Response to Polity Symposium: White Identity Reconsidered

Abstract

I am grateful for the opportunity to offer a response to the articles in the Polity symposium “White Identity Reconsidered” individually and as a group.My own research on the politics of white identity has centered on measurement and conceptualization, two challenges that come in the early stages of taking on an understudied topic in public opinion like white identity politics. The conversation about those challenges continues with the studies included in this symposium. Among the contributions to the literature presented here is a consideration of how difficult it is to capture what it is about white identity that renders it politically potent (or not). Several possibilities are found within these papers, and together, they illustrate the rich range of tools we have at our disposal. Further, they force us to grapple with the question of which concept(s) and measure(s) we might want to include and when. They also make clear that we are not yet at a point where the answer to that question is by any means obvious. It has been noted many times now that political science as a discipline was slow to contemplate white identity. The studies in this symposium illustrate the exciting pace at which we are making up for lost time. As a result, there is a wide range of measures out there now to get at different aspects of white identity and related forms of ingroup attachment. Collectively, we are in the process of figuring out what each one means, when we should use different ones, what causes their aggregate levels in the population to rise and fall, and how they work—either together