Does Race Trump Ethnicity? A Test of the Black Immigrant Invisibility Hypothesis in America
with Dr. Leann Mclaren, Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow
How many candidates with “invisible identities” use their identities in campaigns? Are these strategies effective amongst racial in-group and out-group voters in America? Black politicians’ racial identities are generally “visible,” but not all parts of a candidate’s identity are always apparent. In this paper, I argue that Black immigrant politicians represent a case of candidates with “invisible identities” that are not phenotypically prominent but are politically meaningful in campaigns. Black immigrant candidates may benefit from strategically leveraging their immigrant identity in campaigns. To evaluate the effectiveness of this identity strategy, I present two survey experiments varying the extent to which Black and white immigrants mention their invisible identities as immigrants on dimensions of candidate support. I find that for both white and Black Americans, race trumps the effects of ethnicity. Black Americans will still support the Black immigrant candidate regardless of whether he emphasizes his immigrant identity. White Americans also do not shift support based on whether it is apparent that the Black candidate is an immigrant. Overall, race and partisan identity were the most robust cues conditioning support. These results suggest that when Black immigrants decide to emphasize their immigrant identity, this identity cue alone is not yet strong enough to trump the effects of perceived racial identity in conditioning support among white or Black voters. These results may explain how Black and white voters perceived and felt motivated to vote for Kamala Harris, the first Black woman to run for President of the United States who was also the daughter of immigrants.
Where: SNF Agora Conference Room and Zoom