scholarly journals A Puzzle of Racial Attitudes: A Measurement Analysis of Racial Attitudes and Policy Indicators

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 237802311984273
Author(s):  
J. Micah Roos ◽  
Michael Hughes ◽  
Ashley V. Reichelmann
Keyword(s):  
Alternative Model ◽  
Racial Attitudes ◽  
Preliminary Evidence ◽  
Racial Prejudice ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Policy Attitudes ◽  
Measurement Analysis ◽  
Racial Resentment ◽  
Primary Determinant ◽  
Racial Policy

In the 1970s and 1980s, researchers argued that a new dimension of racial prejudice, termed “symbolic racism” and later “racial resentment,” emerged among white Americans as their endorsement of traditional prejudice declined. Recently, Carmines, Sniderman, and Easter have challenged this conceptualization. Relying on American National Election Surveys data, they argue that racial resentment and the attitudes about racial policy that it presumably explains are part of the same latent construct (labeled racial policy attitudes). This conclusion undermines theories that racial prejudice among white Americans is a primary determinant of their continued opposition to racial policies. We replicate their analyses and test an alternative model using five additional samples. We find that an alternative model that specifies racial resentment as distinct from racial policy attitudes was a better fit to the data, and additionally, we find preliminary evidence that it is inappropriate to consider racial policy attitudes as a single dimension using traditional indicators.

The Rise of Trump, The Fall of Prejudice? Tracking White Americans’ Racial Attitudes Via A Panel Survey, 2008–2018

2020 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel J Hopkins ◽  
Samantha Washington
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Racial Attitudes ◽  
Population Based ◽  
Racial Prejudice ◽  
Presidential Rhetoric ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Panel Survey ◽  
Lead White ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Rule Out

Abstract In his campaign and first few years in office, Donald Trump consistently defied contemporary norms by using explicit, negative rhetoric targeting ethnic/racial minorities. Did this rhetoric lead White Americans to express more or less prejudiced views of African Americans or Hispanics, whether through changing norms around racial prejudice or other mechanisms? We assess that question using a thirteen-wave panel conducted with a population-based sample of Americans between 2008 and 2018. We find that via most measures, White Americans’ expressed anti-Black and anti-Hispanic prejudice declined after Trump’s political emergence, and we can rule out even small increases in the expression of prejudice. These results suggest the limits of racially charged rhetoric’s capacity to heighten prejudice among White Americans overall. They also indicate that rather than being a fixed predisposition, prejudice can shift by reacting against changing presidential rhetoric.

The Effects of Dehumanizing Attitudes about Black People on Whites’ Voting Decisions

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Ashley Jardina ◽  
Spencer Piston
Keyword(s):  
Racial Attitudes ◽  
Black People ◽  
Racial Prejudice ◽  
First Century ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Political Effects ◽  
2016 Election ◽  
Candidate Evaluations ◽  
Voting Decisions

Abstract Political scientists have long noted the key role racial attitudes can play in electoral politics. However, the 2016 election of Donald Trump raises questions about prevailing theories of racial attitudes and their political effects. While existing research focuses on ‘cultural’ or ‘modern’ forms of racial prejudice, this article argues that a sizeable portion of White Americans, disturbingly, dehumanize Black people: that is, they view Black people as less than fully human. Unsurprisingly, given the blatant racism of Donald Trump's campaign, this study also demonstrates that dehumanizing attitudes toward Black people are more strongly associated with support for Trump than with support for other candidates in the 2016 Republican primary. The authors also find evidence that dehumanizing attitudes toward Black people bolstered Donald Trump's vote share among Whites in the 2016 presidential election. Finally, dehumanizing attitudes are negatively associated with Whites' evaluations of Barack Obama, even after holding standard measures of racial prejudice constant. These findings suggest that a fundamental form of racism – dehumanizing attitudes toward Black people – can powerfully shape candidate evaluations and voting decisions in the twenty-first century.

White Americans’ Opposition to Affirmative Action, Revisited: New Racism, Principled Objections, or Both?

2021 ◽  
pp. 232949652110246
Author(s):  
Matthew O. Hunt ◽  
Ryan A. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Affirmative Action ◽  
General Social Survey ◽  
First Century ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Short Article ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
Mixed Support ◽  
Primary Determinant ◽  
Preferential Hiring ◽  
Key Aspects

In this short article, we provide an update and extension of Thomas C. Wilson’s study, “Whites’ Opposition to Affirmative Action: Rejection of Group-based Preferences as well as Rejection of Blacks.” Wilson drew on data from the 1996 General Social Survey (GSS) to revisit a long-standing debate in the racial attitudes literature concerning whether anti-black prejudice (e.g., “new racism”) or ostensibly race-neutral opposition to group-based policies generally (i.e., “principled objections”) is the primary determinant of whites’ opposition to affirmative action in the form of “preferential hiring and promotion for blacks.” We analyze data from the 2000–2018 GSS to replicate and extend key aspects of Wilson’s work. As in the prior study, we find mixed support for the new racism and principled objections perspectives, providing an important update on white Americans’ beliefs about affirmative action for the twenty-first century.

