(Group) Power Threat

Overview

• What is group (power) threat?
• Why does it matter?
• How is it studied?

What Is It?

When competitions for power are viewed in terms of majority- vs. minority- group interests

• V.O. Key (Southern Politics in State and Nation, 1949)
• Hubert M. Blalock (Toward a Theory of Minority-Group Relation, 1967)

Often compared to the contact hypothesis (Gordon Allport, The Nature of Prejudice, 1954)

What Is It?

What Is It?

The moving parts (i.e., the concepts underlying the “power threat” logic)

• predictor: shifts in an area’s [racial] balance of power (often defined in terms of minority density)
• outcome: excerting social control over Blacks (via discrimination, segregation, policies, law enforcement practices, etc.)
• mediator: perceived threat (economic, political, etc.) stemming from demographic power shifts

What Is It?

In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925), Tom Buchanan says this to his wife Daisy:

“[t]he idea is if we don’t look out, the [W]hite race will be – will be utterly submerged…It is up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things.”

What Is It?

Ashley Jardina (White Identity Politics, 2019):

“When the dominant status of [W]hites relative to racial and ethnic minorities is secure and unchallenged, [W]hite identity likely remains dormant…”

What Is It?

Ashley Jardina (White Identity Politics, 2019):

“…When [W]hites perceive their group’s dominant status is threatened or their group is unfairly disadvantaged, however, their racial identity may become salient and politically relevant.”

Why Is It Important?

• threat is one of the oldest lines of race-politics research (and there is renewed interest in it these days)
• it merges studies of race, politics, and geography
• when it comes to understanding threat: context matters!
• we still don’t fully understand how it works (see McClerking 2001, “Looking for Threats…”)

How scholars study threat

Some things to ponder WRT this week’s readings…

• the literature focuses on how Whites feel about minorities
• researchers typically study threat using measures of minority density

Do you agree with this focus and measurement strategy?