 According to Mendelberg, racial resentment remains widespread among white Americans even though explicitly racist appeals have come to be viewed as outside the bounds of acceptable political speech. (At least, that seemed to be the case up until the 2016 presidential election cycle.) White voters, on this model, tend to shy away from accepting explicitly racist proposals because they do not want to think of themselves as racist. The existence of racial resentment allows for the skilled intentional use of utterances that are unrelated to race on the surface yet access negative racial attitudes in a targeted audience, nudging them towards a particular course of action--e.g., voting for a preferred candidate.