Nate Silver: How does race affect votes?

38,912 views ・ 2009-04-24

TED


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00:18
I want to talk about the election.
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For the first time in the United States, a predominantly white group of voters
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voted for an African-American candidate for President.
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00:27
And in fact Barack Obama did quite well.
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He won 375 electoral votes.
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And he won about 70 million popular votes
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more than any other presidential candidate --
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of any race, of any party -- in history.
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00:39
If you compare how Obama did against how John Kerry had done four years earlier --
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Democrats really like seeing this transition here,
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where almost every state becomes bluer, becomes more democratic --
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even states Obama lost, like out west,
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those states became more blue.
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In the south, in the northeast, almost everywhere
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but with a couple of exceptions here and there.
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01:00
One exception is in Massachusetts.
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That was John Kerry's home state.
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No big surprise, Obama couldn't do better than Kerry there.
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Or in Arizona, which is John McCain's home,
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Obama didn't have much improvement.
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But there is also this part of the country, kind of in the middle region here.
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This kind of Arkansas, Tennessee, Oklahoma, West Virginia region.
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Now if you look at '96, Bill Clinton --
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the last Democrat to actually win -- how he did in '96,
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you see real big differences in this part of the country right here,
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the kind of Appalachians, Ozarks, highlands region, as I call it:
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20 or 30 point swings
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from how Bill Clinton did in '96 to how Obama did
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in 2008.
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Yes Bill Clinton was from Arkansas, but these are very, very profound differences.
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So, when we think about parts of the country like Arkansas, you know.
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There is a book written called, "What's the Matter with Kansas?"
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But really the question here -- Obama did relatively well in Kansas.
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He lost badly but every Democrat does.
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He lost no worse than most people do.
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But yeah, what's the matter with Arkansas?
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01:55
(Laughter)
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And when we think of Arkansas we tend to have pretty negative connotations.
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We think of a bunch of rednecks, quote, unquote, with guns.
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And we think people like this probably don't want to vote
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for people who look like this and are named Barack Obama.
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02:08
We think it's a matter of race. And is this fair?
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Are we kind of stigmatizing people from Arkansas, and this part of the country?
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And the answer is: it is at least partially fair.
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We know that race was a factor, and the reason why we know that
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is because we asked those people.
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Actually we didn't ask them, but when they conducted
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exit polls in every state,
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in 37 states, out of the 50,
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they asked a question, that was pretty direct, about race.
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They asked this question.
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In deciding your vote for President today, was the race
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of the candidate a factor?
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We're looking for people that said, "Yes, race was a factor;
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moreover it was an important factor, in my decision,"
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and people who voted for John McCain
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as a result of that factor,
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maybe in combination with other factors, and maybe alone.
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We're looking for this behavior among white voters
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or, really, non-black voters.
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So you see big differences in different parts
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of the country on this question.
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In Louisiana, about one in five white voters
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said, "Yes, one of the big reasons why I voted against Barack Obama
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is because he was an African-American."
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If those people had voted for Obama,
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even half of them, Obama would have won Louisiana safely.
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Same is true with, I think, all of these states you see on the top of the list.
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Meanwhile, California, New York, we can say, "Oh we're enlightened"
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but you know, certainly a much lower incidence of this
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admitted, I suppose,
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manifestation of racially-based voting.
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Here is the same data on a map.
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You kind of see the relationship between
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the redder states of where more people responded and said,
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"Yes, Barack Obama's race was a problem for me."
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You see, comparing the map to '96, you see an overlap here.
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This really seems to explain
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why Barack Obama did worse
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in this one part of the country.
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So we have to ask why.
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Is racism predictable in some way?
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Is there something driving this?
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Is it just about some weird stuff that goes on in Arkansas
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that we don't understand, and Kentucky?
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Or are there more systematic factors at work?
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And so we can look at a bunch of different variables.
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These are things that economists and political scientists look at all the time --
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things like income, and religion, education.
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Which of these seem to drive
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this manifestation of racism
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in this big national experiment we had on November 4th?
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And there are a couple of these that have
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strong predictive relationships,
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one of which is education,
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where you see the states with the fewest years of schooling
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per adult are in red,
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and you see this part of the country, the kind of Appalachians region,
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is less educated. It's just a fact.
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And you see the relationship there
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with the racially-based voting patterns.
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The other variable that's important is
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the type of neighborhood that you live in.
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States that are more rural --
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even to some extent of the states like New Hampshire and Maine --
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they exhibit a little bit of
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this racially-based voting against Barack Obama.
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So it's the combination of these two things: it's education
