Working Twice as Hard to Get Half as Far: Race, Work Ethic, and America's Deserving Poor

Attitudes toward racialized and redistributive policies like welfare are often thought of as a function of both principled ideological positions and the underlying racial attitudes a person holds. look at racial resentment as one explanation, while Sniderman and his colleagues look to principled conservatism and authoritarianism as viable alternatives, claiming that racial resentment is merely proxying a legitimate race-neutral commitment to equality of opportunity. This article engages this debate through an experimental design which tests whether hard work is rewarded in a color-blind manner. The experimental design also affords scholars the opportunity to separate the effects of the two components of racial resentment: principled values and racial animus. The results show that American norms and implicit racism serve to uniquely privilege whites in a variety of ways.