Spencer Piston
Biographic Data
| ID | 220802 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Spencer Piston |
| GIVEN NAMES | Spencer |
| FAMILY NAME | Piston |
| SIGNATURE | PISTON S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Boston University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9933-8295 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 791 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 34 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 15 |
Unchained Care: A Public Health Perspective on Ending Shackling of Incarcerated Patients Seeking Health Care, a Policy Statement Adopted by the American Public Health Association
The Study of Racism and Policing in the United States
We begin this article by discussing two moments, in the late 1800s and late 1900s, in which the racist views of influential political scientists fundamentally shaped research on policing. In contrast, today's scholarship, breaking sharply with research of the past, does not attempt to justify racist policing but to study it. The dominant approach today follows a racial disparities framework, which maps out the uneven allocation of police harms. A…
The limits of criminal justice reform: An analysis of elite rhetoric in four cities
As the coronavirus pandemic swept the nation in 2020, many emphasized that carceral spaces were hotspots for the virus, leaving Black and Brown people especially vulnerable to infection. In combination with other critiques of racism in the carceral state, these observations created pressure to decarcerate, especially on the political left. How did political elites discuss the carceral state in this changed atmosphere? To answer this question, we …
Revisiting the Theory of Broken Windows Policing
How has the academy contributed to the horrors of policing in the United States? While many scholars study policing, few do so from a self-reflective position, which would examine how the production of knowledge has often legitimized policing’s harms. As part of a larger effort to encourage researchers to come to terms with the role we have played in facilitating contemporary atrocities, here I reconsider political scientist James Q. Wilson and c…
The Politics of Racist Dehumanization in the United States
The concept of racist dehumanization is essential for political scientists who seek to understand the nature, scope, and consequences of white racial prejudice in the United States today. Racist dehumanization consists of a variety of processes that construct, refashion, and maintain race by coding some people as white and therefore fully human and others as other than white and therefore less than fully human. In this review, we focus on the rac…
Rachel Elise Barkow, Prisoners of Politics: Breaking the Cycle of Mass Incarceration
The Effects of Dehumanizing Attitudes about Black People on Whites’ Voting Decisions
Political scientists have long noted the key role racial attitudes can play in electoral politics. However, the 2016 election of Donald Trump raises questions about prevailing theories of racial attitudes and their political effects. While existing research focuses on ‘cultural’ or ‘modern’ forms of racial prejudice, this article argues that a sizeable portion of White Americans, disturbingly, dehumanize Black people: that is, they view Black peo…
Undeserving rich or untrustworthy government? How elite rhetoric erodes support for soaking the rich
Why did Washington State citizens vote down a 2010 ballot measure that would have increased taxes on the rich? This outcome appears to contradict consistent survey findings that majorities of the public support increases in taxes on the rich, including those from Washington State polls early in the campaign, before support for the measure plummeted. We investigate the fate of the Washington ballot measure in order to shed light on the broader que…
Hiding in plain sight: Dehumanization as a foundation of white racial prejudice
In the media, during sporting events, in online forums, and in interpersonal interactions, whites often portray Black people as animals, especially as apes or monkeys. In this essay we consider what contemporary research on prejudice in American politics has to say about these dehumanizing portrayals of Black people. We argue that contemporary political science work has not done enough to understand both the historical roots and the continuing pr…
Whitewashing: How Obama Used Implicit Racial Cues as a Defense Against Political Rumors
Although Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008, some Whites nevertheless penalized him because of his race. In part, these penalties involved persistent rumors about his citizenship and religion. How did the Obama campaign respond to these rumors? We argue that the Obama campaign drew attention to his bi-racial ancestry and highlighted his association with Whites in order to curry favor with this constituency. We also argue that Republicans and…
My Group or Myself? How Black, Latino, and White Americans Choose a Neighborhood, Job, and Candidate when Personal and Group Interest Diverge
Amid growing inequality within racial and ethnic groups, how do Americans decide where to live, where to work, and for whom to vote? While previous research has examined racial patterns in voting decisions, it provides less insight into individual-level decisions about neighborhoods, candidates, and employment—even while these decisions also organize the political world. We theorize about the role of a key variable stratifying these individual-le…
Increasing Precision without Altering Treatment Effects: Repeated Measures Designs in Survey Experiments
