Racial Sympathy and Support for Capital Punishment: A Case Study in Concept Transfer

ABSTRACT

Beliefs about race, especially racial resentment, are key predictors of public support for capital punishment and punitiveness generally. Drawing on a conceptual innovation by political scientist Jennifer Chudy, we explore the utility of transferring into criminology her construct of racial sympathy – or Whites’ concern about Blacks’ suffering. First, across three data sets, we replicate Chudy’s finding that racial sympathy and resentment are empirically distinct constructs. Second, based on a national-level 2019 YouGov survey (n = 760 White respondents) and consistent with Chudy’s thesis, racial sympathy is then shown to be significantly related to the race-specific view that capital punishment is discriminatory but not support for the death penalty or harsher courts. Racial sympathy also is positively associated with advocacy of rehabilitation as the main goal of prison. Notably, in all models, racial resentment has robust effects, increasing punitive sentiments. Taken together, the results suggest that racial sympathy is a concept that can enrich criminologists’ study of how racial beliefs shape crime policy preferences in the United States and beyond, especially those with disparate effects on Blacks.

Notes

¹ Examples of White racial sympathy in the media are ubiquitous; two will suffice to make this point. First, former president George W. Bush commented: “Laura and I are anguished by the brutal suffocation of George Floyd and disturbed by the injustice and fear that suffocate our country … . It remains a shocking failure than many African Americans, especially young African American men, are harassed and threatened in their own country” (Neumann 2020). Second, Joe Burrow, Heisman Trophy winner and the first overall selection in the 2020 NFL draft remarked: “The black community needs our help. They have been unheard for far too long. Open your ears, listen, and speak. This isn’t politics. This is human rights” (Dellenger 2020).

² Although they initially used a six-item racial resentment scale, in order to replicate their analyses, Kinder and Sanders's (1996) measure was reduced to the four items that had been used consistently across the 1986, 1988, and 1992 National Election Studies surveys. They explain that the four-item scale – the same used in the current study and in Chudy’s research – excludes the two questions from the six-item scale that are the “least justifiable as measures of prejudice (on the interpretation that prejudicial beliefs are erroneous)” and that may be confounded with their dependent variable (public policy on race) because they “explicitly invoke government” (Kinder and Sanders 1996: 120). The two items in Kinder and Sanders's  (1996: 106) racial resentment study that are excluded from the four-item version of the scale are: (1) “Most blacks who receive money from welfare programs could get along without if they tried”; and (2) “Government officials usually pay less attention to a request or complaint from a black person than from a white person.” Thus, the number of items used in subsequent scholarship varies, but the four items used in the current study and in Chudy’s research are standard (see, e.g., Bobo and Johnson 2004; Feldman and Huddy 2005; Henderson and Hillygus 2011; Johnson 2008; Segura and Valenzuela 2010; Unnever and Cullen 2007b).

³ Future research should examine closely the conceptual and empirical overlap between measures of empathy and the care/harm moral foundation (see Batson 2009; Cuff et al. 2016). Haidt’s (2012) Moral Foundation Theory – drawn from political psychology as opposed to social psychology – seems less orientated toward perspective taking and more oriented toward moral judgments that make someone feel virtuous – in this case, being concerned with preventing harm and being angry and troubled when this does not occur. It may be that a care/harm moral foundation, which is seen to have an evolutionary base and to develop early in life, fosters the development of empathetic identification. Again, however, this remains an issue to be investigated. Further, future research should include in the analysis a measure of empathy along with care/harm.

⁴ Evidence exists showing that findings from YouGov surveys generalize to the U.S. population (Ansolabehere and Schaffner 2014; Kennedy et al. 2016; Sanders et al. 2007; Simmons and Bobo 2015). Further, several studies have reported that YouGov’s sampling design rivals, if not outperforms, probability sampling methods (Graham, Pickett, and Cullen 2020; Kennedy et al. 2016; Vavreck and Rivers 2008). These findings, combined with the widespread publication of YouGov data in the leading social science journals and on a range of public policy issues, lend credence to the conclusion that YouGov data are now a standard source of public opinion data (Thielo, Graham, and Cullen forthcoming).

⁵ One weakness in the response set is that it assumes that the respondents shared a common understanding of the term “sympathy.” Future research might consider using more descriptive responses, such as the amount of “distress” that was felt. Further, although Chudy is focusing on genuine concern over Blacks’ misfortune, sympathy can involve a negative reaction such as feelings of pity. Such a response would likely be experienced by African Americans as condescending and perhaps as a form of White privilege.

⁶ This wording is taken from the General Social Survey. The Gallup Poll uses a slightly different wording: “Are you in favor of the death penalty for a person convicted of murder?”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kellie R. Hannan

Kellie R. Hannan an undergraduate student in the Carl H. Lindner College of Business at the University of Cincinnati. Using national-level data sets, her recent writings have examined the impact of racial beliefs and religion on public support for capital punishment. She is currently leading a project exploring the Second Look Act. More generally, her research interests focus on the influence of public opinion on public policy.

Francis T. Cullen

Francis T. Cullen is a distinguished research professor emeritus and a senior research associate in the School of Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati. He is a past president of the American Society of Criminology and the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. His research interests include developing the rehabilitation–redemption model of corrections, advancing a social support theory of crime, and the criminology of Donald Trump.  He co-editor of the forthcoming Criminological Theory: Past to Present (Oxford University Press, 7th edition).

Leah C. Butler

Leah C. Butler is an assistant professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Nebraska Omaha. Her research is centered on corrections, with an emphasis on the effects of race and racial attitudes on public opinion of correctional policy. She also conducts research in victimology, with a focus on intimate partner violence, sexual violence, repeat victimization, and strategies for preventing such violence including federal policy and bystander intervention training. Her recent work has been published in Crime and Delinquency, Criminal Justice and Behavior, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Journal of School Violence, and Victims & Offenders.

Amanda Graham

Amanda Graham is an assistant professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Georgia Southern University. She received her Ph.D. in criminal justice from the University of Cincinnati. She co-editor of Crime and Victimization in the Trump Era (Taylor & Francis). Her current research interests focus on the fear of police brutality, perceptions of and reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic, the racial sources of crime-related public opinion, and “criminometics”—the measurement of core criminological concepts.

Alexander L. Burton

Alexander L. Burton is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati. His current research interests include public opinion on criminal justice policies and improving correctional officer training. His research has recently been published in Justice Quarterly, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, and Criminology & Public Policy.

Velmer S. Burton

Velmer S. Burton, Jr. is Senior Vice Chancellor for University Strategy and Performance and Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati and an Ed.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.  His research in crime and justice has been published in Criminology, Justice Quarterly, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Criminal Justice and Behavior, and the Journal of Quantitative Criminology.