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By: Courtney J. Nava

Abstract:Ìý

To whom are white Americans willing to extend basic aspects of democratic expression?
This project is motivated by the rise of racial tensions in the wake of the Black Lives Matter
protests and the lack of empirical studies looking at white Americans’ political tolerance of Black
Americans. I argue that white Americans will be more supportive of the civil liberties of their
fellow white Americans, and that priming them to consider Black Americans’ civil liberties will
reduce their support for such protections. I also examine negative stereotypes of Black Americans
and levels of white identity as potential mechanisms underlying this relationship. To test these
expectations, I conduct three web experiments on Lucid Theorem with large, high quality samples of
respondents. I use linear regression and heterogeneous treatment effect tests to determine the extent to which white Americans are (or are not) tolerant toward Black Americans, and how different
mechanisms condition this. Overall, I find that the majority of white Americans in my samples
are supportive of Black civil liberty expression. However, a substantial and coalesced minority
appears to be unsupportive: those with negative stereotype ascription, strong white identity, and
Republican partisanship. The results of this project speak to the willingness of white Americans
to grant democracy to Black Americans, and the mechanisms through which this relationship is
conditioned.
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