Race Appeal: How Candidates Invoke Race in U.S. Political Campaigns

2. The Advantages and Disadvantages of Deploying Racist Appeals.among Black and White Voters

 The Advantages and Disadvantages of Deploying Racist Appeals among Black and white voters C ommunICatIvE ProCESSES are interdependent, making it necessary for media effects studies to address the interplay between the sender and receiver and the message itself. now that we have a solid understanding of the types of messages that are employed in electoral contests in which racial minority candidates are involved, we need to explore what, if any, effects can result when those messages are received by (potential) voters. The next two chapters are dedicated to answering those questions. We are principally concerned with two types of race-based messages: racist appeals and racial appeals. As we described in the previous chapter, racist appeals rely on preexisting negative stereotypes about people of color for their effect, whereas racial appeals invoke race but do not rest on racist predispositions. In this chapter, we focus on racist appeals. Chapter 3 is devoted to an examination of one specific category of racial appeals (the appeal to racial authenticity ). We are ultimately interested in the general question of whether racist appeals affect potential voters, and if they do, how and why. RACIAL PReDIsPosITIons AnD CAnDIDATe evALuATIons Many scholars in psychology, sociology, critical race studies, political science, anthropology, and communication studies have examined the broad notion of White racial predispositions and resentment (see, e.g., Feldman and Huddy 2005; Frederickson 1971; Jordan 1974; Kinder and Sanders 1996; Kinder and The Advantages and Disadvantages of Deploying Racist Appeals  Sears 1981); conceptualizations of racism (Henry and Sears 2002; McConahay 1986); and the psychological basis of stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination (Allport 1979; Fiske 1998; Zuckerman 1990). An increasing amount of work in social psychology seeks to tap into subconscious predispositions about race (Banaji, Hardin, and rothman 1993; Baron and Banaji 2006). Still other researchers have drawn on findings in the area of mediated representations that depict minority images as largely negative and stereotypical to demonstrate that Whites’ perceptions of Black candidates mirror many of those stereotypes played out the broader forms of media, such as television and film (Coleman 2000; Cottle 2000; Drago 1992; entman and rojecki 2001; Gibbons 1993; Hall 1997; Kamalipour and Carilli 1998; larson 2005). research on the intersection of race, political communication, and voting behavior has focused largely on two distinct, yet related, sets of questions. First, what perceptions do White voters have about minorities in general, and about minority candidates specifically? And second, how might those attitudes influence voting choices in election contests in which either a minority candidate or a White candidate championing minority interests is involved (Sigelman , Sigelman, Walkosz, and nitz 1995; Terkildsen 1993; Williams 1990)? While much scholarship regarding the election of minorities to political office has focused on discussions about the efficacy of redistricting policies for descriptive and substantive representation, comparatively few studies have focused directly on individual-level attitudes toward Black candidates and officeholders and how they are evaluated by voters in terms of their fitness for office. Conclusions from this body of literature assert that, by and large, White voters tend to hold negative perceptions of Black candidates and evaluate them more negatively than their White counterparts. Williams (1990), for example, found in a national survey that when Whites were asked to evaluate Black and White candidates, they more often than not attributed positive characteristics such as “intelligent,” “hardworking ,” and “trustworthy” to White candidates more than Black candidates. Terkildsen (1993) reported similar conclusions, adding to the mix the fact that Black candidates’ skin color and tone significantly affected Whites’ negative evaluations of them. Terkildsen concluded that while Black candidates as a whole were evaluated more negatively than White candidates, darkskinned Blacks were evaluated most harshly. More recently, Caruso, Mead, and Balcetis (2009) found that respondents tended to view biracial individuals (Barack Obama and a fictitious candidate for public office) with whom they shared party identification as having lighter skin, choosing a lightened version of a photograph over the actual picture as being most representative of the person in question. Conversely, participants tended to choose darkened images as accurate representations of those with whom they disagreed politically.  The empirical evidence on Race Appeals These studies cite race and skin color as primary determinants of Whites’ negative evaluations of Black candidates. However, Sigelman, Sigelman, Walkosz , and nitz (1995) suggest that, despite the correlation between espoused stereotypes and perception or evaluation of candidates, a minority candidate’s race is not necessarily the most salient predictor of...