APSA Preview: New Research on Race and Political Communication

We are currently assembling our team of volunteer research assistants for the fall. If you are interested in helping with the Race Project (or if you know someone who might be), please scroll to the bottom of this entry to see the formal notice.

The mission of The Project on Race in Political Communication is to "contribute to the state of knowledge in the field of political communication and [to] share that information with the mass public in an accessible way." This blog is one part of our effort to do that, as is the RaceProject.org "resources" page and our public lectures. Our Facebook Page, which we launched two months ago, is yet another (more than 800 "fans" now -- thanks to all for the great postings and discussion!), and THIS WEEK, we expanded our online presence to Twitter. If you tweet, follow us @PRPC for information and commentary related to race and political communication.

Also consistent with our mission, we are offering a preview of the research on race, politics and language that is scheduled to be presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association (APSA) in Toronto, September 3-6.

Academic conferences are opportunities for researchers in the various subfields of a discipline to get together, share their most recent work (and receive comments and criticism), meet with publishers and potential publishers, and network with colleagues and friends from around the world. As you know, we work in a research area (political communication) that spans (at least) three disciplines: political science, communication and psychology, and our specific work involves the interdisciplinary area of race and ethnicity/culture studies. Attending professional conferences in these fields affords us the opportunity to get critical feedback from other researchers and keep abreast of the most current work in which others are engaged.

Furthermore, because we live 800 miles apart, these meetings provide a chance to have some quality face time with one another to get re-centered with our work.

The research that we are presenting at this conference is a draft of a chapter from our book Race Appeal, which will be published next year. The paper is called "Racial Discourse in Political Advertisements: An Historical View," and it will be presented on a panel titled "Communicating and Framing Political Identities" at 8:00 a.m. Saturday, September 5. (You can download a copy of the paper here, or, like all of our papers, at the RaceProject.org "Studies & Data" page.) The panel is chaired by Hyun Jung Yun (Texas State University); Daniel C. Hallin (University of California, San Diego) will serve as the respondent. The other presenters on the panel are as follows:

Racial Framing in Coverage of the 2008 Presidential Election

Kimberly A. Gross, George Washington University

Johanna Harvey, George Washington University

Claire Low, George Washington University

The Impact of Political Campaigns on the Nascent Partisanship of Mexican Immigrants in the United States: Evidence from Two Mobilization Experiments

James A. McCann, Purdue University

Katsuo A. Nishikawa, Trinity University

Stacey L. Connaughton, Purdue University

Like Parents, Like Citizens: Mexican Children’s Political Socialization

Juan Enrique Huerta, ITESM

Young Voters in the U.S. and Turkey: The Changing Landscape of Political Attitudes, Media Use and Individual Traits.

M. Selcan Kaynak, Bogazici University

We have selected about three dozen additional papers (in no particular order) that caught our attention. (You can view the list of panels and papers for all of the organized sections, including political psychology, political communication and race, ethnicity and politics on the conference online program website.) To date, we are only privy to the title and authors, but you should be able to download and read any of these papers at some point during the week (or shortly thereafter) by searching Google Scholar or by navigating to the Social Science Research Network's APSA 2009 page. In any case, just reading through the titles will give an idea about what top researchers and young scholars in the field are working on, which we hope you will enjoy.

Polemics, Political Racism, and Misrecognition: Naming and Analyzing Prejudice Against Arab-Americans

Emily Wills, New School University

Racial Bias by Another Name: Anti-Muslim Attitudes and Voting Against Barack Obama

David P. Redlawsk, University of Iowa

Will Barack Obama be Black in 2012? Stereotypes, Strategies, and Changing Views of a President

Arthur Lupia, University of Michigan

The Effect of Social Networks on the Quality of Thinking about Policies

Elif Erisen, Cal Poly State University

Cengiz Erisen, SUNY, Stony Brook

A Group-Based Approach to Understanding Deliberation: The Deliberative Justice Experiment

Christopher F. Karpowitz, Brigham Young University

Tali Mendelberg, Princeton University

Truth, Relevance and Motivated Processing in Perceptions of Political Advertising

Daniel Stevens, University of Exeter

Barbara Allen, Carleton College

John L. Sullivan, University of Minnesota-Minneapolis

Thinking about Immigration: A Multi-Method Study of Individual Differences in Political Cognition

Shawn W. Rosenberg, University of California, Irvine

Leah A. Hemze, University of California, Irvine

Why Do We Use Race and Gender When Policy Information Is Available?

Nathan A. Collins, Santa Fe Institute

Does Affective Contagion Promote Coherent Political Thinking?

