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WHITE RESPONSE TO BLACK DEATH

A Racialized Theory of White Attitudes Towards Gun Control

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2020

Hannah Walker ,
Loren Collingwood  and
Tehama Lopez Bunyasi
Hannah Walker*
Affiliation:
Department of Government, University of Texas at Austin
Loren Collingwood
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of New Mexico
Tehama Lopez Bunyasi
Affiliation:
The Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, George Mason University
*
Corresponding author: Hannah Walker, University of Texas at Austin, E-mail: hlwalker@utexas.edu, Phone: 360-521-7277
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Abstract

In the United States, Blacks overwhelmingly bear the brunt of gun violence. While Blacks are more likely to favor gun restrictions than are Whites, the influence of Black gun death on Whites’ attitudes about gun control has not been investigated. We advance a theory to explain White response to Black firearm fatalities: Black gun death is explicitly and implicitly racialized in the public discourse and imagination. The roots of the gun control debate are themselves likewise racialized, and portrayals of Black gun death has the potential to tap latent racial biases among Whites. As a consequence, exposure to routinized Black gun death either fails to move White opinion, or moves Whites to greater support for gun rights. The influence of race on White public opinion is particularly concerning in an era when health officials consider gun death a public health crisis. First, we evaluate this theory with a regression discontinuity (RDD) analysis of the effects of a highly salient gun death of a young Black boy in Chicago on Whites’ opinions about gun control. Relative to White people interviewed before the death, White people interviewed after the death record greater opposition to gun control. Second, we fielded a survey experiment, exposing respondents to the reported gun homicide of either Black or White thirteen-year-old boys. Relative to a control, respondents in the Black death condition are unmoved, whereas respondents in the White death condition report greater levels of support for gun control. Implications are discussed.

Keywords

Gun ControlRacial AttitudesGun ViolenceRacial ResentmentPublic Health
Type
State of the Art
Information
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , Spring 2020 , pp. 165 - 188
Copyright
© 2020 Hutchins Center for African and African American Research

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