Ever wondered why advertisements heavily feature Black actors when they're just 12-14% of the population?
I might have an explanation:
Black viewers have a strong preference for seeing other Blacks in media, whereas Whites have no racial preferences.
These results are derived from a meta-analysis of 57 pre-2000 and 112 post-2000 effect sizes for Blacks alongside 76 and 87 such effect sizes for Whites.
If you look at them, you'll notice that Whites' initial, slight preference declined and maybe reversed.
It's worth asking if this is explained by publication bias.
It's not!
Neither aggregately (as pictured), nor with results separated by race.
This study also plotted an alternative measure of racial preferences: differences in thermometer ratings.
These are ratings of how "warm" people feel towards other groups.
For Blacks, a persistent, consistent in-group preference. For Whites, in the past, yes, but now, no.
The hypothesis that Black media overrepresentation is due to catering to higher propensities for Blacks to spend, all else equal, is interesting, but it fails on the merits (less total spending).
It seems plausible that advertisers and media creators are just catering to demand.
Of course, people could just ask.
We do see this crop up in many other areas too. There is usually a Black in-group bias, and at the very least, no/a small White net disdain for Blacks or preference for Whites.
"Without Mohammed, Charlemagne would have been inconceivable."
This quote summarizes Pirenne's thesis that the European Dark Ages began with the rise of Islam because it destroyed the flow of trade across the Mediterranean, ending Antiquity.
The decline in trade that resulted from differences in faith had profound consequences for the economic geography of Europe.
Byzantine economic activity depended on trade, and it collapsed, whereas the Frankish economy, which was never trade-dependent, transformed.
Byzantine minting stalled and the Arabs' and Franks' increased (perhaps partly because they were cut off from one another!), providing each of their states with divergent trends in seignorage revenues and a widening gulf in the ability to fund the government.
Some of you who are familiar with medicine no doubt do, but if you don't, no worries: This is James Lind, the man most often credited with finding the cure for scurvy.
Scurvy is one of humanity's great historical killers.
It's a gruesome condition that culminates in your life's wounds reappearing on your flesh. If you want a picture, go look it up.
You never hear about it today though, because it's so easy to cure.
This research directly militates against modern blood libel.
If people knew, for example, that Black and White men earned the same amounts on average at the same IQs, they would likely be a lot less convinced by basically-false discrimination narratives blaming Whites.
Add in that the intelligence differences cannot be explained by discrimination—because there *is* measurement invariance—and these sorts of findings are incredibly damning for discrimination-based narratives of racial inequality.
So, said findings must be condemned, proscribed.
The above chart is from the NLSY '79, but it replicates in plenty of other datasets, because it is broadly true.
For example, here are three independent replications:
A lot of the major pieces of civil rights legislation were passed by White elites who were upset at the violence generated by the Great Migration and the riots.
Because of his association with this violence, most people at the time came to dislike MLK.
It's only *after* his death, and with his public beatification that he's come to enjoy a good reputation.
This comic from 1967 is a much better summation of how the public viewed him than what people are generally taught today.
And yes, he was viewed better by Blacks than by Whites.
But remember, at the time, Whites were almost nine-tenths of the population.
Near his death, Whites were maybe one-quarter favorable to MLK, and most of that favorability was weak.
The researcher who put together these numbers was investigated and almost charged with a crime for bringing these numbers to light when she hadn't received permission.