God, Guns, and Guts: Racial Priming and White Support for the Expression of Civil Liberties Amongst Black Americans
Year: 2023
Type: dissertation
Abstract: To whom are white Americans willing to extend basic aspects of democratic expression?This project is motivated by the rise of racial tensions in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests and the lack of empirical studies looking at white Americans' political tolerance of Black Americans. I argue that white Americans will be more supportive of the civil liberties of their fellow white Americans, and that priming them to consider Black Americans' civil liberties will reduce their support for such protections. I also examine negative stereotypes of Black Americans and levels of white identity as potential mechanisms underlying this relationship. To test these expectations, I conduct three web experiments on Lucid Theorem with large, high-quality samples of respondents. I use linear regression and heterogeneous treatment effect tests to determine the extent to which white Americans are (or are not) tolerant toward Black Americans, and how different mechanisms condition this. Overall, I find that the majority of white Americans in my samples are supportive of Black civil liberty expression. However, a substantial and coalesced minority appears to be unsupportive: those with negative stereotype ascription, strong white identity, and Republican partisanship. The results of this project speak to the willingness of white Americans to grant democracy to Black Americans, and the mechanisms through which this relationship is conditioned.
Author: Nava, Courtney J.
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: University of Colorado Boulder
OpenAlex ID: W7065917061