Browsing by Author "McClain, Paula D"

How do Black Americans make vote choice decisions in primary elections? This dissertation project answers this question by arguing that Black Americans are highly strategic voters and vote for the candidate that is perceived to be the most electable. I advance the argument that Black voters support candidates in Democratic primary elections that are most likely to beat the Republican candidate in the general election, and that the way in which Black Americans engage in electability politics is unique. Through a series of observational and experimental tests, I show that Black voters rely on considerations about electability to guide vote choice in primary elections. In chapter two I lay out the theoretical framework guiding this project, electability politics, relying on rational choice theory to make the claim that Black voters are strategic. I detail how Black American decision making in primary elections is unique, why Black voters strategically rely on electability to guide their vote choice, when Black voters use this decision-making strategy, and the trade-offs that Black voters make when using this strategy. In chapter three I detail how Black voters determine which candidate is the most electable and find that Black voters turn to ideology, endorsements, and polling to determine who is the most electable. In chapter four, using existing observational data, I show that Black Americans have used this electability politics strategy in Democratic primary contests from the 1980s to the present day. Chapters five and six use experimental methods to show the trade-offs that Black voters make between electability and different types of representation that the literature contends are Black voters’ primary preferences at the voting booth. In chapter five, I argue that Black voters put preferences for electability over descriptive representation. In chapter six, I examine the trade-off that Black Americans make between voting for a candidate that can win the general election and using policy preferences to guide vote choice, arguing that Black Americans prefer electable candidates. Finally, in chapter seven, I discuss the implications of my project, think about how this framework can apply to different groups, and offer future directions for this line of inquiry. While previous literature has only thought about the ways in which Black Americans engage in interparty elections, placing a strong focus on race’s role, and at times, policy’s role in Black politics, this dissertation offers new insights into how and why Black Americans decide between candidates in intraparty elections.

This dissertation examines the topic of social perceptions regarding political candidates at the intersection of race and gender. Within this project I analyze 1) the degree to which stereotypes are held at different points of this intersection; 2) the degree to which these stereotypes can be influenced by way of priming via common news reporting messages; and 3) the ways in which these stereotypes and perceptions influence evaluations of Black female political candidates and their electoral prospects. In order to examine these issues, I utilize data from two surveys I have designed: the 2011 Social Cognition and Evaluation Survey and the 2012 Political Candidate Evaluation and Social Beliefs Survey. The former gathers information regarding social and personal perceptions of "average" and "elite" Black women, White women, Black men, and White men, and the ways in which negative intersectional priming messages can influence the evaluation of each of these groups. The latter survey includes an embedded experiment in which respondents participate in two mock elections and candidate evaluations. One mock election includes a Black female with a relatively dark complexion as the fixed candidate and the other includes a Black female with a relatively light complexion as the fixed candidate, with each competing against either a White male, White female, or Black male opponent. Based on the data from the aforementioned surveys, I find that people engage in stereotyping in an intersectional, rather than a one-dimensional, manner. Consequently, Black women at different social status levels and with differing skin tones are subject to distinct intensities of the attribution of racialized, gendered, and intersectional stereotypes. In turn, the ways in which the voting public evaluates them as political candidates are influenced by these stereotypes.

Racial residential segregation is an enduring feature of America's urban landscape. Patterns of residence have become so divided along racial lines, in fact, that many social scientists have described this phenomenon as an "American Apartheid" that is justified and enforced in practice, if not codified in law. With the rise of public housing in the 1960s, the segregation of racial minorities, and particularly African Americans, reached a new level. Indeed, individuals living in public housing experience such a high degree of social and political isolation that they effectively became members of their own city within the larger metropolis.

This research examines racial segregation in public housing in Durham, a medium-sized city in North Carolina. Specifically, I sought to address why the majority of public housing projects in Durham are located in areas that are racially segregated and secondly, what role public policy has played in creating this outcome. To address this question, I utilized decennial census data from 1950 to 2000, with the tract level as the primary unit of analysis, and archival resources pertaining to housing policies in the 1960s. The conclusions reached are twofold. Firstly, the current high degree of segregation in the Southeast section of the city is the result of policy decisions on the part of the City of Durham in conjunction with the Durham Housing Authority in the late 1960s. Secondly, rising levels of segregation in northeast Durham is a consequence of the concentrated placement of public housing in this area in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the continuance of this policy today. Racial segregation in public housing in Durham is in this way an ongoing issue that profoundly affects not only the individuals living in public housing, but also political society at large.

