The recent series of shootings and attempted bombings across the globe show how fears about racial and ethnic change can motivate violence. In El Paso, a gunman killed twenty-two and injured twenty-four others. He appears to have been motivated by the belief that there is an active plot to exterminate White people. The gunman, who killed 51 at two mosques in New Zealand in March 2019, was driven by a similar narrative. …
These acts of violence appear motivated by an extremely negative view of immigration and demographic change; this view is that immigrants are part of a malevolent plot to replace whites. These views aside, the United States is undergoing a demographic transformation with, according to the US Census, whites expected to become a minority within the next thirty years (although we should remember that definitions matter, too). To examine Americans’ attitudes towards this shift, we surveyed a representative sample of 2,000 Americans from July 23 to August 6. CONT.
Joseph E. Uscinski & Casey Klofstad (U. of Miami), LSE USAPP