Aug 18, 2017 04:21 AM
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...ry/537108/
EXCERPT: [...] Two years ago—before Donald Trump was elected president, before white nationalism had become central to the political conversations [...] sociologists [...] set out to study Stormfront forum posts about genetic ancestry tests. [...] On Stormfront, the researchers did encounter conspiracy theories and racist rants, but some white-nationalist interpretations of genetic ancestry tests were in fact quite sophisticated—and their views cannot all be easily dismissed as ignorance.
“If we believe their politics comes from lack of sophistication because they’re unintelligent or uneducated,” says Panofsky, “I think we’re liable to make a lot of mistakes in how we cope with them.”
[...] Some of the results were 100 percent European, as users expected. But often—surprisingly often, says Panofsky—users disclosed tests results showing non-European ancestry. And despite revealing non-European ancestry on a forum full of white nationalists, they were not run off the site. [...] While some commenters reacted with anger, many reacted by offering up arguments to explain away the test results. These arguments largely fell into two camps.
[...] The team also identified a third group of reactions: acceptance of the genetic ancestry test results. Some users did start to rethink white nationalism. [...] For example, one user suggested a white-nationalist confederation, where different nations would have slightly different criteria for inclusion...
MORE: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...ry/537108/
EXCERPT: [...] Two years ago—before Donald Trump was elected president, before white nationalism had become central to the political conversations [...] sociologists [...] set out to study Stormfront forum posts about genetic ancestry tests. [...] On Stormfront, the researchers did encounter conspiracy theories and racist rants, but some white-nationalist interpretations of genetic ancestry tests were in fact quite sophisticated—and their views cannot all be easily dismissed as ignorance.
“If we believe their politics comes from lack of sophistication because they’re unintelligent or uneducated,” says Panofsky, “I think we’re liable to make a lot of mistakes in how we cope with them.”
[...] Some of the results were 100 percent European, as users expected. But often—surprisingly often, says Panofsky—users disclosed tests results showing non-European ancestry. And despite revealing non-European ancestry on a forum full of white nationalists, they were not run off the site. [...] While some commenters reacted with anger, many reacted by offering up arguments to explain away the test results. These arguments largely fell into two camps.
[...] The team also identified a third group of reactions: acceptance of the genetic ancestry test results. Some users did start to rethink white nationalism. [...] For example, one user suggested a white-nationalist confederation, where different nations would have slightly different criteria for inclusion...
MORE: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...ry/537108/