Read on Twitter
Some of you are going to try and play games using this paper, so let's engage our critical thinking skills and get three things straight: (THREAD) https://twitter.com/micahanglais/status/1385664513941417987
1. This study didn't find that anti-racist policies are UNpopular; just that they're MORE popular when framed through the lens of providing economic benefits. People are more likely to support a policy when it's framed as giving them more money. (In other news, water is wet.)
2. This paper says voters ON AVERAGE supported a policy more strongly when it was framed through a class lens vs a racial lens, but that doesn't give us the breakdown of *how many* voters of the various racial groups found class messaging more persuasive and by how much. So...
Let's say that since Black voters found anti-racist language and economic language equivalently persuasive, 60% were more persuaded by economic language and 40% by anti-racist language. That 40% is a LOT of people. We still need to use anti-racist messaging to appeal to them!
3. Even if every last white person surveyed here was less likely to support policy framed with anti-racist messaging (NOT true) it would still be important for us to use anti-racist messaging — because our job is to influence public opinion in addition to being informed by it.
For progressives, elections are a means to the end of creating an anti-racist society. Language constructs reality; if we stop using anti-racist language, we say race is unimportant. It's not worth having Democrats in office who aren't explicitly anti-racist.
I'm open to responses from others if I've misinterpreted the paper, but to me it seems clear that by no means does this paper indicate we should stop using anti-racist messaging: only that we should target it, which we're already doing. /fin
For another perspective with a similar conclusion, check out @magi_jay's thread: https://twitter.com/magi_jay/status/1386040401916801027?s=20
