[chrischen]

How about wording it like this: the density of racists in a red state is statistically significantly higher than that of a blue state.

But I'd agree, considering America is a salad bowl of cultures, it's probably more tolerant than most homogenous countries out there. Of course being a salad bowl, you'll get more collisions too which is why it may seem like America is less tolerant of different cultures. More homogenous countries simply have less foreigners to be racist towards.

[dantheman]

Here's a map of hate groups: http://www.splcenter.org/intel/map/images/splc_hategroups.pd...

As you can see the blue states and the red states are fairly well represented, with CA having the most. The southern states which are typically red have a significant amount. But the western states that are red have less than the western blue, so as I said before I don't think you can draw any conclusions. Also the majority of the southern red states used to be blue, so that's something else to consider.

[justin_vanw]

This is totally meaningless though. The existence of a hate group is just a geographically local group of people who are racist AND like forming clubs.

A map of the per-capita hate crimes committed would be more educational, but again it would not be a measure of racism. To have hate crimes you need 2 things, people who hate some group, and members of that group they can act against. In the areas that were most heavily racist they chased out all hated minorities 50+ years ago.

The town I grew up in had 5000 residents and no black families (actually, some have moved there, but only when I was in about 3rd grade did that start). I didn't see any racism at all in that town, but how could I? Driving 30 minutes away to the nearest sizeable black population center and you see tons of it. Look at the school zones and you see tons of it. Hate crimes were non-existent however, just because you can't hit someone who isn't around. Finally, if one did happen, how would it get reported? In areas where hate crimes are super rare I would assume they would also be under reported since the justice system would be unfamiliar with recording and prosecuting them.

Finally, saying one area (red states) is 'more racist' than another is the exact same in-group out-group dynamic that feeds racism in the first place. Due to the stuff I listed above, I would expect blue states to have far more racist acts, just because there are more cross-race interactions and boundaries (which are the only 'opportunity' people have to commit racist actions). There is no discrimination against minorities for jobs if there are no minority applicants, and there is no discriminatory school zones or public service allocation if there are no minority communities in a city. The unanswerable question is, "Would there be if there were minorities there", but that can't be captured in these sorts of statistics.

[chrischen]

Well my response was partially tongue in cheek, but you do realize CA also holds about 1/5 of the US population? I said "density", which takes population into account.

I think you're attributing the statement "red states" to Republican party. I think that's an unfair statement, but "red states" is a measurable geographic location, not a political ideology. And I'm pretty sure the map still would show that the density (if you take the total racists and divide by the total population of the red states) of hate groups is greater in the red states.