Close Race: How Correcting Underestimations of African Americans with Irish Ancestry Impacts Irish Americans’ Racial Attitudes

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

Abstract

Multiracial populations increased faster than any single race in the most recent U.S. census. However, we know little about how this demographic shift might impact the political attitudes of monoracial Americans. Drawing on literatures in racial politics and social psychology, this article offers insight into this question by examining how learning about the proportion of African Americans with Irish ancestry impacts Irish Americans’ racial attitudes. Findings from a nationally representative survey of Irish Americans show that identifying with an Irish American identity predicts implicit and explicit racial prejudice toward Black Americans. However, a survey experiment reveals that correcting Irish Americans’ underestimations of the proportion of African Americans with Irish ancestry decreases implicit and explicit racial prejudice, but only among Irish Americans who identify as Irish American. In other words, learning about a shared ancestry with African Americans reduces racial prejudice among those Irish Americans most predisposed to prejudice. Open-ended survey responses offer two possible explanations: the potential for perceived genetic closeness to challenge racial assumptions and the activation of guilt due to historical sexual violence.

Author

• Jasmine Hope English, Stanford University