Yale Research Finds Liberals Dumb Themselves Down When Speaking to Minorities

Conservative News DailyMay 12, 2023

I loved reading this study. I truly did.

I loved it despite the fact that the authors themselves didn’t understand the meaning of their research. They thought it proved that White liberals are trying too hard to be “allies” of minorities, but what it in fact proved is that conservatives respect minorities as individuals and treat them just as they treat White people.

The writeup itself is a bunch of liberal racist gobbledygook, filled with virtue signaling, misrepresentations, and blindness to the meaning of the findings.

Glorious. Truly glorious. Levels of stupidity that only academics can achieve. I am pretty sure it was put together by the Yale PR department rather than the researchers, who seem a bit more sober than the PR people.

The study to which I refer is not new. It is new to me, though, so I feel utterly free to share my thoughts because the study confirms what anybody who has spent time around condescending liberals instinctively knows.

The Yale writeup of the study is a perfect example of how clueless liberals are, and how blind to reason academics are so often.

New research suggests that bias may also shape daily interactions between racial minorities and white people, even those whites who tend to be less biased.

According to new research by Cydney Dupree, assistant professor of organizational behavior at Yale SOM, white liberals tend to downplay their own verbal competence in exchanges with racial minorities, compared to how other white Americans act in such exchanges. The study is scheduled for publication in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Notice how the discussion begins? They claim to be studying Whites who are LESS BIASED. The assumption is that White liberals are not biased against Black people, while their research shows exactly the opposite as we shall see. The researchers are liberal, know that liberals are good, and therefore liberals are not the biased ones. Conservatives, who behave the same with both Whites and minorities, are the genuinely biased ones.

Liberal=good. It is a law of nature.

So how do liberals behave, these truly good and unbiased people?

The team found that Democratic candidates used fewer competence-related words in speeches delivered to mostly minority audiences than they did in speeches delivered to mostly white audiences. The difference wasn’t statistically significant in speeches by Republican candidates, though “it was harder to find speeches from Republicans delivered to minority audiences,” Dupree notes. There was no difference in Democrats’ or Republicans’ usage of words related to warmth. “It was really surprising to see that for nearly three decades, Democratic presidential candidates have been engaging in this predicted behavior.”

In other words, Democrats talk down to Black and Hispanic people, while Republicans do not.

Republicans treat their audiences of whatever race the same, and with the same basic respect for their intelligence and ability to reason.

Hmmm. Who is “less biased?”

What about in work settings? Perhaps liberal politicians treat minorities as if they were children, but the average liberal treats their Black colleagues just the same as their White colleagues?

Nope, they too assume that Blacks are stupid.

The researchers found that liberal individuals were less likely to use words that would make them appear highly competent when the person they were addressing was presumed to be black rather than white. No significant differences were seen in the word selection of conservatives based on the presumed race of their partner. “It was kind of an unpleasant surprise to see this subtle but persistent effect,” Dupree says. “Even if it’s ultimately well-intentioned, it could be seen as patronizing.”

Hmm. Patronizing? Why would anybody assume that treating people as if they are stupid and incompetent is patronizing?

Dupree and Fiske suspect that the behavior stems from a liberal person’s desire to connect with other races. One possible reason for the “competence downshift,” as the authors describe it, is that, regardless of race, people tend to downplay their competence when they want to appear likeable and friendly. But it’s also possible that “this is happening because people are using common stereotypes in an effort to get along,” Dupree says.

Initial data from follow-up studies suggest that describing a black person as highly intelligent, thus reversing the stereotype, or as already highly motivated to get along with whites, thus removing the need to prove goodwill, can reduce the likelihood that a white person will downplay their competence in their interactions with the black person.

Do you see what they are doing here? Liberals treat minorities as if they are clumsy children because they want to be liked. They are just super nice people, that’s all.

Conservatives, those meanies, treat everybody the same, proving that they hate minorities and are a bunch of White supremacists. If they were truly good people they would treat Black people like children, as liberals do. Or something.

Despite all the evidence that White liberals are racist–they assume that Blacks cannot understand complicated things and that Blacks are incompetent–the researchers actually characterize the White liberals as “allies” to minorities.

Some allies.

While many previous studies have examined how people who hold racial bias behave in multi-racial settings, few have studied how whites who are more well-intentioned interact with people of other races. “There’s less work that explores how well-intentioned whites try to get along with racial minorities,” Dupree says. “We wanted to know their strategies for increasing connections between members of different social groups—and how effective these strategies are.”

Conservatives are the ones who aren’t well-intentioned. We know this because they treat minorities like they treat everybody else. We know liberals are well-intentioned because they treat Blacks and Hispanics like little children.

Yeah, you go with that.

There is, of course, an alternative explanation for why White liberals behave as if they look down on minorities as inferior: it may be because they look down on minorities because they believe them to be inferior.

Ever consider that? Isn’t that the assumption in every affirmative action program? In every attempt to eliminate testing requirements? In fact, in every DEI initiative is an assumption that minorities are incapable of achieving success on their own.

Here is the abstract for the study in full:

Most Whites, particularly socio-political liberals, now endorse racial equality. Archival and experimental research reveals a subtle but reliable ironic consequence: White liberals self-present less competence to minorities than to other Whites—that is, they patronize minorities stereotyped as lower status and less competent. In an initial archival demonstration of the competence downshift, Study 1 examined the content of White Republican and Democratic presidential candidates’ campaign speeches. Although Republican candidates did not significantly shift language based on audience racial composition, Democratic candidates used less competence-related language to minority audiences than to White audiences.Across five experiments (total N= 2,157), White participants responded to a Black or White hypothetical (Studies 2, 3, 4, S1) or ostensibly real (Study 5) interaction partner. Three indicators of self-presentation converged:sophistication of vocabulary selected for an assignment, competence-relatedtraitsselectedfor an introduction, and competence-related content of brief, open-ended introductions. Conservatism indicators included: self-reported political affiliation(liberal-conservative), Right-Wing Authoritarianism (values-based conservatism) and Social Dominance Orientation (hierarchy-based conservatism). Internal meta-analyses revealed that liberals—but not conservatives—presented less competence to Black interaction partners than to White ones. The simple effect was small but significant across studies, and most reliable for the self-reported measureof conservatism. This possibly unintentional but ultimately patronizing competence-downshift suggests that well-intentioned liberal Whites may draw on low-status/competence stereotypes to affiliate with minorities

Liberal racism is a very real, measurable phenomenon, based upon the assumption that minorities are unintelligent, incompetent, and lack self-control.

The latter is made clear by the criminal justice policies the Left is putting forward: they refuse to hold minority criminals responsible for their actions because, apparently, they do not believe they are competent moral actors capable of behaving in a civilized fashion.

That assumption is not true, and in fact, encourages criminality among minorities who are assured they will catch a break. For many, it becomes rational to behave as a criminal because they can get away with it.

The statistics are actually pretty clear that success in America is not determined by race. Whites are, among ethnic groups, pretty much in the middle of the pack in income compared to other racial groups. This data is a bit old, but the chart is so easy to understand that I chose to use it. The current data is not much different.

The correlate here is not race, but education. Particularly what kind of education, as the Asian-Americans represented tend to be highly educated with technical skills in high demand. Indian Americans average 80% higher incomes than White Americans. Black immigrants to the United States make $15,000 a year more than American-born Blacks. Race is not the variable that matters.

If liberals really wanted to help minorities who are lower on the socioeconomic ladder, improving our public education system would be the obvious answer. And, of course, there is no institution in America harder to reform than our union-dominated public school system.

Go figure.