Publications
White Democrats’ Growing Support for Black Politicians in the Era of the “Great Awokening”
forthcoming in American Political Science Review
Equitable representation of minority groups is a challenge for democratic government. One way to resolve this dilemma is for majority-group voters to support minority-group candidates, but this support is often elusive. To understand how such inter-group coalitions become possible, this paper investigates the case of white Democratic Americans’ growing support for Black political candidates. I show that as white Democrats’ racial attitudes have liberalized, an increasing number of majority-white districts have elected Black congressional representatives. White Democratic survey respondents have also come to prefer Black candidate profiles, as demonstrated in a meta-analysis of 42 experiments. White Democratic respondents in a series of original conjoint experiments were most likely to prefer Black profiles when they expressed awareness of racial discrimination, low racial resentment, and dislike towards Trump. Additional tests underscore the association between majority-group voters’ concern about racial injustice and their support for minority-group candidates.
As Racial Attitudes Go, So Goes Approval: Why White Democrats Favor Representatives of Color
with Anna Weissman, forthcoming in Political Behavior
Recent research shows that white Democrats have become more approving of politicians of color compared to white politicians in the last decade, in contrast with past research indicating that white voters typically prefer white representatives. White voters’ support for politicians of color has long been linked to their racial attitudes, implying that this change could be a result of white Democrats’ increasing racial liberalism. This mechanism deserves more than speculation, since understanding the cause of this shift influences expectations about its likely durability and broader implications for racial politics. This paper provides evidence of the persistence of this shift and evaluates the most plausible potential mechanisms behind it. We find that racial attitudes are strongly associated with white Democrats’ greater approval of representatives of color at the individual level and over time, while there is little evidence that either ideological stereotyping or differences in legislator quality are responsible. These results provide evidence that white Democrats' increasing racial liberalism influences consequential political opinions like approval of representatives of color.
The Long Shadow of Violence: Historical Homicide Risk Follows US Migrants
with Martin Vinæs Larsen and Gabriel S. Lenz, forthcoming in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Using data on millions of internal US migrants, we document that historical homicide rates follow migrants around the United States. Individuals born in historically safe states remain safer wherever they go, while individuals born in historically dangerous states face a greater risk, including from police violence. This pattern holds across demographic characteristics such as age, gender, and marital status, across migrant groups with different average levels of education, income, and even when comparing migrants from different states who reside in the same county. To help understand why, we conducted a large national survey that oversampled internal White US migrants. The results suggest this persistence may reflect a sociocultural adaptation to dangerous settings. Residents and migrants from historically unsafe states—mainly former frontier states and the deep South—see the world as more dangerous, react more forcefully in aggressive scenarios, value toughness, distrust law enforcement, and say they rely on self and family in violent situations. These adaptations may have kept them safe in historically dangerous states, but may increase their vulnerability to harm in safer states.
COVID-19 Responsibility and Blame: How Group Identity and Political Ideology Inform Perceptions of Responsibility, Blame, and Facial Disparities
with Lyndsey Wallace, Rubi Gonzales, Kyneshawau Hurd, Celina Romano, Victoria Plaut, published in Social and Personality Psychology Compass 2024; e12927.
This study explored how racial group, racial identity centrality, and political ideology inform perceptions of responsibility, blame, and racial disparities in COVID-19 outcomes. The findings revealed that highly identified members of non-dominant racial groups were less likely to endorse items indicating individual blame, while being more inclined to attribute racial disparities to structural inequalities. Furthermore, conservative ideology was consistently linked to individual blame and responsibility, with those endorsing conservative ideology agreeing less with explanations of racial disparities based on structural inequalities and agreeing more with explanations for racial disparities based on personal blame and responsibility. Understanding perceptions of blame and responsibility for COVID-19 may influence political discourse and subsequent health inequities, highlighting the importance of exploring how race, identity, and political ideology shape such perceptions.