Context Matters: The Effect of Racial Composition of State Electorates on White Racial Attitudes

Authors

  • James M. Avery
  • Jeffrey A. Fine

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15763/issn.2374-7781.2012.33.0.211-231

Abstract

We examine the relationship between the racial composition of state electorates and white racial attitudes, arguing that the racial threat hypothesis should characterize this relationship. Specifically, we make the case for why greater black electoral strength should lead to more racially conservative policy preferences and more negative racial stereotypes among whites. Our findings are consistent with this expectation. However, this relationship is dependent on two contexts. We find that black electoral strength mattered in the context of the racially-salient 2008 national elections, but not during the 2000 or 2004 elections. Also, consistent with the racial threat hypothesis, we find that black electoral strength influences racial attitudes only among whites who have greater reason to fear economic competition from African Americans. Overall, our findings are consistent with recent studies demonstrating that the influence of racial composition on white racial attitudes is dependent on context.

References

Abramson, Paul, and William Claggett. 1986. "Race-Related Differences in Self- Reported and Validated Turnout in 1984." Journal of Politics 48:412-422. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2131100

Allport, Gordon W. 1954. The Nature of Prejudice. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Amir, Yehuda. 1976. The Role of Intergroup Contact in Change of Prejudice and Ethnic Relations. Pp. 245-308 in Towards the Elimination of Racism, ed. Phyllis A. Katz. New York: Pergamon. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-018316-9.50016-3

Ansolabehere, Stephen, Nathaniel Persily, and Charles Stewart III. 2010. Race, Region, and Vote Choice in the 2008 Election: Implications for the Future of the Voting Rights Act. Harvard Law Review 123:1385-1436.

Avery, James M., and Mark Peffley. 2005. Voter Registration Requirements, Voter Turnout, and Welfare Eligibility Policy: Class bias Matters. State Politics and Policy Quarterly 5:47-67. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/153244000500500103

Balz, Dan, Anne E. Kornblut, and Shailagh Murray. 2008. Obama is Big Winner in S.C.; Clinton 2nd After Bitter Campaign. Washington Post, January 27, p. A01.

Baybeck, Brady. 2006. Sorting Out the Competing Effects of Racial Context. Journal of Politics 68:386-96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2508.2006.00414.x

Bernstein, Robert, Anita Chadha, and Robert Montjoy. 2001. Overreporting Voting: Why it Happens and Why it Matters. Public Opinion Quarterly 65:22-44. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/320036

Black, Earl, and Merle Black. 1987. Politics and Society in the South. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Black, Merle. 1978. Racial Composition of Congressional Districts and Support for Federal Voting Rights in the American South Social Science Quarterly 59:435-450.

Blalock, Hubert M. 1967. Toward a Theory of Minority-Group Relations. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Bledsoe, Timothy, Susan Welch, Lee Sigelman, and Michael Combs. 1995. Residential Context and Racial Solidarity among African Americans. American Journal of Political Science 39:434-58. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2111620

Branton, Regina P., and Bradford S. Jones. 2005. Reexamining Racial Attitudes: The Conditional Relationship between Diversity and Socioeconomic Environment. American Journal of Political Science 49:359-372. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.0092-5853.2005.00128.x

Campbell, D.T. 1965. Ethnocentric and Other Altruistic Motives. In D. Levine, ed., Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, Current Theory and Research on Motivation 13:283-311. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Carsey, Thomas M. 1995. The Contextual Effects of Race on White Voter Behavior: The 1989 New York City Mayoral Election. Journal of Politics 57:221-228. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2960280

Citrin, Jack, Donald P. Green, Christopher Muste, and Cara Wong. 1997. Public Opinion Toward Immigration Reform: The Role of Economic Motivations. Journal of Politics 59:858-81. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2998640

Giles, Micheal W., and Melanie A. Buckner. 1993. David Duke and Black Threat: An Old Hypothesis Revisited. Journal of Politics 55:702-713. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2131995

Glaser, James M. 1994. Back to the Black Belt: Racial Environment and White Racial Attitudes in the South. Journal of Politics 56:21-41. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2132344

Glaser, James M. 2001. The Preference Puzzle: Educational Differences in Racial- Political Attitudes. Political Behavior 23:313-34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1015428305690

Hajnal, Zoltan L. 2001. White Residents, Black Incumbents, and a Declining Racial Divide. American Political Science Review 95:603-17. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0003055401003033

Highton, Benjamin. 2005. Self-reported Versus Proxy-reported Voter Turnout in the Current Population Survey. Public Opinion Quarterly 69:113-123. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfi003

Hill, Kim Quaile, and Patricia Hurley. 1984. Nonvoters in Voters' Clothing: The Impact of Voting Behavior Misreporting on Voting Behavior Research. Social Science Quarterly 65:153-166.

Hill, Kim Quaile, and Jan E. Leighley. 1992. The Policy Consequences of Class Bias in State Electorates. American Journal of Political Science 36:351-365. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2111481

Hood, M.V., Quentin Kidd, and Irwin L. Morris. 2001. The Key Issue: Constituency Effects and Southern Senators' Roll-Call Voting on Civil Rights. Legislative Studies Quarterly 26:599-621. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/440271

Huckfeldt, Robert, and Carol Weitzel Kohfeld. 1989. Race and the Decline of Class in American Politics. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Hulse, Carl. 2008. New Registrations Give Georgia Blacks More Power at the Polls. New York Times, October 30, p. A18.

Key, Jr., V.O. 1949. Southern Politics in State and Nation. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.

Kuklinski, James H., Michael D. Cobb, and Martin Gilens. 1997. Racial Attitudes and the 'New South.' Journal of Politics 59:323-349. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0022381600053470

Leary, Alex. 2008. Black Voters Could Be Key. St. Petersburg Times, October 4, p. 1B.

