THE REVERE ADVOCATE – FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2022 Page 7 ~ GUEST COMMENTARY ~ Troubling New Research on Political Bias and Bigotry by Dr. Luke Conway T alk about a strange political year. African Americans and Jewish Americans are typically the two most reliable liberal voting blocks in the country, and yet there have been troubling news stories and now data regarding the people who support them. For example, Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar sparked outrage by doubling down on comments many perceived to be anti-semitic. She is a Democrat who typically gets Democrat votes. Such left-wing hostilities towards Jews have become so bad in the United States that some American Jews are openly considering leaving the country and moving to Israel. Similar diffi culties face African Americans. Ilhan Omar’s controversy arrived barely two months after the racist “Uncle Tim” attacks propagated by liberals at African American Senator Tim Scott. These attacks were so markedly racist that the trend had to be shut down by Twitter. More recently, similarly racist “Uncle Clarence” attacks were levied at Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas after he voted to overturn Roe v. Wade. White liberals on Twitter even invoked the “N-word,” and were called out in a remarkable piece by a Columbia University sociology professor. These are the kind of racist behaviors that many associate with conservatives. But to be clear: Those are liberals expressing racist vitriol towards blacks and Jews. And again, blacks and Jews tend to faithfully vote for liberal Democrats. Of course, it is easy to pass off such vitriol as primarily political and not targeted at racial or ethnic groups. And indeed, social psychological research has demonstrated for years that both liberals and conservatives tend to show more biases against racial groups when they think members of those groups disagree with them politically. For example, a well-known study showed that the conservative bias against blacks was essentially because most conservatives believed that blacks tended to be politically liberal. However, when faced with black conservatives, the usual pattern reversed, and liberals—not conservatives—showed a dislike for blacks. Although politically motivated, this does not mean such biases have no societal consequences. After all, these are real ethnic groups and the dislike for them isn’t fi ctitious, no matter its motive. And that should matter. To better understand what is going on, in two recent studies, I and my colleagues tried to parse whether or not liberals and conservatives actually like representative members of these two groups. To do so, we took a trait from each group that is strongly empirically associated with the group in the real world and asked people what they thought about the resulting representative set of group members. So, for African Americans, we asked participants what they thought of “African American women/men who believe in the Bible.” This is a trait highly representative of African Americans: In the modern United States, Pew Data reveal that 77% of African Americans believe that “the Bible is the Word of God.” For Jews, we asked participants how they felt about “Jewish women/ men who are strong supporters of the nation of Israel's interests.” This is a trait highly representative of American Jews, with Gallup survey estimates suggesting that 90% of Jews in the United States show support for Israel. So what happens if you ask people about African American and Jewish persons in this way? The data could not be Appian Club Children Italian Classes T he Appian Club, 100 Fallon St. Stoneham, will be conducting children Italian class. Registration will be Saturday, Sept. 10 with classes beginning on Sept 17. Child must be 6 years old and classes will last for one hour and extend for twenty weeks. 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Both African Americans and Jewish Americans also possess collective traits that, if highlighted, would lead liberals to like them more (and conservatives to like them less). So this fi nding is likely is more about strong partisan beliefs than about racial or ethnic groups per se. But that doesn’t make it any POLITICAL | SEE Page 10 Hope Angel Fund for The RESEARCH AN INDEPENDENT NON-PROFIT CHARITY Saturday, September 10th, 2022 a sponsor • Collect pledges as a walker • Be a corporate sponsor The Angel Fund for ALS Research • 649 Main Street • www.theangelfund.org OurOur 50th Anniversarynniversar Dan 1972 R.Y.O. TOBACCO ---------TUBES CIGAR SMOKERS DELIGHT! 15 Handmade Cigars - Long Leaf - individually wrapped plus a $19. Surprise $43.95 Chris 2022 We Sell Cigars & Accessories Buy Cigars by the Box & SAVE! 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