Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T21:31:01.987Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN?

Barack Obama's Framing Strategies for Bridging Racial Divisions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2009

Richard P. Eibach  and
Valerie Purdie-Vaughns
Richard P. Eibach*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo
Valerie Purdie-Vaughns
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Columbia University
*
Professor Richard P. Eibach, University of Waterloo, Psychology Department, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, N2L 391. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Barack Obama's election as the first Black president of the United States has stimulated much discussion about progress toward racial equality in the United States. Opinion surveys document that White Americans reliably perceive the rate of progress toward racial equality as greater than do Black Americans. We focus on two psychological factors that contribute to these diverging perceptions: (1) the tendency of White Americans and Black Americans to adopt different reference points to assess racial progress, and (2) the general tendency to frame social change as a zero-sum game in which Black Americans' gains entail losses for White Americans. We review research examining how these two factors contribute to racial polarization on the topic of progress toward equality. We also draw on excerpts from Barack Obama's speeches and writings to demonstrate that he often frames issues in ways that, our research suggests, has the potential to substantially bridge these racial divisions.

Keywords

Racial EqualityObamaSocial JudgmentWhite and Black Americans
Type
STATE OF THE DISCIPLINE
Information
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , Spring 2009 , pp. 137 - 151
Copyright
Copyright © W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Blee, Kathleen M. (2002). Inside Organized Racism: Women in the Hate Movement. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Bobo, Lawrence D. and Hutchings, Vincent L. (1996). Perceptions of Racial Group Competition: Extending Blumer's Theory of Group Position to a Multiracial Social Context. American Sociological Review, 61(6): 951–972.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bobo, Lawrence D. and Tuan, Mia (2006). Prejudice in Politics: Group Position, Public Opinion, and the Wisconsin Treaty Rights Dispute. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brodish, Amanda B., Brazy, Paige C., and Devine, Patricia G. (2008). More Eyes on the Prize: Variability in White Americans' Perceptions of Progress towards Racial Equality. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34(4): 513–527.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, James A., Smith, Tom W., and Marsden, Peter V., (2000). The General Social Survey, 2000: Codebook and Datafile, 1972–2000 [Computer file]. Chicago, IL: National Opinion Research Center and University of Chicago. ⟨http://sda.berkeley.edu:7502/cgibin12/hsda?harcsda+gss00⟩ (accessed March 27, 2009).Google Scholar
Eibach, Richard P. and Ehrlinger, Joyce (2006). “Keep Your Eyes On the Prize”: Reference Points and Group Differences in Assessing Progress towards Equality. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32(1): 66–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eibach, Richard P. and Keegan, Thomas (2006). Free at Last? Social Dominance, Loss Aversion, and White and Black Americans' Differing Assessments of Progress towards Racial Equality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90(3): 453–467.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eibach, Richard P. and Purdie-Vaughns, Valerie (2009). Racial Polarization and the Evaluation of Partial and Impartial Accounts of Historical Change. Manuscript in preparation. University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario.Google Scholar
Epley, Nicholas and Gilovich, Thomas (2006). The Anchoring-and-Adjustment Heuristic: Why the Adjustments Are Insufficient. Psychological Science, 17(4): 311–318.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Esses, Victoria M., Dovidio, John F., Jackson, Lynne M., and Armstrong, Tamara L. (2001). The Immigration Dilemma: The Role of Perceived Group Competition, Ethnic Prejudice, and National Identity. Journal of Social Issues, 57(3): 389–412.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ezekiel, Raphael S. (1995). The Racist Mind: Portraits of American Neo-Nazis and Klansmen. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Gilbert, Daniel T. (1989). Thinking Lightly about Others: Automatic Components of the Social Inference Process. In Uleman, James S. and Bargh, John A. (Eds.), Unintended Thought, pp. 189–211. New York: Guilford.Google Scholar
Jackman, Mary R. (1994). The Velvet Glove: Paternalism and Conflict in Gender, Class, and Race Relations. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jervis, Robert (2004). The Implications of Prospect Theory for Human Nature and Values. Political Psychology, 25(2): 163–176.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahneman, Daniel and Tversky, Amos (1984). Choices, Values, and Frames. American Psychologist, 39(4): 341–350.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahneman, Daniel and Tversky, Amos (2000). Conflict Resolution: A Cognitive Perspective. In Kahneman, Daniel and Tversky, Amos (Eds.), Choices, Values, and Frames, pp. 473–486. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
King, Colbert I. (2008). A Rage No One Should Be Stoking. Washington Post, October 18.Google Scholar
Kluegel, James R. and Smith, Eliot R. (1986). Beliefs about Inequality: Americans' Views of What Is and What Ought to Be. New York: Aldine De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Obama, Barack (2006). The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream. New York: Three Rivers.Google Scholar
Obama, Barack (2008a). Keynote Address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. In Olive, David (Ed.), An American Story: The Speeches of Barack Obama, pp. 98–105. Toronto, ON: ECW.Google Scholar
Obama, Barack (2008b). A More Perfect Union. In Olive, David (Ed.), An American Story: The Speeches of Barack Obama, pp. 255–270. Toronto, ON: ECW.Google Scholar
Pratto, Felicia, Sidanius, Jim, Stallworth, Lisa M., and Malle, Bertram F. (1994). Social Dominance Orientation: A Personality Variable Predicting Social and Political Attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67(4): 741–763.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Purdie-Vaughns, Valerie, Ditlmann, Ruth, and Steele, Claude M. (2009). Colorblind or Moving beyond Color? African Americans and Perceptions of Colorblindness in Mainstream Institutions. Manuscript in preparation. Columbia University, New York.Google Scholar
Purdie-Vaughns, Valerie, Steele, Claude M., Davies, Paul G., and Ditlmann, Ruth (2008). Social Identity Contingencies: How Diversity Cues Signal Threat or Safety for African-Americans In Mainstream Institutions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94(4): 615–630.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rustin, Bayard (1971). Down the Line: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin. Chicago, IL: Quadrangle Books.Google Scholar
Sidanius, Jim and Pratto, Felicia (1999). Social Dominance. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sigelman, Lee and Welch, Susan (1991). Black Americans' Views of Racial Inequality. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sniderman, Paul M., Brady, Henry, and Tetlock, Philip E. (1998–1999). Multi-investigator Study, 1998–1999 [Computer file]. Berkeley, CA: Survey Research Center.Google Scholar
Snow, Kate and Harper, Eloise (2008). Clinton Sharpens Barbs against Obama. Political Radar Blog, ABC News, February 14. ⟨http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/02/clinton-sharpen.html⟩ (accessed April 8, 2009).Google Scholar
Tversky, Amos and Kahneman, Daniel (1974). Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. Science, 185: 1124–1131.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vallone, Robert P., Ross, Lee, and Lepper, Mark R. (1985). The Hostile Media Phenomenon: Biased Perception of Media Bias in Coverage of the Beirut Massacre. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49(3): 577–585.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wolfe, Alan (1998). One Nation, After All: What Middle-Class Americans Really Think about God, Country, Family, Racism, Welfare, Immigration, Homosexuality, Work, the Right, the Left, and Each Other. New York: Viking.Google Scholar