Rewiring Linked Fate: Bringing Back History, Agency, and Power

Abstract

Linked fate, the concept introduced by Dawson almost three decades ago, reoriented the study of racism and political behavior in the United States. The scholarship traditionally had focused on the racial psychology of whites and how racism seeps into their political views and actions. Dawson proposed the Black utility heuristic theory and linked fate, its associated measure, to investigate the political behavior of Blacks, the minority group most harmed by racism. Since then, linked fate has become a ubiquitous variable of interest in research on minority group politics. Yet the research program around linked fate is due for some extension. Most studies gloss over the fact that the Black utility heuristic theory is historically and socially conditional. We call for bringing elite-level agency and group-level social practices back into the literature to clarify the macro- and meso-level conditions under which a group’s racial status translates into linked fate at the individual level. Greater inquiry into these dynamics is not only warranted but also has broad implications for the research on racial and ethnic politics.

The Politics of Racist Dehumanization in the United States

“…Political scientists following these two perspectives, and even many of those outside these perspectives, have typically conceived of prejudice in terms of individual psychological dynamics rather than situating prejudice in the context of power relations and historical processes (see Bobo & Hutchings 1996, Rogers & Kim 2023. 6 For example, political scientists have typically characterized prejudice as an outcome of individual-level factors such as socialization or genetics (Kinder & Kam 2010), rather than of systematic group interests emerging from large-scale political dynamics (Bobo & Hutchings 1996).…”

“…As we explained at the beginning of this review, the study of racial attitudes in the social sciences has largely been divorced from history and context (see Rogers & Kim 2023). In particular, rarely do political or social psychologists follow scholars of American political development (e.g., Frymer 2005) by considering the processes of racialization that contribute to the attitudes about race held by individuals.…”

Narratives of Racial Duty: Competitive Reality Television Series as Sites for Studying Racialized Social Obligations and Black Group-Based Decision-Making

“…More recent work on group versus individual-centered political decision-making has questioned the continued explanatory power of linked fate theory. Scholars often begin by pointing to mushrooming ethnic and socioeconomic diversity among Black people in the United States today (Gay, Hochschild, and White 2016; Rogers and Kim 2023; White and Laird 2020; White, Laird, and Allen 2014). Then they argue that the social context and conditions that served as the starting point for Dawson’s canonical text have dramatically evolved and thus highlight the need to revisit core assumptions of the theory.…”

Clarifying the “People Like Me”: Racial Efficacy and Political Behavior

“…This trend suggests that interpretations of the linked fate measure may vary by stability and salience of racial identity. Following the lead of Rogers and Kim (2021), we urge caution in presuming that the meaning of linked fate is consistent across groups with divergent histories and social contexts of racialization.…”