The Psychology of Moral Communities, Part 2 of 5: Ethnocentrism and Its Control

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Controlling Ethnocentrism: Implicit and Explicit Processing

As noted in Chapter 5, psychological research indicates two different types of psychological processing: implicit and explicit processing. These modes of processing may be contrasted on a number of dimensions.[1] Implicit processing is automatic, effortless, relatively fast, and involves parallel processing (i.e., processing going on independently in different parts of the brain) of large amounts of information; it characterizes the modules described by evolutionary psychologists. Explicit processing is the opposite of implicit processing: conscious, controllable, effortful, relatively slow, and involves serial processing of relatively small amounts of information in a sequential manner (e.g., performing the steps of solving a math problem). Explicit processing is involved in the operation of the mechanisms of general intelligence[2] as well as controlling emotional states and action tendencies (such as anger or frustration tending lead to aggression).[3]

As noted in Chapter 5, religious beliefs are able to motivate behavior because of the ability of explicit representations of religious thoughts (e.g., the traditional Catholic teaching of eternal punishment in Hell as a result of mortal sin) to control sub-cortical modular mechanisms (e.g., sexual desire). In other words, the affective states and action tendencies mediated by evolved implicit processing are controllable by higher brain centers located in the cortex.[4] The same goes for ethnocentrism.

Being able to control impulses of any kind taps into the personality system of Conscientiousness, often labelled “effortful control” because it involves explicit, conscious effort to control impulses (see discussion below). Simply put, conscientious people are relatively better able to regulate the more evolutionarily ancient parts of our brain responsible for many of our passions and desires.

Why is this important for thinking about psychology and White ethnocentrism? Just as conscientious people can inhibit their natural tendencies toward aggression and sexual arousal, they are able to inhibit their natural ethnocentrism. The critical point in the following is that cultural information is of vital importance for enabling people to inhibit their ethnocentric tendencies. This cultural information relies on explicit processing and provides the basis for prefrontal inhibitory control of ethnocentrism.

The conclusion is that the control of ethnocentrism is a direct consequence of the control of cultural information. My book The Culture of Critique is an attempt to understand what happened after the highwater mark of the period of ethnic defense (~1870–1930) discussed in Chapter 6.[5] The rise of the new elite meant that explicit messages about race (e.g., “there’s no such thing as race”) and ethnocentrism (e.g., “White ethnocentrism is a sure sign of psychopathology and disturbed parent-child relationships) were being disseminated by the media and throughout the educational system. Especially since World War II, these messages have been consistently hostile to White ethnocentrism. And that in turn has meant that Whites have been encouraged to inhibit their natural ethnocentrism.

Moreover, as emphasized throughout this book, White people tend to be more individualistic than other peoples, implying that they are less likely than other peoples to make invidious distinctions between ingroups and outgroups and are more likely to be open to strangers and people who don’t look like them. Because Whites are low in ethnocentrism and high in Conscientiousness, controlling ethnocentrism is easier for them on average. Their subcortical mechanisms responsible for ethnocentrism are weaker to start with and hence easier to control.

There is considerable research on the roles of implicit and explicit processing in ethnocentrism and its control. Implicit attitudes on race can be measured, e.g., by performing brain scans when the subjects are looking at faces of people of different races.[6] On the other hand, explicit attitudes on race are typically assessed by filling out questionnaires which tap explicit processing. College student populations of Whites in the West typically exhibit pro-Black attitudes on tests of explicit attitudes. For example, one study found that Whites scored 1.89 on a six-point scale, with 1 meaning strongly pro-Black and 6 being strongly anti-Black.[7]

Another way to measure explicit attitudes is by interview. A recent representative sample of 2000 households found that a surprising 74 percent of Whites thought that racial identity was very important (37 percent) or somewhat important (37 percent).[8] In general, people become more racially conscious as they get older—only 53 percent claimed that racial identity was important while growing up. (I have noticed this also as a feature of Jewish identity.[9]) Even more surprising is the finding that 77 percent of Whites thought that Whites had a culture that should be preserved. However, despite asserting the legitimacy of White ethnic identity, only 4 percent of Whites claimed to be a member of an organization based on racial or ethnic identity. (This presumably includes organizations for, say, Scottish or Polish identity which are politically irrelevant in the American political context.) And 75 percent of Whites state that prejudice and discrimination are important or very important to African-American disadvantage.

