Ideological Change and Complexity: A Relational Approach to American Racial Attitudes

• In Event: 2346 - Racism and Anti-Racism I

Abstract

Conventional survey-based research often measures racial attitudes along a linear continuum ranging from racial liberal to racial conservative. Similarly, attitudinal change is widely conceptualized as the incline and decline of particular racial ideologies. However, these linear conceptualization are at odds with the fluid and multidimensional nature of racial ideology. To better capture ideological schemas around race, I draw on the 2016 American National Elections Studies (ANES) data and employ latent class analysis to examine the relationality between five attitudinal dimensions around race and race relations. Results indicate that the dimensions configure in distinct ways to form six racial schemas— the racial apathetic schema, racial conservative schema, racial liberal schema, systemic racism schema, resolute colorblind schema, and individualistic color-conscious schema. Controlling for sociodemographic and political characteristics, I find that these racial schemas shape perception, evaluation, policy preference, and political action in patterned ways. Finally, temporal analysis of racial schemas in the 2012 and 2016 ANES indicates that ideological change during these time points is characterized by both expanding racial polarization and color cognizance. The final iteration of this paper will include an application of this methodology to the General Social Survey data to examine ideological change from 1986 to 2016.

Author

• Karen Lee, University of Texas Austin