The use of survey experiments has surged in political science. The most common design is the between-subjects design in which the outcome is only measured posttreatment. This design relies heavily on recruiting a large number of subjects to precisely estimate treatment effects. Alternative designs that involve repeated measurements of the dependent variable promise greater precision, but they are rarely used out of fears that these designs will y…
Withdrawing and Drawing In: Political Discourse in Policed Communities
A growing body of literature examines how direct or vicarious contact with forms of state surveillance affects political behavior and perceptions of government legitimacy. We develop a new method, Portals, to collect conversations between black residents from highly policed areas in five different U.S. cities between 2016 and 2018. While existing research emphasizes how interactions with the carceral state are alienating and demobilizing, our ana…
The Pictures in Their Heads: How U.S. Mayors Think About Racial Inequality
Many scholars examine what role cities can play in addressing racial inequality. Yet existing research presents little direct evidence of local political elites’ perceptions of racial inequality and preferred strategies to address it. Which mayors perceive racial inequality to be a problem in their cities, and which mayors prefer substantive rather than symbolic solutions to this problem? To answer this question, we survey more than 100 mayors of…
American Oligarchy: The Permanent Political Class
Is the United States a real democracy or an oligarchy masquerading as a democracy? Questions about the extent to which elites dominate American politics drive much scholarship in the social sciences. Research pursuing this line of inquiry confronts many important questions: Which elites dominate which arenas of American politics, and under what circumstances? How (and when) does elite control wax and wane? When do elites cooperate with each other…
Unequal and Unrepresented: Political Inequality and the People’s Voice in the New Gilded Age
Who participates in American democracy? In particular, is it those with high levels of resources who most often vote, protest, contact elected officials, and discuss politics with friends? How unequal is political participation? Political scientists Kay Lehman Schlozman, Henry E. Brady, and Sidney Verba have contributed important answers to these questions over the past few decades. In their first book, Voice and Equality (1995) these scholars tr…
Nationally poor, locally rich: Income and local context in the 2016 presidential election
Guilt by Association: White Collective Guilt in American Politics
Decades of research have illuminated the pernicious effects of white racial prejudice on American politics. However, by focusing on prejudice, scholars have neglected other racial attitudes that might be relevant to whites' political preferences. Our project addresses this omission by exploring how American politics is affected by white collective guilt—defined as remorse that a white person experiences due to her group's actions toward black peo…
Too Much Knowledge, Too Little Power: An Assessment of Political Knowledge in Highly Policed Communities
Studies regularly conclude that ordinary Americans lack the knowledge they need to form meaningful political preferences, leading to inefficient or counterproductive policy making. Our study of conversations about policing among black residents of highly policed neighborhoods challenges this prevailing account. We find that people possess dual, contradictory knowledge about how the state should operate based on written law and how it actually ope…
Class Attitudes in America: Sympathy for the Poor, Resentment of the Rich, and Political Implications
This book explains a long-standing puzzle in American politics: why so many Americans support downwardly redistributive social welfare programs, when such support seems to fly in the face of standard conceptions of the American public as anti-government, individualistic, and racially prejudiced. Bringing class attitudes into the analysis, Spencer Piston demonstrates through rigorous empirical analysis that sympathy for the poor and resentment of …
Examining whites’ anti-black attitudes after Obama’s presidency
We develop and test competing theoretical expectations about the level and effects of white prejudice against blacks in the aftermath of America’s first black presidency. Using both cross-sectional and panel survey datasets of nationally representative samples of Americans, we find little evidence that any of the following declined during Obama’s presidency: white opposition to black leaders, white opposition to policies intended to benefit black…
Books by Our Readers
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
Clear as Black and White: The Effects of Ambiguous Rhetoric Depend on Candidate Race
Campaign advisors and political scientists have long acknowledged the benefits of ambiguous position taking. We argue, however, that these benefits do not extend to black candidates facing nonblack voters. When a white candidate makes vague statements, many of these voters project their own policy positions onto the candidate, increasing support for the candidate. But they are less likely to extend black candidates the same courtesy. We test thes…
Explaining Public Support for Counterproductive Homelessness Policy: The Role of Disgust
Pride or Prejudice: Racial Prejudice, Southern Heritage, and White Support for the Confederate Battle Flag
Debates about the meaning of Southern symbols such as the Confederate battle emblem are sweeping the nation. These debates typically revolve around the question of whether such symbols represent "heritage or hatred:" racially innocuous Southern pride or White prejudice against Blacks. In order to assess these competing claims, we first examine the historical reintroduction of the Confederate flag in the Deep South in the 1950s and 1960s; next, we…
