ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that the upshot is a growing alignment between racial attitudes and public opinion that has polarized the electorate and helped make American politics increasingly vitriolic. Racial resentment is the measure most commonly used by social scientists to explain the role of racial attitudes in public opinion. The impact of racial attitudes on Americans’ public policy preferences also depends on which racial groups Americans think those policies benefit. Social science experiments provide even stronger causal evidence that media coverage connecting racial groups to certain issues can make racial attitudes a more important ingredient of white Americans’ policy preferences. The influence of racial resentment on party identification was largely confined to politically informed individuals who were aware of the two parties’ differences on matters of race and ethnicity. Race has been one of the most important issues in American politics since the nation’s founding.
