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Race, Dehumanization, and the NFL National Anthem Protests

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2020

Stephen M. Utych Open the ORCID record for Stephen M. Utych [Opens in a new window]
Stephen M. Utych*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Boise State University, 1910 University Drive, Boise, Idaho, 83725, USA
*
Email: stephenutych@boisestate.edu
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Abstract

Dehumanizing language, or language used to describe human beings as non-human entities, is increasingly prevalent in political life. This dehumanization also occurs frequently in the world of sports. Sports and politics intersected notably in 2016, when Colin Kaepernick of the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers started protesting the national anthem to raise awareness about police violence against African-Americans. Kaepernick’s protests generated considerable vitriol towards him and other protesters, some of which was dehumanizing. In this study, I examine how dehumanizing language used against anthem protesters of different races influences political attitudes. Using experimental data, I find that, when a Black player protesting the national anthem is dehumanized, White citizens are considerably less supportive of the anthem protests and protesters. This effect does not persist when the dehumanized player is White.

Keywords

dehumanizationrace and ethnicityanthem protestsAmerican politics
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Experimental Political Science , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , Spring 2022 , pp. 88 - 103
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Experimental Research Section of the American Political Science Association

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Footnotes

The data, code, and any additional materials required to replicate all analyses in this article are available at the Journal of Experimental Political Science Dataverse within the Harvard Dataverse Network, at: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/LTHJ4N. The author declares no conflict of interest. I thank participants in the Boise State University Junior Faculty Research Workshop (Jaci Kettler, Jackie Lee, Julie VanDusky-Allen, Alex Severson, and Jessica Wells) for helpful feedback and advice.

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