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Comment by hdndjsbbs | Hacker News Reader

It's funny to me that the average American is Islamophobic, but the US government sharply divides middle eastern countries based on alliances (and how rich they are). Qatari Emir? You're a friend of the US government. Poor Pakistani? Enemy. Lebanese farmer? We'll think about it.

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It makes sense given a few things, although it's not as bad as you're saying: 1. The median American lives in a city and has exposure to Muslims and is most likely not Islamophobic. 2. Due to the voting structure of the U.S., people who don't live in cities and don't get exposure to Muslims get outsized voting rights. 3. Most American electeds are much more well travelled than Americans who don't live in cities.

So basically, elites have to necessarily balance (and exploit) the biases of over-represented minorities with their own largely metropolitan beliefs.

All of this is made more ironic in that the moral structures of the Abrahamic religions, including Islam, are all influences on and in line with, traditional American values, which American elites don't follow (see Epstein) but Americans who don't live in cities largely do.

> The median American lives in a city and has exposure to Muslims and is most likely not Islamophobic

Most Islamophobic people I know live in cities. Is there really that much of a change related to urbanism for Islamophobia, one you adjust for political alignment and religiousness?

For reference, this is the America I see every day:

https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/local/epic-citys-vision-sp...

Collin County is >90% "urban", as much as what counts for urbanism in the US.

Over the past 17 years I've lived in three houses (in the suburbs of two different cities in two different states- one East Coast, one land-locked) and an apartment in NYC (obviously also East Coast). In all of the East Coast spots (urban and suburban) there was a mosque closer than the nearest McDonald's. For the land-locked state suburb the mosque was 2 miles away and the nearest McDonald's was 0.75 miles away.

I'm not selecting these houses to be convenient to the Mosque- I've never been in any of those Mosques. It's just an artifact of living in the sort of neighborhoods that I like. I tend to agree that it isn't urban/rural per se, as much as it's Openness of the Big Five personality traits. Which, at least in the US, tends to be correlated with a lot of other things (college education, density of living, etc.).

IRT the "college education", Collin County is statistically higher educated than most of the country demographically-speaking. >56% achieved bachelors or higher compared to NYC at ~42%. For reference, Santa Clara County in California is also at 56%, so about as educated as the area with Apple, Google, and Facebook at least as far as that statistic analyzes.

https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/collincountytex...

Many people I've heard say extremely Islamophobic things have masters degrees and higher. I'd be interested in seeing real statistics on it.

Old but still good: https://blogs.chapman.edu/wilkinson/2018/10/16/fear-of-musli...

Hey, thanks for sharing some real data, I appreciate it.

>, including Islam, are all influences on and in line with, traditional American values

My brother, in Sunni Islam practicing countries, they can kill you for drawing a stick figure.

Traditional American values include freedom of speech.

Only as long as they are outside the US. As soon as they are in the US a Qatari is just a muslim and considered dangerous.

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