Cengiz Erisen, SUNY, Stony Brook

Milton Lodge, SUNY, Stony Brook

Charles S. Taber, SUNY, Stony Brook

Public Responses to Global Threats: A Racial Divide?

Ted Brader, University of Michigan

Nicholas A. Valentino, University of Michigan

Black Elite Rhetoric and System Justification Ideology

Byron D'Andra Orey, University of Nebraska, Lincoln

Hyung Lae Park, Jackson State University

Lester Kenyatta Spence, Johns Hopkins University

Where Race Matters: The Effects of Space and Neighborhood on Voting Behavior

Thomas K. Ogorzalek, Columbia University

Black and White Americans and Latino Immigrants: A Preliminary Look at Attitudes in Three Southern Cities

Paula D. McClain, Duke University, et al.

Multicultural Multiracialism, Multiracial Multiculturalism: Race, Mixed-Race and Diversity in the United States, Great Britain and Canada

Debra Thompson, University of Toronto

The Obama and the Clinton Factors: How Race and Gender Factor into Blacks’, Whites’, and Latinos’ Trust in the Representation of Group Interests

Shayla C. Nunnally, University of Connecticut

Shifting the Gender Gaze: The Intersection of Race and Gender in the Obama Candidacy

Valeria Sinclair-Chapman, University of Rochester

Food Politics: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Food Access

Melissa V. Harris-Lacewell, Princeton University

The Rise of Indirect Affirmative Action: New Strategies for Promoting "Diversity" in Selective Institutions of Higher Education in the United States and France

Daniel Sabbagh, Centre d`Etudes et de Recherches Internationales

A History of Black Presidential Candidates: 1872-2008

Christina M. Greer, Smith College

Race, Class and Education Policy: Second-Generation Discrimination in the 21st Century

Kenneth J. Meier, Texas A&M University

Meredith Brooke Loudd Walker, Texas A&M University

Sadé Walker, Texas A&M University

Nationalism, Race and the Obama Victory

Joseph Bafumi, Dartmouth College

Michael C. Herron, Dartmouth College

An Experimental Exploration of Political Knowledge Acquisition from The Daily Show Versus CNN Student News

Dannagal Goldthwaite Young, University of Delaware

Lindsay Hoffman, University of Delaware

Do Preconceptions Drive Voter Perception of Campaign Negativity?

Stephen C. Brooks, University of Akron

Rick D. Farmer, Oklahoma House of Representatives

The Role of Race and Age in 2008: A Series of List Experiments

Simon D. Jackman, Stanford University

Lynn Vavreck, University of California

Geo-Ethnic Political Dialogue: Multi-Color Skins with Blue, Red, and Purple Mindsets

Hyun Jung Yun, Texas State University

Lynda Lee Kaid, University of Florida

‘Whites Oppose, Blacks Support, Latinos Divided’: Making Sense of the Racialized Discourse Surrounding California’s Proposition 8

Victoria Wilson, University of California, Irvine

The Exceptional Electoral Style of Barack Obama

Roderick P. Hart, University of Texas, Austin

What is the Best Way to Measure the Bradley Effect? Lessons from the 2008 Election

Reuben Kline, University of California, Irvine

The Impact of Racism on Votes in the 2008 Presidential Election: Results from the Associated Press/Yahoo News!/Stanford Survey, the Standford MRI Survey, and the American National Election Studies

Jon A. Krosnick, Stanford University, et al.

Absence of Prejudice or Political Correctness? Comparing Survey-Based Indicators of Racial Bias with the Implicit Association Test

Shanto Iyengar, Stanford University

Kyu S. Hahn, University of California, Los Angeles and Yonsei University

Advancing Beyond the Local and Congressional Level: Under Which Conditions are Blacks Nominated for High Profile State-Wide Office

Christopher Stout, University of California, Irvine

Elections in Black and White: Race, Perceptions, and Voting Behavior in the U.S. House Elections

Matthew L. Jacobsmeier, University of New Orleans

The Effect of African-American Proximity on Latino Choice in the 2008 Presidential Primary

Ryan Donald Enos, University of California, Los Angeles

Turn Out or Burn Out? How Negative Ads Affect Latino and non-Latino Voting

Jennifer L. Merolla, Claremont Graduate University, et al.

Do Majority-Minority Districts and Reserved Seats for Minorities Undermine the Election of Women?

Robert G. Moser, University of Texas, Austin

Stephanie S. Holmsten, University of Texas, Austin

How Do We Get Along? Linked Fate, Political Allies, and Issue Coalitions

Dianne M. Pinderhughes, University of Notre Dame, et al.

