Comments on "Perceived racial discrimination, racial resentment, and support for affirmative action and preferential hiring and promotion: a multi-racial analysis"

The journal Politics, Groups, and Identities recently published Mangum and Block Jr. 2021 "Perceived racial discrimination, racial resentment, and support for affirmative action and preferential hiring and promotion: a multi-racial analysis".

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The article notes that (p. 13):

Intriguingly, blame [of racial and ethnic minorities] tends to be positively associated with support for preferential hiring and promotion, and, in 2008, this positive relationship is statistically significant for Black and Asian respondents (Table A4; lower right graph in Figure 6). This finding is confounding...

But from what I can tell, this finding might be because the preferential hiring and promotion outcome variable was coded backwards to the intended coding. Table 2 of the article indicates that a higher percentage of Blacks than of Whites, Hispanics, and Asians favored preferential hiring and promotion, but Figures 1 and 2 indicate that a lower percentage of Blacks than of Whites, Hispanics, and Asians favored preferential hiring and promotion.

My analysis of data for the 2004 National Politics Study indicated that the preferential hiring and promotion results in Table 2 are correct for this survey and that blame of racial and ethnic minorities negatively associates with favoring preferential hiring and promotion.

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Other apparent errors in the article include:

Page 4:

Borrowing from the literature on racial resentment possessed (Feldman and Huddy 2005; Kinder and Sanders 1996; Kinder and Sears 1981)...

Figures 3, 4, 5, and 6:

...holding control variable constant

Page 15:

African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians support affirmative action more than are Whites.

Page 15:

Preferential hiring and promotion is about who deserves special treatment than affirmative action, which is based more on who needs it to overcome discrimination.

Note 2:

...we code the control variables to that they fit a 0-1 scale...

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Moreover, the article indicates that "the Supreme Court ruled that affirmative action was constitutional in California v. Bakke in 1979", which is not the correct year. And the article seems to make inconsistent claims about affirmative action: "affirmative action and preferential hiring and promotion do not benefit Whites" (p. 15), but "White women are the largest beneficiary group (Crosby et al. 2003)" (p. 13).

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At least some of these flaws seem understandable. But I think that the number of flaws in this article is remarkably high, especially for a peer-reviewed journal with such a large editorial group: Politics, Groups, and Identities currently lists a 13-member editorial team, a 58-member editorial board, and a 9-member international advisory board.

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NOTES

1. The article claims that (p. 15):

Regarding all races, most of the racial resentment indicators are significant statistically and in the hypothesized direction. These findings lead to the conclusion that preferential hiring and promotion foster racial thinking more than affirmative action. That is, discussions of preferential hiring and promotion lead Americans to consider their beliefs about minorities in general and African Americans in particular more than do discussions of affirmative action.

However, I'm not sure of how the claim that "preferential hiring and promotion foster racial thinking more than affirmative action" is justified by the article's results regarding racial resentment.

Maybe this refers to the slopes being steeper for the preferential hiring and promotion outcome than for the affirmative action outcome, but it would be a lot easier to eyeball slopes across figures if the y-axes were consistent across figures; instead, the y-axes run from .4 to .9 (Figure 3), .4 to 1 (Figure 4), .6 to 1 (Figure 5), and .2 to 1 (Figure 6).

Moreover, Figure 1 is a barplot that has a y-axis that runs from .4 to .8, and Figure 2 is a barplot that has a y-axis that runs from .5 to .9, with neither barplot starting at zero. It might make sense for journals to have an editorial board member or other person devoted to reviewing figures, to eliminate errors and improve presentation.

For example, the article indicates that (p. 6):

Figures 1 and 2 display the distribution of responses for our re-coded versions of the dependent variables graphically, using bar graphs containing 95% confidence intervals. To interpret these graphs, readers simply check to see if the confidence intervals corresponding to any given bar overlap with those of another.

But if the intent is to use confidence interval overlap to assess whether there is sufficient evidence at p<0.05 of a difference between groups, then confidence intervals closer to 85% are more appropriate. I haven't always known this, but this does seem to be knowledge that journal editors should use to foster better figures.

2. Data citation:

James S. Jackson, Vincent L. Hutchings, Ronald Brown, and Cara Wong. National Politics Study, 2004. ICPSR24483-v1. Ann Arbor, MI: Bibliographic Citation: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2009-03-23. doi:10.3886/ICPSR24483.v1.