“The comments made by Cliven Bundy and Donald Sterling this month demonstrate that the U.S. is far from a colorblind society. And the reaction to their comments has drawn further attention to the fraught relationship between racism and partisan politics. When racist statements by high-profile figures are made public, some news commentators become preoccupied with trying to discern the speaker’s political affiliation.

“We were curious about the long-term trends in racial attitudes as expressed by Americans in polls. Are Republicans more likely to give arguably racist responses in surveys than Democrats? Have the patterns changed since President Obama took office in 2009?

“Like The New York Times’ Amanda Cox, we looked at a variety of questions on racial attitudes in the General Social Survey, which has been conducted periodically since 1972. The difference is that we looked at the numbers for white Democrats and white Republicans specifically, based on the way Americans identified themselves in the survey.1 Our focus was only on racial attitudes as expressed by white Americans toward black Americans (of course, racism can also exist between and among other racial groups).”

In this clip from The Young Turks, Michael Shure, Jimmy Dore and John Iadarola dig into the data from the GSS poll and debate whether even asking certain questions is, in and of itself, racist.

For more, read the Nate Silver article in fivethirtyeight.com here: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/are-white-republicans-more-racist-than-white-democrats/