Abstract
Is race politics about racism, ideology, or group conflict? After decades, this debate seems scarcely closer to resolution, despite the enormous theoretical, empirical, and normative issues at stake. I argue that a misguided approach to interpreting public opinion has stymied the debate. All three theories implicitly try to read a person’s motives for supporting or opposing proposals off of their placement in the so-called complex space of contemporary opinion about race. However, I show that because the supposed complexity of the issue space is based on a methodological artifact, any attempt to read qualitative differences in motives from it must fail.
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