8 - In Black and White: Race, Group Position, and Implicit Attitudes in Politics

Summary

Across the last few chapters, we have seen various layers of evidence affirming the political influence of implicit attitudes among individual citizens. By necessity, these efforts have centered on the psychological processes behind implicit attitudes. Yet by focusing on the inner recesses of the mind, the fact that individuals are embedded within a larger social structure has been minimized, if not eliminated, from our investigations so far. This can potentially give the wrong impression about implicit attitudes. At its worst, it insinuates that implicit biases like these are strictly a matter of individual predisposition or temperament, mostly, if not completely, divorced from the social landscape in which he or she is inserted. This chapter endeavors to correct this omission by shedding light on the social foundations of implicit attitude: a feat I accomplish by centering on the role of race.

Race has often been at the center of America's politics and institutions (e.g., Marx 1998; McClain and Stewart 2005). At America's inception, for example, race was used to systematically exclude black Americans from the nation through active denial of citizenship (Smith 1997). This policy continued through the Civil War until passage of the 14th Amendment, which broadened the definition of citizenship to include this group. Yet in spite of constitutional reforms, informal institutions and practices (e.g., Jim Crow) sustained many of the same attitudes, norms, and practices that had thrived under de jure racial exclusion. Race continued to matter. In fact, even today, nearly five decades after the 1964 Civil Rights Act officially ended discriminatory practices like housing segregation and voter fraud, race still matters. For many individuals, their outcomes continue to be profoundly shaped by whether they happen to be black or not, as evidenced by the starkly higher rates of incarceration and poverty within the larger African American community, for example (Brown-Dean 2007; Conley 1999).

Of course, this is not to say that American race relations have not genuinely changed. Progress has been made – and is being made – on many, if not all, of these fronts. We are definitely not the nation of yesteryear. But to focus exclusively on aggregate improvements in the standing of African Americans is to risk missing an enduring but critical insight about black individuals. Even in the face of collective progress, race continues to leave an indelible imprint on many aspects of their personal lives.