Us and them
The Dynamics of Racial Resentment across the 50 US States
Candis Watts Smith, Rebecca Kreitzer & Feiya Suo
Perspectives on Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although many scholars who study the role of racial animus in Americans’ political attitudes and policy preferences do so to help us understand national-level politics, (racialized) policy is largely shaped at the state level. States are laboratories of policy innovation whose experiments can exacerbate or ameliorate racial inequality. In this article, we develop state-level scores of racial resentment. By using linear multilevel regression and poststratification weighting techniques and by linking nationally representative survey data with US Census data, we create time-varying, dynamic state-level estimates of racial resentment from 1988 to 2016. These measures enable us to explore the extent to which subnational levels of racial attitudes fluctuate over time and to provide a comparative analysis of state-level racial resentment scores across space and time. We find that states’ levels of racial animus change slowly, with some exhibiting increases over time while others do just the opposite. Southern states’ reputation for having the highest levels of racial resentment has been challenged by states across various regions of the United States. Many states had their lowest levels of symbolic racism decades ago, contrary to the traditional American narrative of racial progress.
“One Difficulty...of a Serious Nature”: The Overlooked Racial Dynamics of the Electoral College
William Blake
The Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics, July 2019, Pages 315–343
Abstract:
This paper explores the racial origins and legacy of the Electoral College through historical and quantitative analyses. At the Constitutional Convention, the Electoral College served the interests of Southern slaveowners by perpetuating the advantage of the Three-Fifths Compromise. Following Reconstruction, Southern states that disenfranchised African Americans received an even larger voice in the Electoral College. Republicans tried to counter these moves by admitting unusually small states into the union. The ironic consequence of this non-racial decision is that, today, these states are heavily White and have citizens with higher levels of racial resentment. A MM-regression analysis of every election from 2000 on indicates the Electoral College has consistently awarded more votes per capita to states with Whiter populations and more racially conservative attitudes. The racially-disparate power exerted by these states makes it more difficult to enact racially-egalitarian policies. This paper adds a new perspective to the normative debate over the Electoral College, which typically focuses on democratic fairness and federalism concerns.
The Misperception of Racial Economic Inequality
Michael Kraus et al.
Perspectives on Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Racial economic inequality is a foundational feature of the United States, yet many Americans appear oblivious to it. In the present work we consider the psychology underlying this collective willful ignorance. Drawing on prior research and new evidence from a nationally representative sample of adults (N = 1,008), we offer compelling evidence that Americans vastly underestimate racial economic inequality, especially the racial wealth gap. In particular, respondents thought that the Black–White wealth gap was smaller, by around 40 percentage points in 1963 and around 80 percentage points in 2016, than its actual size. We then consider the motivational, cognitive, and structural factors that are likely to contribute to these misperceptions and suggest directions for future research to test these ideas. Importantly, we highlight the implications of our collective ignorance of racial economic inequality and the challenge of creating greater accuracy in perceptions of these racial economic disparities, as well as outline the steps policymakers might take to create messages on this topic that effectively promote equity-enhancing policies. We close with an appeal to psychological science to at least consider, if not center, the racial patterning of these profound economic gaps.
Legislators' Response to Changes in the Electorate: The Great Migration and Civil Rights
Álvaro Calderón, Vasiliki Fouka & Marco Tabellini
Harvard Working Paper, August 2019
Abstract:
Between 1940 and 1970, during the second Great Migration, more than four million African Americans moved from the South to the North of the United States. In this period, blacks were often excluded from the political process in the South but were eligible to vote in the North. We study if, by changing the composition and the preferences of the northern electorate, the Great Migration increased demand for racial equality and induced legislators to more actively promote civil rights legislation. We predict black inflows by interacting historical settlements of southern born blacks across northern counties with the differential rate of black emigration from different southern states after 1940. We find that black in-migration increased the Democratic vote share and encouraged grass-roots activism. In turn, Congress members representing areas more exposed to black inflows became increasingly supportive of civil rights. They were not only more likely to vote in favor of pro-civil rights bills, but also more willing to take direct actions, such as signing discharge petitions, to promote racial equality. Investigating the mechanisms, we document that both “between” and “within” party changes contributed to the shift in the position of northern legislators on civil rights. Taken together, our findings suggest that the Great Migration played an important role in the development and success of the civil rights movement.
Race, Gender, and the Rape-Lynching Nexus in the U.S. South, 1881-1930
Mattias Smångs
Social Problems, forthcoming
Abstract:
Scholarship has long recognized the centrality of white racial sexual fears in the rhetoric and practice surrounding the lynching of African Americans in the U.S. South in the decades around 1900. The topic has not previously been taken up for systematic study beyond event-level analyses. This article presents theoretical and empirical evidence that whites’ intersecting racial and gender concerns converging in racial sexual fears were conducive to lynching related to interracial sex, but not to those unrelated to interracial sex, under certain conditions. The empirical findings, based on lynchings in 11 southern states from 1881–1930, demonstrate that lynchings related to interracial sex were more likely to occur in contexts characterized by higher levels of white female dependents residing with white male householders, higher levels of white female school attendance, and higher levels of adult black male literacy. These findings suggest that interracial sex-related lynching served to recover and retain white men’s racial and gender status, which postbellum developments had undermined, by oppressing not only African American men and women but disempowering white women as well. White racial sexual fears during the lynching era should, therefore, be seen as constituting a social force in their own right with long-term consequences for race and gender relations and inequalities.