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Description
Since Barack Obama's election to the United States presidency, race has become a divisive component in many public policy debates. Consequently, I examined the role of politician race and status threat on support for race-based public policy (e.g., immigration and voter ID policy), for both White and minority participants, Experiment 1 showed that Whites were less supportive of policies that may benefit racial minorities (e.g., nonrestrictive immigration and voter ID policy) when the policy was presented by a politician whose race was central to that policy (i.e., Latino and immigration and Black and Voter ID). When a White politician presented these same policies however, Whites showed greater support. Minorities uniformly supported non-restrictive over the restrictive policy across politician race. Experiment 2 attempted to replicate these findings and to test mediation of the effects through status threat. Whites may feel status threat as a result of minority politicians advocating policy that seemingly benefits their group over Whites. I used a 3 (Politician Race: White, Black, Latino) x 2 (Policy Stance: restrictive, non-restrictive) x 2 (Participant Race: White, minority) between-participants design. Controlling for participants' political ideology, Analyses of Covariance determined how politician/participant race and policy stance predict support towards race-based policy. Minorities supported non-restrictive immigration policy more than restrictive, across politician race. Whites showed no difference in immigration policy support. For voter ID policy, across politician/participant race, restrictive policy was supported more than non-restrictive policy. The 3-way interactions for both policy types were non-significant. Because of this, I could not conduct the mediation analyses. The perceived likability of politicians expressing support for these policies was also tested. Overall, politicians who supported restrictive immigration policy were judged more negatively, across politician/participant race. Latinos in particular judged politicians who supported restrictive immigration policy more negatively than those who supported nonrestrictive policy across politician race. A significant difference did not emerge for Black participants compared to all other participants for restrictive voter ID policy. Overall, this work could potentially shed new light on how race may be a factor in the types of public policies that are endorsed.
