Us Against Them: Ethnocentric Foundations of American Opinion (Chicago Studies in American Politics)

365 Pages·2009·1.42 MB·English

by  Donald R. Kinder

us against them
chicago studies in american politics
A series edited by Benjamin I. Page, Susan Herbst, Lawrence R. Jacobs, and James Druckman
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Agendas and Instability in American Politics, Second Edition
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The Private Abuse of the Public Interest
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Same Sex, Different Politics: Success and Failure in the Struggles over Gay Rights
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u s them
against
Ethnocentric Foundations of American Opinion
donald r. kinder & cindy d. kam
the university of chicago press Chicago and London
donald r. kinder is the Philip E. Converse Collegiate Professor in the Department of
Political Science at the University of Michigan, as well as a professor of psychology and a
research professor in the Center for Political Studies of the Institute for Social Research. His
previous books include News That Matters: Television and American Opinion (with Shanto
Iyengar) and Divided by Color: Racial Politics and Democratic Ideals (with Lynn Sanders),
both published by the University of Chicago Press.
cindy d. kam is associate professor of political science at Vanderbilt University. She is the
author, with Robert J. Franzese Jr., of Modeling and Interpreting Interactive Hypotheses in
Regression Analysis.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2010 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2010
Printed in the United States of America
19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 1 2 3 4 5
isbn-13: 978-0-226-43570-1 (cloth)
isbn-13: 978-0-226-43571-8 (paper)
isbn-10: 0-226-43570-9 (cloth)
isbn-10: 0-226-43571-7 (paper)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kinder, Donald R.
Us against them : ethnocentric foundations of American opinion / Donald R. Kinder &
Cindy D. Kam.
p. cm.—(Chicago studies in American politics)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn-13: 978-0-226-43570-1 (hardcover : alk. paper)
isbn-13: 978-0-226-43571-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
isbn-10: 0-226-43570-9 (hardcover : alk. paper)
isbn-10: 0-226-43571-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Ethnocentrism—United States. 2. Public
opinion—United States. 3. Social values—United States. 4. Americans—Attitudes.
5. Social psychology—United States. 6. United States—Public opinion. 7. United
States—Social life and customs. I. Kam, Cindy D., 1975– II. Title. III. Series: Chicago
studies in American politics.
GN560.U6K56 2010
305.800973—dc22
2009026115
a The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ansi z39.48-1992.
Contents
Preface vii
Introduction: Sumner’s Conjecture 1
i the nature of ethnocentrism 5
1 Four Theories in Search of Ethnocentrism 7
2 Ethnocentrism Reconceived 31
3 American Ethnocentrism Today 42
ii empirical cases 71
4 Enemies Abroad 73
5 America First 105
6 Strangers in the Land 125
7 Straight versus Gay 151
8 Women’s Place 172
9 Us versus Them in the American Welfare State 182
10 Ethnocentrism in Black and White 200
Conclusion: Ethnocentrism and Political Life 219
Appendix 237
Notes 245
References 315
Index 345

