Exposing the racial subtext of coded messages switches White voters against them.

Evidence

A final possible source of inner conflict is not the new racisms, but vestiges of the old racism that remain psychological hot buttons for White Americans because they conflict with the American Creed. Many Whites might accept subtle racist messages because they do not perceive them as inconsistent with the norm of racial equality. But, as Allport suggested, the best retort to bigotry may be an appeal to the Creed. If the underlying racism in subtly racist messages was revealed, they might be repudiated for violating it. The 1988 Republican presidential campaign exploited a horrific crime of sexual violence against a white woman by Willie Horton, a black convict, to attack the Democrats for being “soft on crime.” Though ostensibly a message about crime, the message had a strongly racial subtext. When Jesse Jackson pointed this out, some Whites turned against the Republican campaign (Mendelberg, 2001). — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 2190 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Similar to our previous argument as to how the historical racialization of welfare might make racial appeals ineffective, these discussions in conservative media may lead moderates and conservatives to form strong chronic associations between welfare usage and stereotypes of African Americans that dampen the effect of any novel racial appeal. In the case of gun control, conservative news sources’ discussions of the disproportionate incidence of crime among black Americans may have a similar effect of leading to greater opinion rigidity among moderates and conservatives. These discussions in conservative media mean that conservatives and moderates have likely regularly encountered conservative elites’ arguments about how to respond to criminal activity among black Americans-and specifically, have encountered arguments that gun control policies will not solve the problem because these policies take guns out of the hands of “law-abiding,” implicitly white, citizens (Filindra and Kaplan 2016). We might therefore expect racial appeals to be ineffective for moderates and conservatives because their exposure to elite cues about how to think about negative outcomes among black Americans leads them to be able to defend their previously held positions when presented with a novel racial appeal. — Rachel Wetts and Robb Willer, Who Is Called by the Dog Whistle?…, 182 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Low-identification Whites show a puzzling backlash AGAINST Trump under racial-shift framing. — Brenda Major and Alison Blodorn and Gregory Major Blascovich, The threat of increasing diversity: Why…, 56; Racially encoded messages backfire among moderates high in racial resentment. — Rachel Wetts and Robb Willer, Who Is Called by the Dog Whistle?…, 147; Countervailing information can blunt the downstream political influence of a catalyzed White identity. — Efrén Pérez, Jessica HyunJeong Lee, Ana Oaxaca, Tania Solano Cervantes, Jasmine García Rodríguez, Kimberly Lam, and David McFall, Manifold Threats to White Identity and…, 89 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Exposing the racist subtext of coded appeals can make Whites repudiate them #corroborates (1.00) — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 2190
• Prior exposure to racialized elite cues hardens opposite positions against novel racial appeals. #complicates (0.78) — Rachel Wetts and Robb Willer, Who Is Called by the Dog Whistle?…, 182