Given the strands of conservatism that are present among blacks in the United States, why don’t more black people identify as Republican? In Conservative but Not Republican, Tasha S. Philpot tackles this question head-on. The book explores the factors that predict ideological self-identification and the relationship between ideology and partisanship. Building upon her groundbreaking work on race and partisanship, Philpot provides an explanation for why black ideological conservatism does not translate into more black Republicans. The book offers two key arguments. First, black people uniquely conceptualize the liberal-conservative continuum in a way that does not neatly overlap with the general electorate. This black-specific conceptualization of liberal and conservative leads to a weaker correlation between black people’s ideological self-identification and party identification. Second, for blacks, the expression of ideology is conditional on group consciousness.
The arguments of the book are built upon a multi-method analysis of a range of data....
University of California Press