POLS 1140

Race and Ethnicity

Updated Mar 19, 2026

Overview

Plan

Today:

  • Broad overview of the field:

  • Theories of Race and Ethnicity

  • Racial and Ethnic Politics

    • Racial Gaps
    • Race and Group Interactions
    • Race and Representation
    • Race as Social Identity

  • Begin discussion of “Selling out” White, Laird, and Allen (2014)

Thursday

  • Finish White, Laird, and Allen (2014)

  • “Racial Spillover” Tesler (2012)

  • Possibly Wong and Cho (2005) and Jardina (2020)

Class Structure: Assigned Readings Going Forward

Race

  • March 17: White, Laird, and Allen (2014)
  • March 19: Tesler (2012)

Gender

  • April 7: Huddy, L. and Terkildsen, N. (1993)
  • April 9: Egan (2012)

Socialization and Biology in Politics:

  • April 14 Jennings, Stoker, and Bowers, J. (2009)
  • April 16: Alford, Funk, and Hibbing (2005).

Influence and Persuasion:

  • April 21: Mutz (2002a)
  • April 23: Kalla and Broockman (2022).

Free Pizza Thursday

I generally take students out at the end of semester for food.

Feel free to come by Pizza Marvin at:

468 Wickenden St, Providence, RI 02903

At 5 pm on Thursday. I’ll order a couple of pies to be ready when we get there, and will order more as needed.

Help me with my fit

Our Fashion Advice

Option Choice Votes
Jacket Tuxedo 12
Palette Fall (Warm + Dark) 10
Pant Khakis 7
Patterns Keep it simple 10
Shoe Crocs 9
Tie Bow tie 17
Top Sports jersey 11

What would Derek Guy say?

Apparently nothing…

AMA

Final Papers

  • “Five things you need to know about …”

  • Flexible format any topic from the course

    • Should discuss at least 3 articles.

  • Prompt

Final Paper Structure

  1. Introduce the topic:
  2. Lay out key theories and topics
  3. Present a major debate that interests you
  4. Discuss revisions or extensions to that debate
  5. Offer a direction for future research

Final Paper Structure

  • What is partisanship?
  • Why does partisanship matter?
  • Partisanship is a social identity
  • Partisanship is a heuristic for voters
  • Partisanship bleeds into our personal lives

Studying Race and Ethnicity

Goals for today

  • Why race is central to U.S. politics
  • What it means to say race is a social construct
  • How race operates through social identity
  • Key concept: linked fate and group consciousness

Why Study Race in Politics?

  • Race is central to U.S. political history
  • Race continues to shape:
    • voting behavior
    • policy attitudes
    • political inequality
  • The U.S. is becoming increasingly multiracial
    \(\to\) racial politics will remain (or become more) central

Race vs Ethnicity

  • Race: socially constructed categories often perceived as biological

  • Ethnicity: shared culture, language, ancestry, or national origin

  • The distinction is blurry—but analytically useful. See James (2016)

What is Race?

Two broad perspectives (Sen and Wasow 2016):

  • Essentialist
    • Race reflects biological differences
    • Fixed and immutable
  • Constructivist
    • Race is shaped by social, political, and historical forces
    • Categories and meanings change over time
  • Political (Social) science generally adopts a constructivist view

Why Does This Matter?

  • If race is fixed, how can it cause anything?

“No causation without manipulation” (Holland 1986)

  • We can’t randomly assign race \(\to\) so what are we estimating when we say “the effect of race”?

Constructivist solution:

  • Race = bundle of attributes
    • names, neighborhoods, language, appearance, etc.
  • These can vary and be studied causally

Race as a Bundle of Sticks

Race is not one thing—it is a collection of attributes:

  • Some are fixed (e.g., ancestry)
  • Some are mutable (e.g., names, signals, context)

Variations in Mutability

Summary

  • Race and ethnicity are socially constructed

  • Consist of multiple components with varying mutability

  • Treating race as a “bundle” helps us study how it shapes politics

How Do We Study Race in Political Science?

