The Politics of Resentment in the Post–Civil Rights Era: Minority Threat, Homicide, and Ideological Voting in Congress (original) (raw)
Related papers
2007
This study assesses whether racial and ethnic resentments still influence U.S. politics. Tests of hypotheses derived from minority threat theory and minority voting power stipulating quadratic relationships between minority presence and roll call votes for liberal legislation in the House of Representatives are conducted. In addition to these nonlinear associations, the political influence of the most menacing crime the public blames on underclass minorities is assessed as well. Fixed-effects estimates based on analyses of 1,152 state-years in the post-civil rights era indicate that the expected Ushaped relationships are present between minority population size and roll call votes for liberal legislation. Additional findings suggest that expansions in the murder rates produced decreased support for liberal policies. Statements by Republican campaign officials on how they deliberately used mass resentments against minorities to gain normally Democratic votes provide evidence about the intervening connections between the threat to white dominance posed by larger minority populations and reduced support for liberal legislation.
Race, crime, and Republican strength: Minority politics in the post-civil rights era
Social Science Research, 2008
This investigation assesses the relationships between racial threat and partisan dominance in state legislatures with tests of interactive hypotheses. The findings show that historically contingent expectations derived from racial threat theory, Republican law and order campaign appeals, and fundamentalist strength account for Republican strength in the legislatures. Two-way fixed-effects estimates based on pooled time-series analyses of 799 state-years in the post-civil rights era show that the percentage of Republicans in the state legislatures grew after increases in African American presence and the violent crime rates. The combined effects of a growth in African American and fundamentalist populations also account for increased Republican seats in these bodies. Statements by Republican campaign officials on how they deliberately used mass resentments against minorities to gain votes provide evidence about the intervening links between minority threat, the menace posed by high violent crime rates, and increased Republican strength in the state legislatures.
Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, 2013
This study assesses whether the growth in economic inequality since the late 1960s produced enhanced support for conservative policies in the U.S. House of Representatives. Tests of the effects of inequality and tests of hypotheses derived from minority threat theory are conducted using a pooled time-series, fixed-effects design. The political influence of the most menacing street crime the public blames on underclass minorities is captured as well. Analyses based on 1.488 state-years show that income inequality, minority presence, and the murder rates reduce liberal roll-call votes. Interactions that assess period contrasts in the strength of relationships show that increases in inequality led to greater congressional support for conservative measures particularly in the later years of the post civil rights era. Such tests also support racial threat theory because they show that a strong negative relationship between African American presence and liberal roll-call votes persisted throughout this period. Such results corroborate claims ) that the expansion in economic inequality since the late 1960s helped increase support for conservative legislation.
How Race-Relations Have Determined Voting Behavior Since the Civil Rights Era
2007
In contemporary American Politics, there have been many studies on voting behavior. They have included topics such as bloc voting, coalition building to form an electoral majority, and 3 rd party voting. This paper addresses the question why some racially diverse regions and states have tended to vote Republican in contemporary Presidential elections, while others have tended to vote Democratic. My hypothesis is that race relations have been a major factor in determining voting behavior since the 1964 Presidential elections. I argue that in regions and states where race-relations are polarized, racial issues are generally more salient than other issues, and these regions as well as states generally vote Republican in Presidential elections. In regions and states where race-relations tend to be more harmonious, racial issues are tend to be less salient, and these states generally vote Democratic in Presidential elections. I measure racial polarization in a variety of ways such as differing voting reactions based on issues with a strong racial component, rates of interracial marriages, electoral reactions to policy, and strength of organized racism. The findings generally confirm my hypothesis, although there a few regions as well as states where the findings are not entirely in line with my hypothesis.
This article investigates the impact of Black congressional representation on the racial attitudes of Whites. Utilizing data from the 2010 and 2012 Cooperative Congressional Election Survey, we test whether Black political representation impacts Whites' levels of racial resentment. The informational theory suggests Whites gain critical information as a result of their experience living under Black political leadership and that their experience should positively impact how they feel about Blacks once Whites see that their lives are not dramatically changed as a result of Black political representation. The findings of this article challenge the notion that having a Black political representative will be associated with a decrease in negative racial attitudes among Whites. Using racial resentment to measure White racial attitudes, we find that living under a Black congressional representative only has a marginal effect on racial attitudes. In contrast to the informational hypothesis, we find that Whites who reside in congressional districts represented by a Black person are not less racially resentful than Whites who live in districts that are not represented by a Black person.
