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SOMETHING IN COMMON?

Elite Messages, Partisanship, and Latino Perceptions of Commonality with African Americans1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 December 2012

Kevin Wallsten  and
Tatishe M. Nteta
Kevin Wallsten
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, California State University, Long Beach
Tatishe M. Nteta*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
*
*Dr. Tatishe Nteta, Department of Political Science, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 238 Thompson Tower, Amherst, MA 01003. E-mail: nteta@polsci.umass.edu
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Abstract

Does elite rhetoric influence how Latinos view their relationship with African Americans? In this paper, we provide a systematic empirical assessment of the impact that elite messages have on Latino perceptions of economic and political commonality by drawing on two unique data sources: the 2006 Latino National Survey (LNS) and a survey experiment embedded in the September 2010 Latino Decisions Tracking Poll (LDS). Our analysis reveals that the attitudinal effects of exposure to elite messages are strongly conditioned by one's political partisanship. To be more precise, we find that although exposure to elite messages leads Democrats to express more in common politically with African Americans, it fails to exert any significant influence among other groups and on different dependent variables. Specifically, the evidence presented here shows that reception of persuasive messages from like-minded political leaders contributes nothing to our understanding of how attitudes on economic commonality are formed and very little to our understanding of the source from which perceptions of political commonality arise among Republicans and Independents. In addition to making significant contributions to the literatures on commonality, multiracial coalitions and public opinion, these findings also make a strong case for further evaluating the role of political leadership in forging bonds of cooperation across racial lines.

Keywords

Intergroup RelationsCommonalityElitesPolitical Leadership
Type
Special Feature
Information
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , Fall 2012 , pp. 355 - 374
Copyright
Copyright © W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research 2012

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Footnotes

1

Previous versions of this paper were presented at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the Midwestern Political Science Association and the 2007 Latino National Survey Junior Scholars Conference. The authors would like to thank Michael Crowley and Kate McDonald for their research assistance on the project. The authors also thank Matt Barreto, Regina Freer, Marie Gottschalk, Ramon Gutierrez, Jennifer Hochschild, Jennifer Lee, Paula McClain, Mark Sawyer, Gary Segura, Jill Greenlee, and Rachel Van-Sickle Ward for their helpful comments and technical assistance on the project.

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