ABSTRACT
A handful of studies have documented that personally experiencing repression affects the likelihood of subsequent protest participation. Unfortunately, little is known about how firsthand encounters with repression shape biographical outcomes beyond protest. We take a multidimensional approach by examining not only the connection between repression and protest but also whether repression heightens conventional political participation, legal cynicism, ethnic identity, and psychological distress. We explore these issues using a probability survey of Arab Americans administered shortly after 9/11. We think our work, though centered on the immediate post-9/11 context, has relevance to today’s political climate of hate. Bivariate and multivariate analyses reveal that repression enhances all of the outcomes we investigate. Supplemental analyses demonstrate that repression leads more people to engage in conventional political activity than protest; we also find that the deleterious consequences of repression, legal cynicism and psychological distress, are more common than the politically integrative outcomes. We hope our work encourages researchers who study repression to cast their net more broadly by investigating the biographical consequences of repression, including its impact on cognitions, emotions, and behaviors not limited to protest.
