In Racial Stasis, Christopher DeSante and Candis Watts Smith convincingly make the argument that generational replacement will not bring racial change. Using both qualitative and quantitative evidence, the authors make it clear that white millennials are not the promised generation that will advance racial attitudes in the United States and in some ways are more entrenched in their racial attitudes than their older counterparts. Not only do DeSante and Smith bring a wealth of evidence to bear on white millennial racial attitudes but they also do the important work of creating a measure that they argue better captures racial attitudes for this group.

This work is not just impressive because of the evidence that the authors bring to bear, however. DeSante and Smith present a masterclass on how to think about the white racial attitudes literature. They consider work from political science from about the last 40 years, as well as integrating important work from other fields that has advanced the conversation on how people talk about race today. This is no small task given that there are different theories on what composes white racial attitudes and differing measurement strategies to best capture these attitudes. At the heart of this book is the idea that the way white millennials are socialized to think about race matters for their beliefs about politics and policy.

What becomes clear in the narrative of this work is that white millennials are not their parents and that the ways in which this group has been conditioned to consider race is complicated. For this reason, the interviews that the authors include are crucial. They allow the reader to draw conclusions about what white millennials tend to believe. This is a generation that largely associates racism with the past, a belief that has implications for their attitudes toward other groups and for how they perceive the economic, political, and social condition of their counterparts of color. Although some may value diversity insofar as it means the physical representation of other groups in the room, many are unwilling to engage with white privilege and the racialized power structures that preserve and perpetuate gaps between white people and communities of color in the United States. Indeed, some white millennials even believe that it is whites who are disadvantaged when society does enact policies to address those gaps.

The qualitative analysis is eye-opening. The white millennial self-understanding is in some ways distinct from how scholars have theoretically and empirically described the attitudes of older generations. This is not to say that DeSante and Smith or I believe these older measures are obsolete, but that the authors call us to question to whom they apply. For instance, many of the white millennials included in the study could recognize the inherent inequality embedded in policies like “stop and frisk,” but their recognition did not necessarily mean that they could empathize with how people of color experience these policies. In fact, some of these white millennials used stereotypes about Black men as criminals to justify its use. Although all the respondents could not find empathy for their minoritized counterparts, many could find empathy for themselves in that they perceived a disadvantage toward whites in the use of affirmative action.

Because DeSante and Smith push the reader to consider the components of white millennial racial attitudes, they also make us question how these attitudes are measured. It is not enough to consider how white millennials think about Black people in the United States, because the racial landscape has changed. The racialized nature of American politics very much includes Latinx, Indigenous, Asian American, and Muslim communities. The authors do not leave the reader disappointed on this front. Just as they considered literature on white racial attitudes over time and across fields, they also consider multiple measures of white racial attitudes while also taking generational cohorts into account. I think this analysis is the most compelling. Because the authors use multiple measurement constructs, the reader can see how well each of these measures fit white millennials. This measurement exercise culminates with the introduction of their own battery, the Fear, Institutionalized Racism and Empathy (FIRE) Battery, which in my mind is a critical combination of items that contend with the multidimensional nature of white racial attitudes.

DeSante and Smith are clear about the multidimensional nature of their battery and how it should be used in modeling practices. This clarity also extends to what they see as the constraints of this measure. With a nod to how the authors indicate how the FIRE Battery should and should not be used, I take a moment here to imagine the possibilities for measurement using the FIRE battery and the questions we might ask in the future.

First and foremost, the FIRE Battery opens the door to possibilities for researchers to understand how race affects emotions at work in political attitudes and outcomes among white millennials, as well as the level of awareness that white millennials bring to the table about the privileges of whiteness. A number of questions thus come to mind. What is the picture in respondents’ heads when they consider the questions about fear of other races and being angry about racism? Does one group come to mind or multiple? Do individuals mentally negotiate how they place some groups in relation to others as it pertains to fear and empathy? Furthermore, might attitudes, as captured by the battery, be susceptible to change—whether that be based on information, in-person contact with an outgroup, or current events? Though the FIRE Battery was created to measure millennial attitudes and the authors show its power to predict the attitudes of older generations, how might this battery do in capturing post-millennial white attitudes? Is white Generation Z learning how to conceptualize race in a different way than their older counterparts, and does this move us toward racially progressive attitudes or does another generation bring us to a point of stasis? Finally, is there a dimension of the FIRE Battery that better explains political activities, like voting behavior or protest, versus certain types of policy attitudes (explicitly related to race or not)? I look forward to the possibilities of research inquiry using (and extending) the FIRE Battery.

Overall, DeSante and Smith have produced a book that will have lasting impact, not only because of its empirical content but also because of the great clarity of the writing and the way in which they convey the white millennial racial attitudes story in a concise and straightforward way. The authors use advanced methodology to address a complex issue and this is a necessary task, but this is a book that can be put in the hands of a layperson, as well as a political scientist. I commend the authors for doing the work to make this book accessible to all while also remaining methodologically rigorous. Moreover, the work involved in creating a new measurement tool is no small feat. The FIRE Battery is an impressive set of items, and I hope that it will be in use for years to come.