Recent studies demonstrate that explicit racial appeals are increasingly accepted in American politics. The mechanisms that underlie this increase in acceptability, however, remain unclear. In this project, I investigate the reasons that can make individual voters more or less accepting of explicit racial rhetoric. Using two survey experiments in which respondents are cross-exposed to the real tweets of Democratic and Republican politicians explicitly addressing the issues of race and religion framed in terms of threat (white supremacy and radical Islam), I test two competing hypotheses. One emphasizes the role of partisanship: respondents increase their support for in-party politicians in response to explicit tweets on race and religion from out-part politicians. The other hypothesis can be understood through the lens of “white backlash”: white respondents increase their acceptance of explicit anti-Muslim messages in response to tweets discussing white supremacy as a threat. Overall, I find support for the second hypothesis: when tweets singling out Muslims as a threat are presented after ones mentioning white supremacy, white respondents find the former more acceptable, and this effect is strongest for white Democrats. Analysis of heterogeneous treatment effects further demonstrates that this effect is most strongly moderated by group empathy (more so than by racial resentment and Islamophobia). My results help to shed light on the growing acceptability of explicit racial rhetoric in American politics by underscoring the consequences of cross-exposure to explicit partisan messages on the issues of race and religion.