A stunning little insight into America
The first response to 'the slap' revealed some very interesting information not about race but class in America.
It has been fascinating to watch the reaction to Will Smith slapping Chris Rock. I don’t want to take sides on the right or wrong of this (although I don’t condone violence, bullying, etc.) but that is not what has interested me. What I have found interesting is that not only do people take sides so quickly, but they believe everyone else is on their side. Take for instance this headline from Mediate, “SHOCK POLL: Majority of Americans Side with Will Smith Over Chris Rock in Oscar Slap Brouhaha.”
Trust in Polls
Let me start off by saying I don’t really trust any poll that I can’t see the real data behind. Too many are created by people who have ‘axes to grind’ and they use small samples and skewed weighting. We can get almost any answer we want by carefully wording the questions and picking how and whom we ask them to. Worse, most polls aren’t really polls but small samples with extrapolated models.
All that being said, I saw this poll on ‘the slap’ posted by @davidshor on Twitter. According to his profile, David is “Head of Data Science at Blue Rose Research, based in NYC, originally from Miami. I try to elect Democrats.” It is fair to say, David and I are probably not very politically aligned, and I think he missed the biggest conclusion from his own data. So, what did David find on his overnight survey of 2162 people (no idea how he collected the data but assumed it was online).
Overall, 52.3% to 47.7% of people blame Chris Rock. While 5% seems a lot, I don’t know the margin of error in the poll (guessing 3-5%), so it's probably more of a toss-up than it looks. You can read your way down the data and make your own conclusions. The Odds Ratio on the side shows the largest gaps.
What I found interesting was when, within the group, the opinions swapped.
- If you earn under $100K you probably blame Chris Rock but for over $100K you probably blame Will Smith
- If you are educated with some college or less you blame Chris Rock and a four-year degree or more, you blame Will Smith
If these are linked (and they may not be statistically but go with me) the lower-paid and lower educated (and younger) blame Chris Rock but the better paid and better educated (probably related) blame, Will Smith. Note that the option by race doesn’t seem to change between White, Black, Hispanic, and Native American. Only the Asian group shows a difference but that may be in the margin of error.
It might be interesting to cross-reference the Presidential, Bible, and Discipline questions across this data but they didn’t give us that.
So What?
Again, I can’t validate the data or the polling method, but this pointed out something interesting to me. While we often use Race, Age, and other identities to separate ourselves out, here at least, Class may be the biggest difference.
If we assume that the less well-educated
and lower-paid tend to be working class, we might be able to argue that they felt that Chris Rock’s insult to Will Smith’s wife deserved a smack in the face. Conversely, the upper or middle class, better educated and higher paid, saw no justification in violence and blamed Will smith.
Just one data point but more and more, to me, it feels like class divides us most. Interesting, Stephen Colbert’s reaction was to suggest it was OK to hit a journalist that he didn’t like. Maybe that’s because he’s not very funny or just a desperate attempt to look relevant to the young.