How Explicit Racial Prejudice Hurt Obama in the 2008 Election
Increasing Precision without Altering Treatment Effects: Repeated Measures Designs in Survey Experiments
The use of survey experiments has surged in political science. The most common design is the between-subjects design in which the outcome is only measured posttreatment. This design relies heavily on recruiting a large number of subjects to precisely estimate treatment effects. Alternative designs that involve repeated measurements of the dependent variable promise greater precision, but they are rarely used out of fears that these designs will y…
Too Much Knowledge, Too Little Power: An Assessment of Political Knowledge in Highly Policed Communities
Studies regularly conclude that ordinary Americans lack the knowledge they need to form meaningful political preferences, leading to inefficient or counterproductive policy making. Our study of conversations about policing among black residents of highly policed neighborhoods challenges this prevailing account. We find that people possess dual, contradictory knowledge about how the state should operate based on written law and how it actually ope…
Saving Face: Identifying Voter Responses to Black Candidates and Female Candidates
Much of what we know about the responses of voters to Black candidates and female candidates comes from experimental research. Yet the accuracy of experimental data can be threatened by the possibility that social desirability pressures contaminate self‐reporting. We address this threat in a project that considers psychological approaches to reducing social desirability pressures. Offering participants the opportunity to explain their decisions a…
Racial Prejudice, Partisanship, and White Turnout in Elections with Black Candidates
Explaining Public Support for Counterproductive Homelessness Policy: The Role of Disgust
Pride or Prejudice: Racial Prejudice, Southern Heritage, and White Support for the Confederate Battle Flag
Debates about the meaning of Southern symbols such as the Confederate battle emblem are sweeping the nation. These debates typically revolve around the question of whether such symbols represent "heritage or hatred:" racially innocuous Southern pride or White prejudice against Blacks. In order to assess these competing claims, we first examine the historical reintroduction of the Confederate flag in the Deep South in the 1950s and 1960s; next, we…
Guilt by Association: White Collective Guilt in American Politics
Decades of research have illuminated the pernicious effects of white racial prejudice on American politics. However, by focusing on prejudice, scholars have neglected other racial attitudes that might be relevant to whites' political preferences. Our project addresses this omission by exploring how American politics is affected by white collective guilt—defined as remorse that a white person experiences due to her group's actions toward black peo…
The Political Consequences of Latino Prejudice against Blacks
A good deal of scholarship examines the effects of prejudice against blacks on public opinion and vote choice in the United States. Despite producing valuable insights, this research largely ignores the attitudes of Latinos-a critical omission, since Latinos constitute a rapidly growing share of the population. Using two nationally representative survey data sets, we find that the level of racial prejudice is comparable for Latinos and non-Hispan…
Is Implicit Prejudice against Blacks Politically Consequential? Evidence from the AMP
Journal Article Is Implicit Prejudice against Blacks Politically Consequential? Evidence from the AMP Get access Nathan P. Kalmoe, Nathan P. Kalmoe * Nathan Kalmoe is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the School of Media and Public Affairs, George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA. Spencer Piston is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Political Science, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA. Both authors contributed equally to th…
Accentuating the Negative: Candidate Race and Campaign Strategy
This article examines the impact of candidate race and campaign negativity on candidate evaluations and turnout. Unlike previous research, we argue that candidate race and campaign negativity should be considered simultaneously. In order to test this argument, we conduct a survey experiment of a nationally representative sample of White adults and a replication study. While we find, consistent with previous research, that respondents unfavorably …
Why State Constitutions Differ in their Treatment of Same-Sex Marriage
Some states treat a same-sex marriage as legally equal to a marriage between a man and a woman. Other states prohibit legal recognition of same-sex marriages in their constitutions. In every state that has a constitutional restriction against same-sex marriage, the amendment was passed by a popular vote. \n\nThe conventional wisdom about allowing voter participation in such decisions is that they yield constitutional outcomes that reflect attitud…
Unequal and Unrepresented: Political Inequality and the People’s Voice in the New Gilded Age
Who participates in American democracy? In particular, is it those with high levels of resources who most often vote, protest, contact elected officials, and discuss politics with friends? How unequal is political participation? Political scientists Kay Lehman Schlozman, Henry E. Brady, and Sidney Verba have contributed important answers to these questions over the past few decades. In their first book, Voice and Equality (1995) these scholars tr…
