Exposing the racist subtext of coded appeals can make Whites repudiate 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

Categorization

• XREF: Relates directly to the vault’s contact-theory and symbolic-racism thread — the ‘appeal to the American Creed’ as an intervention mechanism. — connects to: Conservative strategists deliberately coded racial appeals to evade egalitarian norms — Rachel Wetts and Robb Willer, Who Is Called by the Dog Whistle?…, 3; Racially encoded messages backfire among moderates high in racial resentment. — Rachel Wetts and Robb Willer, Who Is Called by the Dog Whistle?…, 147; Prior exposure to racialized elite cues hardens opposite positions against novel racial appeals. — Rachel Wetts and Robb Willer, Who Is Called by the Dog Whistle?…, 182 (+1 more)
• SEED: Follow-up essay angle: whether norms-based framing interventions outperform contact in reducing subtly coded bigotry in real campaigns.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 2190