The salience of racial identity among African-American and white students

This study examines the salience of racial identity among white and black students at four American universities. Utilizing the Twenty Statements Test [Kuhn, M. H., & McPartland, T. S. (1954). An empirical investigation of self-attitudes. American Sociological Review, 19, 68–76], we measure racial identity salience among students at three predominantly white northeastern universities and one historically black southern university. As predicted, we found that racial identity salience for white students at the predominantly white universities (PWUs) was significantly lower than racial identity salience among black students in these university settings. Contrary to our expectations, racial identity salience among white students at the historically black university (HBCU) was lower than racial identity salience exhibited among black students at this university, and white students at the HBCU were not more likely to exhibit racial identity saliency than white students at the PWUs. These findings indicate that the “transparency phenomenon,” transcends context in that whites are generally far less likely to think of themselves in racial terms than are people of color. Thus, racial transparency among whites appears to supercede context. Racial salience is much higher among African-American students at the PWUs than at the HBCU; this finding suggests the importance of context for African-Americans. However, fully one-third of African-American students at the HBCU listed race on the TST, suggesting the transcendent power of a racialized identity in a dominantly white society.     

Shades of Privilege: The Relationship Between Skin Color and Political Attitudes Among White Americans

Shifting racial dynamics in the U.S. have heightened the salience of White racial identity, and a sense that Whites’ social status and resources are no longer secure. At the same time, the growing size of non-White populations has also renewed attention to skin color-based stratification and the potential blurring of racial boundaries. We theorize that Whites with darker skin will be motivated to protect the boundaries of Whiteness due to the loss of status they would face from blurring racial boundaries. Consistent with growing evidence of skin color’s importance for Whites, we demonstrate that darker-skinned Whites—measured via a light-reflectance spectrophotometer—identify more strongly with their White racial identity and are more likely to hold conservative political views on racialized issues than lighter-skinned Whites. Together, these findings offer new insights into the evolving meaning of race and color in American politics.

     

When Common Identities Decrease Trust: An Experimental Study of Partisan Women

How does sharing a common gender identity affect the relationship between Democratic and Republican women? Social psychological work suggests that common ingroup identities unite competing factions. After closely examining the conditions upon which the common ingroup identity model depends, I argue that opposing partisans who share the superordinate identity of being a woman will not reduce their intergroup biases. Instead, I predict that raising the salience of their gender will increase cross‐party biases. I support my hypotheses with a nationally representative survey of 3,000 adult women and two survey experiments, each with over 1,000 adult women. These findings have direct implications for how women evaluate one another in contentious political settings and, more broadly, for our understanding of when we can and cannot rely upon common identities to bridge the partisan divide.     

Exploring Identity Dynamics from a Combined Social Exchange and Social Identity Perspective

The aim of this article is to explore identity dynamics of unit and department leaders in a healthcare setting using both social identity and social exchange theories. In particular, we developed a mediational moderated model in which supervisor trust indirectly influences identification with a subordinate level (i.e., the clinical unit) through its effect on identification with a superordinate level (i.e., the organization as a whole). Furthermore, we predicted and found that this relation is moderated by organizational tenure, contract breach, and the clinical-manager's role (heads of clinical units vs. chairs of departments). We tested our hypotheses with doctors of a large public hospital in northern Italy. A total of 370 doctors completed questionnaires measuring organizational and unit identification, supervisor trust, and contract breach. Results supported our hypotheses: supervisor trust was related to unit identification through its effect on organizational identification. As expected, this relation was stronger for more tenured department chairs, and for those doctors who perceived less contract breach.     

Intraparty Hostility: Social Identity,Subidentity, and the Hostile Media Effect in a Contested Primary

The hostile media effect (HME) has generally been tested in terms of in-groups and out-groups, with a “neutral” story in between. This ignores the nature of many social groups as comprising subgroups, often but not always sharing feelings of connectedness and purpose. In cases when bounded subgroups are at odds with one another, HME provides little guidance. A contested partisan primary provides such a case. This study takes identity centrality, candidate favorability, and perceived social network homogeneity as measures of partisanship and involvement, hypothesizing relationships between each and perceived bias against one’s candidate and party. Findings show that markers of candidate-focused social identity predict greater perceived bias against one’s candidate during the 2016 primary season, while party-focused identity fails to predict perceived bias against one’s party. This suggests that candidate support identity overrides plain partisanship during primaries, supporting concern that a heated primary might damage general election party unity. Subsequent postconvention findings suggest that the salience of candidate-focused identity fades, while homogeneity of one’s network regarding party support helps to make perceived hostility toward one’s party identity more salient. However, as campaigns become more candidate-centered, the contestation between nested candidate and party identities may grow fiercer.     

