Playing the Race Card in the post-Willie Horton Era: The Impact of Racialized Codewords on support for punitive crime policy
Abstract: To date, little is known about the precise impact of racially coded words and phrases. Instead, most of what we know about racialized messages comes from studies that focus on pictorial racial cues (for example, the infamous "Willie Horton" ad) or on messages with an extensive textual narrative that is laced with implicit racial cues. Because in a "post-Horton" era strategic use of racially coded words will often be far more subtle than those explored in past studies, we investigate the power of a single phrase believed by many to carry strong racial connotations: "inner city." We do so by embedding an experiment in a national survey of whites, where a random half of respondents was asked whether they support spending money for prisons (versus antipoverty programs) to lock up "violent criminals," while the other half was asked about "violent inner city criminals." Consistent with the literature on issue framing, we find that whites' racial attitudes (for example, racial stereotypes) were much more important in shaping preferences for punitive policies when they receive the racially coded, "inner city" question. Our results demonstrate how easy it is to continue "playing the race card" in the post-Willie Horton era, as well as some of the limits of such framing effects among whites with more positive racial attitudes.
The article isn't accessible to non-university folx. What I'm thinking about doing is getting it, downloading it to a file, then sharing it. I'm actually thinking about starting a separate blog doing nothing but that.
Posted by: Lester Spence at April 26, 2005 09:43 AM
Can I get a link, yo!?!
K'yatta - this is not surprising - but it is important. In reviewing surveys of "racial attitudes," what strikes me as most compelling is that whites self-perception tends toward objectivity. American whites persistently perceive themselves as non-biased. This was the case as far back as the 30's. The paradox was that these same folks believe blacks were inferior, lazy, superstitious, disloyal and violent - but believed this to be an objective assessment. The same perception prevails today. Andrew Hacker discusses this in his book. Colgate professor Jack Dovidio developed and expounded a theory called "aversive racism," to define the proclivity of 'Caucs' to self-identity mo' better. Therefore, to their mind, whites are industrious, intelligent, rational, patriotic and law-abiding. Go figure.
I think these studies are useful because they demonstrate, to me at least, 1) the intractability of white supremacy as "the paradigm of choice," and 2) the need for indigenous, organic, comprehensive solutions to the BTP (bottom of the totem pole) status of Africans here and abroad. Simply, it's just not about what white folks think of us - and, with all the things that we've been through, if ya don't know by now, you will never, never, never know (to paraphrase Teddy P.)
Posted by: Temple3 at April 26, 2005 09:01 AM