IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/amposc/v63y2019i2p305-322.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Effectiveness of a Racialized Counterstrategy

Author

Listed:
  • Antoine J. Banks
  • Heather M. Hicks

Abstract

Our article examines whether a politician charging a political candidate's implicit racial campaign appeal as racist is an effective political strategy. According to the racial priming theory, this racialized counterstrategy should deactivate racism, thereby decreasing racially conservative whites’ support for the candidate engaged in race baiting. We propose an alternative theory in which racial liberals, and not racially conservative whites, are persuaded by this strategy. To test our theory, we focused on the 2016 presidential election. We ran an experiment varying the politician (by party and race) calling an implicit racial appeal by Donald Trump racist. We find that charging Trump's campaign appeal as racist does not persuade racially conservative whites to decrease support for Trump. Rather, it causes racially liberal whites to evaluate Trump more unfavorably. Our results hold up when attentiveness, old‐fashioned racism, and partisanship are taken into account. We also reproduce our findings in two replication studies.

Suggested Citation

  • Antoine J. Banks & Heather M. Hicks, 2019. "The Effectiveness of a Racialized Counterstrategy," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 63(2), pages 305-322, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:wly:amposc:v:63:y:2019:i:2:p:305-322
    DOI: 10.1111/ajps.12410
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12410
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/ajps.12410?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. IGARASHI Akira & MIWA Hirofumi & ONO Yoshikuni, 2022. "How Do Racial Cues Affect Attitudes toward Immigrants in a Racially Homogeneous Country? Evidence from a survey experiment in Japan," Discussion papers 22091, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:amposc:v:63:y:2019:i:2:p:305-322. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1111/(ISSN)1540-5907 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.