Four approaches:

  • Group Differences
    • Racial gaps in attitudes and outcomes
  • Group Interactions
    • Contact vs. threat
  • Representation
    • Do politicians reflect the groups they represent?
  • Social Identity
    • Linked fate and group consciousness

Racial Gaps

Racial Gaps

Political science documents large racial differences in:

  • Partisanship

  • Participation

  • Political knowledge

  • Policy attitudes

  • Race is one of the strongest predictors of political behavior in the U.S.

Racial Gaps in Partisanship:

  • Black Americans: overwhelmingly Democratic
  • White Americans: more evenly split (and increasingly Republican)

Racial Gaps in Partisanship

Racial Gaps in Turnout

Racial (Class?) Gaps in Participation

  • Participation depends on:
    • time
    • money
    • civic skills
  • Apparent “racial gaps” may reflect resource inequalities

Schlozman, Verba, Brady (2012)

Racial Gaps in Political Knowledge

  • Standard measures focus on:
    • institutions, elites, formal politics
  • But may miss:
    • lived experiences (e.g., policing, carceral state)

Cohen and Luttig (2019)

  • Large differences in views on:

    • criminal justice
    • punishment
    • social policy

  • Race shapes how people interpret policy tradeoffs

What Do These Gaps Mean?

  • Race strongly predicts political behavior

  • But:

    • Gaps do not explain why race matters
    • Some reflect resources, not just identity
    • Some reflect measurement choices

  • We need theory to explain these patterns

From Patterns to Explanations

Two key questions:

  • Why do racial groups think differently?
  • Why do they behave differently?

We’ll explore two answers:

  • Psychology (identity, perception)
  • Social context (norms, pressure)

Race and Group Interactions

When Does Contact Reduce Conflict?

Two competing theories (Allport 1954, Pettigrew 1998, 2006):

  • Threat hypothesis
    • \(\uparrow\) contact \(\to\) perceived competition \(\to\) worse attitudes
  • Contact hypothesis
    • \(\uparrow\) contact \(\to\) familiarity \(\to\) better attitudes
  • Which one is right?

When Do We See Each?

Evidence depends on:

  • Context (where contact occurs)

  • Type of change (gradual vs sudden)

  • Selection (who lives where)

  • Two studies to illsutrate this:

Hopkins (2010): Politicized Places

  • Studies reactions to immigration across communities

  • Key idea:

    • Sudden local change + national rhetoric \(\to\) threat

  • Not just diversity—but unexpected change

When Does Immigration Trigger Threat?

  • Threat increases when:

    • immigration rises rapidly
    • issue is politically salient

  • People react to change, not just presence

Oliver (2010): Neighborhood Context

  • Studies how neighborhood diversity shapes attitudes

  • Key finding:

    • More integrated neighborhoods \(\to\) less racial resentment

  • Supports contact hypothesis

Evidence Across Groups

  • Across racial groups:

    • More integration \(\to\) more positive attitudes

  • Pattern is consistent, not group-specific

What Explains This?

  • Intergroup contact
    • exposure reduces prejudice
  • Self-selection
    • tolerant people choose diverse areas
  • Hard to separate cause from selection

Hopkins vs. Oliver: Are They in Conflict?

  • Hopkins (2010)

    • sudden change \(\to\) threat
    • especially when politicized

  • Oliver (2010)

    • sustained exposure \(\to\) tolerance

  • 👉 Key insight:

    • Rapid, unexpected change \(\to\) threat
    • Stable, everyday contact \(\to\) tolerance

What explains the difference?

  • Unit of analysis (community vs neighborhood)
  • Time scale (short-term vs long-term)
  • Self-selection

Race and Representation

Why Representation Matters

  • Do elected officials need to look like constituents?

  • Does identity shape:

    • attitudes
    • participation
    • policy outcomes

  • 👉 Central question: Does descriptive representation change politics?

