Racial Prejudice, Racial Identity, and Attitudes in Political Decision Making

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashley Jardina ◽  
Spencer Piston
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
American Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Racial Prejudice ◽  
Racial Groups ◽  
Racial Solidarity ◽  
The Protestant Work Ethic ◽  
Biological Differences

A great deal of work in the domain of race and politics has focused on two phenomena: racial prejudice and racial solidarity. Scholarship on racial prejudice has primarily examined the nature and consequences of white racial animus, particularly toward blacks. In the latter half of the 20th century, in the post-Civil Rights era, scholars argued that racial prejudice had been transformed, as most whites rejected the belief that there were innate, biological differences between racial groups. Instead, whites came to embrace the belief that blacks did not subscribe to particular cultural values associated with the protestant work ethic. While these attitudes profoundly shape public opinion and political behavior in the United States, we suspect that there has been a resurgence in the belief that consequential biological differences between racial groups exist, and that biological racism is a growing force in American politics. Most of the development of work on racial consciousness has examined the effects of racial solidarity among racial and ethnic minorities on public opinion. Individuals’ psychological attachments to their racial group are an important element in American politics, and their importance may increase as the country becomes more racially and ethnically diverse.

Prison autobiographical narratives: Making sense of personal and social (racial) transformation

2019 ◽  
pp. 174165901988011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vanessa Lynn
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Racial Solidarity ◽  
Autobiographical Accounts ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Mainstream Society ◽  
The 1960S

This article investigates autobiographical public narratives of people who are, and were, incarcerated during different regimes of injustices in the United States—from the civil rights era to the current era of mass incarceration. People make sense of their experiences with race and racism through time, from a present standpoint of incarceration or freedom, in retrospect via proximate and distant memories of injustices, and toward a vision of the future. I juxtapose mainstream autobiographies from Malcolm X to Shaka Senghor with public blog posts from individuals incarcerated who provide autobiographical accounts to the world. I find that generations of incarcerated people who came of age during the height of the War on Drugs of the 1980s and 1990s project a narrative of a neoliberal subject who has a more individualistic and de-racialized idea of transforming their moral self and community. This contradicts with the way they portray prison as being a conduit for creating communities of racial solidarity and racial consciousness. Highly influenced and inspired by other narratives of radical prisoners of conscience of the 1960s and 1970s who were prone to view their liberation, and of the Black community, through vanquishing White supremacy, the new generation speaks to the color-blind narratives that pervade mainstream society and possible in narrative interventions correctional program.

Britain and Antislavery

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom F. Wright
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Multiple Dimensions ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Anglo American

This chapter explores the multiple dimensions to Frederick Douglass’s invocations of Britain at the lectern. It surveys a wide range of his speeches delivered in the United States between the 1840s and 1880s, and during his two British tours, to unravel the creative uses to which he put his “perplexing duality” toward an Anglo-American commons as part of the struggle for abolition and civil rights. It argues that Douglass’s transatlantic rhetoric helped underpin three strands of his career. First, the idea of an Atlantic world patterned by institutions of speech allowed him to develop his concepts of moral suasion and public opinion. Second, firsthand testimony of British social relations underwrote his transition from antislavery activist to cosmopolitan intellectual engaged with broader issues of citizenship and racial intolerance. Finally, the complex historical narrative of Britain provided Douglass with a vocabulary and teleology through which to contemplate imagined futures for America.

scholarly journals Initial Effects of the Coronavirus Pandemic on Racial Prejudice in the United States: Evidence from Google Trends

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karl F. Vachuska
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
The United States ◽  
Racial Prejudice ◽  
Google Trends ◽  
Racial Groups ◽  
Large Component ◽  
Present Evidence

In the United States, widespread hostility towards Asian-Americans has unfortunately seemed to define a large component of Americans' response to the Coronavirus pandemic. Utilizing Google Trends data, I examine how sentiment towards minority racial groups has been affected by the Coronavirus pandemic. While I find evidence that Coronavirus has been correlated with an increase in anti-Chinese sentiment, more surprisingly I also find evidence that it has been correlated with an increase in anti-Hispanic sentiment. I discuss why this may be and also present evidence that Coronavirus has resulted in discrimination towards Chinese and Mexican restaurants.