In general, Blacks and other minorities have much stronger explicit ethnic identities than Whites do. For example, this same survey found that 90 percent of Blacks thought that racial identity was very important (72 percent) or somewhat important (18 percent), and 91 percent felt that Black culture was worth preserving. Blacks also demonstrate a substantially larger explicit ingroup preference than Whites.[10]

The gap between explicit attitudes and implicit attitudes is made possible by the inhibitory mechanisms of the prefrontal cortex. In one study, subjects were shown photos of Blacks and Whites while hooked up to a Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) machine that takes pictures of the brain in action.[11] When the photos were shown for very brief periods—too short to be consciously processed, the fMRIs showed that Whites had a negative response to the photos of Blacks. This procedure therefore measures implicit negative attitudes toward Blacks.

However, when the photos of Blacks were presented for a much longer period, so that they were consciously experienced, then the difference in reaction to Black and White faces decreased. This happened because the prefrontal region was activated. In other words, people who are consciously aware that they are seeing photos of Blacks are able to inhibit the automatic negative responses from the sub-cortex. Subjects who showed the most prefrontal activation showed the lowest subcortical response. This implies that they were better able to inhibit their negative attitudes toward Blacks.

This study (and there are other studies with similar findings) shows the importance of prefrontal inhibitory control over automatic negative attitudes of Whites toward Blacks. White ethnocentrism exists, but for most Whites, it exists only in a sort of underground world of unconscious, automatic processing: it is an ethnocentrism that dares not speak its name: As soon as the explicit, conscious processor swings into action, it acts to suppress the negative implicit attitudes coming from below so that the subject’s responses align better with the cultural norms of the social environment.[12]

Young children tend to have unabashedly explicit bias in favor of their own race. Explicit race bias emerges early, as young as age three or four, peaks in middle childhood, and then undergoes a gradual decline through adolescence, typically disappearing in adulthood.^[13] However, there is no such decline in implicit racial preferences, which remain strong into adulthood.^[14] There is also a decline in cross-racial friends and companions as children get older. White schoolchildren are much more likely to have White friends than chance would account for, and this trend increases as they get older.[15]

This means that even as explicit racial preference in White children is declining, they become less likely to actually interact with and form friendships with children from other races. In effect, schools undergo a process of self-segregation. And among adults, Whites are significantly less likely than other racial groups to report interracial friendships and contacts.[16]

The bottom line, then, is that as children get older, they become increasingly aware of the official explicit racial ideology, and they conform to it. Their prefrontal centers of inhibitory control are becoming stronger, so that they are better able to inhibit their implicitly generated negative thoughts about racial outgroups. At the explicit level, they are free from any negative attitudes toward non-White groups and may even be politically liberal or radical. At the same time, however, they are “voting with their feet” by choosing friends and companions of the same race.

And their parents are doing the same thing. Liberals show a greater gap between explicit attitudes and implicit attitudes and behavior than do conservatives. Moreover, while highly educated White parents tend to have liberal explicit attitudes on racial issues, including the desirability of school integration, these same highly educated Whites seek out schools that are racially segregated and are more likely to live in racially segregated neighborhoods. A 2018 article noted that for progressive parents, “more often than not, [their progressive] values lost out” when choosing a school.[17] Indeed, there is a positive correlation between the average education of White parents and the likelihood that they will remove their children from public schools as the percentage of Black students increases.[18] Michael Emerson, an author of the study, is quite aware of the gap between explicit attitudes and behavior: “I do believe that White people are being sincere when they claim that racial inequality is not a good thing and that they’d like to see it eliminated. However, … their liberal attitudes about race aren’t reflected in their behavior.”

The flip side of this is that less affluent Whites are more likely to have explicitly illiberal attitudes on racial issues that are condemned by elites. Yet they are also more likely to actually live in racially integrated areas and send their children to racially integrated schools, presumably due to financial constraints.