Descriptive Representation

  • Representatives share constituents’ social identities

  • One form of representation (Pitkin 1967):

    • Formalistic
    • Substantive
    • Descriptive
    • Symbolic

  • 👉 Focus: when identity itself matters

Does Descriptive Representation Matter?

  • Citizen attitudes

  • Turnout

  • Legislative behavior

  • 👉 Evidence is mixed and context-dependent

Descriptive Representation and Attitudes

  • Black political empowerment → higher participation

  • Example:

    • Black mayor → increased engagement

  • 👉 Representation can signal inclusion and efficacy

Descriptive Representation and Turnout

  • Co-ethnic candidates alone do not increase turnout

  • Instead:

    • turnout \(\to\) increases as group size (share of district) increases

  • 👉 Group context may matter more than candidate identity

Descriptive Representation and Policy

  • White representatives:
    • less responsive to Black constituents
  • Minority representatives:
    • more responsive
  • 👉 Identity can shape representation in practice

What Do We Learn?

  • Descriptive representation can matter

  • But effects are:

    • conditional
    • context-dependent
    • not uniform

  • 👉 Identity alone does not determine outcomes

  • 👉 We need theory to explain when it matters

Race as a Social Identity

Three Components of Identity

Race as a social identity includes:

  • Membership

  • Identification

  • Consciousness

  • 👉 Each varies across people and contexts

Membership

  • Assigned to a group based on shared characteristics

  • Defined socially—not biologically

👉 Boundaries of groups change over time

Identification

  • Psychological attachment to a group

  • Varies in:

    • strength
    • context

  • Can be activated by cues

👉 Identity is not always salient

Identification varies context and strength

Junn and Masuoka 2008 find respondents randomly assigned to view co-racial cabinet member had higher levels racial identification

Group Consciousness

  • Identity becomes political

  • Includes:

    • sense of shared fate
    • beliefs about group status
    • support for collective action

  • 👉 Bridge between identity and politics

Group Consciousness

Summary

  • Race is socially constructed

  • Identity has three components:

    • membership
    • identification
    • consciousness

  • Each varies across:

    • individuals
    • contexts
    • time

  • 👉 Identity must be activated to matter politically

Linked Fate

Group Consciousness

  • Group Consciousness (GC) is link between identity and politics
  • Much of early research on group consciousness focuses on Blacks’ racial group consciousness
    • Tate (1993)
    • Dawson (1994)

Puzzle:

Why have well-off Blacks seldom become more socially, economically, and politically conservative as they became upwardly mobile or as their children grew up in the middle class?

Potential Answers:

  • Black political homogeneity reflects a strong sense of Linked Fate

  • Shared experiences of disadvantage and discrimination \(\to\) a sense that:

  • One’s own well being depends on well being of Black Americans as whole (Linked Fate)

Linked Fate as a Heuristic

  • Dawson (1994):

    • Group interest \(\to\) proxy for self-interest

  • Efficient when:

    • race structures life chances

👉 Simplifies political decision-making

Measuring Linked Fate

  • Standard survey question:

  • “Does what happens to Black people affect your life?”

  • 👉 Captures perceived interdependence

Linked Fate

Dawson (1994) finds linked fate among Blacks:

  • Is generally high

  • Doesn’t vary by class and mitigate class-based policy differences

  • Predicts vote choice (in 1984 and 1988 elections)

Open Questions

  • Is linked fate declining?
  • Is it unique to Black Americans?
  • Is it specific to race?
  • Is it inherently political?

Is Linked Fate Unique?

  • Other groups also express linked fate

  • But:

    • varies in strength
    • varies in political relevance

👉 Not uniquely Black—but especially strong

Summary

  • Linked fate connects identity to politics

  • Explains group cohesion

  • But:

    • not the full story
    • varies across groups and contexts

  • 👉 Raises questions about limits of group-based explanations

From Linked Fate to Group Conflict

  • Dawson:

    • Group interest \(\to\) proxy for self-interest

  • But:

    • What if group interest conflicts with personal gain?
    • Why don’t more people defect?

