Who Reacts to Whom? Racial Context and Political Identities in the States

• In Event: Prejudice and Intolerance: New Models and Measures

Abstract

This paper examines political implications of the vast socio-demographic change in the United States over the last several decades, by employing a distinct approach which leverages the variation in state-level diversity to evaluate contextual effects on the political orientations of all four major racial/ethnic groups—whites, blacks, Latinos, and Asians. We also specify which elements of the racial/ethnic context are the primary correlates of individual-level political orientations. Going beyond standard approaches in the research that identify contextual effects of a single dimension of racial/ethnic context on a single racial/ethnic group, this approach provides for a fuller understanding of state public opinion as manifested in the range of groups and in a variety of racial/ethnic contexts. We reach consistent and notable conclusions that are supported by analyses of two datasets with distinct sampling frames that span a 2006 to 2016 time-frame, the cumulative 2006-2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), and the 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey (CMPS).

First, the racial contexts of states correlate with individuals’ partisan affiliations and ideological leanings across the several racial/ethnic groups. Specifically, Whites tend to be stronger Republicans in states with higher proportions of Blacks, Latinos, and Asians. This relationship is weaker, and sometimes reversed, among Blacks, Latino, and Asian respondents. Second, among the minority respondents the degree of reaction to social context often varies in relationship to relative in-group size, with Democratic and liberal orientations stronger in states with larger proportions of co-ethnics. That is, responses to the racial/ethnic context are asymmetrical across groups, particularly whites compared to non-white; thus, the racial/ethnic groups do not equally account for the divergence found. Finally, we consider whether racial context itself, or change in context, explains the results; we find that both matter, though context is more consistently related to respondents’ political orientations than the extent of change. Thus, by expanding beyond dyadic conceptualizations of racial/ethnic group politics, we more fully examine the relationship between the complexity of diversity and its implications for democratic processes through partisan and ideological identities in the states, which, further, advances understanding of the political consequences of social developments in the United States.

Authors

• Robert R. Preuhs, Metropolitan State University of Denver

• Rodney E. Hero, Arizona State University