Study finds tea party can act as a political ‘racialization’ experience

[Tx4obama]

Study finds tea party can act as a political ‘racialization’ experience

Is the tea party motivated by racial animus over the election of the first non-white president in the United States? Many critics of the conservative movement think so.

Tea party supporters themselves have objected to such claims. They insist their movement is based on legitimate concerns about the size and role of the federal government. The tea party’s fierce opposition to President Barack Obama is only coincidental. They would be just upset if he was all-white rather than half-black.

But new research published June 25 in PLoS One suggests that racial concerns do play a role in support for tea party groups.

“We wanted to address a question on the minds of many: Do negative racial attitudes attract whites to the tea party movement? Our data suggest that prejudice may explain why some whites become movement supporters,” Eric D. Knowles of New York University, the lead author of the study, told PsyPost via email.

Knowles and his colleagues examined 316 white participants’ racial attitudes, ingroup identity, and identification with tea party over a period of nine months. The researchers found identification with the tea party was associated with anti-black prejudice, libertarian ideology, social conservatism, and belief the nation was in decline.

-snip-

Full article here: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/07/17/study-finds-tea-party-can-act-as-a-political-racialization-experience/

[nxylas]

1. I think we all knew that, but good to see it backed up with data

Of course the Tea Klux Klan will just use it as proof of the conspiracy against them, and of how reading books other than the Bible turns you into a Marxist America-hater. Burn down all the universities (except Liberty University etc) now!

[Igel]

3. And if that's all that's important to you, that's all you'll see.

The researchers saw a number of different issues driving support, not just one.

They also drew a possible inference. That if you have racial bias and want to support the TP, then the way to legitimize this is by pointing to minority cultures as a reason for the nation's decline. There's research for that.

But there's also research saying that if you have a problem--the nation's decline--that you will find a cause for it, and that cause typically won't be yourself. Who else could it be? Minorities, ow that the USSR and "global communism" are gone. So the researchers' inference is as rock solid as their assumption and until some evidence shows which came first--before the folks joined the TP--it'll be a hard sell except among those that have long since known the Truth and just need their beliefs confirmed.

More distressing is their conclusion that TP support/association leads to increased racialization of the members. This should have been predictable, because when you form a group a common history and shared interpretation of that history usually develops to maintain the group's identity and boundaries. The interpretation seldom says you're wrong; it usually says others are wrong and you're the good guys. If you want solidarity, you want a common history. This is some good post-Soviet research. The more "unshared common histories" a society has, the weaker the society and the more easily polarized it is. Switzerland holds together with 4 rather different languages and cultures because they have a common history and intepretation of that history, with common goals based on that interpretation. Czechoslovakia couldn't hold together with two very similar languages and cultures because they had two opposing "common histories" and interpretations. Kenya's problems have the same reason--Turkana, Kikuyu, Luo and others. Opposition to the British is always a nice uniter but masks what's under the surface. Rwanda is an egregious example.

jugoslavija broke up when the official "shared history and its interpretation" collapsed. All that was left were 6 (or more) smaller group histories and interpretations, all of which were self-justifying, viewed the self as victim or hero and others as only oppressors or subject peoples.

If you want to see what makes a society and subgroups in it tick, you have to look under the surface.

[blkmusclmachine]

2. Duh.

[Populist_Prole]

4. Yes, and yes. But

I have followed this "movement" with interest ( and disgust ) and continue to. It is clear to me that after the initial PR launch of it as a movement based primarily on non-partisan libertarianism ( which in itself is not good IMO ), it did not take long at all for it to be just a re-branding and consolidation of reactionaries. It was that fast and that obvious.

[Javaman]

5. Read my sig line. nt