Is Racial Resentment a Useful Measure?

Is Racial Resentment a Useful Measure? L.J Zigerell Illinois State University 1

Is Racial Resentment a Useful Measure? Racial resentment is often used to assess whether racial attitudes influence political phenomena such as support for healthcare reform (Maxwell and Shields 2014), support for political rights for felons (Wilson et al. 2015), and support for gun control (Filindra and Kaplan 2016). Maxwell, Angie, and Todd Shields. 2014. "The Fate of Obamacare: Racial Resentment, Ethnocentrism and Attitudes about Healthcare Reform." Race and Social Problems 6(4): 293-304. Wilson, David C., Michael Leo Owens, and Darren W. Davis. 2015. "How Racial Attitudes and Ideology Affect Political Rights for Felons." Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race 12(1): 73-93. Filindra, Alexandra, and Noah J. Kaplan. 2016. "Racial Resentment and Whites' Gun Policy Preferences in Contemporary America." Political Behavior 38(2): 255-275. 2

Is Racial Resentment a Useful Measure? • Racial resentment can also be referred to as: • symbolic racism • modern racism • the new racism 3

Is Racial Resentment a Useful Measure? The items commonly used to measure racial resentment are: Irish, Italians, Jewish and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same without any special favors. Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class. Over the past few years, blacks have gotten less than they deserve. It's really a matter of some people not trying hard enough; if blacks would only try harder they could be just as well off as whites. 4

Is Racial Resentment a Useful Measure? Sometimes racial resentment items are presented as direct measures of racial attitudes, as in Pasek, Krosnick, and Tompson (2012): "Explicit racial attitudes were gauged using questions designed to measure 'Symbolic Racism'...The proportion of Americans expressing explicit anti-Black attitudes held steady between 47.6% in 2008 and 47.3% in 2010, and increased slightly and significantly to 50.9% in 2012." Pasek, Josh, Jon A. Krosnick, and Trevor Tompson. 2012. "The Impact of Anti-Black Racism on Approval of Barack Obama’s Job Performance and on Voting in the 2012 Presidential Election". https://pprg.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012-Voting-and-Racism.pdf 5

Is Racial Resentment a Useful Measure? But as Rabinowitz, Sears, Sidanius, and Krosnick (2009) note: "Adherence to traditional values—without concomitant racial prejudice—could drive Whites' responses to SR [symbolic racism] measures and their opinions on racial policy issues." Rabinowitz, Joshua L., David O. Sears, Jim Sidanius, and Jon A. Krosnick. 2009. "Why Do White Americans Oppose Race‐Targeted Policies? Clarifying the Impact of Symbolic Racism." Political Psychology 30: 805-828. 6

Is Racial Resentment a Useful Measure? For example, agreeing that Blacksshould work their way up without any special favors might reflect only a general nonracial belief that everyone should work their way up without any special favors. The standard RR battery does not measure whether respondent attitudes are consistent across racial groups and thus does not inform about racial attitudes. 7

Is Racial Resentment a Useful Measure? RR lacks face validity as a standalone measure of racial attitudes. 8

Is Racial Resentment a Useful Measure? Researchers often address the conflation of nonracial and racial attitudes in racial resentment items by using a correlational research design that controls for related nonracial attitudes. But it is not clear that statistical control works as assumed because models often contain no control for the particular nonracial attitudes captured in racial resentment items or in the particular combination of attitudes as coded in the racial resentment scores. This can produce possibly misleading inferences... 9

Is Racial Resentment a Useful Measure? • In the 2012 ANES Time Series Study data, a standardized racial resentment scale in the presence of statistical control produced: • a 0.068 (p=0.012) residual correlation with a standardized gun control item, • a 0.108 (p<0.001) residual correlation with a standardized scale measuring conservative attitudes toward women. 10

Is Racial Resentment a Useful Measure? RR lacks face validity as a standalone measure of racial attitudes. Even in the presence of statistical control, RR correlates with nonracial variables such as attitudes about women. 11

Is Racial Resentment a Useful Measure? • Experimental evidence indicates that levels of racial resentment can be similar or higher for White targets than for Black targets... • An experiment reported on in Snidermanand Carmines (1997: 136-138) indicated that: • 79% agreed with the idea that Blacks should work their way up without special favors. • 79% agreed with the idea that new immigrants from Europe should work their way up without special favors. • Sniderman, Paul M., and Edward G. Carmines. 1997. Reaching beyond Race. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 12

Is Racial Resentment a Useful Measure? Enos, Ryan D., and Riley Carney. n.d. "Is Modern Racism Caused by Anti-Black Affect? An Experimental Investigation of the Attitudes Measured by Modern Racism Scales". 13

Is Racial Resentment a Useful Measure? RR lacks face validity as a standalone measure of racial attitudes. Even in the presence of statistical control, RR correlates with nonracial variables such as attitudes about women. Experiments manipulating the target of RR items have indicated similar or higher levels of resentment of Whites. 14

