Dramatic political events shift racial attitudes positively even among reluctant whites

Evidence

With respect to attitudes and attitude change, Riley and Pettigrew (1976) found that dramatic political events led to a positive change in racial attitudes. They reported data on the attitudes of white Texans before and after Eisenhower’s decision to send troops into Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. They also had data collected shortly before and after the assasination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Despite some countervailing movement among those with initially negative attitudes, both occurrences produced overall positive shifts on pertinent racial attitudes. In the case of the attitudinal impact of the assassination of Dr. King, Riley and Pettigrew were able to rule out the possibility of simply having captured a preexisting trend by comparing two preoccurrence surveys, separated by several months, that showed no change. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3378 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

The legacies of abolitionist, civil rights, and anti-apartheid social movements have made abundantly evident that there is no ultimate narrative of absolute redemptive transformation resulting from racial revolutions. There are just the piecemeal changes and shifts - some small, ameliorative, accumulative; others largely and to lesser or greater degree groundshifting. But ultimately even the larger changes produce, if not necessarily more often than not, backlashes, changes in racial expression and modes of exclusion themselves. They may become less overt, more subtle, more carefully formulated. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1915 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Southern and non-Southern whites changed racial attitudes at equal rates — Ilyana Kuziemko and Ebonya Washington, Why Did the Democrats Lose the South?…, 319; Perceived racial demographic shift raises White group status threat that drives Trump support. — Brenda Major and Alison Blodorn and Gregory Major Blascovich, The threat of increasing diversity: Why…, 5; Racial anxiety about Obama ignited the Tea Party movement — Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry, The Flag and the Cross: White Christian…, 270 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Dramatic political events shifted white racial attitudes in a positive direction. #corroborates (0.97) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3378
• Racial revolutions bring piecemeal gains that typically trigger new backlashes and subtler exclusions #complicates (0.74) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1915