Yes, there are way too many tortured euphemisms for “racism” in the media, but “racially conservative” is a poli/soc sci term meant to identify/plot relative positions on a continuum in polling and research. Pollsters have *been* using it.
If you wanted to look at the relationship btwn attitudes on race and, like, NFL players protesting, you’d first need to plot out some kind ofmetric for those attitudes: whether respondents agree that the police discriminate against Black people or think Black people are criminals
People who answered strongly in either direction would demonstrate higher rates of racial conservatism/liberalism.
Some researchers call it “racial resentment,”and there is a lot of controversy over the best ways to measure these attitudes in polls. (The kind of obvious racism espoused by people — “i do not believe in interracial marriage” — is called, uh, “old-fashioned racism.”)
Im writing a script for our next ep abt dogs and had a fun conversation w/ a political scientist (and dog lover) re: how racial conservatism/liberalism predicted how folx felt abt Bo Obama.(!) It had little effect on opinions of Splash Kennedy — same breed of dog, same breeder.
This part will prolly not make it into the episode but here’s the study: today.yougov.com/topics/politic…
The important point tho is that it wasn’t attitudes abt *policy* that affected these opinions abt Bo Obama — it was specifically racial attitudes. But you need to identify and label those attitudes to see whether and how they matter. Hence “racial conservative.”
