TRENDS: Racial Resentment and Public Opinion across the Racial Divide

• DOI: 10.1177/1065912919870280
• Published date: 01 December 2019
• Date: 01 December 2019
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912919870280

Political Research Quarterly

2019, Vol. 72(4) 767 –784

© 2019 University of Utah

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/1065912919870280

journals.sagepub.com/home/prq

Article

Scholars have long argued that the most profound politi-

cal division between groups in the United States lies

between blacks and whites. Blacks and whites differ in

their voting behavior, as well as their evaluations of the

carceral state, affirmative action policies, and welfare

policies (Gilens 1999; Hurwitz and Peffley 2010; Pasek

et al. 2014; Piston 2010; Rabinowitz et al. 2009; Tesler

2012; Tien et al. 2012; Tuch and Hughes 2011). Perhaps

one of the greatest divisions between these two groups

concerns how to understand interracial inequality.

Historically, the overwhelming majority of black people

blamed structural barriers to equality such as racism and

prejudice (Dawson 1994; Massey and Denton 1993; Orey

2004; Pattillo-McCoy 1999), while a majority of whites

blamed the individual failings of those in the black com-

munity (Anderson 1999; Ogbu 2004; Wilson 1996).

However, contemporary research on blacks’ explanations

for inequality reveals that over time, black people have

increasingly shifted away from attributing blame to struc-

tural barriers to that of individual attributions (Hunt 2007;

Nunnally and Carter 2012; Smith 2014; Tate 2010). We

believe that the growing convergence of attitudes pertain-

ing to inequality among blacks and whites warrants fur-

ther scholarly inquiry of two racial groups that have

historically been analyzed separately.

A recent examination of this convergence focused on

whites’ and blacks’ reactions to the racial resentment bat-

tery (Kam and Burge 2018). Kam and Burge (2018) find

that when black and white survey respondents are asked

to stop and reflect on their answers to the racial resent-

ment battery, blacks and whites on the high and low end

of the scale provide similar thematic justifications for

their responses. That is, blacks and whites on the high

end of the scale are more likely to attribute blame of

blacks’ unequal status to individual failings, and blacks

and whites on the low end of the scale blame structural

features like racism and discrimination. Kam and Burge’s

(2018) findings lay the groundwork for this paper; we

take the next logical step by theorizing and analyzing the

role that racial resentment plays in the policy opinions of

whites and blacks.

Although the research on racial resentment has been

meticulously developed, tested, and analyzed with white

Americans in mind, survey respondents across both racial

groups have been administered this battery of items in the

American National Election Study since 1986. We assess

the correlation between racial resentment and other

important aspects of racial attitudes: feelings toward

blacks and whites, stereotypes of blacks and whites, and

870280PRQXXX10.1177/1065912919870280Political Research QuarterlyKam and Burge

research-article2019

1Vanderbilt University, Nashville, USA

2Villanova University, Villanova, USA

Corresponding Author:

Camille D. Burge, Department of Political Science, Villanova

University, 800 E Lancaster Ave., Villanova, PA 19085, USA.

Email: camille.burge@villanova.edu

TRENDS: Racial Resentment and Public

Opinion across the Racial Divide

Cindy D. Kam1, and Camille D. Burge2

Abstract

Research on racial resentment has been meticulously developed, tested, and analyzed with white Americans in mind—

yet black Americans have also responded to this battery for the past three decades. To date, little to nothing is known

about the implications of responses to the racial resentment battery among black Americans. A burgeoning literature

on blacks’ intragroup attitudes suggests that over time, black Americans have increasingly attributed racial inequality

to individual failings as opposed to structural forces. As such, unpacking blacks’ responses to the canonical racial

resentment battery may provide further insight into the micro-foundations of black public opinion. Using survey data

from 1986 to 2016, we engage in a systematic quantitative examination of the role of racial resentment in predicting

black and white Americans’ opinions on racial policies, “race-coded” policies, and nonracialized policies. Along the

way, we highlight the existence of wide heterogeneity among black respondents and call for further investigation that

identifies similarities and differences in the foundations of white and black public opinion.

