The race card : campaign strategy, implicit messages, and the norm of equality
Tali Mendelberg (Author)
Did George Bush's use of the Willie Horton story during the1988 presidential campaign communicate most effectively when no one noticed its racial meaning? Do politicians routinely evoke racial stereotypes, fears, and resentments without voters' awareness? This controversial, rigorously researched book argues that they do. Tali Mendelberg examines how and when politicians play the race card and then manage to plausibly deny doing so. In the age of equality, politicians cannot prime race with impunity due to a norm of racial equality that prohibits racist speech. Yet incentives to appeal to white voters remain strong. As a result, politicians often resort to more subtle uses of race to win elections. Mendelberg documents the development of this implicit communication across time and measures its impact on society. Drawing on a wide variety of research--including simulated television news experiments, national surveys, a comprehensive content analysis of campaign coverage, and historical inquiry--she analyzes the causes, dynamics, and consequences of racially loaded political communication. She also identifies similarities and differences among communication about race, gender, and sexual orientation in the United States and between communication about race in the United States and ethnicity in Europe, thereby contributing to a more general theory of politics. Mendelberg's conclusion is that politicians--including many current state governors--continue to play the race card, using terms like "welfare" and "crime" to manipulate white voters' sentiments without overtly violating egalitarian norms. But she offers some good news: implicitly racial messages lose their appeal, even among their target audience, when their content is exposed
History
1 online resource (xv, 307 pages) : illustrations
9781400889181, 9780691070711, 1400889189, 0691070717
1003205759
Part one: The origin of implicit racial appeals: A theory of racial appeals ; The norm of racial inequality, electoral strategy, and explicit appeals ; The norm of racial equality, electoral strategy, and implicit appeals
Part two: The impact of implict racial appeals: The political psychology of implicit communication ; Crafting, conveying, and challenging implicit racial appeals : campaign strategy and news coverage ; The impact of implicit messages ; Implicit, explicit, and counter-stereotypical messages : the welfare experiment ; Psychological mechanisms : the norms experiment
Part three: Implications of implicit racial appeals: Implicit communication beyond race : gender, sexual orientation, and ethnicity ; Political communication and equality
In English
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