UCF Research to be Used in U.S. Supreme Court Case

A UCF Political Science professor’s research on racial resentment is cited in an amicus brief in the upcoming U.S. Supreme Court case Shelby County v Holder. 

Dr. Jonathan Knuckey’s article “Racial Resentment and the Changing Partisanship of Southern Whites” was originally published in the journal Party Politics.

The article found that racial resentment has increasingly come to shape party support among southern whites. The article is one of several cited in the amicus brief submitted by The Southern Coalition for Social Justice.

The case before the U.S. Supreme Court will address the constitutionality of the preclearance requirements of section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires federal approval of any changes in voting practices and procedures in jurisdictions (mostly in the South) covered by the Act.

Below is the abstract, you can read the entire piece here.

One of the most important developments in southern politics in recent years has been the increase in the number of whites holding Republican Party identifications. This article examines the effects of racial attitudes on changing levels of partisanship. Specifically, the article focuses on the concept of racial resentment or symbolic racism. This is an appropriate concept to examine the effects of the contemporary racial attitudes on partisanship, as racial issues have become much more diffuse in nature. It is argued that in the 1990s the southern Republican congressional leadership was especially successful in making salient issues likely to activate the racial resentment of southern whites. A multivariate analysis demonstrates that racial resentment was not a strong or significant predictor of partisanship prior to 1994; however, in 1994 and 2000 racial resentment had a large and significant effect on partisanship. These findings suggest that race and racial attitudes continue to shape southern party politics in the early twenty-first century.