Playing the Race Card in the Post-Willie Horton Era: The Impact of Racialized Code Words on Support for Punitive Crime Policy

Abstract

To date, little is known about the precise impact of racially coded words and phrases. Instead, most of what we know about racialized messages comes from studies that focus on pictorial racial cues (for example, the infamous "Willie Horton" ad) or on messages with an extensive textual narrative that is laced with implicit racial cues. Because in a "post-Horton" era strategic use of racially coded words will often be far more subtle than those explored in past studies, we investigate the power of a single phrase believed by many to carry strong racial connotations: "inner city." We do so by embedding an experiment in a national survey of whites, where a random half of respondents was asked whether they support spending money for prisons (versus antipoverty programs) to lock up "violent criminals," while the other half was asked about "violent inner city criminals." Consistent with the literature on issue framing, we find that whites' racial attitudes (for example, racial stereotypes) were much more important in shaping preferences for punitive policies when they receive the racially coded, "inner city" question. Our results demonstrate how easy it is to continue "playing the race card" in the post-Willie Horton era, as well as some of the limits of such framing effects among whites with more positive racial attitudes.

The Influence of News Media on Stereotypic Attitudes Toward Immigrants in a Political Campaign

“…Such triggers may be subtle cues in the news, such as words with a racial connotation, such as "innercity" (Domke, 2001;Hurwitz & Peffley, 2005) or mug shots of members of racial minorities (Dixon & Maddox, 2005;Gilliam & Iyengar, 2000). In addition, negative depictions of minorities also function as triggers of stereotype and prejudice activation.…”

“…Playing the race card is a common strategy to mobilize voters in elections (Boomgarden & Vliegenthart, 2007;Hurwitz & Peffley, 2005;Valentino, 1999). Third, in order to demonstrate media effects the study relies on media content that news users are exposed to instead of measures of media exposure as a predictor of racial attitudes.…”

“…It is assumed that, in contrast to everyday news, media effects on anti-immigrant attitudes are more likely to occur in a campaign context that explicitly deals with immigration policy (Hurwitz & Peffley, 2005;Valentino, 1999). Third, previous surveys relied on media exposure measures to predict people's attitudes toward minorities.…”

Dogwhistles, Political Manipulation, and Philosophy of Language

“…Horwitz and Peffley (2005) randomly assigned subjects to two groups, with one group being asked question A below, and one group being asked question B (difference underlined by me, from 102-3). This small change-the addition of 'inner city'-turned out to have a significant effect on the answer that subjects gave, but the nature of this effect was strongly influenced by subjects' pre-existing racial attitudes.…”

Code Words in Political Discourse

“…8 A related study adds additional support to the claim that "inner city" conveys something about African Americans. Hurwitz & Peffley 2005 showed that the mere insertion of "inner city" in a question about spending money on prisons on antipoverty programs was sufficient to make participants' racial prejudice against African Americans more predictive of higher support for government spending on prisons. Their question was (p. 102-3):…”