How to be an alien: excerpt from How to Be an Antiracist

Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be An Antiracist has a very amazing section on his youthful view that white people were aliens. When I mentioned it offhand to my daughter she laughed and was incredulous that an adult human would believe such a thing. I’ve decided to excerpt that part of the book so you can see it in context.


I did not knock on Claren’s door that day to discuss Welsing’s “color confrontation theory.” Or Diop’s two-cradle theory. He had snickered at those theories many times before. I came to share another theory, the one that finally figured White people out.

They are aliens,” I told Clarence, confidently resting on the doorframe, arms crossed. “I just saw this documentary that laid out the evidence. That’s why they are so intent on White supremacy. That’s why they seem to not have a conscience. They are aliens.”

Clarence listened, face expressionless. “You can’t be serious.”

“I’m dead serious. This explains slavery and colonization. This explains why the Bush family is so evil. This explains why Whites don’t give a damn. This explains why they hate us so damn much. They are aliens.” I’d lifted off the doorframe and was in full argumentative mode.

“You really are serious about this,” Clarence said with a chuckle. “If you’re serious, then that has got to be the dumbest thing I ever heard in my life! I mean, seriously, I can’t believe you are that gullible.” That chuckle turned to a grimace

“Why do you spend so much time trying to figure out White people?” he asked after a long pause. Claren had asked this question before. I always answered the same way.

“Because figuring this out is the key! Black people need to figure out what we are dealing with!”

“If you say so. But answer me this: If Whites are aliens, why is it that Whites and Blacks can reproduce? Humans can’t reproduce with animals on this planet, but Black people can reproduce with aliens from another planet? Come on, man, let’s get real.”

“I am being real,” I replied. But I really had no comeback. I stood and turned around awkwardly, walked to my room, plopped down on my bed, and returned to staring at the ceiling. Maybe White people were not aliens. Maybe they became this way on earth…

 

Less intelligent people want to exclude racists from the public square

Coefficients 
 BSE(B)Probability
SEX0.7390.2170.001
DEGREE-0.3020.0920.001
WORDSUM-0.3380.0680
POLVIEWS-0.0780.0780.317
INCOME-0.0260.060.671
AGE0.0070.0070.283
ATTEND0.090.0460.05
GOD-0.0180.0770.819
Constant3.3410.9370

It’s been a while since I’ve done much GSS blogging. Part of it is that I’ve got only so much attention I can devote to things, and most of my focus has been on the area of science that I’m interested in, and one or two non-scientific topics. The second variable is that I started blogging about GSS data a long time ago (~2008), and there’s only so much interesting stuff you can talk about.

But over the past few years there have been some controversies related to speech in public spaces, and what is and isn’t acceptable. There has also been some chatter that young people today in particular are intolerant of freedom of speech. I’ve wanted to address this, so here I go.

The toleration of racists is in today’s America is like testing a boundary condition. If you are willing to tolerate racist speech if you are not a racist, then you are pretty likely to be a free speech absolutist. I am not interested in rehashing arguments, I support free speech in an absolutist sense personally. Rather, let’s look at some data.

The General Social Survey has a question up from 2014 for the variable RACEMEET that asks:

Should people prejudiced against any racial or ethnic group be allowed to hold public meetings?

The question was asked in 2010 and 2014, and 2,651 individuals answered this. The answer was converted to ordinal, so I decided to probe relationships between variables and the score of toleration through regression. Some independent variables, such as political viewpoint (POLVIEWS), were recoded in an ordinal fashion (so that “extremely liberal” = 1, “liberal” = 2, and so forth, to “extremely conservative” = 7). Others, such as age, do not require any recoding. RACEMEET itself was converted to an ordinal.

The above results suggest that political ideology does not predict your response to this question much once you account for other variables. In fact, I did a query on ideological views first, and the results indicated to me what was really going on.

 EXT. LIB.LIB.SLIGHTLY LIB.MODERATESLGHTLY CONSERV.CONSERV.EXT. CONSERV.
1: Should definitely be allowed39241715221720
2: Should probably be allowed12242421222215
3: Should probably not be allowed26201922192422
4: Should definitely not be allowed23324043373843

As you can see moderates are relatively skeptical of allowing racists to have a public meeting. All of my analysis of the GSS indicates that moderates are not as smart as more liberal or conservative people.

Let’s go through the variables which were significant predictors above. First, sex.

MaleFemale
1: Should definitely be allowed2113
2: Should probably be allowed2221
3: Should probably not be allowed2023
4: Should definitely not be allowed3643

These results were expected. On the whole women tend to be more skeptical of absolutist free speech positions which allow offensive material to be promoted (women are more skeptical of allowing Communists to speak too in comparison to men, so it’s not because of the ideology of the speaker or viewpoint).

Then church attendance frequency:

Never attends churchMore than once a week
1: Should definitely be allowed202319142115131413
2: Should probably be allowed212127241316262220
3: Should probably not be allowed211720182824182423
4: Should definitely not be allowed373934443745434044

A modest difference.

Next, highest educational attainment:

No HSHSSome collegeCollegeGraduate
1: Should definitely be allowed714112632
2: Should probably be allowed1420232927
3: Should probably not be allowed2023211920
4: Should definitely not be allowed5943452621

The big gap here is between those with college and those without college educations.

Finally, we look at WORDSUM, which is a proxy for intelligence. It’s a ten word vocabulary test. Below in the columns are the number of answers a respondent got correct:

<55678910
1: Should definitely be allowed8101216243036
2: Should probably be allowed13221824263433
3: Should probably not be allowed27202322211818
4: Should definitely not be allowed52484738291812

I combined those who scored below 5 out of 10 (0-4) into one class. You can see that as score on this vocabulary test goes up, the view that racists should be allowed to meet in public goes up. It’s almost monotonic. The smartest people are more tolerant than the next smartest people who are more tolerant than the next smartest people, with the dumb being the least tolerant.

I made the below chart to illustrate this:

Often when it comes to views associated with “smart” people when you put it into some regression eduction accounts for all of the difference. In other words, the less intelligent educated have the same views as the intelligent educated, and the more intelligent but less educated have the same views as the less intelligent less educated. There are more older people who are intelligent but not educated, so it could be generational too (though in this case age does not seem to matter). A plausible hypothesis is that in many cases it is social milieu. Even if you are not bright, being in college inculcates certain values.

And college is a predictor. But these data show that even if you account for college education the brighter you are, the more likely you favor allowing tolerance for views that most people find intolerable.