The Political Impact of Individualistic Rhetoric on Black and White Americans

• In Event: Multiracial Politics Here and There

Abstract

Previous research suggests that individualism—the belief in hard work, self-reliance, and the perception of an open opportunity structure—is part of the same underlying schema as racial attitudes. However, this has not been empirically tested. We fielded a survey experiment on a nationally diverse sample of black and white Americans to test the premise that the mere use of individualistic political rhetoric, devoid of any racial content, primes racial attitudes. We find that for African Americans, exposure to individualistic rhetoric is associated with decreased levels of public and private race-specific collective self-esteem, relative to a control group. This result suggests that blacks think their group is implicated in political messages about hard work and self-reliance, even when their group is not explicitly mentioned. Conversely, for white Americans exposure to the same individualistic message was not associated with any change in race-specific collective self-esteem. However, white Americans exposed to the individualistic message were more likely to express animus toward African Americans, but not other racial and ethnic minorities. This result suggests that white Americans’ beliefs about individualism are directly tied to blacks, but not other racial groups.

Authors

• Lafleur Stephens

• Ashley E. Jardina, Duke University