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and the type of neighbors that you have,
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which we'll talk about more in a moment.
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And the thing about states like Arkansas and Tennessee
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is that they're both very rural,
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and they are educationally impoverished.
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So yes, racism is predictable.
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05:01
These things, among maybe other variables,
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but these things seem to predict it.
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We're going to drill down a little bit more now,
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into something called the General Social Survey.
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This is conducted by the University of Chicago
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every other year.
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And they ask a series of really interesting questions.
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In 2000 they had particularly interesting questions
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about racial attitudes.
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One simple question they asked is,
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"Does anyone of the opposite race live in your neighborhood?"
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We can see in different types of communities that the results are quite different.
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In cites, about 80 percent of people
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have someone whom they consider a neighbor of another race,
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but in rural communities, only about 30 percent.
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Probably because if you live on a farm, you might not have a lot of neighbors, period.
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But nevertheless, you're not having a lot of interaction with people
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who are unlike you.
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So what we're going to do now is take the white people in the survey
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and split them between those who have black neighbors --
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or, really, some neighbor of another race --
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and people who have only white neighbors.
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And we see in some variables
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in terms of political attitudes, not a lot of difference.
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This was eight years ago, some people were more Republican back then.
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But you see Democrats versus Republican,
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not a big difference based on who your neighbors are.
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And even some questions about race -- for example
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affirmative action, which is kind of a political question,
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a policy question about race, if you will --
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not much difference here.
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Affirmative action is not very popular frankly, with white voters, period.
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But people with black neighbors and people with mono-racial neighborhoods
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feel no differently about it really.
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But if you probe a bit deeper and get a bit more personal if you will,
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"Do you favor a law banning interracial marriage?"
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There is a big difference.
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People who don't have neighbors of a different race
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are about twice as likely
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to oppose interracial marriage as people who do.
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Just based on who lives in your immediate neighborhood around you.
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And likewise they asked, not in 2000, but in the same survey in 1996,
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"Would you not vote for a qualified black president?"
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You see people without neighbors who are African-American who
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were much more likely to say, "That would give me a problem."
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So it's really not even about urban versus rural.
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It's about who you live with.
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Racism is predictable. And it's predicted by
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interaction or lack thereof with people unlike you, people of other races.
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So if you want to address it,
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the goal is to facilitate interaction with people of other races.
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I have a couple of very obvious, I suppose,
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ideas for maybe how to do that.
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I'm a big fan of cities.
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Especially if we have cites that are diverse and sustainable,
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and can support people of different ethnicities and different income groups.
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I think cities facilitate more of the kind of networking,
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the kind of casual interaction than you might have on a daily basis.
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But also not everyone wants to live in a city, certainly not a city like New York.
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So we can think more about things like street grids.
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This is the neighborhood where I grew up in East Lansing, Michigan.
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It's a traditional Midwestern community, which means you have real grid.
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You have real neighborhoods and real trees, and real streets you can walk on.
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And you interact a lot with your neighbors --
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people you like, people you might not know.
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And as a result it's a very tolerant community,
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which is different, I think, than something like this,
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which is in Schaumburg, Illinois,
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where every little set of houses has their own cul-de-sac
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and drive-through Starbucks and stuff like that.
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I think that actually this type of urban design,
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which became more prevalent in the 1970s and 1980s --
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I think there is a relationship between that and the country becoming
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more conservative under Ronald Reagan.
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But also here is another idea we have --
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is an intercollegiate exchange program
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where you have students going from New York abroad.
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But frankly there are enough differences within the country now
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where maybe you can take a bunch of kids from NYU,
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have them go study for a semester at the University of Arkansas,
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and vice versa. Do it at the high school level.
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Literally there are people who might be in school in Arkansas or Tennessee
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and might never interact in a positive affirmative way
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with someone from another part of the country, or of another racial group.
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I think part of the education variable we talked about before
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is the networking experience you get when you go to college
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where you do get a mix of people that you might not interact with otherwise.
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But the point is, this is all good news,
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because when something is predictable,
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it is what I call designable.
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You can start thinking about solutions to solving that problem,
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even if the problem is pernicious and as intractable as racism.
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If we understand the root causes of the behavior
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and where it manifests itself and where it doesn't,
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we can start to design solutions to it.
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So that's all I have to say. Thank you very much.
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09:10
(Applause)
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