Racial politics of the white left and beyond
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Literature in political science has long established that a person's attachment to a given social group can have powerful consequences on the political beliefs they adopt. Across the three papers in this dissertation, I build on this work by studying how an individual's connection to their racial group influences their reaction to political messages and their views on important political issues. The first and second paper explore the importance of this connection to the racial group for a specific subset of Americans: White Democrats. Much of the political science scholarship on White identity has focused on its role in shaping the attitudes and behavior of White conservatives and White Republicans. However, I argue that White identity also has a profound effect on the behavior of Whites on the political left. Specifically, White Democrats respond negatively to progressive racial messaging when it can be perceived as threatening to Whites' racial in-group. This negative reaction could arise in response to messages White Democrats perceive as threats to their self-esteem---which I explore in paper one---or in response to messages they perceive as threats to their sense of group position or their material well-being---which I examine in paper two. The findings from these papers highlight how threats to their racial group matter for White Democrats forced to negotiate the conflict between their political identity and their racial identity. The third paper examines the relationship between three different levels of connection to one's racial group: geographic, social, and psychological. Using a novel dataset that includes the four largest ethnoracial groups in the United States, my co-authors and I find that there is only a weak correlation between geographic, social, and psychological embeddedness in one's racial group. Additionally, psychological attachment to a person's racial group proves to be an especially strong predictor of important political attitudes, while geographic attachment to the racial group is a very weak predictor of these attitudes. Together, these papers highlight the profound effect that the connection to one's racial group that exists within an individual's mind has on their political attitudes and behaviors.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2023; ©2023 |
| Publication date | 2023; 2023 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Lienesch, Rachel Kathryn |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Davenport, Lauren, 1983- |
| Thesis advisor | Davenport, Lauren, 1983- |
| Thesis advisor | Bonica, Adam |
| Thesis advisor | Iyengar, Shanto |
| Thesis advisor | Jefferson, Hakeem |
| Degree committee member | Bonica, Adam |
| Degree committee member | Iyengar, Shanto |
| Degree committee member | Jefferson, Hakeem |
| Associated with | Stanford University, School of Humanities and Sciences |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Political Science |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Rachel Lienesch. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Political Science. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2023. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/wf290mj2389 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2023 by Rachel Kathryn Lienesch
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