How Racist Is The Ark-La-Tex? [RESEARCH]

In our current Presidential Election cycle, the term RACIST has been thrown around a lot. Mostly at and around Donald Trump...who happened to win this weekend's Republican Presidential Primary here in Louisiana.

So if the guy being accused of being a racist, wins a primary, does that mean the area he won in is racist?

That's not an easy question to answer. Mostly because if you ask a person if they're racist, they're going to say "NO". However that same person may exhibit racist tendencies. Research has shown that most racism exists in our subconscious, and it also shows that if we KNOW we're racist, we don't like to admit it publicly. Which makes research on the subject difficult.

But the internet is here to save us again.

Last year, an organization called PLOS ONE did the dirty work on the internet to uncover some of the details about our possible racist behavior. See, when we search for things online, we usually feel alone, and we become much more likely to behave in a natural way. Often we forget that Google, Twitter, Apple, and Facebook, and all of the other online service engines are tracking and monitoring what we do.

So when we think we're alone, and not being watched, we're more likely to search for things that we know are wrong...like racist behavior.

These people are professional researchers, so they were able to remove any racist searches that were executed for research, or entertainment purposes. 

This data is compiled from truly racist behavior.

The research does show that the Ark-La-Tex is "Much More Than Average" when it comes to Google data. But that's just one piece of research. So let's look at more.

Humboldt State University has a program they've named "The Hate Map" which uses Twitter data to pinpoint racist activity on the social media site around cities. When you take a look at their research, the Ark-La-Tex doesn't seem as racist:

You can see some small pockets in East Texas, Mansfield, Jefferson, Tx, and Texarkana...but the Shreveport/Bossier area are actually pretty clear.

So what do we have? One piece of research that says our online behavoir in the Ark-La-Tex comes off as racist, and one piece of data that shows it's pretty scattered within our area.

Does any of this mean the majority of people in or around the Ark-La-Tex are racist? No, not even close. But if it does say anything, its that there is still racism in our world. Even if we want to pretend there's not.