White Perceptions of Whether African Americans and Hispanics are Prone to Violence and Support for the Death Penalty

Abstract

Objective: To explore whether the impact of racial and ethnic pejorative stereotypes and prejudice on White support for the death penalty changes over time. Methods: The data were drawn from the 1990 and 2000 General Social Surveys. This trend analysis included a four-item racial–ethnic prejudice scale and two stereotype or “typification” measures that assessed the extent to which the respondents believed that African Americans and Hispanics were more prone to violence than Whites. Controls were introduced for standard demographic measures and for known covariates of punitiveness, such as conservative political ideology and religious beliefs and involvement. The dependent variable was whether the respondents favored the death penalty for persons convicted of murder. Results: The analyses revealed that racial and ethnic prejudice increases Whites' embrace of capital punishment in both periods of time. By contrast, the negative stereotypes that typify African Americans and Hispanics as prone to violence exerted a significant impact on support for the death penalty in 1990 but not in 2000. Conclusions: These findings suggest that Whites' views on minority group members' proneness to violence potentially shift over time and exert significant impacts on death penalty support depending on the broader social context that prevails at a given historical juncture. Racial–ethnic feelings of animus appear to be a stable, if not intractable source of punitiveness. Future research should continue to unpack the complex nature of Whites' racial and ethnic views and to explore how, in given sociopolitical contexts, they potentially serve to justify punitive policy agendas.