This research project involves a comparative, cross-national study of truth and reconciliation commissions (TRCs) in countries around the world that have used these extra-judicial institutions to pursue justice and promote national reconciliation during periods of democratic transition or following a civil conflict marked by intense violence and severe human rights abuses. An important objective of truth and reconciliation commissions involves instituting measures to address serious human rights abuses that have occurred as a result of discrimination, ethnocentrism and racism. In recent years, rather than solely utilizing traditional methods of conflict resolution and criminal prosecution, transitional governments have established truth and reconciliation commissions as part of efforts to foster psychological, social and political healing.

The primary objective of this research project is to determine why there has been a proliferation of truth and reconciliation commissions around the world in recent decades, and assess whether the perceived effectiveness of these commissions is real and substantial. In this work, using a multi-method approach that involves quantitative and qualitative analysis, I consider the institutional design and structural composition of truth and reconciliation commissions, as well as the roles that these commissions play in the democratic transformation of nations with a history of civil conflict and human rights violations.

In addition to a focus on institutional design of truth and reconciliation commissions, I use a group identity framework that is grounded in social identity theory to examine the historical background and sociopolitical context in which truth commissions have been adopted in countries around the world. This group identity framework serves as an invaluable lens through which questions related to truth and reconciliation commissions and other transitional justice mechanisms can be explored. I also present a unique theoretical framework, the reconciliatory democratization paradigm, that is especially useful for examining the complex interactions between the various political elements that directly affect the processes of democratic consolidation and reconciliation in countries in which truth and reconciliation commissions have been established. Finally, I tackle the question of whether successor regimes that institute truth and reconciliation commissions can effectively address the human rights violations that occurred in the past, and prevent the recurrence of these abuses.

Despite the myriad legislative accomplishments of the Modern Civil RightsMovement, structural racial inequality has remained an enduring feature of American life. Tomes have been written attempting to explain why it is that racial inequality in the so-called “post-Civil Rights Era” remains so intractable. Key explanations have centered on the notion that although many white Americans have, since the 1960s, come to express more liberal racial attitudes, they have often failed to support key politics that would ostensibly create a more racially egalitarian society—a phenomenon referred to as the principle-policy gap. This dissertation offers a historical materialist framework for understanding the persistence of the principle-policy gap among white Americans—and contemporary white antiracism more generally—which I term the privatization of racial responsibility. Using historical narrative to show how political elites were instrumental in setting the terms upon which contemporary antiracism rests, and experimental methods to test the hypotheses generated by my theoretical framework, I elucidate the kinds of antiracist behaviors white Americans who are sympathetic to racially egalitarian ideals (in this case, white liberals) will engage in when they must either take responsibility for themselves and their families or take responsibility for racial equality—an arrangement which, I argue, is the primary source of the principle-policy gap among white liberal Americans.

This thesis explores the intersection of social science and judicial decision making. It examines to what extent, and in what contexts, judges utilize social science in reaching and bolstering their rulings. The thesis delves into three areas of law that are typically not grouped together--integration, gay rights, and capital punishment--in order to see the similarities and differences in the use of empirical findings. Analyzing the language in judicial opinions from family courts, district courts, circuit courts, and the United States Supreme Court enabled the emergence of trends. The opinions revealed that inconsistency in the use of social science may stem from how a given issue is framed, the tide of public opinion on an issue, and whether social science in that realm is settled or not. Application of these principles to the gay rights context suggests that if the Supreme Court were to hear a case on gay marriage, a national consensus on the issue would be more outcome-determinative than settled social science.

This dissertation examines Muslims in the United States and the way they negotiate the boundaries of their group identities. Muslims in the U.S. are an extremely diverse spectrum of Muslim communities with different histories, patterns of residence in the U.S and political ideologies. However, the current racial climate that Islamophobia has created, has racialized Muslims and targeted people across diverse groups with specific blanket stereotypes. How do Muslims, with such distinct cross-cutting cleavages, reconcile their distinct history with the external narratives about them? This dissertation examines how Muslims negotiate their identities – as Muslim, as American, as an ethnic minority- in a highly Islamophobic racial climate. I employ a mixed-methods analysis, drawing on 30 qualitative interviews and originally collected survey data to better understand how Muslims negotiate their different identities. I find that Muslims, across different levels of religious belief, identify more closely with a pan-Muslim identity. There are political implications to this attachment, as people who identify as being Muslim are more likely to be politically engaged, particularly in Muslim-specific political activities. Finally, I find that being American is not simply a national identity but a racialized identity that Muslims distance from identifying with when they feel they are being discriminated due to their identity.