I get news feeds periodically from my local news station, WFSB out of Hartford (CBS affiliate). Within the last hour or so, I got one that read something like "Connecticut is a blue state; so you might be surprised where we are ranked on our racial progress!" and it proceeds to tell me we're ranked 11th for states with the LEAST racial progress. It then links me to this:
http://www.wfsb.com/global/category.asp?c=208508&widgetid=209434&slideshowimageid=2As you can imagine, I read all kinds of stuff into that headline; the main implication being that as a blue state, we would lead the world in racial progress, and those filthy conservatives in the red states will be lagging behind wishing they had segregated water fountains still.
Imagine my surprise when I saw the top eleven (the list is published by Wallethub.com):
1. District of Columbia (BLUE)
2. Wisconsin (Red in 2016, but BLUE in 2012 and 2008)
3. Minnesota (BLUE)
4. Vermont (BLUE)
5. South Dakota (Red)
6. Maine (BLUE)
7. Iowa (Red in 2016, but BLUE in 2012 and 2008)
8. Illinois (BLUE)
9.Pennsylvania (Red in 2016, but BLUE in 2012 and 2008)
10. Michigan (Red in 2016, but BLUE in 2012 and 2008)
11. Connecticut (BLUE)
Six blue and four more that are nominally blue but went for change in 2016. Now, I'm not turning the tables and trying to imply that "liberals" are racists. But I am saying that maybe our conventional wisdom isn't accurate. Maybe our news outlets ought not play into those preconceptions when posting headlines (and I wrote an email to the guy who's byline was on the story saying just that). The website does not contain that headline; I don't know if it changed or if it was only on the text messages linking to the story.
But maybe we shouldn't be so quick to point fingers and judge.