Looking for “Threats” in all the Wrong Places: A Critique of the Current Use of Race as a Contextual Effect in Political Science

Abstract

This paper examines race and contextual effects, especially as applied to the study of racial politics. Contextual analysis has proven to be an extremely useful technique in political science. Yet there are instances in which it may be misapplied. I argue that some of the findings in the extant literature fail to specify properly the mechanisms by which contextual effects operate, and that such a failure leads to incomplete the orizing about racial politics. I make two basic arguments. The first is that the major theoretical element, group conflict, is under‐examined as long as we think of conflict between groups only in terms of mass public attitudes. I suggest, instead, that we pay more attention to elite strategies. The second argument is that group theories seem less generalizable as long as we concentrate on Whites as the only relevant political actors. In summary, I contend that politics are not given priority in contextual models of race. Moving beyond some of the current, more standard applications will allow us to demonstrate empirically a richer picture of how race shapes the political options of certain groups in America, especially Blacks and other minority groups.