Americans' views of immigration are substantially more positive than political discourse since 2010 might suggest. And they are becoming more positive. So too are Whites' views of Blacks, as racial resentment declined from 2010 to 2018. Views of immigration and race became more correlated over the last twenty years. And both are more correlated with political party preference now than at any time on record. While Republicans' views of immigration and their racial resentment have changed very little since 2010, Democrats' views of immigration have become far more positive and their racial resentment has declined substantially. The consequences of these trends were borne out dramatically in the 2016 presidential election. In combination, the two attitudes predict well who voted for Trump and who voted for Clinton. These trends and correlations make clear that xenophobic Americans are not ascendant, they are desperate. The dynamics of race, immigration, and polarization tilt in favor of both more immigration and a more progressive view of racial disparities.

The election of Donald Trump raised many questions about the impact of immigration on American politics. This article asks whether backlash to demographic change in counties undergoing rapid growth in foreign-born, Hispanic, and/or Asian populations may have played a role in his election. I use techniques accounting for selection into treatment to examine the relationship between demographic changes at the county level and voting patterns in the 2016 presidential election. Analyzing individual-level survey data and controlling for voting patterns in 2012, I find that people living in counties with a rapid percentage point increase in the Hispanic population since 2000 were more likely to vote for Trump in the general and primary elections. For non-Hispanic Whites in the general election, Hispanic growth is predictive of Trump voting among those with lower levels of education and higher family incomes, as well as those living in counties with smaller Hispanic populations in 2000 ("new destinations"). There is also evidence of backlash to Hispanic growth among Asian voters. When analyzing county-level election results, I again find an uptick in Trump voting in high Hispanic growth counties for the general election, but these results do not replicate for the swing states, or for the primaries. This provides reason to be cautious about claims that backlash against local demographic trends "won" Trump the election, though data limitations prevent me from analyzing all key locations individually. Regardless, this study provides clear evidence of an impact of local demographic change on contemporary U.S. politics.

Recent studies have shown that heterosexual college men report unwanted sex at higher rates than one might expect. And yet, college men’s perceptions of unwanted sex with women have been studied infrequently. This study examines how men understand unwanted sex with women and the impact of these experiences. Thirty‐nine men, aged 18–25, were interviewed using open‐ended questions related to their unwanted sexual experiences. Our findings demonstrate how men frequently minimize unwanted sex by framing it as either funny, unimportant, or something that happens to women. However, we find evidence that men's attempts at minimization are not always successful and that some experiences are indeed upsetting and/or hurtful. Rather than treating all men as a homogeneous category, our analysis details the circumstances associated with more or less troubling experiences. We find that there are particular circumstances (e.g. incapacitation), as well as personal characteristics (e.g. virgin), that position men to be more distressed by unwanted sex. This heterogeneity of men’s experiences explains some, but not all, differences in effects. Our analysis reveals that in experiences described as mild to severe, men talk about unwanted sex in highly contradictory ways. We argue that these contradictions are evidence of broader cognitive and emotional work done by men to convince themselves that unwanted sex does not matter to them. Our findings raise the possibility that when men use hegemonic notions of masculinity to understand their unwanted experiences, these interpretations serve to minimize the emotional damage that men might otherwise report.

Significance The contemporary intellectual landscape, dominated by theories about race and racism, has engendered the majority–minority conception of the American future, in which White people are outnumbered by Americans of color by midcentury. But assimilation, as a set of processes with societal ramifications, is still potent, driven by demographic dynamics that generate opportunities for minority mobility, and is linked to increasing family mixing between White and non-White people. The children of these families offer the best window into ongoing assimilation. The binary vision of the majority–minority society needs major modification because of the emergence and growing size of this bridging group. In addition, racism-focused theories need to be complemented by assimilation ideas to grasp the implications of demographic change.