Can Republican African Americans Win African American Votes? A Field Experiment

2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (5) ◽  
pp. 465-483 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Niven
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Field Experiment ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
National Committee ◽  
Preference Order ◽  
Demographic Trends ◽  
Political Preference ◽  
Presidential Candidates ◽  
The Face

In the face of its 2012 defeat and looming demographic trends that did not bode well for the party’s future presidential candidates, the Republican National Committee officially declared its intention to recruit more African American candidates for office. But will fielding more African American candidates likely attract more African American votes for Republicans? Here, I employ a field experiment using real candidates and real votes cast in two down-ballot races featuring African American Republican candidates. Among voters who received mailings highlighting both race and party, African American voters responded primarily to party, in the process largely rejecting these two candidates. By contrast, African American voters responded more favorably when they learned the race, but not the party, of these candidates. The results here suggest something of a self-affirming political preference order in which African Americans felt affirmed by voting for a fellow African American, but only when they did not see that candidate as conflicting with a more central aspect of their political identity.

More Shadow than Substance

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leah Wright Rigueur
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Substance P ◽  
National Committee ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Black Republicans ◽  
State And Local ◽  
American Party ◽  
Local Party

This chapter studies how, as the 1970s progressed, black Republicans were able to claim clear victories in their march toward equality: the expansion of the National Black Republican Council (NBRC); the incorporation of African Americans into the Republican National Committee (RNC) hierarchy; scores of black Republicans integrating state and local party hierarchies; and individual examples of black Republican success. African American party leaders could even point to their ability to forge a consensus voice among the disparate political ideas of black Republicans. Despite their ideological differences, they collectively rejected white hierarchies of power, demanding change for blacks both within the Grand Old Party (GOP) and throughout the country. Nevertheless, black Republicans quickly realized that their strategy did not reform the party institution.

Living with Lynching

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Koritha Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
National Culture ◽  
Black Church ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
Read Aloud ◽  
Mob Violence ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Right ◽  
White Violence

This book demonstrates that popular lynching plays were mechanisms through which African American communities survived actual and photographic mob violence. Often available in periodicals, lynching plays were read aloud or acted out by black church members, schoolchildren, and families. This book shows that these community performances and readings presented victims as honorable heads of households being torn from model domestic units by white violence, counter to the dominant discourses that depicted lynching victims as isolated brutes. Examining lynching plays as archival texts that embody broad networks of sociocultural exchange in the lives of black Americans, the author finds that audiences were rehearsing and improvising new ways of enduring in the face of widespread racial terrorism. Images of the black soldier, lawyer, mother, and wife helped readers assure each other that they were upstanding individuals who deserved the right to participate in national culture and politics. These powerful community coping efforts helped African Americans band together and withstand the nation's rejection of them as viable citizens.

The regional context of earlier African American speech: Evidence for reconstructing the development of AAVE

2000 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
WALT WOLFRAM ◽  
ERIK R. THOMAS ◽  
ELAINE W. GREEN
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Current Trend ◽  
African American Vernacular English ◽  
Generational Change ◽  
Vernacular English ◽  
Pamlico Sound ◽  
The Face ◽  
Identity Based

Despite extensive research over the past four decades, a number of issues concerning the historical and current development of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) remain unresolved. This study utilizes a unique sociolinguistic situation – a long-standing, isolated, biracial community situated in a distinctive dialect region of coastal North Carolina – to address questions of localized dialect accommodation and ethnolinguistic distinctiveness in earlier African American English. A comparison of diagnostic phonological and morphosyntactic variables for a sample of four different generations of African Americans and a baseline European American group shows that considerable accommodation of the localized dialect occurred in earlier African American speech. Nonetheless, certain dialect features – e.g., copula absence and 3rd person verbal s marking – were distinctively maintained by African Americans in the face of localized dialect accommodation; and this suggests long-term ethnolinguistic distinctiveness. Cross-generational change among African Americans indicates that younger speakers are moving away from the localized Pamlico Sound dialect toward a more generalized AAVE norm. Contact-based and identity-based explanations are offered for the current trend of localized dialect displacement.

Prejudice and Tolerance in US Presidential Politics: Evidence from Eight List Experiments in 2008 and 2012

2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward G. Carmines ◽  
Eric R. Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Presidential Candidates ◽  
Female Candidates ◽  
Marginalized Groups ◽  
Presidential Politics ◽  
Per Se

ABSTRACTUsing list experiments on the 2008 and 2012 Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project, we investigated whether respondents are more likely to vote against presidential candidates from marginalized groups. We show that conservative and Republican respondents are disinclined to support Muslim and gay candidates. However, neither Right- nor Left-leaning respondents are significantly opposed to female candidates. Surprisingly, we uncovered asymmetric prejudices toward Mormons and African Americans. In both 2008 and 2012, Republicans were far more uncomfortable with gay or Muslim candidates than with African American candidates (per se). However, Democrats in 2012 were deeply uncomfortable with Mormon candidates. These findings illustrate that prejudice in presidential politics is not confined to right-wing pathologies alone but is present on both sides of the partisan–ideological divide.