Red Summer and Early 20th-Century Race Massacres

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann V. Collins
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Racial Violence ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Racial Groups ◽  
Early 19Th Century

Between the turbulent months of April and October 1919, racial violence reached a peak in the United States. Some twenty-six white-on-black massacres took place across the country. Author and civil rights activist James Weldon Johnson dubbed this terrible period the Red Summer as a way to characterize pervasive racial hostility and for the blood spilled in its wake. Yet, racial violence has had a long and painful history in the United States. From the moment enslaved Africans arrived in the New World, whites strove cruelly and systematically to maintain power and control over their bodies and labor. Indeed, many interactions between ostensible racial groups have centered on white hostility. A type of brutality that proved especially vicious took the shape of white-on-black race massacres. First appearing in the early 19th century and fading by the end of World War II, whites used these types of disturbances to deny African Americans progress and freedom. Destruction of black communities, massive bloodshed, and lynchings characterized these occurrences. The early 20th century, and particularly the Red Summer, marked a critical moment in the history of race relations of the United States—one that proved deadly to African Americans.

Dreaming Blackness: Black Nationalism and African American Public Opinion. By Melanye T. Price

2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 897-898
Author(s):  
Robert Gooding-Williams
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Black Nationalism ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
Black President ◽  
Post Civil Rights

This is a timely, engaging, and illuminating study of Black Nationalism. The book's “fundamental project,” Melanye T. Price writes, “is to systematically understand individual Black Nationalism adherence among African Americans in the post-Civil Rights era” (p. 60). Black Nationalism has a long history in African American politics, but with the demise of Jim Crow and the election of our first black president, we may reasonably wonder whether ordinary African American citizens are disposed to endorse it. Price's book is important because it addresses this question head-on, defending the thesis that a renewal of Black Nationalism remains a viable possibility in post-Obama America.

Effects of Public Opinion on Policy

1983 ◽  
Vol 77 (1) ◽  
pp. 175-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin I. Page ◽  
Robert Y. Shapiro
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
American Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Government Policies ◽  
Present Evidence ◽  
Proximate Cause ◽  
Democratic Responsiveness ◽  
Central Concern

The responsiveness of government policies to citizens' preferences is a central concern of various normative and empirical theories of democracy. Examining public opinion and policy data for the United States from 1935 to 1979, we find considerable congruence between changes in preferences and in policies, especially for large, stable opinion changes on salient issues. We present evidence that pubic opinion is often a proximate cause of policy, affecting policy more than policy influences opinion. One should be cautious, however, about concluding that democratic responsiveness pervades American politics.

scholarly journals Civil Rights, World War II, and U.S. Public Opinion

2016 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven White
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Racial Attitudes ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Racial Prejudice ◽  
World War ◽  
Gunnar Myrdal ◽  
White Racial Attitudes

Scholars of American politics often assume World War II liberalized white racial attitudes. This conjecture is generally premised on the existence of an ideological tension between a war against Nazism and the maintenance of white supremacy at home, particularly the Southern system of Jim Crow. A possible relationship between the war and civil rights was also suggested by a range of contemporaneous voices, including academics like Gunnar Myrdal and activists like Walter White and A. Philip Randolph. However, while intuitively plausible, this relationship is generally not well verified empirically. A common flaw is the lack of attention to public opinion polls from the 1940s. Using the best available survey evidence, I argue the war's impact on white racial attitudes is more limited than is often claimed. First, I demonstrate that for whites in the mass public, while there is some evidence of liberalization on issues of racial prejudice, this generally does not extend to policies addressing racial inequities. White opposition to federal anti-lynching legislation actually seems to have increased during the war. Second, there is some evidence of racial moderation among white veterans, relative to their counterparts who did not serve. White veterans were more supportive of anti-lynching legislation in the immediate postwar period, and they offered stronger support for black voting rights in the early 1960s. However, they were not distinguishable on many other issues, including measures of racial prejudice and attitudes toward segregation.

