racism

This article asks whether labor union membership shapes white racial attitudes. Using cross-sectional surveys and 2010–2016 panel data, the authors report that white union members exhibit lower racial resentment and greater support for policies benefiting African Americans; importantly, panel analyses indicate that gaining union membership between 2010 and 2016 was associated with reductions in racial resentment among white workers. The findings foreground organizational membership in mass politics.

This article asks whether explicitly racial, inflammatory elite rhetoric makes prejudiced citizens more likely to express or act on their biases. Using a survey experiment tied to the 2016 Trump campaign embedded in an online panel, the authors report that prejudiced respondents typically restrained expression absent elite cues, but exposure to such elite speech—particularly when other elites tacitly condoned it—emboldened greater expression and reported willingness to act on prejudice.

Panel data beginning before Trump’s candidacy (collected in 2011) are used to assess whether animus toward groups aligned with the Democratic Party predicted later political choices. Measures focus on sentiments toward Democratic-linked minority groups and on partisan identities recorded prior to Trump’s emergence.

Political science departments issued public statements in the summer of 2020 following the brutal murder of George Floyd and the longer history of deadly violence against Black people by law enforcement. These departmental statements are treated as windows into how a discipline focused on power publicly responds to racial violence and inequality.

Rising racial resentment is linked to political polarization.

How do we know the extent of racial bias in policing? New research suggests administrative records often mask it. Police officers, when choosing whom to investigate, may show racial discrimination that isn't captured by standard data analysis methods. This gap means past estimates could be seriously off.

The article investigates why women continued to support Republican candidates despite prevalent sexist attitudes during the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections.

The American National Election Studies (ANES) 2012 and Cooperative Congressional Election Studies (CCES) 2018 surveys reveal a counterintuitive pattern: ✦✦ Non-Hispanic whites who support the DREAM Act often also favor harsh immigration policies.

This study investigates how racial resentment influences political discontent among white Americans during periods of electoral loss.

An original, demographically representative survey of 2,131 Americans estimates what drives public support for both supportive and punitive policies aimed at the opioid epidemic.

This article examines how a juror’s level of racial resentment shapes decision-making and the reasoning behind verdicts when the defendant is African American. The argument is that both verdict outcomes and the explanations jurors offer are moderated by racial resentment, producing distinct patterns of judgment across white jurors.

This article explores state-level racial resentment dynamics using data from 1988 to 2016. Researchers developed novel scores representing racial resentment at each US state level, employing multilevel regression and survey weighting techniques with nationally representative surveys linked to Census information.

This paper asks how people form assumptions about who benefits from public policies and shows that concrete elements of policy design can change those assumptions. Using a pre-registered survey experiment, the author manipulates policy features (for example, whether a program includes a work requirement) and measures respondents’ assumptions about beneficiaries’ race and national origin and their policy evaluations. The study emphasizes that these design-driven assumptions influence policy attitudes even when respondents do not report stereotype-consistent beliefs.

A bipartisan deal in 2020 restored Pell Grant eligibility for inmates. Despite past legislative concerns about voter resentment, new findings from a framing experiment show average American public opinion is neither inherently supportive nor opposed.

This study explores how racial resentment connects to political ideology.

The debate over whether racial attitudes or economic distress drove voting behavior in the 2016 presidential election has been dominated by white voters, obscuring other groups' experiences.

This study examines how direct xenophobic attacks impact identity portfolios in African nations.

Does direct democracy hurt immigrant minorities?

Donald Trump launched his presidential campaign with the slogan 'Make America Great Again,' positioning it against a backdrop of decline. This article examines white voters' racialized sense of disadvantage, addressing gaps in pre-primary polling data.

For years, researchers thought racial animosity declined. But our analysis suggests a different story: negative emotions like anger power opposition to policies among white conservatives.