Comments on Enders 2019 "A Matter of Principle? On the Relationship Between Racial Resentment and Ideology"

The Enders 2019 Political Behavior article "A Matter of Principle? On the Relationship Between Racial Resentment and Ideology" interprets its results as "providing disconfirmatory evidence for the principled conservatism thesis" (p. 3 of the pdf). This principled conservatism thesis "asserts that adherence to conservative ideological principles causes what are interpret[ed] as more resentful responses to the individual racial resentment items, especially those that deal with subjects like hard work and struggle" (p. 5 of the pdf).

So how could we test whether adherence to conservative principles causes what are interpreted as resentful responses to racial resentment items? I think that a conservative principle informing a "strongly agree" response to the racial resentment item that "Irish, Italians, Jewish, and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same without any special favors" might be an individualism that opposes special favors to reduce inequalities of outcome, so that, if a White participant strongly agreed that Blacks should work their way up without special favors, then—to be principled—that White participant should also strongly agree that poor Whites should work their way up without special favors.

Thus, testing the principled conservatism thesis could involve asking participants the same racial resentment items with a variation in targets or a variation to a domain in which Blacks tend to outperform Whites. If there is a concern about social desirability affecting responses when participants are asked the same item with a variation in target or domain, the items could be experimentally manipulated and responses compared at an aggregate level. This type of analysis involved manipulating the target of racial resentment items to be Blacks or another group has recently been conducted and reported on in a paper by Carney and Enos, but this paper is not cited in Enders 2019, and I would have hoped that the peer reviewers would have requested or required a discussion of information in that paper that relates to the principled nature of conservatives' responses to racial resentment items.

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Instead of manipulating the target of racial resentment items, Enders 2019 tested the principled conservatism thesis with an analysis that assessed how responses to racial resentment items associated with attitudes about limited government and with preferences about federal spending on, among other things, public schools, child care, and the environment. From what I can tell, Enders 2019 assessed the extent to which participants are principled in a test in which principled conservative responses are only those responses in which responses expected from a conservative to racial resentment items match responses expected from a conservative to items measuring preferences about federal spending or match responses expected from a conservative to items measuring attitudes about limited government. As I think Enders 2019 suggests, this is a consistency across domains at the level of "conservatism" and is not a consistency across targets within the domain of the racial resentment items: "If I find that principled conservatism does not account for a majority of the variance in the racial resentment scale under these conditions, then I will have reasonably robust evidence against the principled conservatism thesis" (p. 7 of the pdf).

But I don't think that the level of "conservatism" is the correct level for assessing whether perceived racially prejudiced responses to racial resentment items reflect "adherence to (conservative) ideological principles" (p. 2 of the pdf). Enders 2019 indicates that "Critics argue that racially prejudiced responses to the items that compose the racial resentment scale are observationally equivalent to the responses that conservatives would provide" (abstract). However, at least for me, my criticism of the racial resentment items as producing unjustified inferences of racial bias is not limited to inferences about responses from self-identified conservatives: "This statement [about whether, if blacks would only try harder, they could be just as well off as whites] cannot be used to identify racial bias because a person who agreed with the statement might also agree that poor whites who try harder could be just as well off as middle-class whites" (p. 522 of this article). I don't perceive any reason why a person who supports increased federal spending on the public schools, child care, and the environment cannot also have a principled objection to special favors to reduce inequalities of outcome.

And even if "conservatism" were the correct level of analysis, I don't think that the Enders 2019 operationalizations of principled conservatism—as a preference for limited government and as a preference for decreased federal spending—are valid because, as far as I can tell, these operationalizations of principled conservatism are identical to principled libertarianism.

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Enders 2019 asks "Why else would attitudes about racial issues be distinct from attitudes about other policy areas, if not for the looming presence and substantive impact of racial prejudice?" (p. 21 of the pdf). I think the correct response is that the principles that inform attitudes about these other policy areas are distinct from the principles that inform attitudes about issues in the racial resentment items, to the extent that these attitudes even involve principles.

I don't think that the principle that "the less government, the better" produces conservative policy preferences about federal spending on national defense or domestic law enforcement, and I don't see a reason to assign to racial prejudice an inconsistency between support for increased federal spending in these domains and agreement that "the less government, the better". And I don't perceive a reason for racial prejudice to be assigned responsibility for a supposed inconsistency between responses to the claim that "the less government, the better" and responses to the racial resentment statements that "Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class" or that "...if blacks would only try harder they could be just as well off as whites", because, as far as I can tell, there is no inconsistency in which a preference for limited government compels particular responses to these racial resentment items.

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NOTES

1. Enders 2019 noted that: "More recently, DeSante (2013), utilizing an experimental research design, found that the most racially resentful whites, as opposed to less racially resentful whites, were more likely to allocate funds to offset the state budget deficit than allocated such funds to a black welfare applicant. This demonstrates a racial component of racial resentment, even accounting for principled conservatism" (p. 6). But I don't think that this indicates a demonstration of a racial component of racial resentment, because there is no indication whether the preference for allocating funds to offset the state budget deficit instead of allocating funds to welfare recipients occurred regardless of the race of the welfare recipients. My re-analysis of data for DeSante 2013 indicated that "...when comparing conditions with two White applicants and conditions with two Black applicants, there is insufficient evidence to support the inference of a difference in the effect of racial resentment on allocations to offset the state budget deficit" (pp. 5-6).

2. I sent the above comments to Adam Enders in case he wanted to comment.

3. After I sent the above comments, I saw this Robert VerBruggen article on the racial resentment measure. I don't remember seeing that article before, but it has a lot of good points and ideas.