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The ‘Obama Generation’ Holds the Most Liberal Racial Attitudes in American History

As America commemorates fifty years since Martin Luther King Jr.’s march on Washington, new research in Political Psychology reveals how the generation of white Americans who came of age during the Obama presidency holds the most liberal racial attitudes of any previous generation and the lowest levels of racial resentment.

The authors turned to the 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study to test the theory that Barack Obama's ascendancy to the White House has had a greater impact on those who experienced this during the ages of 18-25; the "impressionable-years". Statistical analysis reveals how Obama's presidency has been a catalyst for change in racial relations on the youngest cohort of political participants.