04/18/2023
Social Science Quarterly’s fascinating recent study on “white flight” [White flight from immigration? Attitudes to diversity and white residential choice, by Eric Kaufmann, March 28, 2023] proves something with data that anyone with a fully functioning brain always knew: Leftists are hypocrites. They virtue-signal about kindness and equality, but ruthlessly act in their own interests behind the scenes. And because Leftists are highly Machiavellian, one of their Dark Triad personality traits, they virtue-signal, for instance, by siding with “victims” to obtain high social status. But the neighborhoods Leftists choose to live in — Shock! Horror! — are mostly white.
Author Kaufmann, a Canadian psychologist, is a contrarian who has provoked the usual attempts to cancel him, but has managed to hang on to his professorship the University of London’s Birkbeck College [The Petulant Campaign Against Eric Kaufmann, by Noah Carl, Quillette, May 23, 2021]. He has made a number of appearances in VDARE.com — see Verdict: Suicide — Eric Kaufmann Replies To Kevin MacDonald, and Eric Kaufmann’s WHITESHIFT: Repressing Whites Won’t Work — Maybe Pacification Will. His new research takes us deep into the selfish Leftist mind by exploring white flight from “diverse” to white areas, and asking whether those whites favor or oppose diversity and immigration and the public policies that promote them. In the United Kingdom, he looked at support or opposition to Brexit or an anti-immigration party such as the UK Independence Party (UKIP). In the United States, naturally, the key marker was whether one is broadly pro- or anti-Trump.
In his brutally pithy abstract, Kaufmann even asks the study’s key question in terms of hypocrisy:
Work on white mobility preferences finds that whites who dislike diversity prefer less diverse neighborhoods. Do liberal whites practice what they preach, and do conservative whites really avoid diversity?
The answers: no. Kaufmann writes:
Whites select significantly less diverse neighborhoods than nonwhites, but there is little or no racial difference in the destinations that white liberals and conservatives, British Brexiteers and Remainers, and American Trump supporters and opponents move to.
For the UK, Kaufmann pulled data from two large surveys: the British Household Panel Survey that sampled 10,300 people, and the Understanding Society Longitudinal Study, which sampled 40,000, including a 5,000 person over-sampling of the five largest ethnic minority groups. For the U.S., he analyzed Tweets and their origin to create a sample of over 6,000 Americans. He tested two key hypotheses:
Hypothesis 1 makes sense in terms of J. Philippe Rushton’s “Genetic Similarity Theory.” For evolutionary reasons, people want to be with genetically similar people so they can indirectly pass on more of their genes (I discussed Rushton in my book J. Philippe Rushton: A Life History Perspective). Controlling for income and other relevant variables, we would expect non-whites to be less inclined and whites to be more inclined to leave diverse neighborhoods. Kaufmann reports that this is true:
In wards with less than 10 percent nonwhites, white Britons who move select destination wards that are 3.6 to 5.3 points whiter than minority groups originating from the same quintile of wards. The difference widens as we move beyond 11 percent minority in the ward of origin. Among movers who originate in highly diverse wards containing over 40 percent minorities, white Britons are predicted to move to a ward that is fully 10.3 points whiter than a minority individual from a similar ward.
Hypothesis 2 makes sense in terms of consistency: not being a hypocrite, or practicing what you preach.
So what did Kaufmann find? On average, Leftists, again, are hypocrites. They preach about the wonders of immigration and diverse communities, but they are just as likely as conservatives to abandon them for mostly white or less diverse neighborhoods. Indeed, conservatives are no more likely to move to a white neighborhood than is a Leftist:
Whites who identify as English rather than British, support leaving the European Union … or who voted for populist right UKIP or BNP prior to moving, do not move to whiter areas than more liberal whites. This holds regardless of whether whites originate in diverse or nondiverse quintiles, disconfirming H[ypothesis] 2. The only evidence for H[ypothesis] 2 is that whites residing in the most diverse quintile who supported left or liberal parties prior to moving tend to move to somewhat more diverse wards than conservative movers who depart from similar areas [Emphasis added].
