Still Stasis? Racial Attitudes of Young Adults during an Election Year

• In Event: Divided by Racial Attitudes? The Changing Politics of White Americans

Abstract

DeSante and Smith’s 2020 book, Racial Stasis, found that, despite popular narratives of change, young white Americans continued to subscribe to anti-Black racial attitudes and oppose policies designed to advance African Americans’ interests. This “stasis” was not mirrored in their opinions toward sexuality and gender policies, suggesting the unique intransigence of racial politics. In this project, we reassess this stasis with data from an original panel of young Americans conducted during the 2024 Presidential Election season. The panel design permits us to evaluate the stability and salience of several political attitudes and opinions over time. We are particularly interested in whether those white Americans who experienced the Black Lives Matter summer during their “impressionable or formative years” of seventeen to twenty-five years old (Jennings and Niemi 1981) exhibit racially liberal political attitudes, preferences, and interpretations of election-year stimuli, relative to those who had already passed this consequential stage of political socialization. This project updates the literature on generation and racial attitudes by accounting for the impact of the potentially transformative events of a global pandemic and a “racial reckoning.”

Authors

• Jennifer Chudy, Wellesley College

• Maneesh Arora, Wellesley College