LaFleur Stephens-Dougan, "Race to the Bottom: How Racial Appeals Work in American Politics" (U Chicago Press, 2020)

New Books in African American Studies · Aug 23, 2021 · 50m

In Race to the Bottom: How Racial Appeals Work in American Politics (U Chicago Press, 2020), LaFleur Stephens-Dougan argues that we focus on the use of negative racial appeals by the Republican Party, while ignoring the incentives that exist for some Democratic candidates to use race as much as, if not more than Republican candidates. The conventional wisdom is that a Democratic candidate would never be incentivized to invoke race and activate negative racial predispositions. Yet, according to the author, Democratic politicians regularly invoke negative stereotypes about African Americans. On…