Virginia’s election results were a deep disappointment for Republicans who have long been competitive—even dominant—in this Southern state. Terry McAuliffe defeated Ken Cuccinelli 48%-45%, and the margin was greater in the Lt. Governor’s race. A closely contested Attorney General’s race is too close to call. … While the exit polls […] Read more »
Keeping Black Voters in Their Place
The Republicans who now control the legislatures and governorships in the deep South are using the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 to create a system of political apartheid. No state demonstrates this better than Alabama, where in 2010 Republicans took over the State Senate and House for the first […] Read more »
The Right to Vote
It is becoming increasingly obvious that the Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which eviscerated the Voting Rights Act, is leading to a new era of voter suppression that parallels the pre-1960s era—this time affecting not just African-Americans but also Hispanic-Americans, women, and students, among others. The reasoning […] Read more »
Behind Roar of Politics, Whispers of Race Persist
… Whites tend to hold negative views of Obamacare, while blacks tend to like it. Specifically, 55 percent of whites, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found this year, consider Mr. Obama’s health care law a bad idea, while 59 percent of blacks call it a good idea. On immigration, […] Read more »
How the Obama presidency may be changing young people’s views of race
Decades of political science research show that political attitudes can be strongly affected by the events we experience in adolescence and young adulthood, or what are sometimes referred to as the “impressionable years.” New research shows how this applies to the racial attitudes of young people who came of age […] Read more »
150 Years of Racism: Attitudes in the American South
… A new paper by Avidit Acharya, Matthew Blackwell, and Maya Sen has discovered that the proportion of enslaved residents in 1860—153 years ago—predicts race-related beliefs today. As the percent of the population in a county accounted for by the enslaved increases, there is a decreased likelihood that contemporary white […] Read more »