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A Change is Gonna Come: Generational Membership and White Racial Attitudes in the 21 st Century
Author(s) -
Nteta Tatishe M.,
Greenlee Jill S.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
political psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.419
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1467-9221
pISSN - 0162-895X
DOI - 10.1111/pops.12028
Subject(s) - politics , opposition (politics) , presidency , social psychology , white (mutation) , gender studies , racism , resentment , bama , sociology , political science , psychology , biochemistry , chemistry , law , gene , escherichia coli , bacterial outer membrane
The election of President B arack O bama offers a unique opportunity to test the impressionable‐years hypothesis—the theory of political socialization that predicts that widely experienced political events can have a lasting impact on the political attitudes of individuals who experience that event in their youth, thereby creating a generational distinction. Using data from an original survey embedded in the 2010 C ooperative C ongressional E lection S tudy, we examine the racial attitudes of White youth who came of age during B arack O bama's presidential campaign and election to see if those individuals are significantly more liberal on racial attitudes than older generations of Whites. In other words, we look for early evidence that an “ O bama generation” has emerged. We find there are indeed early signs of a generational distinction. Members of the “ O bama generation” are more strongly opposed to racial resentment, but they exhibit similar levels of opposition to old‐fashioned racism as older cohorts. Additionally, we uncover that the factors that traditionally structure racial attitudes among Whites, most notably contact, education, and residential proximity, work quite differently for members of this generation. We take these findings as initial evidence that B arack O bama's presidency will have a lasting impact on the racial views of a generation of Americans.