When Does Diversity Include Political Diversity?

• In Event: Political Diversity in the Classroom

Abstract

Recent survey research has shown that younger adults are more comfortable with racial and ethnic diversity than older adults. A Pew Research from 2019 showed that respondents aged 18-29 were more likely to say they wanted to live in a more racially diverse neighborhood and less likely to say that hearing a foreign language in public would bother them (Horowitz 2019).

At the same time, America is experiencing deep partisan divisions and increasing political animus (Mason, Wronski, and Kane 2021). Negative partisanship increased so much that some scholars are concerned about the future of democratic institutions. This increase in the appreciation of some forms of diversity in an era of political distrust raises questions about the future of essential democratic values such as political tolerance and the role civic education could play to preserve democratic norms (DiGiacomo et al. 2021).

This paper presents the results of a survey experiment conducted among undergraduate students attending a large public university in the United States (n=458). Surveys consisted of 12 statements to which participants were asked to express their degree of agreement (strongly disagree to strongly agree). For half of the participants, the survey included items taken from the Civic Attitudes and Skills Questionnaire (CASQ) such as “I can listen to other people’s opinions” and “I find it difficult to relate to people from a different race or culture” (Moely 2002). The other half of the participants took a version of the survey in which the statements were re-worded slightly to make them about political diversity. To illustrate, the two examples mentioned above became “I can listen to other peopls’s political opinions” and “I find it difficult to relate to people from a different political perspective.” The last two items asked about individuals’ responsibility to participate in political processes; the wording of these items were identical in the two studies.

I analyzed results by testing whether the version of the survey produced different levels of agreement and found a statistically significant difference on nearly every item. For example, responses to the second version of the survey were less likely to agree with the statement about listening to other people and more likely to agree with finding it difficult to relate to people who are different. Despite their identical wording, the last two items also produced statistically different results, with the second (political) version of the survey producing lower levels of agreement with statements about participation in political processes.

These results paint a worrisome picture of pluralism. As Americans become increasingly divided along partisan lines, if tolerance for political diversity is on the decline, trust in democratic institutions may be at risk (Kingzette et al. 2021). Implications for civic education are discussed (DiGiacomo et al. 2021).

REFERENCES
DiGiacomo, Daniela Kruel, Erica Hodgin, Joseph Kahne, and Sara Trapp. 2021. “Civic Education in a Politically Polarized Era.” Peabody Journal of Education 96 (3): 261–74.
Horowitz, Juliana Menasce. 2019. “Americans See Advantages and Challenges in Country’s Growing Racial and Ethnic Diversity.” Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends Project (blog). May 8, 2019.
Kingzette, Jon, James N Druckman, Samara Klar, Yanna Krupnikov, Matthew Levendusky, and John Barry Ryan. 2021. “How Affective Polarization Undermines Support for Democratic Norms.” Public Opinion Quarterly 85 (2): 663–77.
Mason, Lilliana, Julie Wronski, and John V. Kane. 2021. “Activating Animus: The Uniquely Social Roots of Trump Support.” American Political Science Review 115 (4): 1508–16. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055421000563.
Moely, Barbara E. ; Mercer. 2002. “Psychometric Properties and Correlates of the Civic Attitudes and Skills Questionnaire (CASQ): A Measure of Students’ Attitudes Related to Service-Learning.” Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning 8 (2).

Author

• Jason Giersch, University of North Carolina, Charlotte