1 - Anger in Black and White

Summary

Aided by illustrative anecdotes from the worlds of politics, journalism and culture, Chapter One dives into the scholarship on the role of emotions in shaping political behavior to establish the questions at the heart of the manuscript. How does race moderate the emergence of anger, and its impact on political behavior? What is the racial anger gap, and what are its implications for black Americans’ capacity to achieve their policy goals? What are its implications for partisan politics? What factors—both psychological and structural—work to constrain the emergence and translation of political anger to political action among African Americans? Finally, do positive emotions such as hope and pride shape African American decisions to participate in politics in a manner different from their white counterparts? This chapter introduces a theoretical framework that connects the distinct racial lenses through which black and white Americans view the political environment to the divergent set of emotional sentiments they generally carry within that environment. The emotional sentiment of resignation exhibited by African Americans is the root cause of the anger gap, laying the foundation for the exploration of the causes and consequences of this gap in U.S. politics.