Working Paper, 2024
Moving Beyond Linked Fate: A New Measure of Politicized Racial Identity
by Kaiyla Banks, Jeron Fenton, Jasanté Howard, Isaiah Johnson,
Burcu Kolcak, LaFleur Stephens-Dougan, Ismail White
Linked fate, the perception that due to historical and contemporary experiences of group disadvantage and discrimination, one’s life chances are inextricably linked to the status and fortunes of African Americans as a whole, has long been used to explain African Americans’ distinct political unity and policy views. Yet, despite its wide usage, linked fate is weakly associated with Black political behavior. Building on previous research on the limitations of linked fate (Gay et al 2016; McClain et al. 2009) we argue that linked fate does not predict African Americans’ political views reliably because the measure is apolitical and more appropriate for measuring social connectedness. In this paper, we rely on ANES data (2004 -2020) from ~ 2,800 Black respondents to create a multi-dimensional measure of a politicized racial identity (PRI). Our measure combines the linked fate survey item with the Black Americans feeling thermometer and two items from the racial resentment scale. We demonstrate that our PRI measure more reliably and powerfully explains a wide range of Black political views compared to linked fate. Our results indicate that PRI has strong explanatory power for explicitly racial policies (e.g., affirmative action), moderate explanatory power for implicitly racial policies (e.g., welfare), and weak explanatory power for nonracial policies (foreign policy). PRI also helps us to better understand variation in Black political views. These findings provide strong evidence that linked fate has limited explanatory scope.
Lab Presentations
- The lab will present its co-authored working paper (by Kaiyla Banks, Jeron Fenton, Jasanté Howard, Isaiah Johnson, LaFleur Stephens-Dougan, Ismail White) Moving Beyond Linked Fate: A New Measure of Politicized Racial Identity at NCOBPS 2023 on March 8th - March 11th, 2023.
- Prof. Ismail White gave a talk about his working project on co-racial voting at Lousiana State University on January 20, 2023.
- Dr. LaFleur Stephens-Dougan gave a talk in a panel focusing on the discussion of the US elections and their implications at Yale Politics on November 17, 2022.
- Prof. Ismail White gave a talk in a panel focusing on the discussion of the US elections and their implications at Princeton Politics on November 16, 2022.
- Prof. Ismail White presented his working paper at Rutgers Political Science Department's Emerging Trends speaker series on October 20, 2022.
- The lab presented its co-authored working paper (by Kaiyla Banks, Jeron Fenton, Jasanté Howard, Isaiah Johnson, LaFleur Stephens-Dougan, Ismail White) Moving Beyond Linked Fate: A New Measure of Politicized Racial Identity at SPIRE, Symposium on the Politics of Immigration, Race, and Ethnicity at the Emory University on October 7, 2022.
- The lab presented its co-authored working paper (by Sonya Chen, LaFleur Stephens-Dougan, Davin Lanier Phoenix) Shared Disadvantage: Intergroup Conflict? Or Intergroup Solidarity at the 2022 APSA Annual Meeting at Montréal, Quebec on September 17, 2022.
Header: © Jana Curcio, Skin Tones Series, 2019.