The Race Card

Winner of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award "In this excellent study, Tali Mendelberg develops an original argument about the use of implicit racial appeals in political campaigns. She creatively deploys a variety of methods and offers important insights in whites' racial thinking and particularly into the ways modern politicians play upon anti-black racial prejudice and antagonism while retaining respectability... The book is an important contribution to political psychology: a case study in one critical realm of politics (interracial or ethnic relations) of how affect and cognition interact with political culture, processes, incentives, and institutions to shape political behavior at both the elite and mass levels. Unusually for a study so thoroughly grounded in social science methods, the book also treats and links its arguments to the history of U.S. race relations, adding to its value."--Robert Entman, Political Psychology "[A]n impressive and controversial analysis."--Scott Althaus, Harvard International Journal of Press and Politics 2002 "[G]roundbreaking on a number of levels and deserves attention from students of race, mass media effects, campaigns, elite behavior, and public opinion... It should be praised for the sheer volume of empirical evidence it presents and for the high risk of disconfirmation this poses for its central thesis. It should be read not only by those interested in the historical and contemporary role of racial appeals in modern American campaigns, but also by those seeking a model for rigorous, multimethodological, empirical social science research."--Nicholas Valentino, Public Opinion Quarterly "Mendelberg uses historical and experimental surveys and concludes that implicit communication about race is far more prevalent today among dominant groups and far more deadly because it is less visible than the overt racism of the 1960s. Mendelberg's book is a must read. She combines normative and quantitative analysis with self-reflection."--Choice "This book attempts something new and innovative within political science but it does so through a careful deployment of theoretical and methodological procedures acceptable to political scientists."--Andy R. Brown, Ethnic and Racial Studies "In The Race Card, Tali Mendelberg develops a comprehensive theory of the use of implicit racial messages in election campaigns and the relative effectiveness of these messages with voters... Mendelberg takes this thesis and rigorously tests it at each level of analysis... [Her] work is impressive. She has grounded a comprehensive theory of implicit racial messages in the literature on public opinion, the social psychology of prejudice, and the racial character of American political parties. She provides compelling evidence from a variety of sources: experiments, analysis of survey data, and content analysis... Her conclusions make a significant contribution to our understanding of how racial messages work in election campaigns. Her findings will contribute to sociologists working in the fields of race and ethnicity, mass media, and political sociology."--Matthew Schneirov, Contemporary Sociology "Mendelberg mines an impressive array of empirical evidence in support of her thesis... Her book merits a careful reading by sociologists, psychologists, political scientists, historians, and communications scientists interested in norms, racial attitudes, and political campaigns."--Felicia Pratto, American Journal of Sociology "The Race Card offers a methodologically rich and convincing account of the impact of subtle race cues in contemporary American politics. Although her thesis is a controversial one, Mendelberg develops a careful and cogent argument that racial attitudes can have a substantial effect on candidate evaluations--provided that candidates craft a racial appeal that appears to be about something other than race... The author deserves considerable credit for the ingenuity and care that went into her experimental designs... Virtually no one in this subfield has gone to greater lengths to ensure that a study occurred under the most realistic conditions possible... Mendelberg's book should be regarded as a major contribution to the field of race and politics. Although Mendelberg's thesis will undoubtedly be regarded as controversial in some circles, her book goes a long way in providing compelling evidence that race, and racial attitudes, still matter in contemporary American politics."--Vince Hutchings, American Political Science Review "By almost any definition this is a readable book... Mendelberg has made a substantive contribution to our understanding of the political and cultural implications for a nation whose majority cannot seem to find a model other than white or black."--Kenneth O'Reilly, Journal of Southern History