Identity,contact, and the reduction of mutual distrust: a survey of Chinese and Japanese youth

In the midst of rising tension between China and Japan, two powerful countries in Asia, the favorable attitudes of each country's citizens toward the other country have dropped to a historical low. The Taiwan issue, historical legacy, island disputes, and maritime resource competition are major obstacles in Sino-Japanese relations, but the most fundamental issue is a deep-seated mutual distrust and suspicion between the two countries, which result in rising threat perceptions. Beyond the structural and political elite-centered approaches, this study examines the evidence related to the three approaches (face-to-face contact, cross-cultural exposure, and social identity) to reduce mutual distrust and antipathy in the two countries. With a careful analysis of the survey data, this study sheds light on the conditions under which contact (a) results in improved attitudes toward outgroup, (b) has little or no effect on intergroup relations, and (c) yields more prejudice and hostility toward the outgroup. The findings of this study not only identify factors that could facilitate mutual understanding between Chinese and Japanese people and more favorable impressions of one another, but are also relevant to planning interventions to reduce prejudice and distrust among people from different races, religions, and countries.     

Knowledge Matters: Policy Cross-pressures and Black Partisanship

Black Americans are a core Democratic constituency, despite holding views on social issues that put them in conflict with the party. Conventional wisdom attributes this partisan commitment to the salience of race and concerns about racial inequality. This paper considers whether the Democratic bias derives in part from low levels of political knowledge. Using data from the 2004 National Annenberg Election Study, this paper examines how political knowledge moderates the relationship between social issue cross-pressures and partisan attitudes among Black Americans. I demonstrate that the extent to which Democratic allegiance persists despite policy disagreements depends on whether blacks are sufficiently knowledgeable to act on their policy views, and not simply on the importance that blacks assign to their racial commitments. It is only among politically knowledgeable Black Americans that social issue cross-pressures are at all politically consequential; for them, Democratic partisanship is resilient but not immune to policy disagreements. For blacks with low levels of political knowledge, partisan support is unaffected by policy disagreements. This pattern is most pronounced among religiously active Black Evangelicals, for whom social issues are highly salient.     

Opting for White: choice,fluidity and racial identity construction in post civil-rights America

Historically, racial identity for persons with one Black and one White parent assumed the development of a Black identity in accordance with the one-drop rule. However, empirical research on the multiracial population suggests that there exists wide variation in racial identification. We explore the interpretive power of Bonilla-Silva’s Latin Americanization model to explain racial identity construction among a sample of 259 mixed-race respondents. We highlight case studies of individuals who have constructed a White identity in order to illustrate how structural changes in race relations have increased the range of racial identities available to multiracial people. While we observe variation in racial identification among our respondents, their “choices” continue to be differentially available due to their physical appearance and social context.     

Representation and Collaboration: Exploring the Role of Shared Identity in the Collaborative Process

Public managers must regularly engage and interact with stakeholders in the external environment to deliver meaningful policy outcomes. Examining the motivations behind such behavior is a critical component of understanding management in the modern era. Some studies suggest that actors with similar interests are more likely to form collaborative partnerships. Using an original mail survey of 150 American Indian education directors in public school districts, this article examines how shared identity and individual attitudes affect levels of interaction with Native American communities. Findings suggest that public school officials who share both a racial and a tribal/co‐ethnic identity with Native American nations in their service area have higher levels of interaction with these groups than public school officials who are either members of Native American nations outside their service area or non‐Indian. This research has broad implications for incorporating theories of representation and social construction into our understanding of collaboration.     

Taking Threat Seriously: Prejudice,Principle, and Attitudes Toward Racial Policies

Drawing from group theories of race-related attitudes and electoral politics, we develop and test how anxiety influences the relative weight of prejudice as a determinant of individuals’ support for racial policies. We hypothesize that prejudice will more strongly influence the racial policy preferences of people who are feeling anxious than it will for people who are not. Using an experimental design we manipulate subjects’ levels of threat and find significant treatment effects, as hypothesized. We find that individuals’ racial policy attitudes are partially conditional on their affective states: individuals who feel anxious report less support for racial policies than those individuals who do not feel anxious, even when this threat is stimulated by non-racial content. More broadly, we conclude that affect is central to a better understanding of individuals’ political attitudes and behaviors.     