Implicit White Communities

Children’s choice of friends and parents’ choice of schools and neighborhoods reflect the raw reality of racial hypocrisy in the United States. These children and their parents are acting on their implicit attitudes, and there is a profound gap between their implicit attitudes and their behavior (which show ingroup racial preference) versus their explicit attitudes (which express the official ideology of racial egalitarianism). In effect, they are creating implicit White communities—implicit because even though these communities are an expression of (implicit) racial preferences, they cannot speak their name: Whites behaving in an implicitly White manner do not explicitly state that their friendship choices or their choice in neighbourhood or school derives from racial preference, because that conflicts with their explicit racial attitudes and with the official racial ideology of the wider culture.

White Americans are gradually coalescing into political and cultural affiliation as Whites, and this trend will continue to strengthen in the future as America ethnic diversity is more of a reality even away from the immigration centers on the East and West coasts and the southern border. But at present, this political and cultural affiliation is not yet consciously and explicitly White, at least partly because conscious White affiliation is a cultural taboo.

In the face of overwhelming sanctions on explicit assertions of White racial identity in the post-World War II world, Whites have adopted a variety of implicit identities which serve as the basis of White association and community. All of these identities exist under the radar of the political correctness enforced by elites in academia, politics, and the media: Republican political affiliation, NASCAR racing enthusiast, evangelical Christian, and country music fan. Each of these identities allow White people to associate with other Whites and even to form a White political base without any explicit acknowledgement that race plays a role.

Implicit White communities have become an increasingly important part of the American landscape as racial polarization increases due to the rise of identity politics—first among non-Whites (and encouraged by the left) but now clearly also among Whites as a reaction. The most important of these implicit White communities results from residential segregation due to White flight. As Kevin Kruse notes, “at the dawn of the twenty-first century, America found itself dominated by suburbs and those suburbs dominated by the politics of White flight and urban secession.”[19] “In the past, the hostility to the federal government, the welfare state, and taxation had been driven by racial resentment, whether in the form of segregationists inside Atlanta or secessionist suburbanites outside it. In the 1990s the new generation of suburban Republicans simply took the politics of White flight to the national stage.”[20]

As Kruse notes, race is never part of the explicit rhetoric of White flight, which tends to be expressed as opposition to the federal government, the welfare state, taxation, and perceived moral issues like abortion and homosexuality. But at the implicit level, the desire for White communities and the aversion to contributing to public goods disproportionately benefiting non-Whites are the overriding motivations.

White flight is part of the fragmented future that lies in store for the U.S. and other Western countries with high levels of non-European immigration. It is a well-established finding that the more ethnically mixed a population becomes, the greater is its resistance to redistributive policies.[21] For example, a study of donations to the United Way of America charity found that White Americans give less when their communities are more than 10 percent non-White. Robert D. Putnam recently showed that greater racial diversity of a community is associated with a loss of trust.[22] Putnam’s result is confirmed by studies conducted at the local community level[23] and, given the recent surge in ethnic diversity, by recent survey data according to which 71 percent of Americans believe that trust in fellow citizens has declined in the last 20 years.[24] Moreover, people are found to be happier living among fellow ethnics than as an ethnic minority.[25] White people living in relatively homogeneous areas like New Hampshire or Montana are more involved with friends, the community, and politics than people in more diverse areas.[26]

At the political level, implicit Whiteness is also reflected in Howard Dean’s famous comment that the Republican Party is the party of White Christians.^[27] Non-White ethnic groups tend to vote Democrat even when they have relatively high socioeconomic status, while working class Whites tend to vote Republican—a good indication that this pattern results from identity politics rather than economics. The long-term trend is that since 1992, the Republican share of the White vote has been increasing 1½ percent every four years. Moreover,

it seems a bit touchy to assume that Republicans will max out at around 60 percent of the White vote. This might be the case, but … it’s entirely possible that as our nation becomes more diverse, our political coalitions will increasingly fracture along racial/ethnic lines rather than ideological ones.[28]

Another implicit White community is NASCAR racing, which strongly overlaps with evangelical Christianity, country music, and small-town American culture, particularly that of the South. A famous Mike Luckovich cartoon that appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows a Black man and a White man talking with a Confederate flag flying in the background. “We need a flag that isn’t racist … but preserves White southern culture…” The next panel shows a NASCAR checkered flag. The implicit/explicit distinction could not be more obvious. Ninety-four percent of the NASCAR fan base is White, compared to 92 percent for another implicitly White sport, professional hockey.[29]