Clear as Black and White: The Effects of Ambiguous Rhetoric Depend on Candidate Race
Campaign advisors and political scientists have long acknowledged the benefits of ambiguous position taking. We argue, however, that these benefits do not extend to black candidates facing nonblack voters. When a white candidate makes vague statements, many of these voters project their own policy positions onto the candidate, increasing support for the candidate. But they are less likely to extend black candidates the same courtesy. We test thes…
Examining whites’ anti-black attitudes after Obama’s presidency
We develop and test competing theoretical expectations about the level and effects of white prejudice against blacks in the aftermath of America’s first black presidency. Using both cross-sectional and panel survey datasets of nationally representative samples of Americans, we find little evidence that any of the following declined during Obama’s presidency: white opposition to black leaders, white opposition to policies intended to benefit black…
The Effects of Dehumanizing Attitudes about Black People on Whites’ Voting Decisions
Political scientists have long noted the key role racial attitudes can play in electoral politics. However, the 2016 election of Donald Trump raises questions about prevailing theories of racial attitudes and their political effects. While existing research focuses on ‘cultural’ or ‘modern’ forms of racial prejudice, this article argues that a sizeable portion of White Americans, disturbingly, dehumanize Black people: that is, they view Black peo…
What Does it Take to Reduce Racial Prejudice in Individual-Level Candidate Evaluations? A Formal Theoretic Perspective
Anti-black prejudice affects how some citizens evaluate black candidates. What does it take to reduce the role of prejudice in these evaluations? Using logical implications of relevant psychological phenomena, this article shows that repeated exposure to counter-stereotypical information is insufficient to reduce evaluative prejudice. Instead, citizens must associate this prejudice withadverse effectsfor themselves in contexts that induce them to…
Nationally poor, locally rich: Income and local context in the 2016 presidential election
The Politics of Racist Dehumanization in the United States
The concept of racist dehumanization is essential for political scientists who seek to understand the nature, scope, and consequences of white racial prejudice in the United States today. Racist dehumanization consists of a variety of processes that construct, refashion, and maintain race by coding some people as white and therefore fully human and others as other than white and therefore less than fully human. In this review, we focus on the rac…
Undeserving rich or untrustworthy government? How elite rhetoric erodes support for soaking the rich
Why did Washington State citizens vote down a 2010 ballot measure that would have increased taxes on the rich? This outcome appears to contradict consistent survey findings that majorities of the public support increases in taxes on the rich, including those from Washington State polls early in the campaign, before support for the measure plummeted. We investigate the fate of the Washington ballot measure in order to shed light on the broader que…
Hiding in plain sight: Dehumanization as a foundation of white racial prejudice
In the media, during sporting events, in online forums, and in interpersonal interactions, whites often portray Black people as animals, especially as apes or monkeys. In this essay we consider what contemporary research on prejudice in American politics has to say about these dehumanizing portrayals of Black people. We argue that contemporary political science work has not done enough to understand both the historical roots and the continuing pr…
Whitewashing: How Obama Used Implicit Racial Cues as a Defense Against Political Rumors
Although Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008, some Whites nevertheless penalized him because of his race. In part, these penalties involved persistent rumors about his citizenship and religion. How did the Obama campaign respond to these rumors? We argue that the Obama campaign drew attention to his bi-racial ancestry and highlighted his association with Whites in order to curry favor with this constituency. We also argue that Republicans and…
The Pictures in Their Heads: How U.S. Mayors Think About Racial Inequality
Many scholars examine what role cities can play in addressing racial inequality. Yet existing research presents little direct evidence of local political elites’ perceptions of racial inequality and preferred strategies to address it. Which mayors perceive racial inequality to be a problem in their cities, and which mayors prefer substantive rather than symbolic solutions to this problem? To answer this question, we survey more than 100 mayors of…
The influence of competing organisational appeals on individual donations
Policy scholars and the public alike are concerned not only with the actions policymakers take in the legislature but also with the money that enables policies to reach the legislative agenda. A significant portion of these funds come from individual donors. We examine how appeals from public policy organisations influence donation behaviour. Existing research studies the effectiveness of appeals in isolation, but few studies consider the competi…
The Study of Racism and Policing in the United States
We begin this article by discussing two moments, in the late 1800s and late 1900s, in which the racist views of influential political scientists fundamentally shaped research on policing. In contrast, today's scholarship, breaking sharply with research of the past, does not attempt to justify racist policing but to study it. The dominant approach today follows a racial disparities framework, which maps out the uneven allocation of police harms. A…
