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Discrimination and resentment: examining American attitudes about Native Americans

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2021

Raymond Foxworth Open the ORCID record for Raymond Foxworth [Opens in a new window]  and
Carew Boulding Open the ORCID record for Carew Boulding [Opens in a new window]
Raymond Foxworth*
Affiliation:
First Nations Development Institute, Longmont, CO, USA
Carew Boulding
Affiliation:
University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: rfoxworth@firstnations.org
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Abstract

What shapes Americans' attitudes toward and about Native Americans? Public opinion research acknowledges that race and ethnicity are a factor in shaping US public opinion. Native Americans have been almost entirely excluded from this research. But we do know that, despite being a relatively small population, the general public holds stereotypes and false narratives about Native Americans that have been perpetuated by popular culture, education curriculum, and national myths. In this paper, we use new and original data collected under the Reclaiming Native Truth project to examine the factors that shape attitudes toward Native Americans. More specifically, we examine individual and contextual factors that shape views of discrimination against Native Americans and resentment toward Native Americans. We find that political ideology (liberal versus conservative) and the reliance on Native American stereotypes are factors most consistently associated with resentment and attitudes about Native American discrimination, although direct personal experiences and factual knowledge also matter. Our findings contribute to conversations about attitudes toward racial and ethnic minority groups and emerging scholarship on the role of political attitudes in settler-colonial societies.

Keywords

DiscriminationNative American resentmentNative Americanspublic opinionstereotypes
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , March 2022 , pp. 9 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Race, Ethnicity, and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association

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