Racial, Ethnic, & Settler-Colonial Politics
The Political Consequences of Indigenous Resentment
Understanding the legacy of settler colonialism requires understanding the nature and scope of anti-Indigenous attitudes. But what, exactly, are the political consequences of anti-Indigenous attitudes? Answering this question requires recognizing that attitudes toward Indigenous peoples are distinct from White racial attitudes toward other disempowered groups. In this paper, I introduce a novel measure of Indigenous resentment. I then show that Indigenous resentment is an important predictor of policy attitudes using data collected from an original survey of White settlers. I estimate the effect of both Indigenous resentment and overt prejudice on policy attitudes—opposition to welfare and support for pipeline developments—to make the case that Indigenous resentment is a better measure of anti-Indigenous attitudes than explicit dislike, and that Indigenous resentment is an important omitted variable in the study of public opinion in settler societies.
Measuring Anti-Indigenous Attitudes: The Indigenous Resentment Scale
This paper presents a novel Indigenous resentment scale to measure anti-Indigenous attitudes in settler-colonial societies. I draw from existing quantitative research on measuring outgroup attitudes, Indigenous philosophy, and settler-colonial scholarship to develop a concept and measure of Indigenous resentment with high construct validity. I test the Indigenous resentment scale using original, nationally representative survey data. I conduct a reliability analysis and use statistical learning techniques to show that the Indigenous resentment scale is internally consistent and unidimensional, and has high predictive validity. As I show, the Indigenous resentment scale is a strong predictor of social avoidance behaviors and significantly predicts opposition to government policies designed to help Indigenous peoples. I explain how the Indigenous resentment scale improves upon existing attempts to measure anti-Indigenous attitudes and discuss the usefulness of the scale in social scientific research.
Canadian White Identity Politics
How do Whites' racial attitudes--and in particular, White ingroup identification--shape Canadian politics? This paper clarifies the contours of Canadian White identity politics and shows how Whites' racial attitudes impact policy preferences and vote choice. We nd that stronger identification with the White ingroup increases Whites' support for government spending on policies that disproportionately benefit Whites. Confirming existing research, we nd that negative outgroup evaluations—anti-Indigenous attitudes—predict opposition to welfare. In Canada outside Quebec, we find strong evidence that anti-Indigenous attitudes predict voting Conservative and offer some evidence that stronger identification with the White ingroup increases the likelihood White Canadians vote Conservative. In Quebec, White identity mobilizes support for the Bloc Quebecois while Whites' attitudes toward Indigenous peoples are not predictive of vote choice.