(iPoster) What's Inside? Internalized Racism and Black Political Behavior

• In Event: Poster Sessions: Political Science Education & Race, Ethnicity, and Politics
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Race, Ethnicity, and Politics

Abstract

Recent scholarship documents growing heterogeneity in Black political behavior, yet this work proceeds from an implicit assumption: that Black Americans share positive intra-racial attitudes, with political diversity emerging from different strategic calculations rather than divergent racial ideologies. This assumption fails to explain Black individuals who employ anti-Black rhetoric or oppose race-targeted policies. We argue that internalized racism, the adoption of dominant anti-Black ideologies and pro-white attitudes, provides the missing mechanism driving this attitudinal diversity. Using data from the 2020 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey, we demonstrate that racial resentment, traditionally used to measure white racial attitudes, functions as a valid internalized racism proxy for Black respondents. We validate this alongside theoretically motivated proxies capturing negative evaluations of Blackness, psychological distancing from the Black community, and favoritism toward whiteness. Higher internalized racism predicts weaker racial linked fate, reduced support for progressive policies, greater support for punitive policies, and increased Republican approval. These relationships persist after controlling for ideology, socioeconomic status, and respectability concerns. Internalized racism represents a distinctive ideological orientation shaping heterogeneity within the Black electorate.

Authors

• Unregistered Participant

• Unregistered Participant