Lewis-Beck, Michael S., Charles Tien, and Richard Nadeau. 2010. Obama's Missed Landslide: A Racial Cost? PS: Political Science & Politics 43:69-76. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1049096510990616 http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1049096509990618

Liu, Baodong. 2010. The Election of Barack Obama: How He Won. Palgrave Macmillan. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9780230111790

Liu, Baodong. 2001. Racial Contexts and White Interests: Beyond Black Threat and Racial Tolerance. Political Behavior 23:157-180. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1013085831415

Mas, Alexandre, and Enrico Moretti. 2009. Racial Bias in the 2008 Presidential Election. American Economic Review 99(2):323-329. http://dx.doi.org/10.1257/aer.99.2.323

Massey, Douglas. 2000. The Residential Segregation of Blacks, Hispanics, and Asian 1970-1990. Pp. 44-73 in Immigration and Race, ed. Gerald Jays. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Oliver, Eric J., and Tali Mendelberg. 2000. Reconsidering the Environmental Determinants of White Racial Attitudes. American Journal of Political Science 44:574-589. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2669265

Oliver, Eric J., and Janelle Wong. 2003. Intergroup Prejudice in Multiethnic Settings. American Journal of Political Science 47:567-582. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3186119 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1540-5907.00040

Pettigrew, Thomas F. 1971. Racially Separate or Together? New York: McGraw-Hill.

Piston, Spencer. 2010. How Explicit Racial Prejudice Hurt Obama in the 2008 Election. Political Behavior 32:431-452. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11109-010-9108-y

Quillian, Lincoln. 1995. Prejudice as a Response to Perceived Group Threat: Population Composition and Anti-Immigrant and Racial Prejudice in Europe. American Sociological Review 60:586-611. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2096296

Radcliff, Benjamin, and Martin Saiz. 1995. Race, Turnout, and Public Policy in the American States. Political Research Quarterly 48:775-794. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/106591299504800406 http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/448974

Rocha, Rene R., and Rodolgo Espino. 2009. Racial Threat, Residential Segregation, and the Policy Attitudes of Anglos. Political Research Quarterly 62:415-426. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1065912908320931

Rudolph, Thomas J., and Elizabeth Popp. 2010. Race, Environment, and Interracial Trust. Journal of Politics 72:74-89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S002238160999048X

Sigelman, Lee, and Susan Welch. 1993. The Contact Hypothesis Revisited: Black-White Interaction and Positive Social Attitudes Social Forces 71:781-795.

Soss, Joe, Sanford F. Schram, Thomas P. Vartanian, and Erin O'Brien. 2001. Setting the Terms of Relief: Explaining State Policy Choices in the Devolution Revolution. American Journal of Political Science 45:378-395. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2669347

Steenbergen, Marco R., and Bradford S. Jones. 2002. Modeling Multilevel Data Structures. American Journal of Political Science 46:218-237. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3088424

Taylor, Maryless C. 1998. How White Attitudes Vary with the Racial Composition of Local Populations: Numbers Count. American Sociological Review 63:512-535. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2657265

Welch, Susan, Lee Sigelman, Timothy Bledsoe, and Michael Combs. 2001. Race and Place: Race Relations in an American City. New York: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511814037

Wright Jr., Gerald C. 1977. Contextual Models of Electoral Behavior: The Southern Wallace Vote. American Political Science Review 71:497-450. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0003055400267415 http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1978344

Downloads

Published

2012-11-01

Issue

Vol. 33: Fall 2012

Section

Articles

License

Authors who publish with American Review of Politics agree to the following terms:

  1. The Author retains copyright in the Work, where the term “Work” shall include all digital objects that may result in subsequent electronic publication or distribution.

  2. Upon acceptance of the Work, the author shall grant to the Publisher the right of first publication of the Work.

  3. The Author shall grant to the Publisher and its agents the nonexclusive perpetual right and license to publish, archive, and make accessible the Work in whole or in part in all forms of media now or hereafter known under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License or its equivalent, which, for the avoidance of doubt, allows others to copy, distribute, and transmit the Work under the following conditions:

    1. Attribution: other users must attribute the Work in the manner specified by the author as indicated on the journal Web site;

    2. Non-Commercial: the materials may not be used for commercial purposes;

    3. Share Alike: If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.

with the understanding that the above condition can be waived with permission from the Author and that where the Work or any of its elements is in the public domain under applicable law, that status is in no way affected by the license.

  1. The Author is able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the nonexclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the Work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), as long as there is provided in the document an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

  2. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post online a pre-publication manuscript (but not the Publisher’s final formatted PDF version of the Work) in institutional repositories or on their Websites prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (see The Effect of Open Access). Any such posting made before acceptance and publication of the Work shall be updated upon publication to include a reference to the Publisher-assigned DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and a link to the online abstract for the final published Work in the Journal.

  3. Upon Publisher’s request, the Author agrees to furnish promptly to Publisher, at the Author’s own expense, written evidence of the permissions, licenses, and consents for use of third-party material included within the Work, except as determined by Publisher to be covered by the principles of Fair Use.

  1. The Author represents and warrants that:

    1. the Work is the Author’s original work;

    2. the Author has not transferred, and will not transfer, exclusive rights in the Work to any third party;

    3. the Work is not pending review or under consideration by another publisher;

    4. the Work has not previously been published;

    5. the Work contains no misrepresentation or infringement of the Work or property of other authors or third parties; and

    6. the Work contains no libel, invasion of privacy, or other unlawful matter.

  2. The Author agrees to indemnify and hold Publisher harmless from Author’s breach of the representations and warranties contained in Paragraph 6 above, as well as any claim or proceeding relating to Publisher’s use and publication of any content contained in the Work, including third-party content.