Details

Subject(s)

• Elections—United States—History [Browse]
• Communication in politics—United States—History [Browse]
• Political campaigns—United States—History [Browse]
• United States—Race relations—Political aspects [Browse]

Summary note

Did George Bush's use of the Willie Horton story during the1988 presidential campaign communicate most effectively when no one noticed its racial meaning? Do politicians routinely evoke racial stereotypes, fears, and resentments without voters' awareness? This controversial, rigorously researched book argues that they do. Tali Mendelberg examines how and when politicians play the race card and then manage to plausibly deny doing so. In the age of equality, politicians cannot prime race with impunity due to a norm of racial equality that prohibits racist speech. Yet incentives to appeal to white voters remain strong. As a result, politicians often resort to more subtle uses of race to win elections. Mendelberg documents the development of this implicit communication across time and measures its impact on society. Drawing on a wide variety of research--including simulated television news experiments, national surveys, a comprehensive content analysis of campaign coverage, and historical inquiry--she analyzes the causes, dynamics, and consequences of racially loaded political communication. She also identifies similarities and differences among communication about race, gender, and sexual orientation in the United States and between communication about race in the United States and ethnicity in Europe, thereby contributing to a more general theory of politics. Mendelberg's conclusion is that politicians--including many current state governors--continue to play the race card, using terms like "welfare" and "crime" to manipulate white voters' sentiments without overtly violating egalitarian norms. But she offers some good news: implicitly racial messages lose their appeal, even among their target audience, when their content is exposed.

Bibliographic references

Includes bibliographical references (p. [277]-298) and index.

Source of description

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

Language note

In English.

Contents

• Frontmatter
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Tables
• Preface
• PART ONE: THE ORIGIN OF IMPLICIT RACIAL APPEALS
• Chapter 1. A Theory of Racial Appeals
• Chapter 2. The Norm of Racial Inequality, Electoral Strategy, and Explicit Appeals
• Chapter 3. The Norm of Racial Equality, Electoral Strategy, and Implicit Appeals
• PART TWO: THE IMPACT OF IMPLICIT RACIAL APPEALS
• Chapter 4. The Political Psychology of Implicit Communication
• Chapter 5. Crafting, Conveying, and Challenging Implicit Racial Appeals: CampaignStrategy and News Coverage
• Chapter 6. The Impact of Implicit Messages
• Chapter 7. Implicit, Explicit, and Counter-Stereotypical Messages: The Welfare Experiment
• Chapter 8. Psychological Mechanisms: The Norms Experiment
• PART THREE: IMPLICATIONS OF IMPLICIT RACIAL APPEALS
• Chapter 9. Implicit Communication beyond Race: Gender, Sexual Orientation, and Ethnicity
• Chapter 10. Political Communication and Equality
• References
• Index

Show 17 more Contents items

Other format(s)

Issued also in print.

ISBN

• 9781400889181
• 1400889189

OCLC

• 1017611020
• 1024017526

Doi

• 10.1515/9781400889181

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