| Abstract: | To date, little is known about the precise impact of raciallycoded words and phrases. Instead, most of what we know aboutracialized messages comes from studies that focus on pictorialracial cues (for example, the infamous "Willie Horton" ad) oron messages with an extensive textual narrative that is lacedwith implicit racial cues. Because in a "post-Horton" era strategicuse of racially coded words will often be far more subtle thanthose explored in past studies, we investigate the power ofa single phrase believed by many to carry strong racial connotations:"inner city." We do so by embedding an experiment in a nationalsurvey of whites, where a random half of respondents was askedwhether they support spending money for prisons (versus antipovertyprograms) to lock up "violent criminals," while the other halfwas asked about "violent inner city criminals." Consistent withthe literature on issue framing, we find that whites’racial attitudes (for example, racial stereotypes) were muchmore important in shaping preferences for punitive policieswhen they receive the racially coded, "inner city" question.Our results demonstrate how easy it is to continue "playingthe race card" in the post–Willie Horton era, as wellas some of the limits of such framing effects among whites withmore positive racial attitudes. |
