Could America Become Mississippi?

The country’s demographic trends could lead to racially polarized electorates akin to the Deep South.

By Jamelle Bouie

Does a dramatic change in your social environment make you more conservative, and if so, what kind of change would it take?

Working at Northwestern University, psychologists Maureen Craig and Jennifer Richeson apply that question to demographic change, and, in particular, to white Americans vis-a-vis the prospect of a United States where the majority of Americans are drawn from today’s minorities. Does a threat to one’s status as the demographic “in-group” increase political conservatism? The answer, in short, is yes.

Using a nationally representative survey of self-identified politically “independent” whites, Craig and Richeson conducted three experiments. In the first, they asked respondents about the racial shift in California—if they had heard the state had become majority-minority. What they found was a significant shift toward Republican identification, which increased for those who lived closest to the West Coast.

In the second experiment, they focused on the overall U.S. shift with census projections of the national population. Again, they found that white Americans became more conservative—and more likely to endorse conservative policies—when they were aware of demographic changes that put them in the minority.

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http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/04/demographics_conservatism_and_racial_polarization_could_america_become_mississippi.html?