A large part of the attraction of NASCAR is a desire for traditional American culture. NASCAR events are permeated with sentimental patriotism, prayers, military flyovers, and postrace fireworks. As sociologist Jim Wright notes, “just about everything … you encounter in a day at the track drips with traditional Americana.”[30]

However, “race is the skeleton in the NASCAR Family closet. On the tracks and in the stands, stock-car racing remains a White-person’s sport.” The Whiteness of NASCAR races can be seen from a comment that, after surveying the crowd at the 1999 Daytona 500, “there were probably about as many Confederate flags here as Black people”—i.e., fewer than forty out of a crowd of approximately 200,000.[31] “The near-universal discrediting of the Stars and Bars as a politically incorrect, if not racist, symbol has obviously not yet reached every Winston Cup fan. Either that, or they just don’t care. And, as you might imagine, there was no pussyfooting or self-flagellation about the point among fans at the Southern 500, which was adorned by a profusion of Confederate flags the likes of which I had not witnessed at any other track.”[32]

Wright stresses the link of NASCAR to traditional small town and rural American culture and its links to outdoor pursuits like hunting, fishing, camping, and guns.[33] There is a large overlap between NASCAR fans and gun ownership. There is also a strong Christian religious atmosphere: Races begin with a benediction and a prayer. There is “a visible Christian fellowship” in NASCAR, including entire teams that identify themselves publicly as Christian teams; many of the drivers actively participate in Christian ministry.[34] Other values in evidence are courage in the face of danger—another throwback to traditional American culture, deriving ultimately from the Scots-Irish culture of the English-Scottish border: “As we enter the third decade of women’s liberation and the second decade of the post-communist era, we’ve come to expect, even demand more sensitivity and empathy in our men than bravado or grit, and the traditional manly virtues of courage, bravery, and ‘guts’ strike many as anachronistic at best, even dangerous and moronic.”[35]^,[36]

While NASCAR is a White sport, the NBA is widely perceived to be a Black sport. Whites, especially nonurban Whites, are a decreasing audience for the NBA, and in general Whites spend the least percentage of time watching NBA games of all U.S. racial/ethnic groups.[37] Moreover, NBA culture is seen as African-American, and the response of the NBA has been to attempt to make the NBA look more like White America in order to restore its fan base. Sports writer Gary Peterson notes that

for decades there has been a racial divide between NBA players (mostly Black) and the paying customers (largely White). That divide has become a flashpoint over the past 15 years. … Never before have the players seemed so unlike the fans. This divide is the top concern at the league office—even ahead of declining free throw shooting and baggy shorts. For proof you need look no further than the league-wide dress code NBA commissioner David Stern imposed last season. It was an extraordinary step—he might as well have told the players, “Quit dressing like typical young, urban African-Americans. You’re scaring the fans.”[38]

Besides banning ostentatious gold chains and mandating business casual attire, the NBA has also handed out draconian penalties for fighting among players. This is because fighting fits into the image of urban, African-American culture. Fines are $50,000 for throwing a punch plus possible suspension (implying loss of pay).^[39] It’s interesting therefore that Major League Baseball does not have similar penalties for fighting and indeed, MLB tweeted about a brawl between the Yankees and the Red Sox—in effect, advertising it. The obvious explanation is that the NBA is anxious to avoid the stereotype of Black urban thugs because of its image as a Black sport (80 percent of the players are Black), while MLB has no need to do that because it is not seen as a Black sport.^[40]

The point is not that the NBA is more violent than, say, professional hockey—a largely White sport that is notorious for fighting. Rather, the NBA is conscious of racial stereotyping processes among Whites. Part of NASCAR’s attraction for Whites is that it is an implicit White community. By regulating dress and conduct, the NBA seems to be trying to make the NBA more attractive to Whites despite the racial composition of its players.

