To Give or Not to Give: Racial Group Consciousness and In-Group Solidarity

• In Event: Minority Advocates Beyond Voting

Abstract

Researchers across the social sciences use a number of different self-reported identity measures to determine how racial identity affects political behavior. These concepts, including linked fate (Dawson 1994) and group consciousness (Verba and Nie 1972) were theorized as mechanisms for overcoming the costs and barriers to political participation for blacks. However empirical research has frequently treated these constructs as explanations for political preferences and been applied to racial/ethnic groups beyond blacks. Further, because race covaries with important political identities like partisanship it can be difficult to empirically separate racial identity from political identity.

In this study we present a research design that generates unbiased measures of how racial identity can overcome the costs of political participation. Specifically we use a two-wave survey that first measures racial identification and second uses a dictator game experiment where respondents can choose to keep or give money to voter registration organizations that target specific racial groups. This provides a clean causal estimate of the effect of various racial identification measures on racial giving – even when that giving imposes some cost upon the respondent. Because these identification measures were originally theorized as mechanisms for overcoming the costs and barriers to participation, these studies are also a direct test of whether the survey measures of racial identification are actually measuring what they purport to measure.

Authors

• Miguel Martinez, Duke University

• Ismail K. White, Princeton University

• Jasmine Smith, Duke University

• Jared Clemons, Duke University

• Leann Mclaren, Duke University