I was talking to a friend a work recently, and he implied that southern racists all switched parties and became Republicans after the 1960s. I've heard this narrative before: the "Southern Strategy" was an effort to appeal to Southern racists, etc. (I've never see hard evidence it was racist, but that's beside the point: what is never mentioned is that said racists would have been Democrats, and it's never mentioned that said strategy largely failed.)

I asked my friend for examples of such political conversions. He could come with almost none. (Strom Thrumond? I pointed out Robert Byrd.) (A black Republican friend entered the room at that point, and said: "Al Gore's dad became a Republican? That's news to me!")

James Lindgren, a "legal empiricist", decided to search a large body of sociological data to find out if implications like the above are true: Are racists usually attracted to "Republican" values? And, conversely, are people we'd associate with the Republican party generally more or less racist than the people generally attracted to the political solutions offered by the Democratic Party?

To answer the question, he searched through a large existing body of independent sociological survey data, covering 24 years, and noticed that the hard evidence to the contrary had been sitting there all along.

I begin by showing that respondents who express traditionally racist views (on segregation, interracial marriage, and inborn racial abilities) tend to support greater income redistribution. Traditional racists also tend to oppose free-market capitalism and its consequences, wanting the government to guarantee jobs for everyone and to fix prices, wages, and profits. Next, I report a similar pattern for those who express intolerance for unpopular groups on the 15 Stouffer tolerance questions (regarding racists, homosexuals, communists, extreme militarists, and atheists). Those who express less tolerance for unpopular groups tend to favor income redistribution and oppose capitalism.... the preference against income redistribution, for example, is not just the result of income or education; rather, the data are consistent with racism and intolerance continuing to play a significant role in explaining the support for income redistribution and anti-capitalism.

So racists tend to be more attracted to socialism than capitalism. Really, not a shocking result when you recall the racist history of the "progressive" movement and National Socialism (who copied American progressivism in many ways), but certainly this is blasphemous to leftist orthodoxy.

Lindgren also shows "redistributionists" (those who want to take away rich people's money and give it to the poor) are far more likely to be personally stingy, angry at someone, and vengeful.

This, sadly, does not conflict with my personal experiences.

Am I saying all Democrats are racists? Or that all racists are Democrats? No, not at all. I'm sure there are plenty of racists who have worked with Republicans at times. (David Duke, for example, tried out both parties.) I'm just pointing out that the 'liberal' stereotype of Republicans as being more racist is opposed by a large body of social data which any competent sociologist could have examined, had they really wanted to know the answer to this question.