Seeing Difference: The Effect of Economic Disparity on Black Attitudes toward Latinos

Rapid growth in the size of the Latino population has increased the ethnic diversity of urban neighborhoods, transforming the residential experiences of many black Americans. The competition for scarce resources is considered a central force in black-Latino relations and a source of anti-Latino sentiment among blacks. This article examines how the level and the distribution of economic resources within diverse areas affect black attitudes toward Latinos. Drawing on a multilevel dataset of individual racial attitudes and neighborhood characteristics, the analysis reveals that the relative economic status of racial groups is an important influence on black attitudes. In environments where Latinos are economically advantaged relative to their black neighbors, blacks are more likely to harbor negative stereotypes about Latinos, to be reluctant to extend to Latinos the same policy benefits they themselves enjoy, and to view black and Latino economic and political interests as incompatible. While the results suggest that diversity without conflict is possible, they make clear that the prospects for intergroup comity depend on some resolution of blacks' economic insecurities.     

Placing Racial Stereotypes in Context: Social Desirability and the Politics of Racial Hostility

Past research indicates that diversity at the level of larger geographic units (e.g., counties) is linked to white racial hostility. However, research has not addressed whether diverse local contexts may strengthen or weaken the relationship between racial stereotypes and policy attitudes. In a statewide opinion survey, we find that black‐white racial diversity at the zip‐code level strengthens the connection between racial stereotypes and race‐related policy attitudes among whites. Moreover, this effect is most pronounced among low self‐monitors, individuals who are relatively immune to the effects of egalitarian social norms likely to develop within a racially diverse local area. We find that this racializing effect is most evident for stereotypes (e.g., African Americans are “violent”) that are “relevant” to a given policy (e.g., capital punishment). Our findings lend nuance to research on the political effects of racial attitudes and confirm the racializing political effects of diverse residential settings on white Americans.     

Reexamining Racial Attitudes: The Conditional Relationship Between Diversity and Socioeconomic Environment

Social science research notes that racial context is related to attitudes toward social issues; however, surprisingly little research has examined how the impact of racial context on attitudes is activated. The aim of this article is to examine racial context "effects" for policy preferences, but to do so within a broader perspective. This article extends the literature on racial attitudes by considering a conditional relationship between racial and ethnic context and socioeconomic context and expanding racial context to include multiple racial and ethnic groups. The findings indicate that racial and ethnic contextual effects do emerge; however, these effects are conditional on the socioeconomic context in which an individual resides. Specifically, high socioeconomic contexts and highly diverse contexts are related to higher levels of support for racial social issues; however, contexts characterized by low socioeconomic context and high racial and ethnic diversity are associated with lower levels of support for such issues .     

The Color of Devolution: Race, Federalism, and the Politics of Social Control

In this article, we seek to advance scholarship on the origins and consequences of policy devolution by analyzing state decisions to give local authorities control over welfare policy. The first part of our analysis explores the political forces that systematically influence state decisions to cede policy control to lower-level jurisdictions. In this context, we propose a general Racial Classification Model of how race influences social policy choice. Our findings support this model as well as social control perspectives on welfare provision. Building on these results, we then show how modest but consistent racial effects on policy choices concatenate to produce large disparities in the overall policy regimes that racial groups encounter in the federal system. The empirical findings illuminate the fundamental role that federalism plays in the production of contemporary racial disparities and in the recent turn toward neoliberal and paternalist policies in American poverty governance.     

American Patriotism, National Identity, and Political Involvement

Researchers disagree over the definition, measurement, and expected political consequences of American patriotism, a situation that is fueled by the absence of a strong theoretical research foundation. We develop and evaluate a new measure of national attachment that is grounded in social identity theory ( Tajfel and Turner 1979 ), drawing on data from three distinct sources: two studies of undergraduate students and the 1996 General Social Survey (GSS). Confirmatory factor analyses provide clear evidence that national identity is distinct from other measures of national attachment including symbolic, constructive, and uncritical patriotism, and nationalism. National identity has a number of other good measurement properties when compared to existing measures: it receives equal endorsement from conservatives and liberals (unlike most other measures which exhibit an ideological bias), develops with time spent in the United States among immigrants, and most importantly is the only measure of national attachment to predict political interest and voter turnout in both student and adult samples, consistent with the predictions of social identity theory. In that sense, the national identity measure outperforms all other measures of national attachment and provides unambiguous evidence that a strong American identity promotes civic involvement.     