Is Racial Resentment a Useful Measure? Even cross-time changes in racial resentment are uninformative because racial resentment correlates with White attitudes about Whites... 15

Is Racial Resentment a Useful Measure? Using feeling thermometers, with ftw and ftb respectively as the feeling thermometers for Whites and for Blacks: Data source: 2012 ANES Time Series Study 16

Is Racial Resentment a Useful Measure? toomuchinfW is a dichotomous item coded 1 for Whites who reported that Whites have too much influence in U.S. politics but that Blacks and Hispanics do not have too much influence. nodiscrimWis a dichotomous itemcoded 1 for Whites who reported that there is no discrimination against Whites in the United States but that there is discrimination against Blacks and Hispanics in the United States. Data source: 2012 ANES Time Series Study 17

Is Racial Resentment a Useful Measure? RR lacks face validity as a standalone measure of racial attitudes. Even in the presence of statistical control, RR correlates with nonracial variables such as attitudes about women. Experiments manipulating the target of RR items have indicated similar or higher levels of resentment of Whites. RR nontrivially correlates with White attitudes about Whites, so temporal changes in RR cannot be assumed to reflect changing attitudes about Blacks. 18

Is Racial Resentment a Useful Measure? Evidence is mixed about whether racial resentment correlates with discrimination against Blacks or whether high levels of racial resentment predict discrimination against Blacks... Racial resentment correlated similarly with support for Black Republican Tim Scott and White Republican Lindsay Graham in their respective races and did not correlate with preference for Scott or Graham in a hypothetical matchup of the two candidates against each other (Meyer et al. 2016). Meyer, Chase B., and J. David Woodard. 2016. "It's Not Race, It's Politics! A Natural Experiment Examining the Influence of Race in Electoral Politics." Social Science Quarterly. Early View. 19

Is Racial Resentment a Useful Measure? Two of three experiments reported on in Wallsten et al. (2017) indicated that respondents at higher levels of racial resentment were more likely to oppose paying salaries to college athletes when the treatment included all Black or presumed Black targets than when the treatment included all White target athletes, presumed White target athletes, or a set of Black and White targets. Wallsten, Kevin, Tatishe M. Nteta, Lauren A. McCarthy, and Melinda R. Tarsi. 2017. "Prejudice or Principled Conservatism? Racial Resentment and White Opinion toward Paying College Athletes." Political Research Quarterly. Early View. 20

Is Racial Resentment a Useful Measure? However, across the three available survey experiments in the Time-sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences archives that permitted testing for black/white racial discrimination by levels of racial resentment, White racial resentment did not reliably correlate with discrimination, and high levels of racial resentment did not predict better treatment for White targets than for Black targets. For example, in the Stephens 2012 survey experiment involving a manipulation of the race of target candidate... 21

Is Racial Resentment a Useful Measure? 22

Is Racial Resentment a Useful Measure? Cell entries are for the black candidate predictor. 23

Is Racial Resentment a Useful Measure? Or from the Baker 2011 survey experiment involving foreign aid to an African country or an Eastern European country... 24

Is Racial Resentment a Useful Measure? Cell entries are for the Cameroon predictor. 25

Is Racial Resentment a Useful Measure? RR lacks face validity as a standalone measure of racial attitudes. Even in the presence of statistical control, RR correlates with nonracial variables such as attitudes about women. Experiments manipulating the target of RR items have indicated similar or higher levels of resentment of Whites. RR nontrivially correlates with White attitudes about Whites, so temporal changes in RR cannot be assumed to reflect changing attitudes about Blacks. High levels of RR do not reliably predict discrimination by Whites in favor of Whites over Blacks. 26

Is Racial Resentment a Useful Measure? Alternatives to racial resentment measures: Experiments with text-based resentment items that vary the race of the target, to help isolate the racial aspect of the resentment. Experiments with resentment items in which the manipulation primes thoughts of different racial groups, to help isolate the racial aspect of the resentment. Correlational studies in which the same item is asked of multiple racial groups, to help isolate the racial aspect of the resentment. 27

Is Racial Resentment a Useful Measure? Thank you! 28

Is Racial Resentment a Useful Measure? With a larger set of controls Data source: 2012 ANES Time Series Study 29

Is Racial Resentment a Useful Measure? With a larger set of controls Data source: 2012 ANES Time Series Study 30

Is Racial Resentment a Useful Measure? Data source: 2012 ANES Time Series Study 31

Is Racial Resentment a Useful Measure? Feldman, Stanley, and Leonie Huddy. 2005. "Racial Resentment and White Opposition to Race‐conscious Programs: Principles or Prejudice?." American Journal of Political Science 49(1): 168-183. 32

Is Racial Resentment a Useful Measure?