CSSC Brief · Jan 2026
Race or class: does it change how people respond to climate inequality?
Based on Unequal Risks, Unequal Responses: Differential Effects of Emphasizing Race vs. Class Disparities in News Stories about Climate Impacts, published in Science Communication.
The short version
When a news story said Black communities face the greatest climate risks, readers were less likely to believe climate impacts are unequal than when the story focused on poor or working-class communities. The backlash came mostly from White readers and people with more symbolic racism.
What we did
Scientists broadly agree that climate change hits low-income communities and communities of color the hardest. Yet most Americans don’t know this, and they tend to accept class-based gaps more readily than racial ones. So we wondered: does it matter who a news story says is most at risk?
We ran two online experiments with about 1,400 Americans each, including an oversample of Black participants. People read a news story about climate change raising the risk of flooding (Study 1) or heat waves (Study 2). The story said the most at-risk communities were Black communities, poor communities, or working-class communities, or it didn’t name any group. A fifth group read no story at all. Then we asked whether they thought climate impacts are unequal, whether they supported helping affected communities, and whether they supported climate policies.
What we found
- Naming Black communities backfired. In both studies, people who read the story about Black communities were less likely to believe flooding or heat waves hit some communities harder than everyone else, including people who read no story at all.
- Class-focused stories didn’t backfire, and sometimes helped. In the flooding study, the story about poor communities increased belief in unequal climate impacts and support for affected communities compared to reading no story.
- Racial attitudes shaped the response. People higher in symbolic racism, a subtle and indirect form of racial bias, reacted most negatively to the story about Black communities. For people low in symbolic racism, that same story sometimes boosted support, but less often.
- Black participants were generally more supportive of climate action. In the flooding study, the story about Black communities lowered White participants’ beliefs and support, while Black participants responded the same regardless of which story they read.
- The effects were small, and they were stronger for flooding than for heat waves. That may be because flooding feels more local, making it easier to see affected communities as “other people.”
Why it matters
Climate coverage that highlights class-based inequities may be less likely to trigger a backlash than coverage that highlights racial inequities. But that doesn’t mean journalists should stop reporting on how climate change harms communities of color; those harms are real. The bigger challenge is finding ways to talk about climate justice that get past the identity-driven biases some audiences bring to these stories.
Cite the paper
Hart, P. S., Feldman, L., Choi, S., & Zhang, A. L. (2026). Unequal risks, unequal responses: Differential effects of emphasizing race vs. class disparities in news stories about climate impacts. Science Communication. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/10755470251397919