Race and Public Deliberation

Abstract

Although deliberation has a central place in democratic theory, scholars know little about how it actually works. Most deliberative theorists emphasize the many good consequences of deliberation. By contrast, Mansbridge suggests that deliberation in certain circumstances may exacerbate conflict. Scholarship on racial politics suggests that each hypothesis is complicated by implicitly racial language. Using a quasiexperiment, we contrast the rhetoric in two town meetings about school desegregation: a segregated meeting with homogeneous interests, in which segregated Whites unanimously argued against desegregation, and an integrated meeting with heterogeneous interests, in which segregated Whites argued against integrated Whites, Hispanics, and African Americans. We find that (a) deliberation at the segregated meeting maintained consensus among segregated Whites; (b) these citizens used coded rhetoric that appeared universal, well-reasoned, and focused on the common good, but in fact advanced their group interest; (c) deliberation at the integrated meeting maintained the conflict between segregated Whites and others; and (d) there, rhetoric that seemed universal to segregated Whites was decoded by the integrated audience as racist and group interested. We highlight the problem posed by the contested meaning of language and suggest ways to make deliberation more effective.Keyword s deliberation, implicit meaning, public discussion, school desegregation , race, racism Deliberation has been lauded as a central virtue of democracy by thinkers as diverse as Mill, Madison, the anti-federalists, and Calhoun (Fishkin, 1991). Many contemporary theorists closely link deliberation with healthy democracy. Yet, scholars know little about how deliberation in fact works. In this article, we focus on public meetings about school desegregation. Our aim is to understand how citizens publicly and collectively discuss a salient issue when the outcome directly affects their lives. We hope to find out how deliberative democracy operates on the ground, when citizens use it to resolve an issue that counts.Our analysis rests on a pair of contrasting town meetings in New Jersey, each attended by several hundred people. One meeting, in the town of Leonia, was composed entirely of White participants who opposed desegregation (the "segregated" meeting). The other meeting, in the town of Englewood, was attended by a racially diverse set of participants who had conflicting preferences on integration (the "integrated" meeting). The context of deliberation thus varies from common to conflicting interests and from an all-White Tali Mendelberg is Assistant Professor of Politics at Princeton University. John Oleske is a law student at New York University .Address correspondence to Tali Mendelberg, Department of Politics, Princeton University , Princeton, NJ 08544-1012, USA. E-mail: talim@princeto n.edu 170 Tali Mendelberg and John Oleske audience to a racially integrated one. We derive expectations about these meetings from deliberative theory and f...

Deliberative Abilities and Influence in a Transnational Deliberative Poll (EuroPolis)

“…10 In early studies concerning the deliberative impact on empathy, Mendelberg (2002), in line with theories of motivated reasoning, suggested that linguistic intergroup bias -the privileging of arguments by members your own group at the expense of out-groups -is likely to undercut the ability of individuals to empathize. In a follow up piece, Mendelberg and Oleske (2000) found that discussion did not produce greater tolerance for opposing views nor mitigated conflict. This work suffered from a methodological bias, reliant upon participants' self-assessment for measures of empathy.…”

Who Wants To Deliberate—And Why?

“…Many critics reasonably worry that deliberation in practice could be perverse, magnifying political inequality if the people who select into deliberation are already privileged (Sanders 1997). Other critics are concerned that racial dynamics produce less than representative deliberative groups, with ensuing negative outcomes for underrepresented minorities (Mendelberg and Oleske 2000). Some sources of variation in willingness to deliberate may be normatively benign, and others that are less benign might be ameliorated in practice if we understood how they worked.…”

“…Many scholars (Eliasoph 1998;Hibbing and TheissMorse 2002;Mendelberg and Oleske 2000;Mutz 2002;Posner 2003 ;Sanders 1997;Sunstein 2009) worry that pushing deliberation on reluctant citizens, beyond wasting time and resources, will cause actual harm by leading to even greater frustration with and aversion toward politics. Even some scholars who are highly sympathetic to deliberative democracy echo such concerns (e.g., Mansbridge 1980) under some circumstances.…”

Groups and Deliberation

“…In a study of New Jersey town meetings held in both segregated and integrated environments, for example, Mendelberg and Oleske (2000) found that language used by whites in segregated meetings had the veneer of being universal, well-reasoned, focused on the common good, and supportive of the community consensus, but on closer inspection, such language also seemed to advance a narrow group interest (that is, the interests of privileged Whites). At integrated meetings, such language was decoded by many non-Whites as racist and an obstruction to the larger public good.…”