When are Explicit Racial Appeals Accepted? Examining the Role of Racial Status Threat

Autor: Leah Christiani
Rok vydání: 2021
Předmět:
Zdroj: Political Behavior. 45:103-123
ISSN: 1573-6687
0190-9320
DOI: 10.1007/s11109-021-09688-9
Popis: Evidence has emerged demonstrating that whites no longer reject negative, explicit racial appeals as they had in the past. This seeming reversal of the traditional logic of the powerlessness of explicit appeals raises the question: Why are explicit racial appeals accepted sometimes but rejected at other times? Here, I test whether the relative acceptance of negative, explicit racial appeals depends on whites’ feelings of threat using a two-wave survey experiment that manipulates participants’ feelings of threat, and then examines their responses to an overtly racist political appeal. I find that when whites feel threatened, they are more willing to approve of and agree with a negative, explicit racial appeal disparaging African Americans—and express willingness to vote for the candidate who made the explicit racial appeal.
Databáze: OpenAIRE