  • Examples:

    • “sellout” accusations
    • politicians crossing group lines

  • 👉 This is the puzzle:

    • Why does group cohesion persist under conflict?

  • White, Laird, and Allen (2014) answer this:

    • social pressure and group norms

Group Interest in Conflict (White et al. 2014)

When Group and Self Interest Conflict

  • Individuals often face tradeoffs:

    • personal gain
    • group loyalty

  • 👉 Why don’t more people “defect” from group interests?

Theory

  • How do individuals navigate:

    • self-interest vs group interest?

  • Linked fate (heuristic) is not enough

  • Instead, behavior depends on:

    • social pressure
    • internalized norms

  • 👉 Group cohesion must be enforced, not just felt

Experimental Design

All subjects (Black students at an HBCU):

  • Given $100 to allocate between Obama and Romney

  • Control

    • no incentive, no pressure

  • Incentive

    • earn money for donating to Romney
    • \(\to\) incentive to defect

  • Incentive + Newspaper

    • same incentive
    • but donation is public

  • 👉 Adds threat of social sanctions

What do you expect?

Design and Expectations

  • Key comparison:

    • private vs public decisions

  • 👉 Does visibility change behavior?

Social Pressure Reduces Defection

  • With financial incentive:
    • many subjects defect
  • With public visibility:
    • defection drops sharply
  • 👉 Social pressure enforces group norms

Internalized Norms Also Matter

  • Some individuals resist incentives even when private

  • 👉 Norms can be internalized

  • But weaker than social pressure

Linked Fate Does Not Predict Defection

  • Linked fate does not reduce defection

  • 👉 Even strong group attachment does not prevent self-interested behavior

Why Doesn’t Linked Fate Matter?

  • If your fate is tied to the group:

    • why take the payout?

  • Possible answers:

    • beliefs are not enough
    • incentives still matter
    • behavior depends on social context

  • 👉 Identity alone cannot explain cohesion

Stronger Social Pressure → More Compliance

  • Direct signals from in-group members

  • Increase perceived monitoring

  • 👉 Stronger pressure → less defection

Key Conceptual Points

Constraint model, not preference model

  • Individuals will defect when possible

  • Cohesion reflects:

    • costs of defection
    • not pure loyalty

  • Observability is central

  • Public behavior \(\to\) enforced

  • Private behavior \(\to\) less constrained

  • 👉 Political homogeneity is socially enforced

Summary

  • Individuals face real tradeoffs between self and group

  • Cohesion is maintained through:

    • social pressure
    • internalized norms

  • Linked fate alone is insufficient

  • 👉 Group behavior depends on social context and enforcement

Racial Prejudice

Measuring Racial Prejudice

  • Take a few moments to write down:
    • aspects of racial prejudice
    • how we might measure them
    • how those measures may have changed over time

Two Broad Approaches

  • Scholars often distinguish between:

    • Old-fashioned / overt racism
    • Modern / symbolic racism

Overt Racism

  • Traditional measures of anti-Black prejudice among whites include:

    • desire for social distance
    • belief in biological inferiority
    • support for segregation

  • These attitudes have generally declined over time

  • But:

    • racial inequality persists
    • discrimination persists
    • opposition to remedial policies persists

Racism by Another Name

  • Many scholars argue prejudice persists, but is expressed in less overt language:

    • Modern Racism (McConahay 1986)
    • Symbolic Racism (Kinder and Sears 1981)
    • Racial Resentment (Kinder and Sanders 1996)

Racial Resentment: Conceptually

  • Kinder and Sanders argue contemporary racial animus reflects a mix of:

    • anti-Black affect
    • beliefs about Black work ethic
    • denial of continued discrimination

Racial Resentment: Measurement

How strongly do you agree or disagree with the following?

