There is less support for redistribution & race-targeted aid among blacks in the U.S. today than in the 70s; anti-black stereotypes have had consequences for political attitudes for whites, but for blacks too

Inequality, Stereotypes and Black Public Opinion: The Role of Distancing. Emily M. Wager. . http://www.emilymwager.com/uploads/1/2/7/2/127261100/inequality_stereotypes_and_black_public_opinion.pdf

Abstract: There is less support for redistribution and race-targeted aid among blacks in the U.S. today than in the 1970s, despite persistent and enduring racial and economic disparities. Why? I argue that anti-black stereotypes suggesting blacks are lazy and reliant on government assistance have not only had consequences for political attitudes of whites but blacks as well. I note that as stigmas persist, they can have durable effects on the groups they directly stigmatize. To combat being personally stereotyped, some members of stigmatized groups will practice “defensive othering,” where one accepts a negative stereotype of one’s own group and simultaneously distances oneself from that stereotype. I illustrate the ways in which defensive othering plays a role in black attitudes toward redistribution using individual and aggregate level survey data, as well as qualitative interviews

6 Conclusion
When talking to ordinary people, I observed how Americans, including blacks, expressed disapproval of the high level of access citizens have to government assistance, recited scripts about meritocracy, and brought up others they knew that had “abused the system.” However, these opinions must be placed in a broader historical context, one in which for decades whites have restricted blacks’ access to distributive and redistributive programs, reinforced racialized images of government assistance recipients and justified racial inequalities through claims of meritocracy. These racist messages are part of the “smog in the air” we all breathe.

This study makes the argument that the stigmatization of blacks as lazy recipients of government assistance has the potential to shape blacks’ own reported attitudes about the role of government in addressing inequalities. I argue this should be seen as a condition of internalized racial oppression, specifically “defensive othering,” which involves the acceptance of negative group stereotypes while simultaneously distancing oneself from that stereotype. Internalized oppression is not a reflection of weakness, ignorance or inferiority on the part of the subordinate group. Instead, as Pyke (2010) succinctly states, “all systems of inequality are maintained and reproduced, in part, through their internalization by the oppressed” (p. 552). This study shows that belief in blacks’ unwillingness to work is not an uncommon feature in black public opinion today. Consequently, acceptance of this stereotype among black individuals leads them to be significantly less demanding of race and nonrace based government aid. This study also suggests a media environment that disproportionately characterized the poor as lazy and black may help to explain the rise in blacks’ acceptance of in-group stereotypes.

There are several avenues for future research. First, scholars might consider what individual and contextual factors contribute to the acceptance of negative in-group stereotypes and the consequences for political attitudes. Variation in racial and socioeconomic contexts, such as neighborhoods, could very well lead to public opinion change (Cohen and Dawson, 1993; Gay, 2004). Future research would also benefit from examining more robust measures of media coverage by extending the time frame and examining the content of mainstream media as well as black media. Finally, I identify stereotypes as one possible reason for the shifts we see in black public opinion. Scholars might also consider how actual experiences with social services shape political attitudes. For example, qualitative researchers have found that social service providers can purposefully lead recipients to adopt more neoliberal attitudes (Woolford and Nelund, 2013).

This study serves several purposes. First, it aims to build a deeper understanding of racial minorities’ redistributive policy preferences in a literature where they are often ignored. This disregard for black public opinion is a part of a larger failure to recognize blacks as more than the object of whites’ resentment in the study of race in political science (Harris-Lacewell, 2003). Simply put, the public’s relatively weak demand for redistribution despite extreme inequality may not be able to be understood with only one theory. My explanation suggests that when blacks and whites are asked in surveys about redistributive policies, they are often not drawing on the same considerations. Given that blacks have been most negatively depicted in relation to these policies, they have more motivation than whites to distance themselves from freeloading stereotypes. Second, while American politics scholars have paid much attention to the role of racial biases in whites’ political attitudes, this study explores how racism can impact the attitudes of the marginally situated people racism targets. This fits in with a large literature that identifies the negative psychological and physiological consequences of stereotypes for members of stigmatized groups,19 but is rare in the study of political attitudes and behavior. Finally, in 19Some notable studies include Steele (2016); Blascovich et al. (2001); Burgess et al. (2010); Cohen and Garcia (2005); Lewis Jr and Sekaquaptewa (2016) this paper, I rely on an interpretive perspective to study public opinion, which encourages researchers to not analyze opinion and behavior as divorced from the historical and social context in which they take place.