Why State Constitutions Differ in their Treatment of Same-Sex Marriage
Some states treat a same-sex marriage as legally equal to a marriage between a man and a woman. Other states prohibit legal recognition of same-sex marriages in their constitutions. In every state that has a constitutional restriction against same-sex marriage, the amendment was passed by a popular vote. \n\nThe conventional wisdom about allowing voter participation in such decisions is that they yield constitutional outcomes that reflect attitud…
How Explicit Racial Prejudice Hurt Obama in the 2008 Election
Is Implicit Prejudice against Blacks Politically Consequential? Evidence from the AMP
Journal Article Is Implicit Prejudice against Blacks Politically Consequential? Evidence from the AMP Get access Nathan P. Kalmoe, Nathan P. Kalmoe * Nathan Kalmoe is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the School of Media and Public Affairs, George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA. Spencer Piston is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Political Science, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA. Both authors contributed equally to th…
Saving Face: Identifying Voter Responses to Black Candidates and Female Candidates
Much of what we know about the responses of voters to Black candidates and female candidates comes from experimental research. Yet the accuracy of experimental data can be threatened by the possibility that social desirability pressures contaminate self‐reporting. We address this threat in a project that considers psychological approaches to reducing social desirability pressures. Offering participants the opportunity to explain their decisions a…
What Does it Take to Reduce Racial Prejudice in Individual-Level Candidate Evaluations? A Formal Theoretic Perspective
Anti-black prejudice affects how some citizens evaluate black candidates. What does it take to reduce the role of prejudice in these evaluations? Using logical implications of relevant psychological phenomena, this article shows that repeated exposure to counter-stereotypical information is insufficient to reduce evaluative prejudice. Instead, citizens must associate this prejudice withadverse effectsfor themselves in contexts that induce them to…
Accentuating the Negative: Candidate Race and Campaign Strategy
This article examines the impact of candidate race and campaign negativity on candidate evaluations and turnout. Unlike previous research, we argue that candidate race and campaign negativity should be considered simultaneously. In order to test this argument, we conduct a survey experiment of a nationally representative sample of White adults and a replication study. While we find, consistent with previous research, that respondents unfavorably …
Racial Prejudice, Partisanship, and White Turnout in Elections with Black Candidates
The influence of competing organisational appeals on individual donations
Policy scholars and the public alike are concerned not only with the actions policymakers take in the legislature but also with the money that enables policies to reach the legislative agenda. A significant portion of these funds come from individual donors. We examine how appeals from public policy organisations influence donation behaviour. Existing research studies the effectiveness of appeals in isolation, but few studies consider the competi…
The Political Consequences of Latino Prejudice against Blacks
A good deal of scholarship examines the effects of prejudice against blacks on public opinion and vote choice in the United States. Despite producing valuable insights, this research largely ignores the attitudes of Latinos-a critical omission, since Latinos constitute a rapidly growing share of the population. Using two nationally representative survey data sets, we find that the level of racial prejudice is comparable for Latinos and non-Hispan…
Explaining Public Support for Counterproductive Homelessness Policy: The Role of Disgust
Pride or Prejudice: Racial Prejudice, Southern Heritage, and White Support for the Confederate Battle Flag
Debates about the meaning of Southern symbols such as the Confederate battle emblem are sweeping the nation. These debates typically revolve around the question of whether such symbols represent "heritage or hatred:" racially innocuous Southern pride or White prejudice against Blacks. In order to assess these competing claims, we first examine the historical reintroduction of the Confederate flag in the Deep South in the 1950s and 1960s; next, we…
Class Attitudes in America: Sympathy for the Poor, Resentment of the Rich, and Political Implications
This book explains a long-standing puzzle in American politics: why so many Americans support downwardly redistributive social welfare programs, when such support seems to fly in the face of standard conceptions of the American public as anti-government, individualistic, and racially prejudiced. Bringing class attitudes into the analysis, Spencer Piston demonstrates through rigorous empirical analysis that sympathy for the poor and resentment of …
Examining whites’ anti-black attitudes after Obama’s presidency
We develop and test competing theoretical expectations about the level and effects of white prejudice against blacks in the aftermath of America’s first black presidency. Using both cross-sectional and panel survey datasets of nationally representative samples of Americans, we find little evidence that any of the following declined during Obama’s presidency: white opposition to black leaders, white opposition to policies intended to benefit black…
Books by Our Readers