Keywords

race, prejudice, racial resentment, public opinion

768 Political Research Quarterly 72(4)

linked fate. Next, we engage in a systematic quantitative

examination of the micro-foundations of opinion among

black and white Americans on racial policies, “race-

coded” policies, and nonracialized policies. In so doing,

we examine the possibility that racial resentment can

serve as a predictor of racial policy opinion and race-

coded policy opinions not only among white Americans

but also among black Americans. No prior analysis has

examined white and black responses to the racial resent-

ment battery over a thirty-year period. We move the pub-

lic opinion and racial resentment literature forward by

finding that the racial resentment battery can be profit-

ably incorporated into the portfolio of “basic ingredients”

that unpack the racial policy opinions not only of white

Americans but also of black Americans.

Racial Resentment across the Racial

Divide

Racial prejudice is age-old, but modern social scientific

approaches to quantifying and measuring racial prejudice

are rooted in the twentieth century. The nature of racial

prejudice itself has shifted within the twentieth century,

from an “old-fashioned” or “Jim Crow” form of racism

that focused on biological, inherent differences between

blacks and whites, to its more modern variants. These

modern variants combine negative affect toward blacks

with a judgment regarding the failure of blacks to con-

form to “American” values of hard work. Such measures

have appeared under the terms symbolic racism, modern

racism, and racial resentment.

Racial resentment, according to Kinder and Sanders

(1996), refers to the sentiments held by white Americans

toward black Americans. Racial resentment combines

anti-black affect infused with a sense of anger and indig-

nity, undergirded by a belief that black people have failed

to conform to the classic Protestant work ethic: “At its

center are the contentions that Blacks do not try hard

enough to overcome the difficulties they face and that

they take what they have not earned” (Kinder and Sanders

1996, 106). A four-item scale has appeared in each of the

major installments of the American National Election

Studies (ANES) since 1986. In their comprehensive treat-

ment of the subject, Kinder and Sanders (1996) estab-

lished the strong and robust effect of racial resentment on

attitudes toward explicitly racialized policies such as

affirmative action and federal spending on programs to

assist minorities and toward “race-coded” policies such

as welfare and crime. Subsequent work has established

the relationship of racial resentment to electoral decision-

making and candidate evaluation, particularly in the

Obama age (Kam and Kinder 2012; Kinder and Dale-

Riddle 2012; Tesler and Sears 2010).

These robust findings notwithstanding, prominent

scholars have raised questions concerning the underlying

meaning of the battery (e.g., Carmines, Sniderman, and

Easter 2011; Feldman and Huddy 2005; Huddy and

Feldman 2009; Sniderman and Carmines 1997; Sniderman

and Piazza 1993). They contend that the role of prejudice

in policy judgments is minimal and at its core, the policy

judgments of whites are shaped by their principles: fair-

ness, equality, and the appropriate role of government, and

further suggest that the racial resentment battery may be

conflated with these underlying principles. Use of the

racial resentment battery to predict racial policy attitudes,

the argument goes, may be tautological given the battery

itself might be conflated with race-based policy opinions

(Carmines, Sniderman, and Easter 2011). Recent experi-

mental work by DeSante (2013) speaks to both sides of

the debate demonstrating that although racial resentment

correlates with principled ideologies, its relationship is

highly conditioned by racial considerations. The open-

ended analyses of Kam and Burge (2018) also speak to

both sides of the debate by unpacking the meaning under-

lying the varied responses of whites and blacks to the

scale. Recent work demonstrates that both prejudice and

principles are integral components to the racial resentment

battery.

Despite these divergent views within the literature on

racial resentment, there is one common thread across

them: nearly all of the public opinion research featuring

racial resentment focuses on white Americans. In this

voluminous line of research, we are struck by the paucity

of studies of how black Americans respond to what has

become the canonical measure in public opinion research

on race.1 This lacuna in the literature could in part be

attributable to political impact: whites have been a major-

ity not only of the U.S. population but also a majority of

the electorate (although this will change in the not-so-far

future). The lacuna could also be attributable to the epis-

temological conventions of the field: that this is simply

how political scientists have approached the study of

public opinion and race. It could also be attributable to

outgroup homogeneity bias: that (mostly white) public

opinion researchers have explored heterogeneity among

whites but largely ignored analyses of blacks (or included

a dummy variable to capture “race”). Finally, it could also

be attributed to data limitations: until recently, the sample

size of black people in nationally representative datasets

has been too limited to sustain rigorous statistical analy-

sis (but, note that political, epistemological, and psycho-

logical forces all can play a role in shaping what research

designs are proposed and funded). Whether the lack of

research on racial resentment among blacks is an inten-

tional oversight attributable to population or political

influence, a feature of the epistemological convention