D eparting from accounts of minority group politics that focus on the role of group identity in advancing group members' common interests, we investigate political decisions involving tradeoffs between group interests and simple self-interest. Using the case of black Americans, we investigate crystallized group norms about politics, internalized beliefs about group solidarity, and mechanisms for enforcing both through social pressure. Through a series of novel behavioral experiments that offer black subjects individual incentives to defect from the position most favored by black Americans as a group, we test the effects of social pressure to conform. We find that racialized social pressure and internalized beliefs in group solidarity are constraining and depress self-interested behavior. Our results speak to a common conflict-choosing between maximizing group interests and self-interest-and yet also offer specific insight into how blacks remain so homogeneous in partisan politics despite their growing ideological and economic variation.

Recent events have led to a renewed conversation surrounding the relevance and potential removal of Confederate monuments around the country, and several monuments have already been removed. However, we have little insight to explain why some monuments have been removed while others remain. This article seeks to understand the social and political determinants that can better explain the recent removal of Confederate monuments throughout the United States. Analyzing results from an original dataset of Confederate monuments, we identify which local government structures and racial and civic characteristics best predict the removal of these monuments. Ultimately, although we find that other factors contribute to monument removal, the size of the black population, the presence of a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People chapter, and the percentage of Democrats in a county in which a monument exists—as well as whether the monument exists in a state that constrains removal by legislative decree—best predict whether a Confederate monument will be taken down. This project elucidates the interplay of race, partisanship, and local and statewide politics as it relates to the dismantling of Confederate monuments.

No abstract

No abstract

We define racial transcendence as an elevated status in which evaluations of an individual are no longer shaped by the race of the attitudinal target or the race of the person making the evaluations. Observers argue that Oprah Winfrey transcends race, meaning that she is just as likely to receive support from non-Blacks as she is from fellow Blacks. But this argument may not follow when Oprah moves into the political arena. We use two surveys to demonstrate this: The first survey supports Winfrey’s transcendence, while we see in-group support in the second. We find that Oprah enjoys her greatest support among racial fellows, and her favorability flows along the lines of race and gender: Her greatest supporters are Black women. Oprah’s ability to offer political cues also flows along lines of race and gender: Those most likely to be influenced by her Obama endorsement are Black women.