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
Clear as Black and White: The Effects of Ambiguous Rhetoric Depend on Candidate Race
Campaign advisors and political scientists have long acknowledged the benefits of ambiguous position taking. We argue, however, that these benefits do not extend to black candidates facing nonblack voters. When a white candidate makes vague statements, many of these voters project their own policy positions onto the candidate, increasing support for the candidate. But they are less likely to extend black candidates the same courtesy. We test thes…
American Oligarchy: The Permanent Political Class
Is the United States a real democracy or an oligarchy masquerading as a democracy? Questions about the extent to which elites dominate American politics drive much scholarship in the social sciences. Research pursuing this line of inquiry confronts many important questions: Which elites dominate which arenas of American politics, and under what circumstances? How (and when) does elite control wax and wane? When do elites cooperate with each other…
Unequal and Unrepresented: Political Inequality and the People’s Voice in the New Gilded Age
Who participates in American democracy? In particular, is it those with high levels of resources who most often vote, protest, contact elected officials, and discuss politics with friends? How unequal is political participation? Political scientists Kay Lehman Schlozman, Henry E. Brady, and Sidney Verba have contributed important answers to these questions over the past few decades. In their first book, Voice and Equality (1995) these scholars tr…
Nationally poor, locally rich: Income and local context in the 2016 presidential election
Guilt by Association: White Collective Guilt in American Politics
Decades of research have illuminated the pernicious effects of white racial prejudice on American politics. However, by focusing on prejudice, scholars have neglected other racial attitudes that might be relevant to whites' political preferences. Our project addresses this omission by exploring how American politics is affected by white collective guilt—defined as remorse that a white person experiences due to her group's actions toward black peo…
Too Much Knowledge, Too Little Power: An Assessment of Political Knowledge in Highly Policed Communities
Studies regularly conclude that ordinary Americans lack the knowledge they need to form meaningful political preferences, leading to inefficient or counterproductive policy making. Our study of conversations about policing among black residents of highly policed neighborhoods challenges this prevailing account. We find that people possess dual, contradictory knowledge about how the state should operate based on written law and how it actually ope…
Withdrawing and Drawing In: Political Discourse in Policed Communities
A growing body of literature examines how direct or vicarious contact with forms of state surveillance affects political behavior and perceptions of government legitimacy. We develop a new method, Portals, to collect conversations between black residents from highly policed areas in five different U.S. cities between 2016 and 2018. While existing research emphasizes how interactions with the carceral state are alienating and demobilizing, our ana…
The Pictures in Their Heads: How U.S. Mayors Think About Racial Inequality
Many scholars examine what role cities can play in addressing racial inequality. Yet existing research presents little direct evidence of local political elites’ perceptions of racial inequality and preferred strategies to address it. Which mayors perceive racial inequality to be a problem in their cities, and which mayors prefer substantive rather than symbolic solutions to this problem? To answer this question, we survey more than 100 mayors of…
Undeserving rich or untrustworthy government? How elite rhetoric erodes support for soaking the rich
Why did Washington State citizens vote down a 2010 ballot measure that would have increased taxes on the rich? This outcome appears to contradict consistent survey findings that majorities of the public support increases in taxes on the rich, including those from Washington State polls early in the campaign, before support for the measure plummeted. We investigate the fate of the Washington ballot measure in order to shed light on the broader que…
Hiding in plain sight: Dehumanization as a foundation of white racial prejudice
In the media, during sporting events, in online forums, and in interpersonal interactions, whites often portray Black people as animals, especially as apes or monkeys. In this essay we consider what contemporary research on prejudice in American politics has to say about these dehumanizing portrayals of Black people. We argue that contemporary political science work has not done enough to understand both the historical roots and the continuing pr…
Whitewashing: How Obama Used Implicit Racial Cues as a Defense Against Political Rumors
Although Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008, some Whites nevertheless penalized him because of his race. In part, these penalties involved persistent rumors about his citizenship and religion. How did the Obama campaign respond to these rumors? We argue that the Obama campaign drew attention to his bi-racial ancestry and highlighted his association with Whites in order to curry favor with this constituency. We also argue that Republicans and…
Political science (29 works) · Politics (25 works) · Law (24 works) · Law (24 works) · Sociology (21 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (20 works) · Psychology (20 works) · Social Psychology (16 works) · Social Psychology (16 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (13 works)