Whiteshift: a story in data
- For media coverage of Whiteshift, and related events and content, please see my main page: www.sneps.net
- Book published in UK on October 25, 2018 with Penguin (Allen Lane), and US on January 28, 2019 with Overlook Press.
You can find links to further readings and visuals for each chapter. Simply click on the relevant linked chapter. More material will be added over time. Colour figures from the book will be added with the paperback release in May 2019.
Chapter 1 (no content)
Chapter 2
You can read a lot more about the subject of this chapter in my Rise and Fall of Anglo-America (Harvard University Press, 2004). I have acquired the rights so I aim to make an open access or low cost pdf version available with the US release in late January 2019.
Chapter 3
Psychological Values Map of Anti-Immigration Support in Suburbs of Large Cities, UK, 2015
Source: Cultural Dynamics 2015
The above values mapping schema, developed by Pat Dade from the models of leading social psychologists Shalom Schwartz and Abraham Maslow, asks over a hundred questions to a representative sample – in this case from the UK (no US data was available on this question at time of writing). Answers to questions cluster in predictable ways. ‘Settlers’ , linked to concepts of status quo conservatism and authoritarianism, are located in the top right third. ‘Pioneers’, with their exploratory ethic, are in the lower third, with ‘Prospectors’, who value hedonism and display, in the left. Darker brown to reds indicate high agreement with the statement about foreigners, green to blues disagreement. For instance, the ‘whip’ question (whipping sex criminals publicly for crimes against children) is circled in black in the Settler space and correlates highly with anti-immigration sentiment. The big 5 trait of openness is circled in red and is coloured blue, indicating that high openness is associated with a pro-immigration orientation. Notice how the question of immigration divides the values space between Settlers and Pioneers, with Prospectors more agnostic.
Psychological Values Map of Anti-Immigration Support in UK Villages, 2015
Source: Cultural Dynamics 2015
While Dade has not produced maps for the US on the subject, his UK maps show how homogeneous villages divide similarly to cities (above map) on the question of immigration, albeit with the more hedonistic prospectors showing up as less anti-immigration than is true in the suburban heat map above. This gets to the point that strong value divides which predict immigration attitudes and populism exist within both rural and urban environments. Ultimately these psychological differences are much more powerful than those based on popularly used social categories such as class, rural-urban, age or even education (though education is most closely linked to values). This is also why nearly 30 percent of UK households had a divide on the Brexit vote.
Ultra Orthodox and Orthodox Jewish Trump Vote, Brooklyn, New York, 2016
Source: ‘An Extremely Detailed Map of the 2016 Election,’ New York Times
Minorities played an important part in the Trump coalition. Though not a racial minority, religious Jews in New York are an unknown exception to the tendency of Jews to vote Democratic. The above map shows areas of Trump strength in deep-blue Brooklyn, New York. These correspond to Hasidic (ultra-Orthodox) sections of Williamsburg, Borough Park, and Crown Heights as well as Orthodox Midwood and Mill Basin, and Russian-Jewish Brighton Beach. Ultra-Orthodox (excluding Orthodox) Jews are projected to comprise half of observant American Jews in 2050 due to their average fertility rate of 6 children per woman. This could alter New York’s political demographics unless these high-fertility conservative Jews move to cheaper settlements outside the city like Kiryas Joel.
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Psychological Values Map of Anti-Immigration Support, UK, 2015
Source: Cultural Dynamics 2015
This values mapping schema, developed by Pat Dade from the work of Shalom Schwartz and Abraham Maslow, asks over a hundred questions to a representative sample. Answers to questions cluster in predictable ways. ‘Settlers’ , linked to concepts of status quo conservatism and authoritarianism, are located in the top right third. ‘Pioneers’, with their exploratory ethic, are in the lower third, with ‘Prospectors’, who value hedonism and display, in the left. Darker brown to reds indicate high agreement with the statement about foreigners, green to blues disagreement. For instance, the ‘whip’ question (whipping sex criminals publicly for crimes against children) is circled in black in the Settler space and correlates highly with anti-immigration sentiment. The big 5 trait of openness is circled in red and is coloured blue, indicating that high openness is associated with a pro-immigration orientation. Notice how the question of immigration divides the values space between Settlers and Pioneers, with Prospectors more agnostic.
Psychological Values Map of Anti-Immigration Support, France, 2015
Source: Cultural Dynamics 2015. Note the similar values map in France as in the UK, with polarization between Settlers and Pioneers.
Psychological Values Map of Anti-Immigration Support, Germany, 2015
Source: Cultural Dynamics 2015. Same story in Germany.
Psychological Values Map of Pro-Nature Support, UK, 2015
Source: Cultural Dynamics 2015.
Notice in the above map of support for Nature, that this time the cosmopolitan Pioneers find themselves pitted against the hedonistic pro-market Prospectors, with Settlers relatively warmer towards this issue and thus aligning more with Pioneers. Shows that on classic left-right economic questions, the split is more between Pioneers and Prospectors, but on the liberal-conservative cultural questions, the split is Pioneer-Settler.
Psychological Values Map of UKIP support, 2015
Source: Cultural Dynamics 2015. Notice the similarity between UKIP support and UK anti-immigration support in the first map in this series.
Psychological Values Map of Front National support, France, 2015
Source: Cultural Dynamics 2015. The map of FN support in France shows a similar pattern, albeit with some shading into the more economically right-wing/social dominance group along the Settler-Prospector boundary.
Psychological Values Map of AfD support, Germany, 2015
Source: Cultural Dynamics 2015. Another similar map, this time of AfD support, though prior to their Migrant Crisis peak. Again, note similarity with maps above and the German anti-immigration attitudes map (third in this series).
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Share of Visible Minorities by Census Division, Canada, 2016
Source: Census Mapper.ca 2016
Note the limited geographic impact of Canada’s 22 percent minority population, concentrated in Toronto, Vancouver and to a lesser degree Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa.
Racial Geography of the United States, dot-per-person, 2010
Source: University of Virginia from 2010 census
Note the predominance of whites across most of the country, aside from cities and the historically black Lower South/Mississippi Delta areas. This is one reason why the Senate, reflecting territory, is likely to remain dominated by white voters for longer than the Presidency, elected by popular vote. The House is subject to both popular and territorial logic so lies in between.
Ethnic and Income Geography of Toronto Public School Pupils and Parents, 2011-12
Toronto Student and Parent Census, 2011-12
Note the relatively close correspondence between ethnicity and income, with white families (about a quarter of the public school population) clustered in upper-income neighbourhoods proximal to the Lakeshore, north of the Centre along Yonge St. and in Humberside to the West