The United States is undergoing dramatic demographic change, primarily from immigration, and many of the new Latino immigrants are settling in the South. This paper examines hypotheses related to attitudes of Latino immigrants toward black Americans in a Southern city. The analyses are based on a survey of black, white, and Latino residents (n = 500). The results show, for the most part, Latino immigrants hold negative stereotypical views of blacks and feel that they have more in common with whites than with blacks. Yet, whites do not reciprocate in their feelings toward Latinos. Latinos' negative attitudes toward blacks, however, are modulated by a sense of linked fate with other Latinos. This research is important because the South still contains the largest population of African Americans in the United States, and no section of the country has been more rigidly defined along a black-white racial divide. How these new Latino immigrants situate themselves vis-à-vis black Americans has profound implications for the social and political fabric of the South.

Dramatic demographic changes are occurring in the United States, and some of the most dramatic changes are occurring in the South from Latino immigration. Latinos, by and large, are an entirely new population in the region. How are Black southerners reacting to this new population? Using survey data gathered from a southern location, this article explores several questions related to whether Blacks see these new residents as friendly neighbors or economic competitors. Results suggest that Blacks and non-Blacks perceive a potential economic threat from continued Latino immigration, but Blacks are more concerned about the effects of Latino immigration than are Whites.

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Part of the motivation for encouraging elite stakeholders—like governments, professionals, and advocacy groups—to replace the language of "mental retardation" with "intellectual disability" (ID) is the belief that elite endorsement could undermine negative attitudes and influence the public to follow suit. We examine the veracity of this expectation empirically with an experiment that exposed individuals to information about endorsements of the terminology change made by the federal government, Special Olympics, or professional psychologists. We subsequently measured attitudes about persons with ID and the language used to describe ID. Results indicate that exposure to information about elite endorsement of the terminological shift either exacerbated negative attitudes or had no effect, suggesting that other factors may have primacy over "expert" opinion.

This study examines how anti-Black political rhetoric affects race-specific collective selfesteem (R-CSE) and internal political efficacy among African-Americans and Whites. Results from an experiment in which subjects received an anti-Black stereotype-accentuating message attributed to either a political figure or an "ordinary American," or no message at all, demonstrate that the political message undermined how African-Americans regard their own racial group, activated beliefs about how others regard African-Americans as a predictor of how African-Americans regard their own racial group, and undermined internal political efficacy. For Whites, the results demonstrate that the political message moderated the relationship between how they regard their own racial group and beliefs about how others regard their racial group, though the political message did not significantly increase or decrease racial group-regard or political efficacy overall. These results provide empirical confirmation of the role that government and politics can play in self-esteem. Keywords: Self-esteem, race-specific collective self-esteem, internal political efficacy, antiBlack political rhetoric.In their capacity to define groups and confer status, governments inevitably affect citizens' self-esteem (Lane 1982). Yet, as research on self-esteem has grown and evolved over the last several decades, the ways that government and politics facilitate, stifle, and otherwise affect how individuals regard themselves and the groups to which they belong received little empirical examination. This study examines how political rhetoric that devalues one racial group affects self-and group-regard among the group's members and non-members. In particular, this study examines the effect of anti-Black political rhetoric on two components of self-esteem-race-specific collective self-esteem (R-CSE) and internal political efficacy-among AfricanAmericans and Whites. the anonymous reviewers for helpful feedback at various stages of this project.