2022: SEPTEMBER 28 // New Perspectives on Race and Public Opinion
Attitudes about race and ethnicity, and the groups that hold such identities, are central to political behavior and public policy, particularly among survey researchers and scholars of the American political system. Yet in recent years, we have seen presumably new forms of racial bias and discrimination in mainstream politics that challenge existing theories and offer new scholarly directions. How can researchers push the boundaries of how we think about race to advance knowledge that informs the character of American democracy and the prospect of a just society? How can we utilize the elements of survey design to assess the explicit and subtle effects of race on public opinion? And how can our work shape policy and political decision-making to build greater equity, understanding, and social cohesion? In this panel, we will discuss new perspectives on inter- and intra-racial attitudes, new directions for research, and new ways of theorizing, measuring, and experimenting to understand the politics of race and ethnicity.
Professor Naomi Levy presented on the Lab’s Firsthand Framework for Policy Innovation work, which gathers rich, qualitative expertise from communities and applies it to generate quantitative, Firsthand Indicators. These indicators can be used to identify, pilot, and evaluate reforms that authentically represent community perspectives and priorities.