Preface
This book began, as perhaps many books do, in dereliction of duty. Kinder
was spending the academic year 1994–95 on leave at Stanford University.
Freed from administrative and teaching responsibilities at the University
of Michigan, Kinder’s one assignment for the year was to complete a chap-
ter for the fourth edition of The Handbook of Social Psychology. He did not.
(Eventually he did—very eventually; Kinder thanks, one more time, Daniel
Gilbert, Susan Fiske, and Gardner Lindzey, the editors of the Handbook,
for their patience.) Instead, Kinder spent the fall rummaging through
Stanford’s libraries, reading up on the subject of ethnocentrism.
The subject was of interest, at least to Kinder, because of a puzzling result
he was about to report with Lynn Sanders in their book, Divided by Color
(1996). The puzzling result was this: the resentment some white Ameri-
cans feel toward black Americans figures heavily into their views, not just
on affirmative action or school desegregation, but on welfare reform, capi-
tal punishment, urban unrest, family leave, sexual harassment, gay rights,
immigration, spending on defense, and more. In assessing resentments di-
rected specifically at black Americans, Kinder and Sanders seem to have
tapped into a broader hostility, one that might be called ethnocentric.
And so Kinder spent the fall of 1994 reading: William Graham Sumner,
who introduced the term ethnocentrism in the early years of the twentieth
century in his famous book on folkways, T. W. Adorno and his colleagues’
epic study of the authoritarian personality and the immense and sprawling
literature it inspired, Henri Tajfel and the European perspective on identity
and conflict, and much more besides. He then spent the winter (insofar as
Palo Alto can be said to have a winter) writing. He returned to Ann Arbor
with preliminary drafts of the first four chapters of what would become Us
Against Them—an argument without evidence, one could say.
The argument was an effort to rehabilitate the concept of ethnocen-
trism, to suggest that something like ethnocentrism—a deep human pre-
disposition to reduce all of social life to in-groups and out-groups—was an
viii preface
important (if unacknowledged) engine of contemporary American politics.
The plan (let’s pretend there was a plan) was to see if there was any merit to
this argument by taking up empirical cases, one by one. Back in Ann Arbor,
Kinder was working with a group of enormously talented graduate students:
Lisa D’Ambrosio, Claudia Deane, Kim Gross, Tali Mendelberg, and Karin
Tamerius. The group discussed, expanded on, and criticized what Kinder
had written. The group began to produce conference papers that applied
the argument to particular cases. Production was slow but steady. Well, it
was slow. Slow but intellectually rewarding: ethnocentrism did indeed seem
to be playing an important role in American public opinion across a set of
distinct cases.
As others went on with their lives—dissertations, families, and careers—
Kinder plowed ahead and was joined on the project by Kam in 1998. We
thought seriously about the measurement and origins of ethnocentrism. We
wrote three more conference papers, one on welfare reform, a second on
the war on terrorism, and a third on morality politics. We combed through
existing datasets to find additional test cases and to replicate our analyses
wherever possible. We added a key piece to our argument, attempting to
specify the conditions under which ethnocentrism would be more or less
important in politics. In time, we found ourselves with both a compelling
argument and a generous supply of evidence. We now felt confident that we
had the materials for a book. But then disaster struck: Kinder became chair
of his department, and Kam found herself awash in the responsibilities that
rain down on an assistant professor. Somehow or another, eventually we
prevailed.
* * *
Collaborations are almost never easy, and rarely are they fun. Ours was dif-
ferent. Easy, fun, and productive, all three. We like each other more now
than when we started. We hope to find something else to work on together.
First of all, we thank each other.
We are grateful as well to the aforementioned Lisa D’Ambrosio, Clau-
dia Deane, Kim Gross, Tali Mendelberg, and Karin Tamerius for their ad-
vice and assistance in the early stages. Others helped in various ways: Kath-
erine Drake at Michigan, and Carl Palmer and Sara Price at the University
of California at Davis. Generous support came from the National Science
Foundation (in the form of a Graduate Research Fellowship for Kam) and
from UC Davis and Vanderbilt University. Over the life of the project, we
gave papers and seminars at the American Political Science Association,
the Midwest Political Science Association, UC Davis, the University of
Michigan, and Stanford University. We had productive conversations with
Nancy Burns, Philip Converse, Richard Hall, Hazel Markus, Lee Ross, Lance
preface ix
Sandelands, David Sloan Wilson, Abby Stewart, and David Winter. We ben-
efited enormously from close readings provided by Nancy Burns and Janet
Weiss, as well as by the reviewers for the University of Chicago Press, who
raised hard questions and offered us bracing advice, much of which we took.
At the Press we thank Ben Page, series editor, and John Tryneski, editor su-
premo, for their patience and careful stewarding of our manuscript.
The book is dedicated to Benjamin (Jordan Weiss Kinder), Samuel (Da-
vid Kinder Weiss), and Jacob (Russell Weiss Kinder), from whom Kinder
has learned so much, and to Rob and Charlotte Mikos.