How White Identification Shapes Support for Racial Justice Protest and Policy

• In Event: Racial Attitudes from Policy to Protest

Abstract

Whiteness is an increasingly consequential social identification in the United States, but existing work falls short in analyzing variation in how this identity presents and what it means for political engagement and opinions. This paper makes a conceptual contribution by developing a typology of white identification that captures variation across salience of white identity and affect towards whiteness. The resultant three types of white identification—racial agnostics, racial preservationists, and racial reconstructionists—are broad but useful patterns for understanding how white Americans think about racial politics. This paper focuses on attitudes about Black Lives Matter and the 2020 uprising, a particularly rich ground for research as this moment increased salience of white identity nationally and illuminated differences in attitudes about amending or defending white privilege. Using two rounds of in-depth semi-structured interviews from the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area in St. Paul and an original nationally representative survey, this paper presents evidence for how types of white identification shape attitudes about protests and racial justice initiatives.

Author

• Geneva Cole, University of Chicago