Anger and Racial Politics provides a theoretical framework for understanding the emotional conditions that cause race to have a more pervasive effect on politics. Antoine Banks asserts that making whites angry – no matter the basis for their anger – will make ideas about race more salient to them. He argues that anger, and not other negative emotions, provides the foundation upon which contemporary white racial attitudes are structured. He demonstrates that putting an end to affirmative action, repealing health care reform, hanging the confederate flag high, voting for Tea Party backed candidates, in all of these cases, anger plays an important role in enhancing the impact of race on whites’ political preferences

The Anger Rule provides an important insight to understanding how racial inequality sustains itself in the United States. Antoine Banks and Ismail White focus on an explanation that hasn’t received consideration – emotion. They argue that an “anger rule” is applied to Black politicians, thereby penalizing them at the ballot box for publicly expressing anger about politics, particularly when it is related to their racial group. Using a multi-method approach, they uncover that Black politicians and Black voters are aware of the angry feeling rule applied to their group. As a consequence, they constrain their anger about issues related to their group in political spaces dominated by whites to avoid a penalty from those who are motivated to maintain the racial status quo. This anger constraint significantly hinders Black politicians’ ability to address American racial inequality.