quote:How Whites Are Reacting to the Browning of America
Some white people see their future minority status as threatening and it pushes their political leanings to the right.
Citing a study by Northwestern University psychologists Maureen Craig and Jennifer Richeson, Jamelle Bouie frets that white Americans will react to their future minority status with ever-more conservative leanings and angst, perhaps making the country’s future electorate as racially polarized as Mississippi’s electorate is today. Here’s what the study found:
Using a nationally representative survey of self-identified politically “independent” whites, Craig and Richeson conducted three experiments. In the first, they asked respondents about the racial shift in California—if they had heard the state had become majority-minority. What they found was a significant shift toward Republican identification, which increased for those who lived closest to the West Coast.
In the second experiment, they focused on the overall U.S. shift with census projections of the national population. Again, they found that white Americans became more conservative—and more likely to endorse conservative policies—when they were aware of demographic changes that put them in the minority.
The final experiment—where questions were further refined and targeted—saw similar results. As Craig and Richeson write, “Perceived group-status threat, triggered by exposure to majority-minority shift, increases Whites’ endorsement of conservative political ideology and policy positions.”
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