Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T15:37:59.112Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Rebuttals as deracializing strategies for African American and white candidates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 November 2020

Matthew Tokeshi Open the ORCID record for Matthew Tokeshi [Opens in a new window]
Matthew Tokeshi*
Affiliation:
Williams College, Schapiro Hall Room 238, 24 Hopkins Hall Drive, Williamstown, MA 01267, USA
*
Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access

Abstract

The study of American racial politics has long focused on the conditions that activate racial animosity. A central line of research demonstrates that campaign messages that highlight negative stereotypes of African Americans can activate whites' racial attitudes. However, little is known about whether this activation can be overcome. I develop a theory of racial deactivation and test its predictions with two survey experiments. I find that explicitly criticizing the racial nature of an attack restores support for white candidates, but not African American candidates. However, African American and white candidates fare equally well using two rebuttal styles: a credible, non-racial justification of the attacked action or an explicit racial critique combined with the justification. The results have implications for how race affects campaigns, the susceptibility of the American public to racial cues, and campaign strategy.

Keywords

Race and electionswhite votersAfrican American candidates
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , July 2022 , pp. 219 - 238
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Race, Ethnicity, and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association

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

Ansolabehere, S and Iyengar, S (1995) Going Negative: How Political Advertisements Shrink and Polarize the Electorate. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Bailenson, JN, Iyengar, S, Yee, N and Collins, NA (2008) Facial similarity between voters and candidates causes influence. Public Opinion Quarterly 72, 935–961.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berinsky, AJ, Huber, GA and Lenz, GS (2012) Evaluation online labor markets for experimental research: Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk. Political Analysis 20, 351–368.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chong, D and Druckman, JN (2007) Framing public opinion in competitive democracies. American Political Science Review 101, 637–655.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chong, D and Druckman, JN (2011) Identifying frames in political News. In Bucy, EP and Holbert, RL (eds), The Sourcebook for Political Communication Research: Methods, Measures, and Analytical Techniques. New York: Routledge, 238–267.Google Scholar
Citrin, J, Green, DP and Sears, DO (1990) White reactions to black candidates: when does race matter? Public Opinion Quarterly 54, 74–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooper, C (2006) Mining midterms for clues to ’08 field. Wall Street Journal, October 24.Google Scholar
Edsall, TB and Edsall, MD (1991) Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics. New York: W.W. Norton.Google Scholar
Englehardt, AM (2019) Trumped by race: explanations for race's influence on whites’ votes in 2016. Quarterly Journal of Political Science 14, 313–328.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frederick, KA and Jeffries, JL (2009) A study in African American candidates for high-profile statewide office. Journal of Black Studies 39, 689–718.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geer, J (2006) In Defense of Negativity: Attack Ads in Presidential Campaigns. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerber, AS, Gimpel, JG, Green, DP and Shaw, DR (2011) How large and long-lasting are the persuasive effects of televised campaign ads? Results from a randomized field experiment. American Political Science Review 105, 135–150.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glaser, JM (1996) Race, Campaign Politics, and Realignment in the South. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Goldman, SK and Mutz, DC (2014) The Obama Effect: How the 2008 Campaign Changed White Attitudes. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Hajnal, Z (2007) Changing White Attitudes toward Black Political Leadership. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hamilton, C (1977) Deracialization: examination of a political strategy. First World, March/April, 3–5.Google Scholar
Hurwitz, J and Peffley, M (2005) Playing the race card in the post-Willie Horton era: the impact of racialized code words on support for punitive crime policy. Public Opinion Quarterly 69, 99–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hutchings, VL, Walton, H Jr and Benjamin, A (2010) The impact of explicit racial cues on gender differences in support for confederate symbols and partisanship. Journal of Politics 72, 1175–1188.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacobs, J (2018) DeSantis warns Florida not to “monkey this up,” and many hear a racist dog whistle. New York Times, August 28.Google Scholar
Jardina, A (2019) White Identity Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jeffries, JL and Jones, CE (2006) Blacks who run for governor and the U.S. senate: an examination of their candidacies. Negro Educational Review 57, 243–265.Google Scholar
