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Does Race-Baiting Split Latino and White Americans? Racial Political Speech, Political Trust and the Importance of White Identity

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Abstract

This article uses two survey experiments to examine how political rhetoric about ethnic and religious minorities influences diffuse and specific political trust among Latino and white Americans. Specifically, it tests whether negative and positive political messages about Latinos and Muslims affect political trust differently depending on audience ethnicity and degree of ethnic self-identification. It finds that negative or conflicting rhetoric about Latinos damages Latinos’, but not whites’, trust in political institutions, while positive messages have little effect on such trust. More immediately, both Latino and whites express much greater trust in, and report more willingness to vote for, a politician who speaks positively about minorities, than one who bashes them. That gap is consistently larger among Latinos than whites, however—even when Muslims are targeted. Further, people’s responses vary with their degree of identification with their ethnic ingroup, but this occurs more markedly among whites than Latinos: while Latinos’ degree of Latino identity only somewhat moderates their responses to an anti- or pro-Latino politician, whites’ trust and support for race-baiting politicians is sharply higher among high-white-identifiers than those low in white identity.

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Fig. 1

Note: Coefficient plots of effects of being presented with each article prime on trust in political institutions (2-item index, as compared to the control condition, among Latino and white respondents, respectively. Trust index scaled 0–10. OLS, 95% confidence intervals, no control variables (see Figures A3 & A4 in the online appendix for levels with and without control variables). Study 1 Nwhites = 1519, NLatinos = 1510; Study 2 Nwhites = 349, NLatinos = 382. See Tables A5 and A6 in the online appendix for estimates of effects on trust in leaders and institutions for Studies 1 and 2.

Fig. 2

Note: Upper row displays mean levels of trust and vote likelihood by condition and ethnicity; lower row displays differences in levels between the pro- and anti-minority conditions, by respondent ethnic group, target ethnic group (Study 1 only). For Study 2, responses from mixed-message condition respondents referring to either the anti- or pro-Latino politician are included (randomly assigned), so as to retain independence between observations. See Figure A3 for Study 2 levels separated by single- and mixed-message conditions. Estimated using OLS regression, 95% confidence intervals. See Tables A9, A8, A9, A10 and A11 for full results.

Fig. 3

Note: Predicted levels of trust in, and likelihood of voting for, a pro-minority vs. anti-minority politician among white and Latino respondents—by level of identification with ethnic ingroup. Study 2 mixed-message condition respondents randomly assigned to analysis with either negative or positive message as in Fig. 2. Estimated using OLS regression, 95% confidence intervals; models control for respondent gender, age group, education level and party affiliation. See Tables A12, A13, A14, A15, A16, A17, A18, A19, A20 and A21 for full results.

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Notes

  1. It should be noted, however, that some research has found inter-minority affinity and political consciousness to be driven more by ingroup identification itself or by perceived subgroup affinity, than by perceived discrimination (e.g., Kaufmann, 2003). In addition, responses on behalf of another minority group can be weakened when people feel their own group's distinctiveness is at risk or see large status differences with or competition with the other group (Ball & Branscombe, 2019; Burson & Godfrey, 2018; Gay, 2006).

  2. Qualtrics recruits respondents through managed consumer panels, as well as some social media-recruitment. Panel participation is opt-in, with respondents receiving an incentive based on survey length and panel origin.

  3. Online opt-in panels of United States residents, such as those available through Mechanical Turk, have been shown to provide reliable approximations of opinion and political psychological effects among the general U.S. population (Mullinix et al., 2015).

  4. Respondents were asked, “Please choose the race/ethnicity that you most consider yourself to be.” Response options were: American Indian or Alaska Native; Asian; Black or African-American; Latino, Hispanic or Spanish; Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander; White; Other (which?). Those who identified primarily as Latinos/Hispanic were also asked about their national origin; controlling for this does not substantially change any of the results presented in this paper—though see Garcia-Rios et al. (2019) for a consideration of how differences in candidate evaluations between Latinos of Mexican vs. non-Mexican origin may arise when Mexicans are particularly targeted with political rhetoric.

  5. This greater identification rate among Latinos than Whites echoes findings from the National Election Studies, where much larger proportions of black than white respondents indicated that they felt ‘close’ to their own self-reported ethnic ingroup, though it was a dichotomous measure (group chosen as one the respondent identified closely with, rather than a continuous, multi-item scale; see Wong & Cho, 2005).

  6. Response options included four verbal response options for questions 1, 2 and 4 (e.g., Not at all important, Not very important, Quite important and Extremely important); and 5 values for question 3 (Never, Rarely, Some of the time, Most of the time, All of the time).

  7. In 2017, the Pew Research Center estimated that the U.S. population included approximately 3.45 million Muslims, just over 1% of the population overall. U.S. Muslims are racially diverse: according to Pew’s 2017 estimates, 41% of adult U.S. Muslims were white, 20% were black, 28% were Asian, 8% were Hispanic and 3% were mixed-race or other. According to Pew’s estimates, approximately 0.5% of adult U.S. whites, and 0.4% of adult U.S. Latinos, are Muslim.

  8. Combining respondents in the single and mixed-message conditions; average levels of trust in the anti-Latino politician are somewhat higher among Whites in the mixed than anti-Latino condition, but the difference is not significant (see Figure A5 for comparison).

  9. As tests for differences in responses between conditions necessitate multiple interaction terms conditioning the expected effects of SDO and authoritarianism on message valence, I opt instead to test the influence of ingroup identification on responses within each message condition while accounting for these two variables.

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Funding

Financial support for this project was received from the Danish Council for Independent Research, Society and Business (Samfund og Erhverv, Det Frie Forskningsråd), Award Number: 4003:00154B to Emily Cochran Bech, Ph.D. (Aarhus University).

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    Emily Cochran Bech

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Bech, E.C. Does Race-Baiting Split Latino and White Americans? Racial Political Speech, Political Trust and the Importance of White Identity. Polit Behav 45, 805–829 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-021-09731-9

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