Recent racial attitude research has focused on whites' increasing support for the principles of racial equality and lack of support for programs meant to bring about racial equality. As one explanation for this gap some researchers have hypothesized that a new form of symbolic racism with origins in early-learned feelings of individualism and antiblack affect is taking the place of traditional prejudice. According to symbolic racism theory, whites oppose programs such as affirmative action out of moral resentment toward blacks for not living up to traditional protestant values. However, longitudinal studies of racial attitudes continue to focus on whites increased support for the principles of equality. No study has focused on symbolic racism over time. Using data from the American National Election Studies I analyze symbolic racism among whites from the years 1986-2000 by decomposing the time trend into its attitudinal change and cohort replacement components. Results of the analyses support the view that symbolic racism is not decreasing, and has actually increased slightly since 1986. Results of the analysis do not support the view that symbolic racism has origins in early-learned feelings such as antiblack affect. In fact, the effect of antiblack affect on symbolic racism is decreasing over time as symbolic racism is increasing. Based on this finding, an alternative conceptualization of symbolic racism that places the origins of racial prejudice in competition between groups for status and not in feelings and emotions is offered. / Master of Science

Political and historical literature largely attributes the political development of the Southern Strategy to the 1964 Barry Goldwater and 1968 Richard Nixon presidential campaigns. The Southern Strategy is commonly explained as the Republican Party’s 1964 campaign decision to abandon Black voters in the North to expand its national political base of support by seeking White voters outside of the South who were angry with the political advancements of the Civil Rights Movement (Aistrup 1996, 5; Bass and DeVries 1976, 27). Discussions of Ronald Reagan’s role in the development of the Southern Strategy describe him more as a beneficiary rather than a significant influence in the Republican Party’s efforts to nationalize Southern racial politics (Aistrup 1996, 12; Black and Black 2002, 4). However, his speeches equated social spending with racial stigmas and pathological behavior. The fusion of economic issues and racial stereotypes has influenced future presidential politics since 1964 with Reagan’s “A Time for Choosing” speech (Reagan 1964). The racialized language used by Reagan in his speech has influenced the rhetorical frame of the Southern Strategy in the last six decades. This qualitative study utilizes content analysis to examine the impact of racially coded language of Democratic and Republican presidents, from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama, when they argue the legitimacy of the social safety net. The study seeks to expand the knowledge of the prevalence of the politics of pathology, which is defined as the belief that social spending encourages individuals to engage in immoral behavior and is used by presidents to mitigate or cultivate racial resentment.

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