Trickle-down racism: Trump's effect on whites’ racist dehumanizing attitudes

Abstract

Reported hate crimes against Black people surged following Trump's election. While only a relatively small fraction of Americans committed these abhorrent actions, we show that Trump's victory had broader effects on the attitudes of the larger white public. Specifically, Trump altered the extent to which white survey respondents describe Black people in dehumanizing ways. We report findings from a two-wave national survey in which white respondents rated Black people on a dehumanizing attitudes scale before and after the 2016 presidential election. Trump supporters rated Black people as less "evolved” in the post-election wave than they rated Black people in the pre-election wave. Conversely, Trump opponents rated Black people as more "evolved" in the post-election wave than in the pre-election wave. These findings suggest Trump's victory had a polarizing effect on whites' expression of dehumanizing views of Black people, with important implications for scholars' understanding of the sociopolitical factors that can affect dehumanizing attitudes and the normalization of racism in the U.S. today.