Sociology Understands the Difference Between "Most People" and "Each Person"

The hardest part of teaching sociology is getting students to see how we can make generalizations about groups which are true of the group in general, without being true of each in individual in the group.

One teachable aphorism I came up with this year is "Sociology Understands the Difference Between 'Most' and 'All'".

Today a refinement of that aphorism came to me, which appears in the title of this post.

White resentment of African Americans is a strong predictor of support for Donald Trump.

This survey found that, on a 17-point scale, a majority of white Republicans fell into the top four levels of racial resentment, and fully a quarter took the most extreme position.

If you can't see the whole chart in your browser, please follow the link to the original article.

White Against Black 

Whites were surveyed and placed on a 17-point scale that gauges the racial resentment they feel toward African-Americans. Here is the percentage of Democrats, independents and Republicans who fell into the least resentful (having a positive view of blacks) and most resentful ends of the scale. 

24%

of white Republicans were at the extreme end of the resentment scale.

20%

Democrats

Independents

Republicans

15

10

5

LEVEL OF RESENTMENT:

Most

Most

Most

Least

Least

Least

22

42

58

23%

10%

0.4%

of Democrats

Source: Analysis of American National Election Studies survey data, collected by YouGov, by Drew Engelhardt and Marc Hetherington, Vanderbilt University 

By The New York Times