Reducing Police Brutality in African American Communities: Potential Roles for Social Workers in Congregations

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 66-84
Author(s):  
Betty Wilson ◽  
Terry A. Wolfer
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
General Public ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
Police Brutality ◽  
Religious Congregations ◽  
Predominantly Black ◽  
African American Communities ◽  
White Congregations

In the last decade, there have been a shocking number of police killings of unarmed African Americans, and advancements in technology have made these incidents more visible to the general public. The increasing public awareness of police brutality in African American communities creates a critical and urgent need to understand and improve police-community relationships. Congregational social workers (and other social workers who are part of religious congregations) have a potentially significant role in addressing the problem of police brutality. This manuscript explores and describes possible contributions by social workers, with differential consideration for those in predominantly Black or White congregations.

Emancipation and Free African Americans

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Archer
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
New England ◽  
Rhode Island ◽  
New Hampshire ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
African Descent ◽  
American Population ◽  
African American Population ◽  
Free African Americans

Except in parts of Rhode Island and Connecticut, slavery was a peripheral institution, and throughout New England during and after the Revolution there was widespread support to emancipate slaves. Some of the states enacted emancipation laws that theoretically allowed slavery to continue almost indefinitely, and slavery remained on the books as late as 1857 in New Hampshire. Although the laws gradually abolished slavery and although the pace was painfully slow for those still enslaved, the predominant dynamic for New England society was the sudden emergence of a substantial, free African American population. What developed was an even more virulent racism and a Jim Crow environment. The last part of the chapter is an analysis of where African Americans lived as of 1830 and the connection between racism and concentrations of people of African descent.

Slavery and Class in the American South

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
William L. Andrews
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
American South ◽  
Frederick Douglass ◽  
Harriet Jacobs ◽  
Slave Narrative ◽  
William Wells Brown ◽  
The American South ◽  
Work Family

In this study of an entire generation of slave narrators, more than sixty mid-nineteenth-century narratives reveal how work, family, skills, and connections made for social and economic differences among the enslaved of the South. Slavery and Class in the American South explains why social and economic distinctions developed and how they functioned among the enslaved. Andrews also reveals how class awareness shaped the views and values of some of the most celebrated African Americans of the nineteenth century. Slave narrators discerned class-based reasons for violence between “impudent,” “gentleman,” and “lady” slaves and their resentful “mean masters.” Status and class played key roles in the lives and liberation of the most celebrated fugitives from US slavery, such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, William Wells Brown, and William and Ellen Craft. By examining the lives of the most- and least-acclaimed heroes and heroines of the African American slave narrative, Andrews shows how the dividing edge of social class cut two ways, sometimes separating upper and lower strata of slaves to their enslavers’ advantage, but at other times fueling convictions among even the most privileged of the enslaved that they deserved nothing less than complete freedom.

Justice and injustice in Christian liturgies

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Wolterstorff
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Biblical Story ◽  
The Cross

The chapter begins by briefly taking note of various ways in which Christian liturgical enactments are related to the doing of justice. Attention then turns to the fact that at the heart of the biblical story is an appalling case of the perversion of justice. Christians worship one who was unjustly crucified. The chapter employs The Cross and the Lynching Tree, by the African-American theologian James Cone, to bring to light some of the implications of this fact. Cone notes that Christ’s crucifixion is central in African-American preaching and hymnody, and that the pain and injustice of the crucifixion are highlighted rather than concealed because African-Americans identify with Jesus in his pain and as a victim of injustice. After noting that the pain and injustice of Christ’s crucifixion are veiled in most liturgies, the chapter concludes by asking whether they should not instead be highlighted.

Religion, Race, and Humanism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony B. Pinn
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Richard Wright ◽  
Institutional Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
Unitarian Universalist ◽  
Racial Injustice ◽  
History Of ◽  
Lorraine Hansberry

This chapter explores the history of humanism within African American communities. It positions humanist thinking and humanism-inspired activism as a significant way in which people of African descent in the United States have addressed issues of racial injustice. Beginning with critiques of theism found within the blues, moving through developments such as the literature produced by Richard Wright, Lorraine Hansberry, and others, to political activists such as W. E. B. DuBois and A. Philip Randolph, to organized humanism in the form of African American involvement in the Unitarian Universalist Association, African Americans for Humanism, and so on, this chapter presents the historical and institutional development of African American humanism.

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