Preserving national unity in light of diversity-e pluribus unum-is a challenge in immigrant-receiving nations like the United States We claim that endorsement of this view is structured by the varied bond between ethnic and national identity among immigrant minorities and native majorities, a proposition we test across three studies of US Latinos and whites. Study 1 uses national survey data to show that ethnic and national identity are associated with support for this objective, though in varied ways, among these groups. Studies 2 and 3 sharpen these results experimentally by illuminating the role of elite rhetoric in forging these connections. We show that elite remarks about the (in-)compatibility of ethnic and national identity motivate support for e pluribus unum through the specific attachment it influences. That is, elite rhetoric causes shifts in ethnic or national identity, which then asymmetrically shapes support for e pluribus unum among Latinos and whites. We have a country, where, to assimilate, you have to speak English.. .. To have a country, we have to have assimilation. This is a country where we speak English, not Spanish.-Donald J. Trump, 2015 1 We are a country where people of all backgrounds, all nations of origin, all languages, all religions. .. can make a home. America was built by immigrants.
The conventional wisdom is that racial attitudes, by forming through early socialization processes, are causally prior to most things political, including whites' party identifications. Yet a broad literature demonstrates that partisanship can shape mass attitudes. The author argues that this influence extends even to presumptively fundamental predispositions like racial attitudes. The study applies cross-lagged models to panel data from the 1990s and 2000s to demonstrate that whites align their racial attitudes with their party loyalties. The results demonstrate that partisanship has a more pronounced influence in the latter time period, which is consistent with a view that changes in the political context can make partisanship a more likely causal force on other attitudes. Racial concerns not only provide a foundation for political conflict: my results reveal that political processes can increase or decrease racial animus.
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