Weird / Funny

Narrowing Down On Racism Using Google

Google

The highest concentration of racist people live in the rural Northeast as well as the rural South, according to a recent study published in the journal PLOS ONE. The methodology used to determine the most racist places in america was the usage of Google searches of the N-word.

Seth Stephens-Davidowits, the studies author, wrote in a previous paper where he measured the effect of racist attitudes on Barack Obama’s electoral prospects, saying that they are “unlikely to suffer from major social censoring.”

Google data, evidence suggests, are unlikely to suffer from major social censoring (…) Google searchers are online and likely alone, both of which make it easier to express socially taboo thoughts.

According to the Washington Post it’s important to note that not all people searching for the N-word are motivated by racism, and not all racists search for that word, wither. But aggregated over several years and several million searches, the data gives a pretty good approximation of where a particular type of racist attitude is the strongest.

The AJC reports that the authors of the study note that the methodology “correlates strongly” with other ways social scientists have measured attitudes about race.

Aside from the Gulf Coast region and a stretch of the Appalachians along the East Coast, other concentrated areas of racist Googling include Michigan’s upper Peninsula and a section of Ohio. The Midwest and West Coast appear to be in the clear.

Researcher of the paper found that racist searchers correlated with higher mortality rates for blacks, even after accounting for a variety of racial and socio-economic variables, concluding that “racist google searches is associated with an 8.2% increase.”

Results from our study indicate that living in an area characterized by one standard deviation greater proportion of racist google searches is associated with an 8.2% increase in the all-cause mortality rate among Blacks.

What are your thoughts on this racism related study?

Click to comment
To Top

Hi - We Would Love To Keep In Touch

If you liked this article then please consider joing our mailing list to receive the latest news, updates and opportunities from our team.

We don't want an impostor using your email address so please look for an email from us and click the link to confirm your email address.