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[–] 87 points 11 months ago (4 children)

I knew a guy in grad school who was a hard-core Trumper back in 2015/16 who thought I was too because we both owned guns and were white I guess.

Anyway - I was talking to him one day about an epidemiological analysis I was leading a team on for HHS. I'm a geographer, and our group was analyzing the demographic, spatial, socioeconomic, and temporal distribution of cases of gonorrhea in a major metropolitan area.

I explain that we're doing multivariate analysis on the demographic stuff because of all the issues caused by covariance showing "fake" correlation between gonorrhea and other variables. I explained that while the strongest indicator of gonorrhea in univariate analysis was whether or not you were black, that was actually an artifact from the fact that being black had a strong covariance with other variables like low income status, low employment rate, low education level, high population density, poor access to preventative healthcare, etc, and that when you took all the covariance into account there was no actual statistically significant correlation between gonorrhea and being black.

He then said something that was etched into my memory:

"It's just you and me here, [chilie]. You don't have to be all PC about thisbshit with me. We both know that just like how there's stupid breeds of dogs, there are stupid breeds of people, and it's a fucking disgrace that you can't study that honestly here."

That racist motherfucker has a Master's degree.

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  • [+] 40 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)
  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    It seems to me that racism is an easy thing for any human to fall into if they are not conditioned out of that from an early age by their family and by their social environment. Fear and hatred of others not like ourselves seems like it could be potentially be a "default" and may have even been an advantage early on when everyone outside your tribe was seen as an enemy. I haven't read anything about this but is just my impression. Also, you'd be surprised by how racist many countries and cultures are, especially those that are very racially homogeneous and that have less contact with people of other races.

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