Equality, Inferiority and Electoral Competition: Black-Brown Partnerships in Newark, New Jersey

Andra N. Gillespie, Emory University

Fall Research Opportunities

The Project on Race in Political Communication has volunteer research opportunities for anyone who would like to be involved. While students (all levels) are a natural constituency in this regard, anyone is welcome to help. We are in the midst of the most labor-intensive phase of a very exciting element of the Project that will have implications far more widespread than the study of race and political communication.

We are compiling data and constructing a database that will be made available to researchers (in the form of a spreadsheet appropriate for quantitative analysis) and the public (in the form of a Web-interfaced search engine) that contains information about candidates for federal office (U.S. House and U.S. Senate) since 1970, including the candidate's race, gender, party affiliation, number of votes received, amount of money raised and spent, and other variables of interest. Research assistants are responsible for collecting information from a variety of sources (most of which are online) to compete the dataset. This is an important contribution that has the potential to substantially advance our understanding of elections, as this information is not currently available in one place.

The work requires no prior research experience and can be done from any location and at any time of the day (we can work around work schedules). For students, working as a Race Project research assistant affords the opportunity to gain experience with social science research for the purposes of CV building, instigating an original research project, and/or working toward a better understanding of racial inequality and injustice.

If you are interested, please Facebook message or email Senior Research Assistant Sidra Hamidi (sidra.hamidi@RaceProject.org). If you know someone who might be interested (or if you are a faculty member who has students who might be interested), please do not hesitate to pass this information along.

Mountains and Molehills

A particularly bright and insightful person asked us this week if we found the criticism over Hillary Clinton’s latest racist slip to undermine the Obama campaign’s stated intention to be a different kind of campaign – that is, one that does not seek to magnify every slip by an opposing candidate. It’s a point worthy of consideration.

First, as our friend recognizes, spending time analyzing Clinton’s comments in this space is not the same as the Obama campaign making political hay out of it. Our job, as we see it, is to provide some perspective that our readers may not have gleaned from the mainstream media or from their own analysis. In fact, most of the criticism of Clinton’s comments about “hard working Americans, white Americans” from this past week came from media pundits and bloggers rather from the Obama campaign itself.

Second, it is one thing to capitalize on an isolated “slip” and quite another to point out a communicative act that is indicative of a trend in one’s campaign. Clinton’s remarks clearly fall into the latter category. In the context of “fairy tales,” MLK needing a white politician to accomplish something, Jesse Jackson winning South Carolina, praise for black men who know their proper place, and Geraldine Ferraro’s suggestion of affirmative action in the presidential race, the latest comment carries more substantive weight than what Clinton campaign chair Terry McAuliffe offered on Sunday’s Meet the Press.

First, let’s take a look at McAuliffe’s explanation of Clinton’s comments. We will then go back to the original statement to see if we can accept it as valid.

When Russert played the audio clip of Clinton’s remarks and asked about it, here was McAuliffe’s initial response:

First of all, Tim, as you know, she was quoting an AP story. In fairness, she was quoting what had been written in the AP. Both candidates have put together terrific coalitions. What Hillary was talking about is the coalitions that she has been able to put together that has allowed her to win Texas and Ohio, a lot of working-class folks have come out. I'm not saying that Senator Obama can't win that at the end of the day. But, you know, we have been both proud of what we have brought to this table. . .

At this point, McAuliffe continued his rationalization for Clinton staying in the race, deflecting the substance of the question. One might notice, however, that besides falsely putting the words in the metaphorical mouth of the Associated Press, McAuliff did not at all address the questions about racism implicit in the answer. Russert pressed:

But when she uses a phrase, “hardworking Americans, white Americans,” Mayor Willie Brown, San Francisco…she's saying that white Americans are hardworking Americans. A lot of African-Americans took great offense at that.

To which McAuliffe responded:

Yeah. Well, and that's not what she meant. And she was quoting the AP story and could--literally, nobody has worked harder, as you know, than President Clinton... Tim, listen, both Clintons have worked their whole life on civil rights issues; Hillary, her entire life, has been working on issues, on education, on health care. They both have been out there fighting hard. This is the end of a long campaign.