Thus, Leftists might be slightly more tolerant of living around non-whites, but they still move from extremely non-white areas to somewhere “whiter.” Kaufmann controlled for socioeconomic status, so the finding is unrelated to wealth.
As for the United States, Kaufmann found something just as interesting: Being a Trump supporter predicts moving away from diverse areas to whiter areas even among minorities. Again, this controlled for variables such as socioeconomic status. So, this might reflect the beginning of a process which I have also explored in a book, The Past Is a Future Country: The Coming Conservative Demographic Revolution. As much of the United States degenerates into Leftist-induced chaos and crime — think Seattle, Portland, San Francisco — we might expect the more “conservative” blacks and other minorities, being high in agreeableness (like conservatives in general) to trade broad genetic similarity for psychological similarity. They want to escape Clown World and “white align.” We might call this the “Candace Owens Effect.”
Interestingly, mixed race couples seem to compensate for their physical dissimilarity with psychological similarity to a much greater extent than even racially endogamous couples, which advances their genetic interests [Personality attributes of males and females marrying within vs. across racial/ethnic groups, by F. Ahern et al., Behavior Genetics, May 1981].
In looking for explanations for his findings, Kaufmann charitably summarized his findings this way:
However, in both America and Britain, anti-immigration whites are only marginally more likely to move to whiter neighborhoods than pro-immigration whites. This is important because it suggests that attitudes toward diversity, which predict mobility intentions, do not explain whites’ ethnocentric mobility behavior. One possibility is that unconscious ‘fast-thinking’ ethnocentric decision making is dominant among both whites who espouse and oppose ethnocentrism. This suggests that “voice,” that is, attitudes to national diversity and politics, may operate on a wholly separate cognitive plane from local “exit” and destination choice. … This points to a disjuncture between a relatively universal ethnocentrism in the realm of residence (and perhaps friendship and relationships) and a more politically contested ethnocentrism as regards national membership and public life.
Let me put it slightly less charitably. People operate in their own genetic interests. We are evolved not only to want to be around people who are genetically similar but also to attain status within and for our group. Some people — conservatives — are more group-oriented [see Liberals and Conservatives Rely on Different Sets of Moral Foundations, by J. Graham et al., Personality Processes and Individual Differences, 2009]. Signaling kindness and inclusivity is a covert means of attaining individual status. So we shouldn’t be surprised that some people signal that they are anti-ethnocentric — they are kind and favor “equality” — while, nevertheless, acting to satisfy their ethnocentric desires and preserve those interests. To put it even less charitably: We call these people hypocrites.
On a related note, other research has found that, compared to conservatives, Leftists are just not very nice people. They are lower in the altruism and empathy than conservatives, further proving that they are mere hollow virtue-signalers [Corrigendum to ‘The nature of the relationship between personality traits and political attitudes,’ by B. Verhulst et al., Personality and Individual Differences, 2016]. So we shouldn’t expect consistency to be important to them.
This is why Harriet Harman, former deputy leader of the Labour Party in England, railed against academically selective schools and ran on a manifesto to abolish them, but then sent her son to one [The privileged life of hypocrite Harperson, by Edward Heathcoat-Amery, Daily Mail, January 13, 2009]. It is why Labour Party former Shadow Home Secretary Dianne Abbott condemned Harman for not sending her son to a local, non-selective “state [public] school,” but then sent her son to an expensive private school [Abbott defends indefensible in sending son to private school, by Patrick Wintour, The Guardian, November 1, 2003].
So when it comes to where they live or send their kids to school, surely, the de facto mantra of the Leftists hypocrites is this: Do as I say, not as I do, so that I can get ahead of you!
Edward Dutton (email him | Tweet him) is Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at Asbiro University, Łódź, Poland. You can see him on his Jolly Heretic video channels on YouTube and Bitchute. His books are available on his home page here.
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