Lifestyle politics
Another project I am working on as a co-author looks at how lifestyle politics affect political participation. More specifically, we are looking at how people can use a single issue to shape all their political thought. The issue we are going to be looking at is race issues in the black community. For some people, race issues will define the individual’s whole being, while in others race issues are important but are not the basis of all their political thought. To quantify this, we are going to present the individual’s with a number of scenarios and then ask them how much they would agree with or support the proposition. These propositions need to speak to black culture and should be politically based. Lance suggested something about supporting the funding of HBCU. So far I have thought of another couple:
- Affirmative action scenario
- Unconstitutionality of mandatory minimums
We are also trying to come up with a couple questions that do not speak to black culture at all.