And back to rationalizing her continued presence in the campaign. McAuliffe fails to offer exactly what she did mean. She was NOT quoting the AP story, and the old “I have supported equal rights for black folks all my life” argument has nothing to do with the fact that she clearly implicitly associates “hard-working” with whites. This is consistent with a study conducted in 1990 by Linda Williams, where she found that whites in her study tended to attribute positive characteristics such as “intelligent,” “strong leader,” “knowledgeable,” “hard-working,” “gets things done,” “experienced,” and “trustworthy” more often to white candidates than to black candidates. Further, it is consistent with all of the work that has come from the Implicit Associations research at Harvard (go here to take the Implicit Associations Test yourself to see your level of subconscious bias).

And hold on a sec: "literally, nobody has worked harder than President Clinton. . .on civil rights issues." Is he serious? LITERALLY. So Bill Clinton has worked harder on civil rights than Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., Angela Davis, Jesse Jackson, Shirley Chisolm, Al Sharpton -- Barack Obama, even! We have one of two possibilities here: 1) McAuliff really thinks that Bill Clinton has "literally" worked harder for civil rights than each of these people, or 2) McAuliff meant that he worked harder than any other white person, which, besides being highly arguable, is further indicative of the notion that his reference point is whites and whites only (he'll let us know if he's including people of color when he speaks of "anyone").

In any case, Tim Russert stayed on point:

Here's a report from the New York Post: "Hillary Rodham Clinton played the race card as she dismissed Barack Obama as a candidate who can't win support from `white Americans.' ... The `white Americans' remark drew a swift rebuke from some superdelegates, and private dismay from several Democratic" party "officials who said they're concerned about reuniting the factionalized party. Muriel Offerman, a North Carolina superdelegate who has not disclosed her choice, said: `That should not have been said. I think it drives a wedge, a racial wedge, that's not what the Democratic Party's about.' ... Massachusetts [undeclared] superdelegate Debra Kozikowski said: `That's distressing. ... I'm not even sure how to respond to that. I'd like to think that it was not intended to be what it sounds" "but... it" "sounds like trying to split the country down the middle.'" Those are undeclared superdelegates responding to Hillary comments about race.

Uh oh. How is McAuliffe going to respond to all of THAT? How ‘bout with:

And you know what? I can put up 30, 40 more superdelegates who will say, you know, talk about what the Clintons have done on the race issue. First of all, I hate that even race is even in the--we should not have it. We shouldn't have race, we shouldn't have gender. We ought to talk about who can do the best job uniting this country, moving us forward, dealing with health care, getting our troops out of Iraq fast and safe, creating jobs, dealing with the mortgage crisis. That's what this campaign has been about, in fairness. We had 23 total debates through the process, a lot of issues being discussed and let's make sure we stay back focused on the issues.

Ok, so let’s make sure we’re clear here. If you know people who think what she said is racist, but I know people who think it’s not, it’s a wash and therefore not racist. Got it.

Most important, though, the white guy wishes race wasn’t an issue. How nice. How novel! “We shouldn’t have it,” he says. “Can’t we just forget about this whole messy race stuff – it makes me so uncomfortable to have to deal with the realities of racial inequality and the fact that my candidate is garnering support by tapping into existing racial animosity (the type “antipathy” for folks unlike themselves that Obama was so criticized for noting last month in San Francisco).”

Finally, McAuliffe argues at the end of this statement that we should be sure to “stay back focused on the issues.” By this, we presume, he means issues such as those he just mentioned above. But he didn’t just say THOSE issues, he called those issues, THE issues, which means that he does not think race IS an issue – not only that it he wishes that it weren’t. In other words, “people” are trying to make this an issue when it is not. And who are those “people?” Not the hard working white Americans, of course – they, like the rest of us, are ostensibly past race and view everyone equally.

McAuliff’s argument is deflective and insulting to anyone who cares about racial injustice as a real and important issue facing America. But more than that, he is off mark from what Clinton actually said. Let’s take it apart. Here is the quote:

There was just an AP article posted that found how Senator Obama's support among working--hardworking Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how the, you know, whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me. ... I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on.

It is very important for us to listen to her comments, not just read them. (Again, you can do that here). Listen for when Clinton 1) interrupts herself (to make a correction) and 2) uses a vocalized pause to buy some time to think.

1) She interrupts herself after “working” to change it to “hard working.” Why the importance of the modifier? The suggestion is that she’s not being supported by all Americans who have jobs (who “work”) but by those who work “hard,” which implies jobs that require physical labor or repetition and do not pay particularly well. These jobs are most often held by Americans without college degrees. She is absolutely correct that she has been doing well in part of this demographic – whites who meet these qualifications. But there is a disproportionate amount African Americans who are without college degrees and are therefore “hard working” and she has not gotten their support (though she has done well with Latinos of all economic groups). So the interruption and clarification helps to narrow down the base of her support, distancing her from the so-called “intellectual elites” that make up a portion of Obama’s base.

