The frequency of 'diversity and inclusion' mentions in the NYT was always low. By 2016, though, 0.086% of articles mentioned it (up from 0.0257% in 2015)
NYT mentions of 'police brutality' reached roughly 0.37% of all articles (or search results) in 2018.
In hindsight, I should have done a combined search for 'racism' and 'racist' (instead I only pulled data on the former). Thus, here's the graph for mentions of 'racist'
Note that the slope begins pointing upward before 2015, which is consistent with my findings that the 'wokening' was underway before Trump entered the picture.
This term was mentioned only 473 times overall--most of the articles of which were published only over the past few years.
Ran a combined search for this one (probably should have just used 'of color')
These terms saw 559 total mentions--most of which, once again, came over the past few years.
This is a less pronounced trend by comparison, though still some growth over the past few years
First NYT mention of LGBT (N=1,871) was in 2001
In response to @KatyaSedgwick's suggestion, I ran a combined LGBT + LGBTQ search. Such actually moves the first NYT appearance back to 1995 (though they didn't use the acronym. Impressed that Lexisnexis nonetheless caught it)
Someone requested a 'transgender' search. Here you go. First (and isolated) mention, believe it or not, was in 1986.
Also saw a request for 'safe space'. First (of 1,036) appearance of these words in the NYT was in a 1983 article on a school ('Safe Space') for the deaf. Something tells me the context of its usage has changed overtime. Anyways, here you have it.
Forgot to run the percentages for 'social justice' (which appears to be trending towards 1% of all NYT articles), so here
Oh, to clear up any confusion: I shifted over to percentages vs. absolute numbers out of concern that the trends were largely a function of increases in NYT article output.
Clear Trump/travel ban effect here, though some small degree of growth in the preceding years.
Also forgot to graph for percentages for 'whiteness' (see below). Someone asked me why I didn't calculate the percentages for some of the non-NYT graphs. Short answer: tallying the annual # of NYT articles is a lot more manageable than tallying the annual # of ALL news articles.
Just pulled this one out of my critical theory hat
For comparison, I graphed some random control terms
This graph was the result of a coding error. So as to not mislead (60%?!!), I've deleted it. On your right is the corrected figure
Could very well be a spurious correlation (r=0.714), but the number of monthly NYT articles mentioning 'racism' does correspond to increased Google search interest (note that GoogleTrends begins in 2004, so I had to limit the data accordingly)
Some potentially relevant contextual data: the percent of people saying they regularly read NYT roughly doubled between 2012-2016. Nearly all of this growth occurred among digital readers (i.e. those who visit NYTOnline).
I cross-verified this increase with data from Statista (though it only begins in 2014)
Readership seems to have doubled across the board, but liberals (16%->31%) still (naturally) constitute the majority of readers.
This might be relevant insofar as a) perceptions of the prevalence of discrimination among liberals saw tremendous increases across this period, and b) there's a robust relationship between NYT readership and perceiving more discrimination
Some of you requested it, so here it is
If conservatives would just have more empathy, we could finally redistribute all the wealth, dissolve the borders, pay reparations, sign the GND, and live in an egalitarian multicultural utopia.
As with racism, the number of monthly NYT articles mentioning 'empathy' closely tracks (r=0.825) Google searches for 'empathy'
This is over *all* newspaper results per year (not just NYT).
I knew it
LexisNexis shows results for 190 NYT articles referring to African American enslavement in 2012. That number grew to 805 in 2018.
White people have never been more popular. Number of articles mentioning between 2011-2018: 507 (2011), 547 (2012), 577 (2013), 843 (2014), 851 (2015), 1,476 (2016), 1,681 (2017), 2018 (1,827).
Made this one for you @PsychRabble. Unfortunately, I could find only 3 listings (overall) for 'stereotype accuracy'
This one probably took the longest to put together. Since 2016, NYT has published roughly 15-30 articles a day that mention these terms, as compared to 2-4 a day in the 1980s.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
1/Thrilled to share @fsuigc’s latest report, based on a national survey of 1,447 U.S. adults we conducted in late September—one week after the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
We examine how Americans think about harmful speech and whether physical violence can ever be justified to stop its public expression.
