Racial Pragmatism and Opinion Change Among Black Voters

PI: William Bishop, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Maryland, College Park

Grant Amount and Grant Fund: $2,500, William A. Steiger Fund for Legislative Studies

Project Abstract: Despite largely converging on party preference and their support of social policies designed to reduce inequality, Black Americans differ in their views on strategy and how the group should tactically strive to advance in America. In this project I offer a theory and measure of racial pragmatism to understand how these strategic considerations influence the political opinions of Black Americans. Through a scale of original and adapted survey questions, I measure whether due to their marginalized status, Black Americans feel they must utilize pragmatic strategies such as relying on doble-consciousness and strategic deracialization to help Blacks advance in politics and America generally. I expect that Black Americans who hold higher levels of racial pragmatism will report more moderate, but not conservative attitudes on racial policies when compared to group members who are less pragmatic. Additionally, building upon Katherine Tate’s (2003) research on opinion change among Black voters when responding to threat, I analyze whether this pragmatism leads Black voters to compromise on and update their policy attitudes when appraised of political constraints. I will use this award from the Centennial Center to test my theory by fielding a survey with a national sample of Black Americans. This survey will contain framing experiments on policy to measure attitude change, as well as other survey items to measure pragmatism and support for a host of racialized and ostensibly race-neutral policies to interrogate heterogeneity in Black public opinion.

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