More Than Linked Fate: Toward A New Measure of Politicized Racial Identity

Linked fate – the belief that one’s life chances are tied to the status of African Americans – has long been used to explain Black political unity. Yet, prior research finds it only weakly predicts many forms of Black political behavior. We argue that linked fate’s single-item design makes it unable to capture the multidimensional nature of a politicized Black identity. Linked fate also overlooks the central role of grievance in Black public opinion. In this paper, we develop and assess a new measure – Politicized Racial Identity (PRI). We show that PRI not only more reliably explains a broader range of political views but also predicts costly political engagement for the racial group’s benefit. Lastly, PRI differentiates African Americans with conservative racial policy preferences from African Americans with liberal racial policy preferences, which other measures such as linked fate and ideology have been unable to do.