Managing White Ethnocentrism: The Problem with Non-Explicit White Identity

White people are clearly coalescing into implicit White communities that reflect their ethnocentrism but “dare not speak its name.” They are often doing so because of the operation of various mechanisms that operate implicitly, below the level of conscious awareness. These White communities cannot assert explicit White identities because the explicit cultural space is deeply committed to an ideology in which any explicit assertion of White identity is anathema. Explicit culture operates in the conscious prefrontal centers able to control the subcortical regions of the brain.

This implies that the control of culture is of critical importance. The story of how this explicit cultural space came to be and whose interests it serves is the topic of my book, The Culture of Critique, combined with the material in this volume on European individualism: these cultural transformations are the result of a complex interaction between pre-existing deep-rooted tendencies of Europeans (individualism, moral universalism, and science) and the rise of a new elite hostile to the traditional peoples and culture of Europe.[41] The result has been a “culture of critique” that represents the triumph of the leftist movements that have dominated twentieth-century intellectual and political discourse in the West, especially since the 1960s. The fundamental assumptions of these leftist movements, particularly as they relate to race and ethnicity, permeate intellectual and political discourse among both liberals and mainstream conservatives and define a consensus among elites in academia, the media, business, and government.

Because implicit ethnocentrism is alive and well among Whites and affects their behavior in subtle ways (implicit Whiteness), one might suppose that Whites are in fact able to pursue their interests even against the prevailing wind of the explicit culture of powerful anti-White social controls and ideologies. The problem, however, is that White ethnic identity and interests can be managed as long as they remain only at the implicit level. In general, implicit White communities conform, outwardly at least, to the official multicultural ideology and adopt conventional attitudes and rhetoric on racial and ethnic issues. This allows them to escape the scrutiny of cultural elites that enforce conventional attitudes on racial and ethnic issues. However, it renders them powerless to promote issues that vitally affect their ethnic interests actively and explicitly.

A good example is non-White immigration. During the 2016 presidential campaign and since Donald Trump’s election, there has been much discussion of immigration stemming from Trump’s proposed policies aimed at preventing illegal immigration. His rhetoric tapped into a very large reservoir of public anger about the lack of control of our borders and, I think, the transformations that immigration in general—legal and illegal—is unleashing. Indeed, his rhetoric on immigration may well have been responsible for his election. Although it is common for proponents of illegal immigration to label their opponents “racists,” the fact that illegal immigration is, after all, illegal has made it easy for mainstream conservatives to oppose it without mentioning their racial interests.

This contrasts with the tendency within the establishment media—from far left to neoconservative, libertarian right—of presenting little or no discussion of the over one million legal immigrants who come to the U.S. every year—no discussion of their effect on the economy, social services, crime, or competition at elite universities; no discussion of their effect on the long-term ethnic composition of the U.S. and how this will affect the political interests of Whites as they head toward minority status; no discussion of the displacement of native populations in various sectors of the economy; and no discussion of whether most Americans really want all of this. Indeed, it has been quite common for high-profile conservative opponents of illegal immigration to assert their support for legal immigration as a means of dodging the charge of “racism,” although many are also in thrall to business interests wanting cheap labor. While assertions of ethnic interests by non-Whites are a commonplace aspect of the American political and intellectual scene, mainstream explicit assertions of ethnic interests by Whites have been missing since the 1920s (see Chapter 6).

The result is that leftist ideologies of race and ethnicity have become part of conventional morality and intellectual discourse even within implicitly White communities. As a result, such communities are unable to oppose the forces changing the country in ways that oppose their long-term interest. Because there is no mainstream attempt by Whites to shape the explicit culture in ways that would legitimize White identity and the pursuit of White ethnic interests, implicit White communities become enclaves of retreating, resentful Whites rather than communities able to consciously pursue White interests.

Bottom line: The creation of an explicit culture legitimizing White identity and interests is a prerequisite to the successful pursuit of the interests of Whites as a group.

End of Part 2.

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[1] See, e.g.: David C. Geary, The Origin of Mind: Evolution of Brain, Cognition, and General Intelligence (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2005); Kevin MacDonald, “Effortful Control, Explicit Processing and the Regulation of Human Evolved Predispositions,” Psychological Review 115, no. 4 (2008): 1012–1031; Keith Stanovich, Who is Rational? Studies of Individual Differences in Reasoning (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1999); Keith Stanovich The Robot’s Rebellion: Finding Meaning in the Age of Darwin (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004).

