The Ben Carson Effect: Do voters prefer racialized or deracialized black conservatives?

Gregory John Leslie; Christopher T Stout; Naomi Tolbert

doi:10.1016/j.ssresearch.2018.12.002

The Ben Carson Effect: Do voters prefer racialized or deracialized black conservatives?

Soc Sci Res. 2019 Feb:78:71-81. doi: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2018.12.002. Epub 2018 Dec 10.

Authors

Gregory John Leslie¹, Christopher T Stout², Naomi Tolbert³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Political Science, University of California, Los Angeles, USA.
² Department of Political Science, Oregon State University, USA. Electronic address: stoutch@oregonstate.edu.
³ Department of Political Science, University of Chicago, USA.

PMID: 30670222
DOI: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2018.12.002

Abstract

A plethora of research has explored how blacks and whites respond to deracialized and racialized outreach. However, these studies overwhelmingly focus on individuals' reactions to liberal black elites. We explore whether whites and/or blacks favor co-racial elites who take a conservative deracialized position in the form of support for privatizing social security or a conservative racialized position in the form of advocating for ending the norm of political correctness. Using an online experiment with an oversample of black respondents, we find that whites, and in particular white Republicans, have a strong preference for racialized black conservatives over deracialized black conservatives. In contrast, we find that blacks display a preference for deracialized co-racial conservatives, but view black and white racialized conservatives as being equally likeable.