Dissertation
Shades of White: How White Consciousness Shapes Attitudes About Racial Politics
Race is a central organizing principle of American politics and scholars have increasingly turned to studying whiteness itself as critical for shaping the political world. How do white Americans understand their racial identity? What do different understandings of whiteness mean for American politics? This dissertation builds on growing research about white identity politics and argues that the complexity of racial identification among white Americans has consequential effects for politics. I make a conceptual contribution by outlining a typology of white identification: racial agnostics are not racially conscious and do not comprehend their privilege; racial deniers are racially conscious but deny comprehension; racial preservationists are racially conscious with a desire to defend their privileges; and racial reconstructionists are racially conscious with a desire to amend their privileges. These types represent broad patterns of white identification that vary principally by relative salience or recognition of whiteness and by valence of affect towards whiteness. While many white Americans are racial agnostics, the growing centrality of race—and especially whiteness—in American politics can lead to the development of different kinds of white consciousness.
The first chapter develops a typology of white racial identification based on in-depth semi-structured interviews of 41 regular white Americans residing in the Minneapolis-St.Paul, MN metropolitan area which took place in February and March 2020. Using an abductive approach to analyzing the interview data, I identify four distinct patterns of white racial consciousness. In the second chapter, I introduce a novel survey measurement strategy for capturing the four types of white identification which allows me to generalize the typology to the broader population.
The third chapter focuses on how different types of white identification shape attitudes about Black Lives Matter with a combination of interview and survey data. This study gains analytic leverage from the tragedy of George Floyd's murder in Minneapolis in May 2020 and the subsequent uprising that swept the nation by re-interviewing some of the same participants (n=20) after their experiences witnessing, and in some cases participating in, protests for racial justice. The qualitative interviews provide evidence of how different patterns of white identification present and how they are altered by large-scale disruptive protest events.
Finally, the dissertation demonstrates the utility of the new measurement typology for understanding how different kinds of white consciousness shape attitudes about policies, partisanship, and political participation.
Race is a central organizing principle of American politics and scholars have increasingly turned to studying whiteness itself as critical for shaping the political world. How do white Americans understand their racial identity? What do different understandings of whiteness mean for American politics? This dissertation builds on growing research about white identity politics and argues that the complexity of racial identification among white Americans has consequential effects for politics. I make a conceptual contribution by outlining a typology of white identification: racial agnostics are not racially conscious and do not comprehend their privilege; racial deniers are racially conscious but deny comprehension; racial preservationists are racially conscious with a desire to defend their privileges; and racial reconstructionists are racially conscious with a desire to amend their privileges. These types represent broad patterns of white identification that vary principally by relative salience or recognition of whiteness and by valence of affect towards whiteness. While many white Americans are racial agnostics, the growing centrality of race—and especially whiteness—in American politics can lead to the development of different kinds of white consciousness.
The first chapter develops a typology of white racial identification based on in-depth semi-structured interviews of 41 regular white Americans residing in the Minneapolis-St.Paul, MN metropolitan area which took place in February and March 2020. Using an abductive approach to analyzing the interview data, I identify four distinct patterns of white racial consciousness. In the second chapter, I introduce a novel survey measurement strategy for capturing the four types of white identification which allows me to generalize the typology to the broader population.
The third chapter focuses on how different types of white identification shape attitudes about Black Lives Matter with a combination of interview and survey data. This study gains analytic leverage from the tragedy of George Floyd's murder in Minneapolis in May 2020 and the subsequent uprising that swept the nation by re-interviewing some of the same participants (n=20) after their experiences witnessing, and in some cases participating in, protests for racial justice. The qualitative interviews provide evidence of how different patterns of white identification present and how they are altered by large-scale disruptive protest events.
Finally, the dissertation demonstrates the utility of the new measurement typology for understanding how different kinds of white consciousness shape attitudes about policies, partisanship, and political participation.
