I studied with Nisbett, and respect his work, but this show nothing _comparatively_ and isn't meant to. At the time I took his class, I was at the U of M, 40 miles from Detroit, the city with the then-highest murder rate in the US and with levels of white racism so toxic you could not breathe. White Southerners talk a rhetoric of honor, don't I know it. That may explain some of the violence that some of them commit. Unfortunately a vastly disproportionate amount of the violent crime in this country is committed not by white Southerners but by poor minorities, and that's not because the cops don't try to catch or the prosecutors convict white murderers and thugs. Obviously the poverty and hopelessness of the circumstances in which urban minorities find themselves, north and south, has a lot to due with the violence, It's also likely that honor culture of a different sort provides the official rhetoric for young minority men in urban centers. In any case, your psychopathic hatred of and contempt for the South cannot be bolstered by the sort of evidence you cite, The most violent places in the country have been for a long time Northern cities. Likewise the most racist places. So don't drag in social psychology to explain your own vile and idiotic prejudices. You might not want a white Southerner to marry your sister, and apparently don't, but most people know enough to keep their lips zipped about embarrassing attitudes like that.
--- Carl Remick <carlremick at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >From: andie nachgeborenen
> <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com>
> >
> >I grew up down South, N.Va., ....
> >Do try to set aside the hateful contemptuous
> >superiority that some Northerners, like Carl,
> display
> >towards the South. Just because people drawl
> doesn't
> >mean they are dumb, right wing, racist,
> >violence-prone, or marry their sisters. ...
>
> [Hmm, touchy, touchy. You might find this abstract
> from the "Personality
> and Social Psychology Bulletin" of interest. I
> regret that I do not have
> access to the full text:]
>
> Self-Protection and the Culture of Honor: Explaining
> Southern Violence
>
> Dov Cohen
> University of Michigan
>
> Richard E. Nisbett
> University of Michigan
>
> The southern United States has long been known to be
> more violent than the
> northern United States. The authors argue that this
> may be due in part to an
> ideology justifying violence for self-protection and
> for maintaining "honor"
> or a reputation for toughness. Analysis of data from
> three surveys shows
> that southern White males do not endorse violence
> unconditionally but do
> endorse violence when it is used for
> self-protection, to defend one's honor,
> or to socialize children. These data fit well with
> behavioral data
> concerning gun ownership and the types of homicide
> committed in the South.
> Although the conditions that gave rise to southern
> violence are largely
> gone, it may be sustained through collective
> representations emphasizing the
> importance of honor and through violent
> self-fulfilling prophecies centering
> on hypersensitivity to affronts.
>
>
<http://psp.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/20/5/551>
>
> Carl
>
>
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