Racial Order, Racialized Responses: Interminority Politics in a Diverse Nation

Book excerpt: America's racial sands are quickly shifting, with parallel growth in theories to explain how varied groups respond, politically, to demographic changes. This Element develops a unified framework to predict when, why, and how racial groups react defensively toward others. America's racial groups can be arrayed along two dimensions: how American and how superior are they considered? This Element claims that location along these axes motivates political reactions to outgroups. Using original survey data and experiments, this Element reveals the acute sensitivity that people of color have to their social station and how it animates political responses to racial diversity.