Elite Discourse and Evolving Racial Ideologies in the United States

• In Event: Poster Session: Public Opinion & Ideas, Knowledge and Politics
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Public Opinion

Abstract

Contemporary studies of white racial attitudes in Political Science have focused on anti-black affect disguised with moral traditionalism and usually measured with the racial resentment battery. However, the measurement strategy for racial resentment was formulated in a cultural and political context that has fundamentally changed. While anti-blackness is certainly at the root of white racial attitudes, there is growing evidence that whites conceive of their own racial identity in relation to multiple salient outgroups (Jardina, 2019). This is especially apparent in elite political discourse: instead of welfare queens, Islamic terrorists and Mexican immigrants increasingly dominate. This paper asks how and when did this shift in the expression of whiteness in America register in the mass public? I use historical ANES data to trace the shifts in racial ideology of white Americans beginning in the 1990s by looking at how racial resentment sustains correlations with different policies and opinions over time, and contextualizing the different components of white racial ideology in relation to elite political discourse. These developments ultimately signal a change in the way that whites understand their race and position in the racial hierarchy, and suggest a need to reconsider how Political Scientists conceptualize and measure white racial attitudes in relation to other groups.

Author

• Geneva Cole, University of Chicago