scholarly journals Racial demographics explain the link between racial disparities in traffic stops and county-level racial attitudes

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierce D. Ekstrom ◽  
Joel Michel Le Forestier ◽  
Calvin K. Lai
Keyword(s):  
Racial Disparities ◽  
Racial Attitudes ◽  
County Level ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Traffic Stops ◽  
Arrest Rates ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Implicit And Explicit ◽  
Racial Demographics

Disparities in the treatment of Black and White Americans in police stops are pernicious and widespread. We examine racial disparities in police traffic stops by leveraging data on traffic stops from hundreds of U.S. counties from the Stanford Open Policing Project and corresponding county-level data on implicit and explicit racial attitudes from the Project Implicit research website. We find that Black-White traffic stop disparities are associated with county-level implicit and explicit racial attitudes and that this association is attributable to racial demographics: counties with a higher proportion of White residents had larger racial disparities in police traffic stops. We also examined racial disparities in several post-stop outcomes (e.g., arrest rates) and found that they were not systematically related to racial attitudes, despite evidence of disparities. These findings indicate that racial disparities in counties’ traffic stops are reliably linked to counties’ racial attitudes and demographic compositions.

Officers, Servants, and Race

2018 ◽  
pp. 83-105
Author(s):  
Kristopher A. Teters
Keyword(s):  
Black Men ◽  
Racial Attitudes ◽  
Black People ◽  
Black Population ◽  
Racial Prejudice ◽  
Information Resources ◽  
Union Army ◽  
White People ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Individual Level

While many western Union officers came to support emancipation and even the enlistment of black troops, their racial attitudes changed very little. On the whole, officers continued to view black people as inferior, exotic, incapable, and even subhuman. Interactions with former slaves reinforced racial stereotypes. This intense prejudice was especially prominent in the Midwest where there were many discriminatory laws. Freeing the slaves, which many officers only supported as a practical necessity to win the war, was very different from seeing black people as anything close to equal with white people. But experiences with black men and women, particularly servants with whom Federals formed long-lasting personal bonds, often tempered racial prejudices on an individual level. Black men and women who assisted the Union army by providing information, resources, and aid in dangerous circumstances also won positive comments from officers. This softening of racial attitudes, however, almost never extended to the black population as a whole, and even ardent supporters of emancipation showed little sympathy for expanding black rights. The Civil War had eliminated slavery but had hardly solved the problem of racial prejudice.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 320-338
Author(s):  
Angie Maxwell ◽  
Todd Shields
Keyword(s):  
New Deal ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Fault Line ◽  
Southern Identity ◽  
Sexist Attitudes ◽  
Racial Resentment ◽  
The New Deal ◽  
Three Components

The Long Southern Strategy was “long” because all three components of the strategy—choosing to exploit white racial angst, fear of feminism, and evangelical righteousness—were necessary to build a solid red base in the states of the old Confederacy. The stark polarization that resulted from these partisan choices unraveled the New Deal coalition. It also redivided white Americans not just along the Mason-Dixon line, but across the imagined fault line of southern identity. Thus, conservatism was redefined on the basis of white southern identity, and that definition became the baseline ideology of the Republican brand nationwide. A partisan sorting and realignment followed. As a result, the distribution of white Americans who harbor Racial Resentment or Modern Sexist attitudes or who identify as Christian fundamentalists is no longer even across the parties, and now, within the GOP, there is not enough opposition to fully suppress such prejudice or religiosity.

The Compound Effects of Candidate Race and Racial Resentment in US House Elections

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 299-325
Author(s):  
Isaac Hale
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Racial Attitudes ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Congressional Elections ◽  
Vote Choice ◽  
White Voters ◽  
Racial Resentment ◽  
Theoretical Predictions ◽  
To Receive

AbstractDespite the longstanding underrepresentation of blacks in Congress, political science research has not settled on the cause. While there is increasing evidence that racial attitudes affect vote choice in today's congressional elections, how this effect interacts with the race of the candidates is unknown. This study addresses this debate by analyzing novel survey, census, and candidate data from the Obama era of congressional elections (2010–2016) to test whether racially prejudiced attitudes held by whites decrease their likelihood of supporting black Democratic candidates and Democratic candidates as a whole. In line with theoretical predictions, this paper finds that Democratic House candidates are less likely to receive votes among white voters with strong racial resentment toward blacks, and black Democratic candidates fare even worse. These findings help to explain the persistence of black legislative underrepresentation and contribute to theories of partisan racial realignment.

Obama’s Potential to Transform the Racial Attitudes of White Americans

2011 ◽  
pp. 245-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
John F. Dovidio ◽  
Samuel L. Gaertner ◽  
Tamar Saguy ◽  
Eric Hehman
Keyword(s):  
Racial Attitudes ◽  
White Americans
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