The Geography of the Immigration Backlash

This chapter examines whether demographics influences white attitudes toward immigration. It asks whether living near heavy concentrations of immigrants and Latinos is threatening enough to produce a reaction by white Americans; that is, whether context is driving at least part of white America's response to immigration. It shows that white attitudes are strongly and consistently correlated with the size and growth of the state Latino population on a range of immigrant-related policies and white partisanship. Whites who live in states with more Latinos are more punitive, less supportive of social welfare and other public services, and generally more conservative than whites in other states. Whites in those same states are also significantly more likely to support the Republican Party.

Modifying ethnic attitudes in young children

Due to their sociocognitive limitations, children between the ages of 4 and 8 years tend to resist antibias messages from others. The purpose of this study was to examine if children would be more responsive to an antibias message as a function of the race of the communicator, the strength of the antibias message, and their ability to reconcile different perspectives. As children’s inferences of communicators’ attitudes constitute an unintended message, we assessed children’s inferences of communicators’ Black and White attitudes before and after the intervention. Children’s own attitudes and cognitive elaboration of the antibias message were assessed after the intervention. Very few children were able to reconcile different ethnic perspectives. Results further revealed that communicators were inferred to hold more positive attitudes after the intervention, but that this was largely due to an increase in the ingroup communicator’s inferred White attitudes and when the message was weak. Moreover, no difference was observed for children’s own attitudes and cognitive elaboration of the message. Results are discussed with respect to social cognitive barriers that result in children’s distortion or dismissal of antibias messages.