President Trump is facing a strong backlash for telling four progressive Democratic congresswomen to “go back” to where they “originally came from.” …
As I noted in an earlier Monkey Cage post, within the social-science literature on intergroup relations, Jim Sidanius and Felicia Pratto’s theory of social dominance argues that politically dominant groups, such as whites in the United States, effectively claim “ownership of the nation.” According to this influential theory, “Nationality and ethnicity are complementary because their power has enabled whites to successfully define the prototypical American in their own image.”
Consistent with that contention, social-psychology research shows that “to be American is implicitly synonymous with being white.” Those studies show that many whites subconsciously see both African and Asian Americans as less associated with the national category “American” than whites. CONT.
Michael Tesler (UC Irvine), Monkey Cage