Thomas Craemer

An Evolutionary Model of Racial Attitude Formation: Socially Shared and Idiosyncratic Racial Attitudes

A growing body of research in political science has uncovered evidence of a “split personality” among Americans when it comes to racial attitudes—people express different attitudes in public than they personally hold. At present no theoretical model can account for the emergence of this discrepancy. This article proposes a simple neural model of racial attitude formation that makes an important distinction between socially shared and idiosyncratic racial attitudes. A computational model based on Kimuras (1983) Neutral Theory of Evolution predicts that socially shared racist attitudes may be able to coexist with, and eventually be replaced by, more favorable idiosyncratic racial attitudes. Results of a laboratory-based study (N = 555) involving reaction-time-based implicit measures of socially shared and idiosyncratic attitudes are consistent with the predictions derived from the computational model. The implications of the theoretical model and the empirical findings are discussed.

Implicit Racial Attitude Measures in Black Samples: IAT, Subliminal Priming, and Implicit Black Identification

One of the shortcomings of the implicit racial attitudes literature is that it relies almost exclusively on white subjects. Arguably, there are two possible reasons for this. First, these measures were created to address issues of social desirability among whites who harbor negative racial attitudes toward blacks. Second, social desirability pressures and antiblack affect were not viewed as significant among black respondents (see Craemer 2008). This assumption is problematic because it treats black racial attitudes as a monolith. Rather than examining black racial opinion as a complicated and multivalenced set of evaluations about their own group and others, there has been an over emphasis on measures of group solidarity (e.g., linked fate). Understandably, bloc voting and cohesive policy opinions have partially justified this focus; however, the black community is more diverse than presidential election turnout suggests. Price (2009) argues that linked fate, the most common measure for black racial identity, is not adequately problematized as a potentially positive or negative measure of psychological attachment. Here, we hope to build on this literature by using an implicit black identity measure.

Implicit Closeness to Blacks, Support for Affirmative Action, Slavery Reparations, and Vote Intentions for Barack Obama in the 2008 Elections

Does pro-Black policy support require an individual to be unbiased? I distinguish two types of implicit attitudes based on whether the attitude-target is evaluated as an object (evaluative associations) or as an independent social agent (relational associations). In a series of studies (N = 3,073), a significant anti-Black evaluative association bias emerges. In contrast, relational associations are significantly pro-Black and are unrelated to evaluative associations. Relational associations predict opinions regarding affirmative action, government help for Blacks, slavery reparations, and intentions to vote for Barack Obama. Thus, minority representation based on relational associations may not require absence of anti-minority evaluative bias.

Implicit Black identification and stereotype threat among African American students

This study detects statistically significant and substantively large stereotype threat effects that would remain hidden if Black identification were measured only explicitly. Three hundred and fifty-one students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) were tested on an implicit Black identification measure in an online survey, and stereotype threat was manipulated beforehand by randomly presenting one of three introductory screens: an all-White research team (high-threat condition), an all-Black research team (low-threat condition), or no team picture (control condition). The implicit Black identification measure predicted pro-Black political opinions (regarding affirmative action and government aid to Blacks, slavery reparations, and the Racial Resentment Scale), high performance on a political knowledge test, and high self-reported political participation. However, under the high-threat condition, Black students with the highest implicit Black identification scores answered 25% fewer political knowledge questions correctly, and reported 25% fewer acts of political participation, compared with students operating under the low-threat conditions.

Ancestral ambivalence and racial self-classification change

Abstract In survey research, race is often treated as an exogenous control variable, which assumes that response instability in racial self-classification represents random response instability only (error). With census figures suggesting that only 3% of Americans change their racial self-classification in the short-term, potential violations of this assumption may seem harmless. Advances in genetic research together with other factors, however, may render racial self-classification increasingly flexible in the future, which in turn may increase the risk of observing systematic response instability. This study subjects the research hypothesis of systematic response instability to conservative empirical testing using a representative telephone survey with repeated race questions (n = 1200). The results suggest that knowledge about ancestors of other backgrounds (‘ancestral ambivalence’) may predict response instability in racial self-classification. Results of a college student experiment (n = 555) further suggest that survey content can induce ‘ancestral ambivalence’ and short-term racial self-classification change. The implications of these findings are discussed.

International Reparations for Slavery and the Slave Trade

This article compares German Holocaust reparations with reparations regarding slavery and the slave trade in the United States and beyond. I review many historical reparations measures (proposed and realized) making them comparable in 2016 U.S. dollars. Based on slave-ship manifests, I investigate how reparations for the slave trade may be distributed. I propose that European slave-trade reparations could be used in Africa and the New World to indemnify the descendants of the formerly enslaved. Total and per-recipient amounts provide a wide range for possible negotiations. They range from only US

Nonconscious Feelings of Closeness toward African Americans and Support for Pro‐Black Policies

71.08 per recipient demanded by James Forman in 1969 to US

Psychological ‘self–other overlap’ and support for slavery reparations

3.6 million per recipient actually paid by the descendants of Haiti’s enslaved to the descendants of their former oppressors. The German example suggests that a political solution can be worked out if the representatives of the perpetrating side reach out to the representatives of the victimized side for negotiations.