… Most work in the social sciences has ignored the possibility that white Americans possess a racial identity or a sense of racial solidarity, arguing that because of their dominant status and their numerical majority, white Americans are able to take their race for granted. But in recent years, significant immigration to the U.S., demographic change, and the salience of racial and ethnic minorities in politics and the media, mean that some whites have come to see their group’s power and privileges threatened. As a result, white identity has become a salient political force. Obama, I suggest, is viewed as a source of that threat, and Trump, with his dog-whistle promises to “make America great again”, as an antidote. As a result, for whites, both out-group prejudice and in-group identity were attitudes brought to bear on their candidate evaluations in 2012 and 2016.
To test these claims, I draw on evidence from the 2012 and 2016 American National Election Study (ANES) Time Series Studies, and the 2016 and 2018 ANES Pilot studies—all nationally representative public opinion surveys. CONT.
Ashley Jardina (Duke), Political Behavior
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