The Racial Politics of the 1956 Elections

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Kyle Day
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Racial Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Partisan Politics ◽  
National Elections ◽  
Presidential Primaries

This chapter discusses how the emerging Civil Rights Movement and the controversy over Brown’s implementation played out in American partisan politics. Specifically, the United States Senate’s Southern Caucus, under the leadership of Senator Richard Brevard Russell, Jr., led a concerted regional program to subvert Brown. In turn, President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s response to the controversy over Brown and the Autherine Lucy riots proved to be the driving force of American politics in the 1956 national elections, determining Ike’s own decision to seek reëlection/. The Civil Rights Movement also set the course for the Democratic Presidential Primaries in that election year, almost becoming definitive issue in American politics.

EMBEDDING THE COLOR LINE: The Accumulation of Racial Advantage and the Disaccumulation of Opportunity in Post-Civil Rights America

2005 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael K. Brown ◽  
David Wellman
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Cumulative Effect ◽  
The United States ◽  
Racial Groups ◽  
Individual Choice ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Post Civil Rights

This article investigates why deeply entrenched racial inequality persists into the post-civil rights era in the United States. It challenges individual-level explanations that assume persistent racial inequality is the result of either White bigotry, which is diminishing, or the failure of Blacks to take advantage of the opportunities opened up by the civil rights legislation of the 1960s. We propose an alternative explanation for durable racial inequality. Contemporary color lines, we argue, result from the cumulative effect of racial discrimination and exclusion, a process in which Whites accumulate racial advantages to the detriment of African Americans and Latinos. These cumulative inequalities are produced and sustained by competition between racial groups to acquire and control jobs and other resources, and by institutional practices and public policies. Individual choice in the form of intentional racism has little to do with the persistence of racial inequality. Our analysis suggests that Americans' current understanding of the concept of equality of opportunity is out of sync with the realities of durable racial inequality, and needs to be revised.

Latina Feminist Literature

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alicia Arrizón
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
Social Power ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Feminist Literature ◽  
The 19Th Century

Any examination of Latina feminist literature must acknowledge that this area of study, like the identity of women of Latin American heritage, is a complex phenomenon. This complexity attests to the fact that the Latino population in the United States embraces multiple ethnicities, such as Mexican American and Cuban American. Aside from ethnic representations, the notion of Latina (Latino) recognizes various ideologically determinant identities, such as Chicanas (Chicanos) and Nuyoricans. In order to embrace the notion of Latina feminism in literature, it is paramount to recognize the reality of women who live in a complex bifurcated reality. Latinas are Americans, and yet, at the same time, they are not “Americans.” Latinas comprise multiracial and multiethnic communities whose multiple and diverse voices are situated within different hierarchies of social power and discourse. While Latina literature is deeply rooted within cultural values and traditions, it critiques the repressive, patriarchal foundations of that tradition. Consequently, Latina feminist writers embody a rebellious sensibility to the task of dismantling the structures that have defined, silenced, and marginalized them. Thus Latina feminist writing cannot be understood as an exclusive or absolute phenomenon but rather must be seen as a heterogeneous cultural practice drawing from the diverse genealogies of women’s specific ethnic backgrounds, as well as from their histories and their voices, while attempting to challenge gender norms, heteronormativity, and power relations. Although the renaissance of Latina feminist literary production became evident in the period after the Civil Rights and Women’s Liberation movements, especially after the 1980s (and 1990s consecutively), discursive configurations of Latina writings have been identified dating back to the 19th century in the United States.

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