The last chapter revealed important changes in the white vote. Experience with black incumbency increased white support for black candidates and altered the nature of the white vote in biracial elections. These changes imply that whites are learning from their experience with black leadership, but the fact that some white voters begin to choose black candidates over white candidates does not tell us exactly what whites learn – how their views toward blacks change. The goal of this chapter is to focus directly on white views to try to understand what white voters learn during and after the transition from white to black leadership. The information that black incumbency provides appears to have a broad impact on white views. The tests analyzed here suggest that experience with black incumbents leads to positive changes in how many whites perceive black leadership and the larger black community. The changes are not always dramatic, but they are real. The results also show that everyone does not learn the same things from black leadership: among whites, Republicans and Democrats, in particular, appear to learn differently, and the result is a growing partisan divide on matters of race.

ASSESSING WHITE ATTITUDES

To assess changes in white racial attitudes and policy preferences under black mayors, I compared the attitudes of a representative sample of white respondents in cities with a white mayor to the attitudes of a similar sample of white respondents in cities with a black mayor.