RAPID: Racial Attitudes and Health Care Opinions

这些结果表明，种族态度日益组织党派政治，这可能会产生重要的政策影响。种族问题可能是美国公共生活中最令人关注的问题。因此，选民沿着种族态度的两极分化可能会使当代政治话语比克林顿总统和布什总统领导下本已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。这就是为什么在过去的十年里，越来越多的研究表明，隐性的种族沟通可以使种族态度在随后的决策中变得更加重要（参见Mendelberg 2008）。事实上，多项研究表明，大众传播可以使种族态度成为对表面上非种族政策（如福利，犯罪和社会保障）的意见的更核心成分（Gilens 1999; Mendelberg 2001; Hurwitz and Peffley 1997; Winter 2008），以及在全白人竞选中对总统候选人的评价（Mendelberg 2001; Valentino，Hutchings and白色2002）。2008年竞选活动的研究大大建立在现有的知识基础上，表明仅仅将一个人或政策置于反对或与巴拉克奥巴马一致，就会使种族态度成为公众对这些对象的评价中比以前更重要的成分（Tesler和Sears，即将出版）。本研究项目试图提供进一步的证据，这种奥巴马引起的种族化，通过精确定位的程度，医疗保健的意见是受种族态度和确定奥巴马？的因果作用，在种族化的公众舆论的政策，没有明显的种族内容。

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.