[2] Dan Chiappe and Kevin B. MacDonald, “The Evolution of Domain-General Mechanisms in Intelligence and Learning.” Journal of General Psychology 132, no. 1 (2005): 5–40.

[3] MacDonald, “Effortful Control, Explicit Processing, and the Regulation of Human Evolved Predispositions.”

[4] Kevin MacDonald, “Evolution and a Dual Processing Theory of Culture: Applications to Moral Idealism and Political Philosophy,” Politics and Culture (Issue, #1, April, 2010; unpaginated); see also Kevin MacDonald, “Evolution, Psychology, and a Conflict Theory of Culture,” Evolutionary Psychology 7, no. 2 (2009): 208–233.

[5] MacDonald, The Culture of Critique.

[6] Another method of assessing implicit attitudes is use of the Implicit Attitudes Test (IAT) in which subjects are presented with photos of Blacks and Whites in succession and asked to pair positive or negative words (e.g., “intelligent,” “law-abiding,” “poor,” “success”) with the photos. Eighty percent of Whites take longer to associate positive words with Blacks than with Whites. This is interpreted as indicating that Whites have implicit negative stereotypes of Blacks.

Recently, the results of the IAT showing that people higher on the IAT are more likely to engage in discrimination have been called into question. However, these findings do not reflect on studies that do not focus on discrimination; nor do they affect studies based on brain scans.

For a good summary of the controversies surrounding the IAT, see Jesse Singal, “Psychology’s Racism-Measuring Tool Isn’t Up to the Job,” The Cut (January, 2017).

https://www.thecut.com/2017/01/psychologys-racism-measuring-tool-isnt-up-to-the-job.html

[7] Elizabeth A. Phelps, et al., “Performance on Indirect Measures of Race Evaluation Predicts Amygdala Activation,” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 12 (2000): 729–738.

[8] Paul C. Croll, Douglas Hartmann, and Joseph Gerteis, “Putting Whiteness Theory to the Test: An Empirical Assessment of Core Theoretical Propositions,” unpublished manuscript, Department. of Sociology, University of Minnesota American Mosaic Project (2006).

[9] I describe several cases in my trilogy on Judaism, such as Heinrich Heine; see Kevin MacDonald, Separation and Its Discontents, Ch. 2, n. 9.

[10] Brian A. Nosek, Mahzarin R. Banaji, and Anthony G. Greenwald, “Harvesting Implicit Group Attitudes and Beliefs from a Demonstration Web Site,” Group Dynamics 6 (2002): 101–115.

[11] William A. Cunningham, et al., “Separable Neural Components in the Processing of Black and White Faces,” Psychological Science 15 (2004): 806–813.

[12] A similar study explains what happens when people confront controversial issues related to race and ethnicity. White subjects were shown pictures of a smiling interracial couple and then told that their response to the photo indicated that they were prejudiced. After being told this, subjects took much longer to respond to later photos. This is interpreted as being due to subjects trying to consciously control their responses to the photos. The photo serves as a “cue for control”—a warning that “the situation is one in which prejudiced responses may occur and that the brakes need to be applied to ongoing behavior.”

Margo J. Monteith, Leslie Ashburn-Nardo, Corrine. I. Voils, and Alexander M. Czopp. “Putting the Brakes on Prejudice: On the Development and Operation of Cues for Control,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 83 (2002): 1029–1050, 1046.

[13] Frances Aboud, Children and Prejudice (New York: Blackwell, 1988); Martha Augoustinos and Dana Louise Rosewarne, “Stereotype Knowledge and Prejudice in Children,” British Journal of Developmental Psychology 19 (2001): 143–156.

[14] Yarrow Dunham, Andrew S. Baron, and Mahzarin R. Banaji, “From American City to Japanese Village: A Cross-Cultural Study of Implicit Racial Attitudes,” Child Development 77 (2006): 1268–1281.

[15] James Moody, “Race, school integration and friendship segregation in America,” American Journal of Sociology 107 (2002): 679–716.

