Racialized Perceptions of Cities and the Attitudes of White Americans

Abstract

Over the past eight decades, scholarship has demonstrated that racial attitudes are shaped by local demographic contexts. While this literature offers a sophisticated account of how interactions with proximate space structure racial attitudes, little is known about the impact of racialized perceptions of non-proximate spaces. This paper examines how racialized perceptions of distant cities influence perceptions of racial threat and policy preferences among white Americans. We advance two hypotheses: that racialized perceptions of cities can evoke racial threat even without geographic proximity, and that policy preferences are shaped by the racial groups respondents believe policies will benefit. We test these expectations using one observational study and two original survey experiments. Across all studies, whites view cities imagined as having larger Black populations as more threatening and less deserving of federal aid, particularly among respondents with limited familiarity with those cities, underscoring the importance of non-proximate space in structuring racial politics.