Convergence Between Racial and Political Identities: Boundary Erasure or Aversive Racism?

The relationship between race group membership and political orientation is considered with respect to the accommodation of White identity in media representations of Blacks. Participants watched a brief video featuring a pair of commentators—either a White liberal and a White conservative, a White liberal and a Black conservative, or a Black liberal and a White conservative. The portrayal of the relationship (agreement, disagreement) was also manipulated. Preferences for the recial outgroup were a function of the recial/political pairings. The dimension of race dominated the dimension of political orientation in participants' preferences for the outgroup and their judgments of similarity between interracial pairs of commentators. Results are consistent with aversive racism and previously untested assertions about White viewers' preferences for accommodating representations of Blacks.