Racial Sympathy and Its Political Consequences

Reversing course from a long tradition of studying racial antipathy, I argue that racial sympathy, defined as white distress over black misfortune, shapes public opinion among a nontrivial subset of white Americans. Using an original measure—the racial sympathy index—I find that sympathy motivates support for policies perceived to benefit, as well as opposition to policies perceived to harm, African Americans. Racial sympathy is distinct from a more general sympathy, as it does not shape opinion related to other groups. The concept is foremost a racial attitude; as evidence of this, I find that sympathy is activated when a policy draws attention to its black beneficiaries. In probing this effect, I find that even exposure to negative stereotypes of blacks does not extinguish the influence of sympathy. The consistent results across multiple national studies suggest that racial sympathy represents a distinct dimension of American racial attitudes.