Anger And Racial Politics The Emotional Foundation Of Racial Attitudes In America

Antoine J. Banks

"Politicians, scholars, and pundits often disagree about whether race has been injected into a political campaign or policy debate. Some have suspected that race sometimes enters into politics even when political elites avoid using racial cues or racially coded language. Anger and Racial Politics provides a theoretical framework for understanding the emotional conditions under which this effect might happen. Antoine J. Banks asserts that making whites angry - no matter the basis for their anger - will make ideas about race more salient to them. He argues that anger, and not fear or other negative emotions, provides the foundation upon which contemporary white racial attitudes are structured. Drawing on a multi-method approach - lab and Internet survey experiments and nationally representative surveys - he demonstrates that anger plays an important role in enhancing the impact of race...