I imagine the data is accurate. It's the same for a lot of conservative countries. I imagine they have less of an outlet to express their sexuality, so they search for porn. (E.g., people in New York wouldn't need as much gay porn---they have Grindr).
Most of these groups are very small with little influence (though some are very active politically, though it isn't listed, the Sons of Confederate Veterans loves to make life hard for state legislators and Governors). Many of these are literally holes in the wall, like The Redneck Shop in SC (not discrediting racism in the SE, but most people have other things to do with their time).
Also you have a disproportionate number of historically black colleges in the South as compared to the rest of the US. Upper-middle black households are more likely to send their kids to schools like Spelman and Morehouse and if kids like anything, they like sex.
That's also where the majority of the black population lives[1], so it's not much different than asians being high in California. I don't think your correlation to racism has much to do with it, at least not in the way it seems you are implying.
Blacks are still a minority in these places. I know they are a minority in Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi. I think it is probably a combination of blacks and whites searching on 'Ebony' that makes it come out on top in the data. Just as in California I strongly suspect a combination of Asians and Whites searching on 'Asian' places that term high in their data.
Or more likely, white people don't have to specify "white" in their searches because most mainstream porn is already "white". If that wasn't the case, I'd bet "white" or "caucasian" would be the top search in every single state.
Sure there are probably quite a few white people that also search for ebony porn. But I doubt it's that much higher amongst whites in the south vs. whites in the north. And even if it is, it's probably not a correlation to racism as the parent post was implying.
"...Sure there are probably quite a few white people that also search for ebony porn. But I doubt it's that much higher amongst whites in the south vs. whites in the north..."
That's an interesting question. It would be illustrative to get the data for that. My own wager would be that it is slightly higher... just as searches by whites on 'Asian' is slightly higher in California than it is in ... say ... North Dakota. But that data would be telling.
In any case... I do agree with you that it's not "cross burning racism" that is driving these searches. My own suspicion is that it's probably more a matter of simply close 'proximity' combined with the natural difficulty of starting those relationships in the first place.
But of course data would be needed to validate any of this.
> My own suspicion is that it's probably more a matter of simply close 'proximity' combined with the natural difficulty of starting those relationships in the first place.
I see what you're saying, and I think you'd likely be correct. Would be interesting to see how high of a difference that might potentially be, would need the hard data instead of an infographic unfortunately :/
I think in the deep South there is still a 'taboo' of sorts on relationships with blacks. Leading to more searches on 'Ebony' as fewer people experiment with it. A phenomenon similar to the data from other more conservative nations where the top search becomes *(Gay). It's just a 'safe' outlet.
The presence of places like Spelman probably magnifies the effect. I'd wager that if you put the college for the daughter's of the nation's elite blacks in the middle of say... Iowa... the number of searches on 'Ebony' would shoot up in Iowa as well.