Work in Progress
White Identity and Black Lives Matter: Amending and Defending Privilege in the Wake of the 2020 Uprising
Whiteness is an increasingly consequential social identification in the United States, but existing work has failed to analyze the variation in how this identity presents and what it means for political engagement and opinions. This paper makes a conceptual contribution by developing a typology of white identification that captures variation in level of white consciousness and valence of attitude about whiteness. The resultant four types of white identification—racial deniers, racial agnostics, racial preservationists, and racial reconstructionists—are broad but useful patterns for understanding how white Americans think about racial politics and specifically Black Lives Matter. Using two rounds of in-depth interviews from the Minneapolis-St.Paul metropolitan area in Minnesota, this paper presents preliminary qualitative evidence for how these types shape racial attitudes before and after the large scale protests for racial justice following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Working paper available here.
Contemporary Conservatism and Identity Politics: How American Identity Animates Conservative Identity
Donald Trump took the Republican party by storm when he announced his presidency in June 2015 and, despite strong party insider opposition, he swept the primary and became the figurehead for the contemporary Republican party. Economic and social conservatives shed their differences and coalesced behind the politics of Trump, forging a new conservative identity. I investigate the meaning of conservative identity to those who are intensely engaged in the conservative movement by attending the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Using a combination of semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and data from an original survey from CPAC in 2019 and 2020, I evaluate the extent to which contemporary conservative identity makes claims on American identity and what it means to be an American. Working paper available here.
Forcing Their Dirty Fingers into the National Wounds: Strategies of Russia Today on YouTube and Their Consequences for Political Polarization with Evgenia Olimpieva and Ipek Cinar
States invest money in media designed to reach an international audience to shape public opinion abroad. How does the messaging of state-funded media outlets differ from independent media sources in their coverage of topics, and what are their effects on domestic politics? This paper explores the choice of topics covered by Russia Today (RT) on YouTube and how framing and coverage of topics affect the viewership of the channel and the consequences these strategies have for political polarization in the United States. Using a unique dataset of all the videos published by RT on YouTube between 2015 and 2018, we employ both unsupervised learning techniques and qualitative content analysis of key videos. We find that RT focuses on the issues that are anti-institutional and polarizing in nature and invest their limited resources into coverage of countries’ major sources of polarization (or “national wounds”). The paper focuses on American audiences and on a topic directly addressing one such national wound: police brutality. RT covers police disproportionately more than other broadcasters with international audiences, and coverage of police is among the most popular content put forth by RT. This is important for polarization in American politics along both racial and partisan lines. We demonstrate that investing in covering painful and divisive subjects pays off as it drives the viewership of RT on YouTube. However, increased viewership implies increased exposure to polarizing content. This has negative consequences for polarization as previous research has demonstrated that exposure of an already polarized society to a biased media can result in even deeper polarization.
Racial Justice as Transitional Justice: Framing and Public Support for Racial Justice Initiatives in the United States with Genevieve Bates
How does the framing of racial justice issues affect support for policies? Recent media coverage of racial justice initiatives in the U.S. have been controversial. Even politicians who are ideologically sympathetic to the cause, like Barack Obama, have criticized demands like defund the police and reparations to Black Americans for injustices of the past and present. While controversial in the U.S., we argue first that these policies are transitional justice mechanisms similar to those employed in countries like those recovering from authoritarian rule, and that they operate in similar ways and encounter similar complexities. As with other transitional justice mechanisms, demand from below can play an important role in supporting or inhibiting the implementation of these policies. But the controversy surrounding the framing of racial justice initiatives may inhibit such support from developing. We use a survey experiment to test whether framing these initiatives as part of an international movement around transitional justice affects whether Americans support them. Our findings have important implications for both scholars and activists looking to garner support for the racial justice movement.
Whiteness is an increasingly consequential social identification in the United States, but existing work has failed to analyze the variation in how this identity presents and what it means for political engagement and opinions. This paper makes a conceptual contribution by developing a typology of white identification that captures variation in level of white consciousness and valence of attitude about whiteness. The resultant four types of white identification—racial deniers, racial agnostics, racial preservationists, and racial reconstructionists—are broad but useful patterns for understanding how white Americans think about racial politics and specifically Black Lives Matter. Using two rounds of in-depth interviews from the Minneapolis-St.Paul metropolitan area in Minnesota, this paper presents preliminary qualitative evidence for how these types shape racial attitudes before and after the large scale protests for racial justice following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Working paper available here.
- Related: Some context for why Minnepolis became the spark igniting so many protests, MinnPost. 2020.