2) But the second clarification comes as she wrestles – as so many of us do (Ever notice how when white folks talk about “blacks” or “African Americans” they often say those words quieter than the rest of the sentence?) – with how to insert race into the conversation. One can hear her hesitation as she flips through her mental Rolodex to see if there is another word or phrase to convey the same message: “. . .and how the, you know, whites. . .” The “you know” here is not a question, but a vocalized pause that at once affords her an opportunity to search for a substitute and brings the listener into her thought process by using second person “you.” By stating that we “know,” she implies that it is factual. “Everyone knows they’re white, so I’m not a bad person for bringing it up.”

So while it is true that harping on a small “slip” is the sort of politics-as-usual that the Obama campaign has emphasized (and that millions have embraced), this incident does not fall into that category. She has talked about this particular racial dimension of the contest since the Texas and Ohio primaries. Her surrogates have used it a number of times since her support among African Americans slipped (the Iowa caucuses). There is a clear pattern that demonstrates that no matter how much Clinton and her husband, the former president, may have “worked” for issues of concern to African Americans, she is not somehow above racism anymore than the rest of us. What we hoped would have been different, however, is that she recognized that and worked hard to avoid using it to her political advantage.

Three research assistants from The Project on Race in Political Communication presented original social science research at North Central College’s annual Rall Symposium for Undergraduate Research this week. We present their paper titles and abstracts below.

The RaceProject welcomes undergraduate and graduate students who wish to get hands-on research experience working on issues of race, politics and language. Interested students should contact either of us by visiting the RaceProject main page.

The Digital “Hood”: Effects of Racial Priming on Online Argumentation

Mark Jenkins

Recent research on online argumentation primarily centers on the outcomes produced by the discussion. There has been a push to explore the potential effect on an individual’s civic participation as a result of having access to new media sources. Democracy is believed to be weakened by the threat of selective exposure and the lack of concrete identity in the online world. However, there have been few studies that have looked at this issue through a racial lens. By using Daniel Canary’s Manual for Coding Conversational Argument (1989) and viewing racial and political content on the new media source YouTube, I examine basic and often unfiltered arguments between individuals to gauge the level of racial discourse in an online forum of a user-submitted video featuring 2008 Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

“George Bush Doesn’t Care about Black People”: An Analysis of the Presidents Who Did “Care” about Black Americans

Ann Fisher

Of the forty-two presidents whom Americans have elected into office, only seven have made executive orders or proclamations with the attempt of advancing African Americans in American society (Lincoln, F. Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, L. Johnson, and Nixon).I do not examine what these presidents did to enhance the lives of African Americans, rather what they could have done to have an even greater effect on racial equality. Using scholarly literature from race theory, psychology of leadership, racial communication and public opinion, I examine environmental constraints, options available to presidents, and ultimately, action. The result will be a greater understanding of the reasons for the statistical inequality within the United States and the role American presidents have played.

Ethical Ideology Influences Judgment of Employees Returning from FMLA Leave

Elizabeth Konrad

The current research examines how employees who take FMLA (Family Medical Leave Act) are perceived by their manager upon return from leave. The FMLA was enacted to allow employees to take up to 12 weeks of leave after the birth of a child or to care for a sick child or parent. In this study, we look at how the ethical position of the manager, as measured by Forsyth’s (1980) EPQ, impacts how the employee is perceived. Participants in this study were asked to imagine that they were responsible for a firm during a critical time. They were told they had an employee who needed leave and were asked to evaluate that employee upon return from leave. The results indicate that individuals with low relativism and high idealism scores were the most negative in their evaluations, particularly when organizational problems occurred in their absence.

Additionally, Gwen Bowman, another RaceProject research assistant, participated in the Rall recitals of student scholarship.

Ballade by Albert Perilhou

Albert Perilhou was born in 1846 and died in 1936. He was a French composer and one of his most famous pieces is “Ballade,” composed in 1903. Ballade is French for ballad. A musical ballad is a piece with one movement which includes dramatic and lyrical narrative qualities. In fact, medieval ballads generally featured an upper voice and two lower voices. This theme is reflected during the Allegro sections the very expressive runs spanning the range of the flute. The beginning of the piece starts out in a slow Lento section. The introduction is very dramatic, further echoing the qualities of a ballad. The transition into the Allegro section is very abrupt. The Lento sections are song-like, with a distinctive melody. This melody from the beginning Lento section can be heard throughout each phrase, and the melody returns at the end.