  • Over the past few years, black people have gotten less than they deserve.

  • Irish, Italian, Jewish, and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Black people should do the same without any special favors.

  • It’s really a matter of some people not trying hard enough; if black people would only try harder they could be just as well off as white people.

  • Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for black people to work their way out of the lower class.

Racial Resentment and Trump Support

  • Racial resentment strongly predicts support for Trump in 2016

  • Interpreted by many as evidence that racial attitudes were central to contemporary partisan conflict

A Counterpoint: Aggregate Gains

  • Grimmer, Marble, and Tanigawa-Lau (2022) shift attention from predicted probabilities to aggregate vote gains

  • Their argument:

    • Trump’s net gains came disproportionately from the middle of the resentment scale

  • This complicates simple “highest resentment \(\to\) biggest electoral change” stories

Aggregate Gains by Racial Resentment

  • Different estimands can yield different interpretations

  • Key lesson:

    • strong predictors are not always the same as large aggregate sources of electoral change

A Central Critique

  • Can racial resentment really distinguish:

    • racial prejudice
    • principled conservatism

  • This is the central critique raised by Sniderman and colleagues

Feldman and Huddy (2005)

  • Feldman and Huddy ask:

    • does racial resentment measure prejudice?
    • or does it partly capture ideology?

  • They test this directly with an experiment

Feldman and Huddy (2005): Design

  • Experimental manipulation:

    • race and class of scholarship recipients

  • Eight treatment conditions:

    • race only: White or Black
    • class only: poor or middle class
    • race and class combined:
      • poor White / poor Black
      • middle class White / middle class Black

Feldman and Huddy (2005): Expectations

  • If racial resentment reflects prejudice:

    • support should decline when beneficiaries are Black
    • resentment should matter more when race is salient

  • If racial resentment reflects individualist ideology:

    • opposition should appear regardless of recipient race

Evidence for Racial Prejudice

  • Among some respondents, racial resentment predicts lower support specifically when programs benefit Black recipients

  • This supports the prejudice interpretation

Class Complicates the Story

  • Reactions depend not just on race, but also on class

  • Racial resentment appears to work differently across combinations of deservingness and race

Among Liberals

  • For liberals, racial resentment looks more like racial prejudice

  • It predicts opposition to racially targeted benefits in a distinctly racialized way

Among Conservatives

  • For conservatives, racial resentment appears more entangled with ideology

  • It may capture commitments to limited government and individualism as well as race

Summary

  • Scholars debate whether racial resentment measures prejudice or ideology

  • Feldman and Huddy (2005) provide evidence for both views

  • Opposition to racially targeted programs:

    • reflects racial animus among liberals
    • is more entangled with ideology among conservatives

Feldman and Huddy: Discussion

Discussion:

  • If racial resentment means something different for liberals and conservatives, what does that imply for how we should use it in research?

  • How might these findings complicate how we interpret Tesler’s (2012) results about racial resentment and health care?

Racialization of Policy Debates

Post-Racial or Most Racial?

  • Overt racism may have declined

  • But:

    • racial resentment remains politically relevant
    • racial attitudes can shape ostensibly non-racial policy debates

Tesler (2012)

  • Core question:
    • Can a racialized political figure make a non-racial issue become racialized?
  • Tesler’s answer:
    • yes

Concept Check

  • What does Tesler mean by:

    • racialization
    • spillover of racialization

  • What kinds of data does he use?

  • How does he distinguish race from partisanship?

