Clarifying the meaning of symbolic racism

We examined whether symbolic racism is associated with anti-Black affect or more general anti-liberal affect. Across six studies (N = 14,078), we determined that symbolic racism is associated with more positive attitudes toward conservatives and more negative attitudes toward liberals, regardless of the target’s race. While high scorers on the symbolic racism scale show a slight preference for White vs. Black conservatives (d = .15) and White vs. Black liberals (d = .12), low scorers show a considerable preference for Black vs. White liberals (d = .42) and Black vs. White conservatives (d = .50). Lingering questions about the validity of the symbolic racism construct are justified on the basis that symbolic racism does not reliably measure anti-Black affect.

The Process of Racialized Social Constraint

This chapter digs into the process by which racialized social constraint works to inhibit the defection of black Americans from the norm of Democratic Party support. Empirically, it takes advantage of the social interactions within survey interviews—between black respondents and either black or non-black interviewers—as a window into exactly how racialized social constraint works to inhibit blacks' defection from the Democratic Party. Pooling more than thirty years of face-to-face survey data and twenty years of phone survey data, the chapter shows that the simple presence of a black interviewer exerts considerable pressure on black respondents to conform to the norm of supporting the Democratic Party. It reveals that black respondents express significantly greater identification with the Democratic Party when in the presence of a black interviewer. This chapter further demonstrates that the effect is most pronounced among those blacks who have the greatest incentive to defect from the norm of Democratic Party support: black conservatives.

The Political Consequences of Black Social Networks

This chapter offers an empirical assessment of the connection between racial homophily in black social networks and homogeneity in black party support. It shows a strong link between racially homogeneous social networks and black Democratic Party support. Among the findings in this chapter is that the more racial in-group members within a black person's close social network, the more likely that individual is to identify as a Democrat. Further, the composition of networks seems most predictive among those blacks who have ideological incentives to defect from the norm of Democratic support. Among black conservatives, those with more racially diverse social networks are more likely to defect from the norm of supporting the Democratic Party.