Dem politicians and people who identify as politically liberal tend to choose words that downplay their own competence and emphasize warmth and friendliness instead when talking to blacks and other racial minorities. This is in contrast with how they speak to other whites. Conservatives and Republican politicians do not make any significant word choice changes based on the race of their audience. Here's an article on the study, which is due for publication soon:
https://insights.som.yale.edu/insig...petent-in-interactions-with-african-americans.
In the first part, they studied speeches given by Democrats and Republicans going back several decades and found that Dem politicians had significant variation in their word choices based on the race of their audience. The sample size for Republican speeches to majority black or hispanic audiences was smaller, but there was no similar variation in word choice based on race. “It was really surprising to see that for nearly three decades, Democratic presidential candidates have been engaging in this predicted behavior.” I liked this line, because I
don't find the result surprising.
The study also had people compose e-mails to people they didn't know, and in emails to people with black sounding names like Lakisha liberals tended to vary their word choice to present themselves as less competent, while conservatives did not. “It was kind of an unpleasant surprise to see this subtle but persistent effect,” Dupree says. “Even if it’s ultimately well-intentioned, it could be seen as patronizing.” Again, is this surprising to anyone other than Dr. Dupree?
And finally, "Initial data from follow-up studies suggest that describing a black person as
highly intelligent, thus reversing the stereotype, or as already highly motivated to get along with whites, thus removing the need to prove goodwill, can reduce the likelihood that a white person will downplay their competence in their interactions with the black person." So initial data from followup studies suggests that at least some of the time the problem may be a common assumption among liberals that racial minorities are not very smart, thus the need to use easier words to communicate with them. This is why when it is a given that a racial minority is highly intelligent, the variation in word choice lessens or disappears.
Anyway, a patronizing liberal attitude toward blacks and other racial minorities has long been a complaint on the right, at least as far back as George HW Bush's "the soft bigotry of low expectations". Does this prove it exists or are there other explanations?