Johnston, R, Hagen, MG and Jamieson, KH (2004) The 2000 Presidential Election and the Foundations of Party Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kinder, DR and Dale-Riddle, A (2012) The End of Race? Obama, 2008, and Racial Politics in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Kinder, DR and Sanders, L (1996) Divided by Color. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Krupnikov, Y and Piston, S (2015) Accentuating the negative: candidate race and campaign strategy. Political Communication 32, 152–173.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuklinski, JH and Hurley, NL (1994) On hearing and interpreting political messages: a cautionary tale of citizen cue-taking. Journal of Politics 56, 729–751.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lau, RR and Rovner, IB (2009) Negative campaigning. Annual Review of Political Science 12, 285–306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGraw, KM (1991) Managing blame: an experimental test of the effects of political accounts. American Political Science Review 85, 1133–1157.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McIlwain, CD and Caliendo, SM (2011) Race Appeal: How Candidates Invoke Race in U.S. Political Campaigns. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Mendelberg, T (2001) The Race Card: Campaign Strategy, Implicit Messages, and the Norm of Equality. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mooney, M (2008) Obama aid concedes “dollar bill” remark referred to his race. ABC News, August 1. Available at https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Politics/story?id=5495348&page=1.Google Scholar
Nelson, TE, Clawson, RA and Oxley, ZM (1997) Media framing of a civil liberties conflict and its effect on tolerance. American Political Science Review 91, 567–583.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, T and Kinder, DR (1996) Issue frames and group-centrism in American public opinion. Journal of Politics 58, 1055–1078.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, TE, Sanbonmatsu, K and McClerking, HK (2007) Playing a different race card: elite influence on perceptions of racism. Journal of Politics 69, 416–429.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perry, HL (1991) Deracialization as an analytical construct in American politics. Urban Affairs Quarterly 27, 181–191.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pew (2017) The Partisan Divide on Political Values Grows Even Wider. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, October 5.Google Scholar
Piston, S, Krupnikov, Y, Milita, K and Ryan, JB (2018) Clear as black and white: the effects of ambiguous rhetoric depend on candidate race. Journal of Politics 80, 662–674.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skoneki, M (2018) President trump calls Andrew Gillum a “stone cold thief” on fox news. Orlando Sentinel, October 30.Google Scholar
Sniderman, PM and Theriault, SM (2004) The structure of political argument and the logic of issue framing. In Saris, WE and Sniderman, PM (eds), Studies in Public Opinion: Attitudes, Nonattitudes, Measurement Error, and Change. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 133–165.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sonenshein, RJ (1990) Can black candidates win statewide elections? Political Science Quarterly 105, 219–241.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sterling, A (2009) Huckabee calls criticisms over clemency “disgusting”. CBS News, December 1. Available at http://www.cbsnews.com/news/huckabee-calls-criticisms-over-clemency-disgusting/.Google Scholar
Stout, CT (2015) Bringing Race Back In: Black Politicians, Deracialization, and Voting Behavior in the Age of Obama. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.Google Scholar
Tesler, M (2012) The spillover of racialization into health care: how president Obama polarized public opinion by racial attitudes and race. American Journal of Political Science 56, 690–704.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tesler, M and Sears, DO (2010) Obama's Race: The 2008 Election and the Dream of a Post-Racial America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tokeshi, M and Mendelberg, T (2015) Countering implicit appeals: Which strategies work? Political Communication 32, 648–672.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Valentino, NA, Hutchings, VL and White, IK (2002) Cues that matter: how political ads prime racial attitudes during campaigns. American Political Science Review 96, 75–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Valentino, NA, Neuner, FG and Vandenbroek, LM (2017) The changing norms of racial political rhetoric and the end of racial priming. Journal of Politics 80, 757–771.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weaver, VM (2012) The electoral consequences of skin color: the “hidden” side of race in politics. Political Behavior 34, 159–192.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, IK (2007) When race matters and when it doesn't: racial group differences in response to racial cues. American Political Science Review 101, 339–354.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Tokeshi supplementary material

Tokeshi supplementary material

Download Tokeshi supplementary material(File)
File 779.6 KB