Race & Ethnicity

This is a really interesting and really disturbing map, on several different levels. The most disturbing aspect, though, is how broadly some of the word usages are really spread out. There are definitely areas with more or less hate, but with the exception of a few terms, the map pretty much looks like a picture of U.S. city lights at night. You find at least moderate levels in any heavily populated area, which seems deeply wrong.

Racism seems to be pretty deep seated in humanity. It's probably going to be very hard to deal with in the long-term, honestly, even if we make it socially unacceptable. Social controls can keep it out of the public eye, but as this reveals, it's still going to be there. If people feel that they can only reveal it behind a perception of anonymity, though, maybe that says good things about our society. At least we as a society from upon the sorts of public expressions of explicit racism that were widespread a few decades ago. We might be able to move past this and teach children to recognize racist tendencies as destructive rather than something to be accepted.