[16] Michael O. Emerson, Rachel Talbert Kimbro, and George. Yancey, “Contact Theory Extended: The Effects of Prior Racial Contact on Current Social Ties,” Social Science Quarterly 83 (2002): 745–761.

[17] Margaret A. Hagerman, “White Progressive Parents and the Conundrum of Privilege,” Los Angeles Times (September 30, 2018).

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-hagerman-White-parents-20180930-story.html

[18] David Sikkunk and Michael O. Emerson, “School Choice and Racial Segregation in U.S. Schools: The Role of Parents’ Education,” Racial and Ethnic Studies 31 (2008): 267–293.

[19] Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 259.

[20] Ibid., 263.

[21] Frank Salter (ed.), Welfare, Ethnicity, and Altruism: New Data and Evolutionary Theory (London: Taylor & Francis, 2005).

[22] Putnam, “E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century”; recent literature: Salter, “The Biosocial Study of Ethnicity”; Peter Thisted Dinesen, Merlin Schaefer, and Kim Mannemar Sønderskov, “Social Trust: A Narrative and Meta-analytical Review,” Annual Review of Political Science 23 (2020), in press. Preprint:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335924797_Ethnic_Diversity_and_Social_Trust_A_Narrative_and_Meta-Analytical_Review

[23] See Salter, “The Biosocial Study of Ethnicity.”

[24] “The State of Personal Trust,” Pew Research Center (July 22, 2019).

https://www.people-press.org/2019/07/22/the-state-of-personal-trust/

[25] Salter, “The Biosocial Study of Ethnicity.”

[26] Steve Sailer, “Fragmented Future: Multiculturalism Doesn’t Make Vibrant Communities but Defensive Ones,” The American Conservative (January 1, 2007).

[27] Shailagh Murray, “Dean’s Words Draw Democratic Rebukes,” The Washington Post (June 9, 2005).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/08/AR2005060800650_pf.html

[28] Sean Trende, “Does the GOP Have to Pass Immigration Reform?,” Real Clear Politics (June 25, 2013).

[29] “Demographics of Sports Fans,” Demographic Partitions.org (July 10, 2017).

http://demographicpartitions.org/demographics-of-sports-fans-u-s/

[30] Jim Wright, Fixin’ to Git: One Fan’s Love Affair with NASCAR’s Winston Cup (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 35.

[31] Ibid., 83.

[32] Ibid., 141.

Wright’s book was published in 2002. Since then, the Confederate flag has been less in evidence and there have been efforts to minimize its presence. In 2015 Brian France, Chairman of NASCAR, called the flag an “offensive symbol,” and asked, but did not require, that it not be shown. Some well-known drivers have discouraged it. In 2019 NASCAR rejected an ad for a semiautomatic rifle. Nevertheless, it is doubtful that NASCAR is any less an implicit White community.

Mike Hembree, “NASCAR Fans: Confederate Flag Still Important Symbol,” USA Today (August 8, 2017).

Awr Hawkins, “NASCAR Shifts on Guns, Rejects Ad Showing Semiautomatic Rifle” Breitbart (September 09, 2019).

[33] Ibid., 156.

[34] Ibid., 37.

[35] Ibid., 156.

[36] Country music is also an implicit White community: The vast majority of people [over 90 percent] who listen to country music on a regular basis are White, while only 3 percent of Hispanics and 5 percent of African-Americans say that they prefer country music to other genres of music.

Brandon Gaille, “49 Curious Country Music Demographics” (May 9, 2016).

https://brandongaille.com/46-curious-country-music-demographics/

[37] “Hoop Dreams: Multicultural Diversity in NBA Viewership” (February 26, 2915).

http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2015/hoop-dreams-multicultural-diversity-in-nba-viewership.html

[38] Gary Peterson, “Brawl puts glaring spotlight on NBA,” Contra Costa Times (Dec. 22, 2007).

[39] Gabe Fernandez, “Baseball Fights Highlight a Double Standard in Sports Perception,” The Sporting News (April 12, 2018).

http://www.sportingnews.com/us/mlb/news/baseball-fights-yankees-red-sox-nba-brawls-players-double-standard/15e4ngugjbiv217ebzyvhzeia8

[40] Ibid.

[41] MacDonald, The Culture of Critique.