Legislative Victory, Electoral Uncertainty: Explaining Outcomes in the Battles over Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights

Previous studies indicate that in cases of relatively low issue salience, the interest group model best explains lesbian and gay antidiscrimination policy in the American states. The analysis of state and local public policy prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation concludes that for cases of high issue salience, the morality politics model best describes outcomes. The interest group politics model is used here in a case study of Wisconsin's passage of a comprehensive antidiscrimination policy, while the morality politics model is used to investigate the electoral outcomes of anti‐gay ballot initiatives in several states. The results of this analysis conform with prior research—when lesbian and gay issues are not salient, the interest group politics model best explains resulting policy, however, under salient conditions, the morality politics model best describes outcomes. Finally, the implications of this research for social scientists and activists are discussed.     

Identity,Social Exclusion and Perceived Performance of Local Government — Evidence from Urban China

As a product of China’s planned economy, the state-run hukou system has dramatically influenced national and social management. However, hukou identity often results in social exclusion and alienation of outsiders. This study explores how hukou identity affects urban residents’ perception of local government performance. The least-square method (OLS), ordered-logit regression, and propensity score matching method (PSM) are applied to test our hypothesis. We found that hukou identity has a significant impact on perceived performance of local government. Specifically, non-locals’ perceived performance is lower than that of native locals, but there is no apparent distinction between new locals’ perceived performance and native locals through hukou conversion. Furthermore, hukou identity’s influence on perception of local government performance has individual heterogeneity. Here, the opinions of highly educated residents coincide due to hukou identity. Beginning with the unique heterogeneous social structure in urban China attributable to hukou system, this study provides a new way to understand residents’ complicated political psychology in urban China.

     

How Trust Matters: The Changing Political Relevance of Political Trust

Americans most often think about government in terms of its ability to grapple with issues of redistribution and race. However, the September 11 terrorist attacks led to a massive increase in media attention to foreign affairs, which caused people to think about the government in terms of defense and foreign policy. We demonstrate that such changes in issue salience alter the policy preferences that political trust shapes. Specifically, we show that trust did not affect attitudes about the race‐targeted programs in 2004 as it usually does, but instead affected a range of foreign policy and national defense preferences. By merging survey data gathered from 1980 through 2004 with data from media content analyses, we show that, more generally, trust's effects on defense and racial policy preferences, respectively, increase as the media focus more attention in these areas and decrease when that attention ebbs.     

Identity as Dependent Variable: How Americans Shift Their Identities to Align with Their Politics

Political science generally treats identities such as ethnicity, religion, and sexuality as “unmoved movers” in the chain of causality. I hypothesize that the growing salience of partisanship and ideology as social identities in the United States, combined with the increasing demographic distinctiveness of the nation's two political coalitions, is leading some Americans to engage in a self-categorization and depersonalization process in which they shift their identities toward the demographic prototypes of their political groups. Analyses of a representative panel data set that tracks identities and political affiliations over a 4-year span confirm that small but significant shares of Americans engage in identity switching regarding ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, and class that is predicted by partisanship and ideology in their pasts, bringing their identities into alignment with their politics. These findings enrich and complicate our understanding of the relationship between identity and politics and suggest caution in treating identities as unchanging phenomena.     

Administrative reorganization as a signal: Bounded rationality,agency merger,and salience of policy issues

Although administrative reorganization has been a major political instrument in many democracies, there has been limited research on its effects. Aiming to address this gap, this study examines the reorganization of Korean government ministries, specifically, the impact of reorganization in the form of a merger of ministries performing interrelated but dissimilar functions. Examining the salience of policy issues expressed in official government press releases during the 12‐year period from 2001 to 2012, we found that administrative reorganization in the form of a merger has a significant impact on the relative salience of government policy agendas. Specifically, the interrupted time series estimates indicate that the salience of science and technology policy issues (in relation to education policy issues) decreased by approximately 12% to 17% following the dissolution of the Ministry of Science and Technology. We explain this finding based on the bounded rationality view of bureaucratic information processing.