Counties with higher lynching rates have low voter turnout today(postandcourier.com)
postandcourier.com
Counties with higher lynching rates have low voter turnout today
https://www.postandcourier.com/politics/counties-with-higher-lynching-rates-have-low-voter-turnout-today/article_627132ba-9375-11e9-b335-3f61123ae128.html
5 comments
Is it an innocent blunder that the editor wrote "Counties with higher lynching rates" rather than "Counties that had higher lynching rates"? I don't think so.
After skimming through, the author uses present tense for the rate:
" Greenwood County, which has the highest lynching rate in South Carolina with 6.87 blacks lynched per 10,000 people in the black population in 1900,... "
But then uses past tense for the voter turnout
" ... had a black voter registration rate in the 2008 presidential election of 72.4 percent. "
But I am not sot sure that I understand why either.
" Greenwood County, which has the highest lynching rate in South Carolina with 6.87 blacks lynched per 10,000 people in the black population in 1900,... "
But then uses past tense for the voter turnout
" ... had a black voter registration rate in the 2008 presidential election of 72.4 percent. "
But I am not sot sure that I understand why either.
I don't think they're limiting the time period for the lynchings. So although the rate is based on the population in 1900, it's not limited to that year or decade, so it's not past tense.
" To examine the connection between historical acts of racial violence and modern-day voting behavior among blacks in the South, Williams examined county-level voter participation data in the six Southern states where individuals are asked to identify their race when they register to vote. "
Where they basically drew connections between two sets of statistics, different from what 'spurious correlations'[1] takes aim at? Although the article doesn't mention at any greater depth as to how the research was done.
[1] https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations