Norms of prejudice: political identity and polarization

Abstract

The USA is fast becoming a‘majority–minority’country in which Whites willno longer comprise the numerically dominant racial group. Prior studieshave linked Whites’status decline to heightened in-group solidarity andthe feeling that Whites, as a group, face growing discrimination. In the lightof these findings, we examine the extent to which a social norm controllinganti-White prejudiceis now discernible in the USA. Drawing from an originalsurvey measuring Americans’reactions to racially-offensive speech, we exam-ine second-order beliefs about the social inappropriateness of offensivestatements targeting White Americans. We find that White Americans (in com-parison to non-Whites) are indeed more likely to profess a social normgoverning anti-white prejudice. The pattern is most discernible among whiteRepublicans whom we expect to be most fearful of demographic change.