Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T16:01:21.042Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

WORLDS APART: Blacks and Whites React to Hurricane Katrina

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 August 2006

Leonie Huddy  and
Stanley Feldman
Leonie Huddy
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Stony Brook University
Stanley Feldman
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Stony Brook University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Hurricane Katrina was a natural disaster that destroyed New Orleans, a major U.S. city, and it is reasonable to expect all Americans to react with sympathy and support for the disaster's victims and efforts to restore the city. From another vantage point, however, Hurricane Katrina can be seen more narrowly, as a disaster that disproportionately afflicted the poor Black inhabitants of New Orleans. Past research demonstrates a large racial divide in the support of issues with clear racial overtones, and we examine the possibility of a racial divide in reactions to Katrina using data from a national telephone survey of White and Black Americans. We find large racial differences in sympathy for the hurricane's victims, the adequacy of the federal government's response, and support for proposed solutions to mend hurricane-ravaged New Orleans, verifying the racial nature of the disaster. Blacks viewed the hurricane victims more positively than did Whites, drew a sharper distinction between and felt more sympathy for those stranded than for those who evacuated New Orleans, and were substantially more supportive of government efforts to improve the situation of hurricane victims and rebuild New Orleans. This racial gap is as large as any observed in recent polls; persists even after controlling for education, income, and other possible racial differences; and documents more fully differences that were hinted at in public opinion polls reported at the time of the disaster. We spell out the implications of this divide for racial divisions within U.S. politics more generally.

Keywords

Racial AttitudesRacial DifferencesPublic OpinionHurricane Katrina
Type
STATE OF THE ART
Information
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , March 2006 , pp. 97 - 113
Copyright
© 2006 W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

This research was supported by Grants SES-030318800 and SES-0555068 from the National Science Foundation and a presidential award from the Russell Sage Foundation.

References

REFERENCES

Bobo, Lawrence D. and Devon Johnson (2000). Racial attitudes in a prismatic metropolis: Mapping identity, stereotypes, competition, and vies on affirmative action. In L. D. Bobo, M. L. Oliver, J. H. Johnson, Jr., and A. Valenzeual, Jr. (Eds.), Prismatic Metropolis: Inequality in Los Angeles, pp. 81–163. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Bobo, Lawrence D. and James R. Kluegel (1993). Opposition to race-targeting: Self-interest, stratification ideology, or racial attitudes? American Sociological Review, 58: 443–464.Google Scholar
Cook, Fay L. and Edith J. Barrett (1992). Support for the American Welfare State. New York: Columbia University Press.
Dawson, Michael C. (1994). Behind the Mule: Race and Class in African-American Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Dovidio, John F. and Samuel L. Gaertner (1986). Prejudice, discrimination, and racism: Historical trends and Contemporary approaches. In J. F. Dovidio and S. L. Gaertner (Eds.), Prejudice, discrimination and racism, pp. 1–34. Orlando, FL: Academic Press.
Gay, Claudine (2004). Putting race in context: Identifying the environmental determinants of Black racial attitudes. American Political Science Review, 98(4): 547–562.Google Scholar
Huddy, Leonie (2003). Group Identity and Political Cohesion. In David O. Sears, Leonie Huddy, and Robert Jervis (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology, pp. 511–558. New York: Oxford University Press.
Huddy, Leonie, Stanley Feldman, and Sarah Dutton (2006). Not So Simple: The Role of Religion in the 2004 Presidential Election. Public Opinion Pros, January. 〈http://www.publicopinionpros.com/features/2006/jan/huddyns.asp〉 (accessed June 2006).
Jackman, Mary (1994). The Velvet Glove: Paternalism and Conflict in Gender, Class, and Race Relations. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Hurwitz, Jon and Mark Peffley (2005). Explaining the Great Racial Divide: Perceptions of Fairness in the U.S. Criminal Justice System. Journal of Politics, 67(3): 762–783.Google Scholar
Kinder, Donald R. and Lynn M. Sanders (1996). Divided by Color: Racial Politics and Democratic Ideals. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Kinder, Donald R. and Nicholas Winter (2001). Exploring the Racial Divide: Blacks, Whites, and Opinion on National Policy. American Journal of Political Science, 45: 439–456.Google Scholar
Kluegel, James R. and Eliot R. Smith (1986). Beliefs about Inequality: Americans' Views of What is and What ought to be, Social Institutions and Social Change. New York: A. de Gruyter.
Nelson, Thomas E. and Donald R. Kinder (1996). Issue Frames and Group-Centrism in American Public Opinion. Journal of Politics, 58(4): 1055–1078.Google Scholar
Schuman, Howard, Charlotte Steeh, Lawrence D. Bobo, and Maria Krysan (1997). Racial Attitudes in America: Trends and Interpretations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Sigelman, Lee and Susan Welch (1991). Black Americans' Views of Racial Inequality: The Dream Deferred. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Skitka, Linda J. and Phillip E. Tetlock (1993). Providing public assistance: Cognitive and motivational processes underlying liberal and conservative policy preferences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65(6): 1205–1223.Google Scholar
Tajfel, Henri (1981). Human Groups and Social Categories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tajfel, Henri and John C. Turner (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. G. Austin and S. Worchel (Eds.), The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations, pp. 7–24. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole.
Tate, Katherine (1993). From Protest to Politics: The New Black Voters in American Elections. New York: Russell Sage.
Tuch, Steven A., Lee Sigelman, and Jack K. Martin (1997). Fifty Years after Myrdal: Blacks' Racial Policy Attitudes in the 1990s. In Steven A. Tuch and Jack K. Martin (Eds.), Racial Attitudes in the 1990s, pp. 226–237. Westport, CT: Praeger.
Turner, John C., Michael A. Hogg, Penelope J. Oakes, Stephen D. Reicher, and Margaret S. Wetherell (1987). Rediscovering the Social Group: A Self-categorization Theory. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Welch, Susan, Lee Sigelman, Timothy Bledsoe, and Michael Coombs (2001). Race and Place: Race Relations in an American City. New York: Cambridge University Press.