… Despite the popular conversation about whether President’s Trump’s comments are racist, in recent research, I along with co-author (Adam Enders), maintain that a statement or policy need not make explicit mention of race to be racist. In fact, it is the use of racially coded language, like “go back to where you came from”, that activates racial prejudice without even mentioning race. We show that this communication strategy has been effective in creating an increasing link between racial prejudice (measured as racial resentment) and attitudes about political issues over time. Moreover, we show that this relationship persists in a series of statistical models in which we control for factors like political values, attitudes about the size of government, sociodemographic characteristics and more. CONT.
Jamil Scott (Georgetown), LSE USAPP