My, That Is Unconventional

I was flipping through some Technorati tags today and found a lot of comments on Richard Morin's Unconventonal Wisdom column that ledes with how Daily Show host Jon Stewart is souring our impressionable youth on politics (Jon Stewart, Enemy of Democracy?). What hardly any bloggers are doing, apparently, is reading the rest of his column, which includes a different kind of startling news:

Are Republicans stingy but principled while Democrats are generous but racist?

"I wouldn't put it quite so starkly," said Stanford University professor Shanto Iyengar. He would prefer to call Democrats "less principled" rather than bigoted, based on his analysis of data collected in a recent online experiment that he conducted with The Washington Post and washingtonpost.com....

As reported in this column a few weeks ago, the study found that people were less likely to give extended aid to black Hurricane Katrina victims than to white ones. The race penalty, on average, totaled about $1,000 per black victim.

As Iyengar and his colleagues subsequently dug deeper into these data, another finding emerged: Republicans consistently gave less aid, and gave over a shorter period of time, to victims regardless of race.

Democrats and independents were far more generous; on average, they gave Katrina victims on average more than $1,500 a month, compared with $1,200 for Republicans, and for 13 months instead of nine.

But for Democrats, race mattered -- and in a disturbing way. Overall, Democrats were willing to give whites about $1,500 more than they chose to give to a black or other minority. (Even with this race penalty, Democrats still were willing to give more to blacks than those principled Republicans.) "Republicans are likely to be more stringent, both in terms of money and time, Iyengar said. "However, their position is 'principled' in the sense that it stems from a strong belief in individualism (as opposed to handouts). Thus their responses to the assistance questions are relatively invariant across the different media conditions. Independents and Democrats, on the other hand, are more likely to be affected by racial cues."...

I don't know what to make of this, but I do have a question for Morin. What would be an undisturbing way that race mattered?

UPDATE: I see John Hawkins noticed.

Comments

[Nancy]

Check out James Taranto's post too.

[Paulpaz]

Hi,

There’s a site to register your support for Jon Stewart and outrage at the Post’s column. Please visit www.enemyofdemocracy.com today!

Thank you!

Paul

[Christopher Fotos]

Well, I watch Jon Stewart, but now I feel too cynical to do anything about it.