Racial Hegemony: Group Conflict, Prejudice, And The Paradox Of American Racial Attitudes.

Abstract

Although there is continuing improvement in whites' beliefs about blacks and support for the general principles of racial equality and integration, there is pronounced opposition to specific policies like busing, affirmative action and, to any situation that might alter the predominance of whites over blacks. This research is concerned with two explanations or reconciliations of the contradictory character of racial attitudes. One reconciliation claims that the gap between support for racial principles and the implementation of those principles is a matter of an increasingly sophisticated prejudice. This explanation, often labeled symbolic racism, contends that whites' attitudes have perhaps become more sophisticated, but still rest upon a basic affective antipathy toward blacks. Whites may, therefore, adeptly give the socially acceptable reply to survey questions about general racial principles, but allow the depth of their antiblack feelings to emerge when asked about an issue like school busing. A second reconciliation contends that white support for the principle of racial justice is a real but limited commitment. The commitment is limited in that it often fails to be translated into support for concrete policy change insofar as blacks are viewed as significantly challenging for resources whites possess and value. It is maintained in this research that in any intergroup context involving inequality, the attitudes of dominant group members toward their subordinates represent more an effort to justify and defend an advantaged position than prejudiced orientations. This motivation to maintain hegemony is grounded in ethnocentrism and the existence of an important economic, political, or social inequality. The limitations on the form this effort at ideological hegemony will assume depends upon historically determined states of economic, political, and social relations and the current cultural milieu. Three data analytic efforts are undertaken to test the racial hegemony thesis. The first explores the determinants of antibusing attitudes, the second explores trends in attitudes toward the black political movement, and the third explores trends in attitudes toward federal involvement in school integration. The overall pattern of results substantiates the racial hegemony thesis.