President Trump recently insulted Rep. Elijah E. Cummings by attacking his Baltimore district, tweeting that it was “dangerous,” a “rat and rodent infested mess” and the “Worst in the USA.” Many observers quickly noted that Trump’s description of Baltimore played on negative stereotypes of African Americans as universally impoverished and unwilling to improve their situation. Many news organizations and politicians called the tweets racist, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
But many Republicans defended the president — including Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson. Carson is an African American and a Trump ally who worked for many years as the director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. In an interview, Carson told Fox News host Tucker Carlson that, as a surgeon, he had worried about sending kids back to “homes in East Baltimore that were infested with rats and roaches and ticks and mold and lead and violence.”
That fits a pattern in Trump’s presidency. Conservative people of color often defend the president when he’s accused of racism. For example, African American public figures such as Stacey Dash, Candace Owens and Kanye West have defended the president’s controversial statements on immigration and on the deadly “Unite the Right” demonstration in Charlottesville.
So does the race of the messenger matter?
Are voters more receptive when racially insensitive remarks come from conservatives of color? We investigated this in our recent research article. The answer is a resounding yes.
How we did our research
In the summer of 2016, we conducted an online survey experiment of 236 African Americans and 711 whites on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.
All of our respondents read a racially charged editorial that argued that “political correctness” stifles free speech. Because part of what conservatives describe as “political correctness” involves avoiding comments that offend minority racial groups, arguments attacking political correctness can be seen as attacking racial, ethnic and gender minorities. Each respondent was randomly assigned to one of two groups. We told one group that this editorial was written by a prominent white conservative and the other that it was written by a prominent African American conservative. After reading the editorial, respondents answered questions about how they felt about the conservative author to which they were assigned.
Whites and blacks responded very differently
Whites of all political viewpoints — Republican, Democratic and independent — rated the black conservative who made the implicitly racist appeal as significantly more likable on a 100-point scale than the white conservative. Whites who received the editorial from a fictitious black conservative rated the author as up to 15 points more likable than did those rating a white conservative who made the same comments.
Black respondents, however, felt quite differently. Most social science research finds that black people engage in co-racial favoritism and generally rate prominent black elites more favorably than prominent whites. Not in this scenario. Black respondents rated the African American conservative who attacked political correctness just as unfavorably as they rated the white conservative.
What do Ben Carson’s comments mean for Trump?
Our research suggests that Trump’s strategy of taking cover behind black conservatives has its opportunities and pitfalls. On one hand, our findings suggest that Ben Carson may have improved his favorability ratings among whites, and particularly white conservatives, by echoing Trump’s characterization of Baltimore. This may offset some of the damage Trump’s statements could bring. By having African Americans speak out and defend him, Trump may convince some of his followers that his views are valid rather than racially biased.
But black conservatives coming to Trump’s defense may suffer some loss of support from black Americans. Carson and others who speak out for Trump sully their reputations among blacks and probably do little to change African Americans’ opinions of Trump.
Trump thinks racist rhetoric will help him in 2020. The data suggest otherwise.
Only time will tell whether Carson’s statements will be politically advantageous for Trump. However, given the history of the Trump administration, we can expect more black conservatives to come to Trump’s defense on these racially sensitive topics.
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Gregory John Leslie (@GregoryJLeslie) is a PhD student in political science at the University of California at Los Angeles.
Christopher T. Stout (@christophestout) is an associate professor of political science at Oregon State University.
Naomi Tolbert is a graduate student in political science at the University of Chicago.