to having some real effect on the world they would not carry on like this.

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  7. Back to the topic, that's an excellent find Mark.

    On American "race realist" sites, commenters often put a great emphasis on black criminality (which is true) to explain why integration is bad and they feel uncomfortable around large numbers of blacks (only partly true).

    I've thought for a while now it's a weak argument: what about East Asians? They're less criminal than even whites. Is integration with them a good idea?

    Articles like this demonstrate why not. I lived in China when I was just out of college for a few months and was offered a job there with a Western company. I turned it down and returned home. I was still mostly a racial liberal; I didn't think race should matter. That view was challenged every time I got in the subway and was greeted by stares, every time I wondered if I was being cheated bargaining at a merchant's, and every time I looked in the mirror, after an entire day of seeing Asian faces, and started thinking I looked weird (had always thought of myself as a pretty good looking guy before lol).

    For a thousand little and big reasons, racial integration just doesn't work.

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