Racial Sympathy in American Politics

Abstract

This project examines the understudied, but prevalent, phenomenon of white racial sympathy for blacks in American politics. Reversing course from a long tradition of studying racial antipathy, I argue that racial sympathy, which I define as white distress over black misfortune, shapes public opinion among a subset of white Americans. In Chapter 1, I introduce the project and provide an overview of the dissertation’s organization. Chapter 2 begins with a summary of the relevant racial attitudes literature, laying the foundation for the theory of racial sympathy. In Chapter 3, I describe the qualitative exploratory research I conducted to form an original measure of racial sympathy, the racial sympathy index. I examine the properties of the index, including its convergent validity. In Chapter 4, I explore the relationship between racial sympathy and public opinion using four national samples. These analyses reveal that racial sympathy is consistently and significantly associated with support for public policies perceived to benefit African Americans, while accounting for measures of principles and prejudice. Additionally, racial sympathy is distinct from a general social sympathy, as it does not influence policy opinion related to other groups, such as women. The concept is tightly associated with race; as evidence of this, I find that racial sympathy is activated when the suffering of African Americans is made salient, a phenomena I explore through a series of experiments in the dissertation’s fifth chapter. In Chapter 6, I argue that racial sympathy enhances our understanding of the complexity of intergroup relations. Here I suggest that sympathy has the potential to motivate a variety of political opinions and behavior. I also discuss the limits to its reach. Overall, the project is a companion to the rich literature in political science on racial prejudice. The dissertation demonstrates the multifaceted role of race in American politics and public opinion.