How does one measure racism? It’s a tricky question. Public opinion polls reveal very little overt racist sentiment. Racism has not disappeared, some pollsters think, it has just gone underground. People don’t want to sound gauche, so they don’t admit to racist sentiments in opinion polls. However, Harvard professor Seth Stephens-Davidowitz has come up with an interesting proxy for racism — Google searches employing the “N” word.

In a study aiming to to guesstimate how many Americans voted against Barack Obama for president because he is black, Stephens-Davidowitz compares the difference in votes for John Kerry in 2004 with votes for Obama in 2008 and generates correlations with the frequency of the “N” word in Google. He makes a number of assumptions that readers may or may not find plausible but his presidential election analysis is not what interests me. His findings on the frequency of the use of the “N” word are what intrigue me. Always on the look-out for fascinating sociological insights into the Old Dominion, I was particularly fascinated by his state-by-state breakdown.

Stephens-Davidowitz argues that use of the “N” word is a predominantly white usage, hence a valid gauge of racist attitudes, as opposed to the African American usage, “nigga.” The red chart at the top of this post shows a breakdown by media market. The area corresponding to Virginia is a center of relatively low use of the word compared to surrounding regions. Darker areas show higher search volume using the “N” word. Here is a state-by-state breakdown:

So, where does Virginia fare on the Racism Index? Not as well as I’d like, but not as badly as I feared. We are 29th in the country — the lowest ranked of all the Southern states. Interestingly, West Virginia, which seceded from Virginia during the Civil War fought over slavery, is the most bigoted by this measure. Perhaps most interesting of all, those bastions of Yankee liberalism and enlightenment — New York, New Jersey and Connecticut — have more frequent recourse to the “N” word than Virginia.

Heh! Heh!

— JAB