The literature on race and public opinion has been dominated by the debate between those who emphasize the continuing role of prejudice or racial resentment and those who emphasize the role of other values and ideologies, such as limited government or individualism, in explaining sources of individual-level support and opposition to current race policy. Thus, it is refreshing to find a book like The Mass Media and the Dynamics of American Racial Attitudes, which looks at racial attitudes from a different perspective. In the tradition of Howard Schuman and his colleagues in Racial Attitudes in America (1997), Paul Kellstedt demonstrates and explains variation in the American public's racial policy preferences over the last half of the twentieth-century. Kellstedt draws on the existing opinion and media effects literature to develop a theory that can explain how the public as a whole evolves on matters of race. This book's most valuable contribution comes from the specific attention he gives to media framing. Many researchers suggest a role for media coverage in the development and trajectory of racial policy preferences over this period, yet little empirical work examines this relationship. Using an innovative approach, the author provides convincing evidence that media coverage “is an important part of a system of influences that determine public opinion on race in America” (p. 134).

Specifically, Kellstedt argues that racial policy preferences have their basis in two core values—individualism and egalitarianism. Most Americans are conflicted about race policy because they are committed to both principles, and these values pull them in opposite directions. Media messages help to resolve value conflict by linking racial issues more closely with a specific value in a specific period. Thus, when media coverage demonstrates the inconsistency between America's egalitarian beliefs and the treatment of blacks, it should pull the public toward more liberal views on race policy; media coverage that highlights the inconsistency between liberal racial policy and the value of individualism should pull the public in a conservative direction.

In testing this theory, Kellstedt faced a major hurdle—he needed to develop a reliable measure of media content spanning a nearly 50-year period and to address the fact that no single policy question is asked regularly over this time. In my view, he addresses these problems creatively. Rather than focus on specific policy questions, he develops and justifies the use of an aggregate measure of “racial policy preferences” following James Stimson's work on policy mood (Chapter 3). To measure media content, he tracks references to the core beliefs of individualism and egalitarianism, as well as references to poverty, in coverage of African Americans in Newsweek magazine (Chapter 2). With these data in hand, he tests his theory about the role of media coverage in shaping racial policy preferences (Chapter 4) and explores the role of media coverage in cementing the relationship between racial policy attitudes and more general social welfare policy attitudes (Chapter 5).

The author finds, consistent with his theory, that when the media provide more egalitarian cues in the context of covering black Americans, the public responds with more liberal views on race policy. Moreover, these effects are not insubstantial (p. 102). Generational replacement, media coverage highlighting states' rights, and predispositions toward government involvement also drive racial policy preferences over time. The idea that individualistic media cues will lead the public toward more conservative race policy views finds less support, and I believe further study is required before definitive conclusions can be drawn. It is interesting to note that results from cross-section research also provide little support for the claim that the value of individualism drives individual's racial policy views. Despite the intuitive appeal of the argument, individualism may play a relatively minor role in determining racial attitudes.

Kellstedt's examination of the relationship between preferences on racial policy and the welfare state generates some interesting findings, for example, that racial policy preferences and general welfare state policy preferences became linked in the minds of citizens precisely when national media coverage began to feature black poverty. However, this aspect of the project is less well integrated within the book.

One limitation of Kellstedt's approach is that his conclusions regarding the role of specific value frames may depend upon how he defines those frames. In Kellstedt's theory, egalitarian frames lead to liberal views, but can one appeal to the value of egalitarianism in arguing against liberal racial policy? The answer could be yes: Both sides in a policy debate may try to tap into the same fundamental American value—witness the equal rights versus special rights argument about gay rights. In the case at hand, the author has coded references to reverse discrimination and discrimination against whites as individualistic references (pp. 40–44), whereas he codes discrimination against blacks as egalitarian references. While the reverse discrimination frame for affirmative action often conveys the notion that the policy violates our ideas of individual merit (by implying that blacks receive a job or education over more qualified whites), it may also appeal to our egalitarian notions (by implying that the program is wrong because it violates our sense of equality). Some support for this comes from the affirmative action framing experiment reported by Donald Kinder and Lynn Sanders (1996) in Divided by Color. They find that endorsement of the principle of equal opportunity leads to greater support for affirmative action framed as unfair advantage, but greater opposition to affirmative action framed as reverse discrimination (pp. 174–78). This possibility would still be consistent with Kellstedt's larger framework for understanding media influence over time, but it suggests a more specific conclusion: Egalitarian frames emphasizing discrimination against blacks lead to more liberal policy views.

Kellstedt makes an important contribution to the story of American racial attitudes. The cross-sectional research often characterizes racial attitudes as quite stable. He reminds us that citizens' views can and do change. Moreover, he helps us to explain that change over a seminal period in American racial history.