Social Science & Medicine, 2015
Excess mortality in marginalized populations could be both a cause and an effect of political processes. We estimate the impact of mortality differentials between blacks and whites from 1970 to 2004 on the racial composition of the electorate in the US general election of 2004 and in close statewide elections during the study period. We analyze 73 million US deaths from the Multiple Cause of Death files to calculate: (1) Total excess deaths among blacks between 1970 and 2004, (2) total hypothetical survivors to 2004, (3) the probability that survivors would have turned out to vote in 2004, (4) total black votes lost in 2004, and (5) total black votes lost by each presidential candidate. We estimate 2.7 million excess black deaths between 1970 and 2004. Of those, 1.9 million would have survived until 2004, of which over 1.7 million would have been of voting-age. We estimate that 1 million black votes were lost in 2004; of these, 900,000 votes were lost by the defeated Democratic presidential nominee. We find that many close state-level elections over the study period would likely have had different outcomes if voting age blacks had the mortality profiles of whites. US black voting rights are also eroded through felony disenfranchisement laws and other measures that dampen the voice of the US black electorate. Systematic disenfranchisement by population group yields an electorate that is unrepresentative of the full
The Dynamics of Racial Resentment across the 50 US States
Perspectives on Politics, 2019
Although many scholars who study the role of racial animus in Americans’ political attitudes and policy preferences do so to help us understand national-level politics, (racialized) policy is largely shaped at the state level. States are laboratories of policy innovation whose experiments can exacerbate or ameliorate racial inequality. In this article, we develop state-level scores of racial resentment. By using linear multilevel regression and poststratification weighting techniques and by linking nationally representative survey data with US Census data, we create time-varying, dynamic state-level estimates of racial resentment from 1988 to 2016. These measures enable us to explore the extent to which subnational levels of racial attitudes fluctuate over time and to provide a comparative analysis of state-level racial resentment scores across space and time. We find that states’ levels of racial animus change slowly, with some exhibiting increases over time while others do just th...
This paper tests the informational hypothesis by examining the degree to which African American political representation in congress impact the racial attitudes, policy preferences, job performance evaluations, and vote choice of whites that reside in majority black congressional districts. Prior studies that have examined how whites respond to African American representation have only focused on local elections leaving scholars to speculate if the findings of those analyses are applicable to congressional elections. Utilizing a representative sample of whites residing in congressional districts represented by an African Americans from the 2010 and 2012 Cooperative Congressional Election Survey, this study challenges the findings that suggest that black political representation positively impacts white racial attitudes, policy preferences, job performance evaluations and vote choice of whites. In fact the evidence presented in this study suggest that the longer whites live under African American congressional representation, the more they become racially resentful. The study also finds that whites who are represented in congress by an African American were less likely to approve of the job performance of their incumbent representatives and were even less likely to indicate electoral support for African American congressional incumbents.
American Journal of Sociology, 2003
Criminal offenders in the United States typically forfeit voting rights as a collateral consequence of their felony convictions. This article analyzes the origins and development of these state felon disenfranchisement provisions. Because these laws tend to dilute the voting strength of racial minorities, we build on theories of group threat to test whether racial threat influenced their passage. Many felon voting bans were passed in the late 1860s and 1870s, when implementation of the Fifteenth Amendment and its extension of voting rights to African-Americans were ardently contested. We find that large nonwhite prison populations increase the odds of passing restrictive laws, and, further, that prison and state racial composition may be linked to the adoption of reenfranchisement reforms. These findings are important for understanding restrictions on the civil rights of citizens convicted of crime and, more generally, the role of racial conflict in American political development. Punishment for felony-level crimes in the United States generally carries collateral consequences, including temporary or permanent voting restric