The Spillover of Racialization

  • Racialization:
    • the process by which racial attitudes come to shape policy preferences
  • Spillover of racialization:
    • racialized evaluations of a public figure spill over onto evaluations of that figure’s policies
  • Example:
    • Obama \(\to\) health care

Data and Design

  • Tesler uses both observational and experimental evidence

  • Observational

    • compare the relationship between racial resentment and health care attitudes before and after Obama becomes associated with reform

  • Experimental

    • vary the source cue:
      • Obama
      • Clinton
      • neutral / unnamed source

  • Goal:

    • test whether the effect is about race rather than generic partisan polarization

Observational Evidence

  • Racial resentment becomes more predictive of health care attitudes in 2009

  • Key claim:

    • the same issue becomes more racialized once Obama is strongly associated with it

Panel Evidence

  • Using panel data strengthens the argument

  • Same respondents:

    • weaker racialization before Obama-centered reform debate
    • stronger racialization after

Additional Evidence

  • Multiple analyses point in the same direction

  • Racial attitudes become more tightly linked to health care preferences once Obama becomes the face of reform

Additional Evidence

  • The pattern is not limited to one model or one dataset

  • The central takeaway is the same:

    • Obama’s association with health care increases racialization

Additional Evidence

  • Racialization is visible across several measures of attitudes and support

  • This strengthens the spillover argument

Is It Race or Partisanship?

  • Alternative explanation:

    • health care became more polarized because Democrats owned the issue

  • Since the Democratic Party is seen as more racially liberal, the relationship could be spurious

  • Tesler’s experiment is designed to address this

Experimental Design

We would like to get your opinion about two current health care proposals being debated.

  • As you may know, [some people have / President Obama / President Clinton] proposed a plan that would guarantee health insurance for all Americans. What do you think?

  • [Many of these same people have / President Obama / President Clinton] also proposed a government-administered health insurance plan, often called the “public option,” to compete with private insurance. What do you think?

Experimental Evidence

  • Same policy

  • Different source cue

  • If Obama cue produces stronger racialization than Clinton cue:

    • that supports a race-specific mechanism

Beyond Health Care

  • Tesler also shows similar patterns for the stimulus

  • This suggests the mechanism is broader than one single issue

Black Support Under Obama

  • Black support for health reform increases under Obama

  • Result:

    • racial divisions widen from both sides

  • This is not only about White opposition

Summary

  • Racial attitudes can spill over into ostensibly non-racial policy areas

  • The same policy becomes more racialized depending on who proposes it

  • Tesler’s core contribution:

    • elite identity can activate racial attitudes in public opinion

How Race Shapes Politics: A Synthesis

This week’s papers reveal two distinct mechanisms:

Tesler (2012) White et al. (2014)
Level Public opinion Political behavior
Mechanism Elite cues activate racial attitudes Group norms constrain individual choices
Direction Top-down (elite \(\to\) mass) Horizontal (peer \(\to\) peer)
Key finding Same policy becomes racialized depending on who proposes it Solidarity depends on social enforcement, not just identity
  • Big idea: Race operates through both psychology (how we think about issues) and social structure (how groups enforce norms).

White Racial Identities

White Racial Identities

  • Until recently, relatively little research focused on the racial identities of Whites

Why White Identity Was Overlooked

Whiteness is everywhere in U.S. culture but it is very hard to see. … As the unmarked category against which difference is constructed, whiteness never has to speak its name, never has to acknowledge its role as an organizing principle in social and cultural relations.
— Lipsitz (1998)

Core Questions

  • Do Whites identify as White?

  • Are these identities politically relevant?

Conventional Wisdom vs Current Understanding

  • Wong and Cho (2005)
    • Do Whites identify as White? Yes
    • Is that identity politically relevant? Not much
  • Jardina (2019)
    • Do Whites identify as White? Yes
    • Is that identity politically relevant? Yes

Wong and Cho (2005)

  • Early work shows that White group identification exists

  • But its link to politics appears weaker than for minority identities

Measuring White Identity

Please read over the list and tell me the number for those groups you feel particularly close to—people who are most like you in their ideas and interests and feelings about things.

