Anti-egalitarians for Obama? Group-dominance motivation and the Obama vote

The election of the first Black president was a watershed moment in American race relations, and many Obama voters saw their choice as affirming and furthering the dream of racial equality. However, the present study provides evidence that Obama also garnered votes from an unlikely source: those wishing to maintain racial disparities. Data from a longitudinal study of the election suggest that, while some anti-egalitarian voters opposed Obama due to his perceived ‘‘foreignness,” others voted for him in order to underwrite the hierarchy-enhancing claim that US racism has been eliminated. Anti-egalitarianism was only associated with an increased tendency to vote for Obama among individuals who claimed that his victory signals the end of racism. 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Perhaps more than any presidential election in recent memory, the 2008 contest between Barack Obama and John McCain engaged voters’ hopes, fears, and motivations concerning the future landscape of American society. Without doubt, Mr. Obama drew support from individuals who hoped his victory would symbolize, and even facilitate, the dissolution of White-over-Black dominance in the United States. We suggest, however, that those wishing to maintain the hierarchy did not uniformly oppose Obama. Anti-egalitarian desires can motivate individuals to embrace policies and candidates they regard as ‘‘hierarchy-enhancing,” or likely to preserve existing patterns of intergroup inequality (Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, & Malle, 1994; Sidanius, Levin, Federico, & Pratto, 2001; Sidanius & Pratto, 1993). Thus, the relationship between anti-egalitarianism and support for a given candidate should vary as a function of the perceived social consequences of his or her election. We argue that ambiguity concerning President Obama’s effects on the hierarchy may have produced conflicting preferences among voters motivated to maintain the hierarchy. The present longitudinal study suggests that anti-egalitarian motivation functioned—through distinct pathways—both to increase and decrease voters’ preferences for Mr. Obama. The dominance–vote relationship To many voters, an Obama victory promised a symbolic and substantive challenge to the racial hierarchy. The mere existence of a Black president would undermine the prejudicial belief that African Americans are incapable of ascending to the highest echell rights reserved. lons of power. Moreover, Mr. Obama’s subordinate-group status might have created an expectation that he would pursue policies designed to undermine the racial hierarchy (e.g., affirmative action). Thus, many of those interested in maintaining the hierarchy may have been motivated to oppose, or at least not support, Obama’s candidacy. This proposition is consistent with research linking dominance motives to anxiety over minority gains in political power (Bobo, 2000) and to support for conservative political candidates (Pratto, Stallworth, & Sidanius, 1997). Anti-egalitarian sentiment may have led many to oppose Obama; yet these individuals likely would not wish to recognize, or have others recognize, dominance motives as the basis for their opposition. Social dominance theory suggests that individuals rationalize opposition to hierarchy-attenuating policies or candidates in terms of ‘‘legitimizing myths” (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999, 2004). Consequently, voters may have cloaked their motives in more ‘‘legitimate” objections to Obama, including the notions that he is an Arab (Babington, 2008), a socialist (Lind, 2008), unpatriotic (Powell, 2008), or a Black radical (Brown, 2008). Such beliefs, which together express a suspicion that Obama is ‘‘foreign” (either to American values or literally), may mediate any relationship between dominance motives and opposition to Obama (cf. Federico & Sidanius, 2002). While some anti-egalitarian voters likely opposed Obama, we suggest that others might have found his candidacy appealing. An Obama victory might be seen to support the claim that racism has been eliminated and racial equity achieved in the United States. Indeed, Ward Connerly, a prominent social activist, took Obama’s support among Whites as proof of racism’s demise: ‘‘How can you say there is institutional racism when people in Nebraska vote for a guy who is a self-identified black man?” 966 E.D. Knowles et al. / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 45 (2009) 965–969 (Williams & Negrin, 2008). Similarly, former US Secretary of Education William Bennett claimed that Obama’s victory meant that ‘‘[y]ou don’t take any excuses anymore from anybody who says, ‘The deck is stacked, I can’t do anything, there’s so much in-built this and that’” (Neiwert, 2008). Those motivated to maintain the hierarchy might see value in assertions concerning the potential ‘‘postracial” implications of Mr. Obama’s victory. If widely embraced, claims that Obama’s victory demonstrate the end of racism would undercut efforts to increase equality, by denying the conditions that would justify those efforts (Bonilla-Silva, 2003; Winant, 2001). Moreover, such claims might be seen to obviate the need even to discuss race or racial issues (Saguy, Dovidio, & Pratto, 2008). Thus, for those who regard electing a Black president as justifying postracial assertions, group-dominance motives may be positively associated with voting for Obama. While this would represent a sophisticated legitimizing maneuver—requiring, as it does, anti-egalitarian individuals to aid a subordinate-group member’s elevation to the nation’s highest office—recent research suggests that legitimizing strategies can be quite sophisticated (Hogan, Lowery, & Chow, 2009; Knowles, Lowery, Chow, & Hogan, 2009).