RAPID: Racial Attitudes and Health Care Opinions

这些结果表明，越来越多的种族态度组织了党派政治，这可能会对政策产生重要影响。种族问题可能是美国公共生活中最直接的问题。因此，选民在种族态度上的两极分化可能会使当代政治话语比克林顿和布什总统时期已经充满敌意的气氛更加尖刻。在奥巴马时代，这样一个种族化的环境可能会使在公共政策上达成共识变得更加困难。这就是为什么过去十年见证了大量研究的主要原因，这些研究表明，隐性种族交流可以使种族态度在随后的决策中更加重要（见Mendelberg 2008年的评论）。事实上，多项研究表明，大众传播可以使种族态度成为对诸如福利、犯罪和社会保障等表面上非种族政策的意见的更核心成分（Gilens 1999; Mendelberg 2001； Hurwitz和Peffley 1997； Winter 2008），以及对全白人竞选中的总统候选人的评价（Mendelberg 2001; Valentino， Hutchings和White 2002）。2008年竞选活动的研究显著地建立在这一现有知识的基础上，表明仅仅将一个人或政策置于巴拉克•奥巴马（Barack Obama）的对立面或对立面，就会使种族态度成为公众对这些对象的评估中比之前更重要的因素（特斯勒和西尔斯，即将出版）。本研究项目试图为奥巴马引起的种族化提供进一步的证据，通过精确地指出医疗保健意见受种族态度影响的程度，并确定奥巴马？在公众舆论对一项没有明显种族内容的政策的种族化方面，这是美国的一个因果作用。

The growing organization of partisan politics by racial attitudes suggested by these results could have important policy ramifications. Race is probably the most visceral issue in American public life. As such, increased polarization of the electorate along the lines of racial attitudes would likely make the contemporary political discourse even more vitriolic than the already rancorous atmospheres under Presidents Clinton and Bush. Such a racialized environment would potentially make it more difficult to achieve common ground on public policy in the Age of Obama. That is a major reason why the last decade has witnessed a proliferation of research demonstrating that implicit racial communications can make racial attitudes more important in subsequent decision making (see Mendelberg 2008 for a review). Multiple studies, in fact, show that mass communications can make racial attitudes a more central ingredient of opinions about ostensibly non-racial policies such as welfare, crime and Social Security (Gilens 1999; Mendelberg 2001; Hurwitz and Peffley 1997; Winter 2008), as well as evaluations of presidential candidates in all-white contests (Mendelberg 2001; Valentino, Hutchings and White 2002). Research from the 2008 campaign significantly builds upon this existing knowledge by showing that merely situating a person or policy in opposition or accordance with Barack Obama made racial attitudes a much more important ingredient of public evaluations of these objects than they were beforehand (Tesler and Sears, forthcoming). This research project attempts to provide further evidence for this Obama-induced racialization by pinpointing the extent that health care opinions are influenced by racial attitudes and determining Obama?s causal role in racializing public opinion about a policy that has no manifest racial content.