1/ I'm delighted to finally share some of the work I've done since joining @fsuigc.
Last month, we published a report about political tolerance based on national survey data (N=1,004) we collected during the summer. In this study, we measure political tolerance as the willingness to interact with or accept people with opposing political views across different relational contexts. For comparison, we also measured tolerance towards ex-felons and flat earthers.
2/ As shown in the table below, across all contexts, people are much more willing to engage with people with opposing political views than the other two target groups. Regardless of the target group, though, openness tends to decline as the intimacy of an engagement increases. For instance, whereas 73% would engage in a social/recreational activity with political opponents (ex-Felon: 54%, flat-earther: 49%) without reservation, just 41% would be willing to date them (ex-Felon: 22%, flat-earther: 19%)
3/Consistent with this intimacy 'gradient', our analysis finds that our 7 tolerance items best fit a 3-factor structure, which is depicted in the table below.
1/ Updated racial ingroup vs. outgroup feeling thermometer differentials from the ANES. In sum, while the 'curve has flattened', the attitudinal effects of the Great Awokening persist (at least wrt race). If you thought or hoped otherwise, sorry to disappoint.
2/ In fact, coverage linking Israel to “genocide” now exceeds that of every actual or widely recognized genocide of the last 40 years, including:
Rwanda (1994)
Darfur (2003–2008)
Bosnia (Srebrenica, 1995)
Myanmar (Rohingya, 2017–Present)
Yazidis (ISIS, 2014–2017)
3/ In The New York Times, for example, the spike in 2023–2024 mentions of “genocide” alongside “Israel” is more than 9x larger than the peak for Rwanda in the mid-1990s and nearly 6x the peak for the more recent Darfur genocide.
1/ One of the more counterintuitive findings in my latest article:
Historically, when Democrats only control the House, an average of just over 10 race-conscious provisions are added to the NDAA per year.
When they control both the House and Senate? That number drops to about 4.
But why?
2/ First, what makes the House so powerful here?
Simple: the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) writes the first draft of the NDAA.
If you control the House, you control the blueprint—and the early language that often survives reconciliation. That’s where ideological riders get embedded.
3/But why are more race-conscious provisions added under divided government?
While I can’t say for sure, my reasoning is this: when Democrats only control the House, the NDAA becomes one of the few legislative vehicles guaranteed to pass.
Standalone race-conscious or DEI bills are less likely to survive the Senate.
🚨1/ Just released what may be my most significant project to date:
The first in-depth, data-driven account of how racial preferences actually operated at a U.S. service academy (the U.S. Naval Academy)—and the recent federal court case that challenged them (and lost).
Published on my Substack, the report draws on thousands of pages of filings, depositions, internal admissions data, and expert reports from Students for Fair Admissions v. USNA—a case that flew under the radar, despite its profound constitutional and institutional stakes.
2/ The full report runs ~115 pages—so there’s a lot to unpack. Too much for a single thread.
Thus, over the coming days, I’ll be posting a series of threads, each walking through key sections.
Note that these threads are high-level summaries—many important details are left out. I strongly encourage reading the full report for the complete picture.
Here’s the outline for this series of threads:
Thread 1 (this one): What the internal data reveal about USNA’s use of race—and how the Academy tried (and failed) to discredit the revelations.
Thread 2: The government’s sweeping (and evidence-free) justification for race-based admissions—and why it collapses under scrutiny.
Thread 3: How a federal judge upheld the policy—and why his ruling still matters, even after Trump’s executive order rescinded the policy.
Thread 4: What can be done to permanently outlaw race-based admissions at the service academies—or at least make it far harder for future administrations to reinstate them.
3/ Thread #1: What the Data Reveal
Like Harvard, USNA didn’t deny using race in admissions. It simply described it as “limited” and non-determinative.
At the same time, USNA admitted it never even attempted to measure race’s impact on outcomes—begging the question: how can it call race a “limited” factor if it never quantified its effect?