The Intersection of Racial and Partisan Discrimination: Evidence from a Correspondence Study of Four-Year Colleges
Abstract
Social decisions are often imbued with biases that can lead to discrimination against certain groups of people. Racial minorities frequently find themselves on the receiving end of such discrimination. Recent work also reveals partisan bias such that members of one political party unfairly favor their copartisans or discriminate against members of the other party. In this article, we use an e-mail correspondence study to explore the impact of racial and partisan discrimination in higher education. We find no direct evidence of a racial or political bias; however, we do find that African Americans who reference politics in any way receive substantially fewer responses. This coheres with the theory of racial threat: members of a majority group are averse to minorities who might threaten their political, economic, or social status.
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White individuals, presumably due to threat, exhibit discriminatory behaviors in excluding Black individuals from the political sphere.
“More directly relevant to backsliding, Druckman and Shafranek (2020) show that White individuals, presumably due to threat, exhibit discriminatory behaviors in terms of excluding Black individuals from the political sphere, with obvious implications for participatory inclusiveness.”
From How to study democratic backsliding (2024) · cites this paper as Druckman and Shafranek (2020)
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- Authors
- Druckman, J. N., & Shafranek, R. M.
- Affiliations
- Northwestern University (US)
- Venue
- The Journal of Politics
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Press
- Published
- 2020-10-01
- Volume
- 82
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 1602-1606
- ISSN
- 0022-3816 (ISSN-L)
- 1468-2508
- OpenAlex
- W2900563918
- Cited by
- 14
- References
- 25
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 3
- FWCI
- 2.34
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- The Journal of Politics (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Names, Identity, and Discrimination Research
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Electoral Systems and Political Participation
- Keywords
- racial discrimination, political bias, African Americans, university admission, four-year colleges, racial threat theory
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