Race, Racial Cues, and the Severity of Violence in the United States

• In Event: Information & Views of Minoritized Groups

Abstract

Recent racialized mass shootings have exposed a gap in understanding political responses to these incidents and how they are perceived by people of shared identity with the targeted group. I argue that for African-Americans, but not White Americans, racial identity serves as a crucial cue for evaluating violence. A conjoint experiment that considers multiple attributes of violence finds support for this argument. Racial cues – who is targeted and who perpetrates violence – can emphasize the severity of an incident, even when accounting for other characteristics, like casualties incurred. For African-Americans, violence is more severe when directed at coethnic group members. Importantly, and in contrast, White Americans do not perceive violence as more severe when their coethnic group members are targeted. This paper provides evidence for a distinct relationship between African-Americans and civilian violence, whereby these incidents – when racialized and committed by racial out-groups – are perceived with heightened severity.

Author

• Kiela Crabtree, Emory University