White Group Closeness

  • Roughly half of Whites report feeling close to other Whites

  • So:

    • White identity is not absent

  • But this measure may be relatively weak and apolitical

Predictive Validity

  • White identification predicts:
    • in-group affect
    • stereotyping
  • So the measure is not meaningless

Predictive Validity

  • But its relationship to explicitly political outcomes remains less clear

Summary of Early Work

  • White identity exists

  • These measures have some predictive validity

  • But:

    • White identity does not initially appear strongly political
    • neither does Black identity when measured in similarly thin ways

Jardina (2019)

  • Jardina argues earlier work understated White identity because of:

    • measurement problems
    • limited theory
    • failure to consider changing context

Why White Identity May Be Different

  • Whites are a dominant-status group

  • This means White identity may be especially sensitive to perceived status threat

  • Relevant contexts include:

    • Obama
    • immigration
    • demographic change

White Identity vs White Consciousness

  • White identity
    • importance
    • pride
    • commonality
  • White consciousness
    • identity
    • perceived competition with out-groups
    • support for in-group cooperation

Jardina’s Measures of White Identity

  • Importance
    • How important is being White to your identity?
  • Pride
    • To what extent do you feel that White people in this country have a lot to be proud of?
  • Commonality
    • To what extent do you think White people share common interests and a common fate?

White Racial Consciousness

Jardina defines racial consciousness for Whites as identification plus:

  • Competition
    • How likely is it that many Whites are unable to find a job because employers are hiring minorities instead?
  • Cooperation
    • How important is it that Whites work together to change laws that are unfair to Whites?

High Levels of Identification

  • Jardina finds substantial levels of White identification

  • White racial identity is more widespread than older accounts suggested

High Levels of Consciousness

  • White consciousness is also present at meaningful levels

  • Especially when identity is paired with competition and perceived threat

Predictive and Discriminant Validity

  • Jardina argues these measures are not reducible to:
    • partisanship
    • ideology
    • anti-Black affect
  • They capture a distinct form of group politics

Who Identifies as White?

  • White identity and consciousness tend to be higher among:

    • older respondents
    • lower education respondents
    • rural respondents
    • more authoritarian respondents

  • They appear less related to:

    • region
    • economic dissatisfaction

White Identity and American Identity

  • White identity is associated with American identity

  • This raises an important conceptual question:

    • where does nationalism end and racial identity begin?

Perceived Discrimination Against Whites

  • White identity predicts perceptions that Whites face discrimination

  • This is one pathway through which identity becomes politically consequential

White Identity and Immigration

  • White identity predicts opposition to immigration

  • Especially when demographic change is framed as status threat

Support for White-Benefiting Policies

  • White identity predicts support for policies perceived to benefit Whites as a group

  • This is evidence that White identity can structure policy preferences

Support for White-Benefiting Policies

  • White consciousness strengthens these associations further

  • Identity becomes more political when paired with threat and group competition

White Identity and Trump Support

  • White identity also predicts support for Trump

  • Suggests White identity is not merely symbolic:

    • it is electorally relevant

Summary

  • White racial identity exists and is politically salient

  • Earlier work understated its relevance because of:

    • measurement
    • context
    • theory

  • Open questions remain:

    • how distinct is White identity from national identity?
    • how distinct is it from racial prejudice?
    • what role do these identities play in recent elections?

References

References

Jardina, Ashley. 2020. “In-Group Love and Out-Group Hate: White Racial Attitudes in Contemporary U.S. Elections.” Political Behavior.
Tesler, Michael. 2012. “The Spillover of Racialization into Health Care: How President Obama Polarized Public Opinion by Racial Attitudes and Race.” American Journal of Political Science 56 (3): 690–704.
White, Ismail K, Chryl N Laird, and Troy D Allen. 2014. “Selling out?: The politics of navigating conflicts between racial group interest and self-interest.” American Political Science Review 108 (4): 783–800.
Wong, Cara, and Grace E Cho. 2005. “Two-Headed Coins or Kandinskys: White Racial Identification.” Political Psychology 26 (5): 699–720.