Unpacking White Identity

• In Event: Unpacking Social and Political Identities

Abstract

The politics of racial and ethnic identity began shaping the United States government long before the country was founded (Hannah-Jones 2019). The candidacy and administration of Donald J. Trump, with an agenda many argued appealed to white nationalism, only exacerbated existing racial tensions. Most notably, the racially charged “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia culminated with one attendee murdering a counter-protester during the proceedings (Peters and Besley 2017). Scholars rightly continue to take note of the importance of racial identity in the study of American politics. Notably, the concept of a white racial identity now permeates the literature as well, perhaps in reaction to such high-profile events as the Charlottesville rally (Jardina 2018). More broadly, the racial, ethnic, and ancestral categories listed on the U.S. Census repeatedly define group boundaries when scholars attempt to study identity politics (Gutierrez et al. 2019 as just one example of multitudes).

Yet Americans have continually refine and reshape the very boundaries of the notion of what constitutes white, exactly, over the course of the nation’s history. As just one example, immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe experienced considerable discrimination and were viewed as diluting so-called “pure white stock” in the 19th and early 20th centuries (Kelkar 2017). Many immigrants from Poland, Italy, or Ireland were simply not considered “white.” Today, many white Americans check a box for “Caucasian” or “White/Caucasian” on Census and other forms and surveys. Yet “Caucasian” is hardly a well-defined or meaningful ethnic identity. As Levitz (2021) put it, “Do the grandsons of coal miners in deindustrialized Appalachia, first-generation Russian Jewish immigrants in Brighton Beach, and tech bros in Palo Alto all consider themselves part of the same white community?”

In this manuscript, we aim to develop a better understanding of “white identity” in the United States. First, we are interested how many white Americans have other ethnic and ancestral identities that are important to them (Polish, Italian, etc). Second, we are interested in how important “white” identity is to people who identify as white in light of the broader ethnic and ancestral attachments that they may poses. Third, we are interested in the effect that reflecting on one’s ethnic background has on social and partisan identities. Finally, we’re interested in the consequences of priming white identity on racial attitudes, political identities, and polarization. We answer these research questions using two, nationally representative surveys of Americans conducted using Lucid Theorem.

Authors

• Dominik Andrzej Stecula, Colorado State University

• Matthew P. Hitt, Colorado State University