In a kickoff for Colorado College’s Midterm Election Symposium, Vincent L. Hutchings, a professor of political science from the University of Michigan, was invited to be CC’s First Monday Speaker for this block. His talk focused on the on the use of racial appeals within voting, elections, and politics as a whole.
In light of the racially inflammatory comments repeatedly coming from the Trump administration, Hutchings investigated whether economic anxiety or racial considerations had a greater impact in the 2016 election. With reference to the 2016 American National Election Study, the main questions he examined were “How worried are you about your financial situation?” and “How much influence do blacks have in U.S. politics?” He found that 57 percent reported not being worried and that 87 percent saw that they had too much influence. After gasps from the crowd at these shocking results subsided, Hutchings emphasized how “there is a narrative that [the vote] was economics, but this shows otherwise,” yet he was by no means “arguing race as the only factor.” He explained that it simply showed that “race is a very salient factor in our politics.”
The divide between Republicans and Democrats factors into these results, where one party consists of 85 percent white voters, while the other is 57 percent, respectively. He also emphasized that “this isn’t about Trump, per se” as political parties have been divided along racial lines for roughly 50 years. Politicians know this, and practice racial priming, which is when campaigns seek to influence the effect of racial considerations in elections. Hutchings made sure to emphasize that this is a bipartisan issue as Republicans look to draw the white vote away from Democrats, while Democrats use it to retain enough white support to remain competitive in the political sphere. Within racial priming, Hutchings explained, there are both explicit and implicit appeals. An example of explicit appeals would be the direct use of derogatory statements. To demonstrate an implicit appeal, Hutchings used the example of how in Obama’s 2008 campaign he used white people in his ads 93 percent of the time and emphasized his Kansas roots along with his white mother. This whitewashing may have facilitated in helping him get elected, but did it actually help the overall state of the country?
The talk landed well with students, with audible laughter and gasps scattered throughout. Zoe Lilak ‘20 commented that, “I truly enjoyed the talk and appreciated how informative it was. The facts presented were a little disheartening, but also incredibly powerful. Hutchings showed the importance of not simply placing the blame on the opposing political party, but rather holding our own representatives accountable.”
The main takeaway that Hutchings highlighted was that politicians in both parties have incentives to incorporate racial priming. Towards the end of the talk, a quote from Martin Luther King Jr.’s sermon in the Washington National Cathedral left the crowd silent: “It is an unhappy truth that racism is a way of life for the vast majority of white Americans, spoken and unspoken, acknowledged and denied, subtle and sometimes not so subtle—the disease of racism permeates and poisons a whole body politic. And I can see nothing more urgent than for America to work passionately and unrelentingly—to get rid of the disease of racism.” His last point echoed throughout the Kathryn Mohrman Theater as he emphasized that if we are serious about discouraging the use of racial appeals, then we have to criticize our politicians, especially when it is our own party.