Contemporary Conservatism and Identity Politics: How American Identity Animates Conservative Identity
Donald Trump took the Republican party by storm when he announced his presidency in June 2015 and, despite strong party insider opposition, he swept the primary and became the figurehead for the contemporary Republican party. Economic and social conservatives shed their differences and coalesced behind the politics of Trump, forging a new conservative identity. I investigate the meaning of conservative identity to those who are intensely engaged in the conservative movement by attending the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Using a combination of semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and data from an original survey from CPAC in 2019 and 2020, I evaluate the extent to which contemporary conservative identity makes claims on American identity and what it means to be an American. Working paper available here.
- Related: In 2020, conservatives believe they're battling to save America's soul by supporting Trump, Washington Post Monkey Cage. 2020.
Forcing Their Dirty Fingers into the National Wounds: Strategies of Russia Today on YouTube and Their Consequences for Political Polarization with Evgenia Olimpieva and Ipek Cinar
States invest money in media designed to reach an international audience to shape public opinion abroad. How does the messaging of state-funded media outlets differ from independent media sources in their coverage of topics, and what are their effects on domestic politics? This paper explores the choice of topics covered by Russia Today (RT) on YouTube and how framing and coverage of topics affect the viewership of the channel and the consequences these strategies have for political polarization in the United States. Using a unique dataset of all the videos published by RT on YouTube between 2015 and 2018, we employ both unsupervised learning techniques and qualitative content analysis of key videos. We find that RT focuses on the issues that are anti-institutional and polarizing in nature and invest their limited resources into coverage of countries’ major sources of polarization (or “national wounds”). The paper focuses on American audiences and on a topic directly addressing one such national wound: police brutality. RT covers police disproportionately more than other broadcasters with international audiences, and coverage of police is among the most popular content put forth by RT. This is important for polarization in American politics along both racial and partisan lines. We demonstrate that investing in covering painful and divisive subjects pays off as it drives the viewership of RT on YouTube. However, increased viewership implies increased exposure to polarizing content. This has negative consequences for polarization as previous research has demonstrated that exposure of an already polarized society to a biased media can result in even deeper polarization.
- Related: "Forcing Their Dirty Fingers into the National Wounds": How Russia Today Targets American Audiences with Content on Police Brutality, Reframing Russia. 2020.
Racial Justice as Transitional Justice: Framing and Public Support for Racial Justice Initiatives in the United States with Genevieve Bates
How does the framing of racial justice issues affect support for policies? Recent media coverage of racial justice initiatives in the U.S. have been controversial. Even politicians who are ideologically sympathetic to the cause, like Barack Obama, have criticized demands like defund the police and reparations to Black Americans for injustices of the past and present. While controversial in the U.S., we argue first that these policies are transitional justice mechanisms similar to those employed in countries like those recovering from authoritarian rule, and that they operate in similar ways and encounter similar complexities. As with other transitional justice mechanisms, demand from below can play an important role in supporting or inhibiting the implementation of these policies. But the controversy surrounding the framing of racial justice initiatives may inhibit such support from developing. We use a survey experiment to test whether framing these initiatives as part of an international movement around transitional justice affects whether Americans support them. Our findings have important implications for both scholars and activists looking to garner support for the racial justice movement.
Publications
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Cole, Geneva (2020), Types of White Identification and Attitudes About Black Lives Matter. Social Science Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1111/ssqu.12837
Objective. Until recently, whiteness was not considered a politically significant social identity. This study builds on recent work and explores empirically the different ways in which white people understand their whiteness with the objective of recognizing how variations in white identification shape attitudes about the Movement for Black Lives. Methods. I use qualitative analysis of in-depth semistructured interviews to develop a theoretical framework for understanding how white Americans understand and identify with their whiteness and apply this typology to expressed attitudes about Black Lives Matter. Results. I find three distinct patterns of white identification that characterize how white people understand their own race and privilege. These patterns subsequently affect how white Americans understand the experiences of minorities, specifically analyzed through opinions about Black Lives Matter. Conclusion. Variations in the way that white Americans understand their whiteness have tangible effects on the way they approach racial politics, with this paper focused specifically on white attitudes about the Movement for Black Lives. As the movement engages a broad multiracial coalition it is very possible that those who were previously unaware of their whiteness will come to see it as important, with potentially wide-ranging impacts on the future of racial politics in the United States. |
