Measuring Racial Discrimination (2004) / Chapter Skim
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8 Attitudinal and Behavioral Indicators of Discrimination
8 Attitudinal and Behavioral Indicators of Discrimination
Pages 162-185
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From page 162... ...
In this chapter, we consider the challenges of collecting direct evidence of the incidence, causes, and consequences of discrimination from sample surveys, governmental administrative data, nongovernmental data, and in-depth interviews. We also review in some detail the scale measures of racial attitudes used in surveys.
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From page 163... ...
. Although a few states had passed civil rights laws, there was no national prohibition on discriminatory treatment.
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From page 164... ...
. Much of the information on racial attitudes and perceptions of discrimination comes from sample surveys and other observational studies (as distinct from experimental studies)
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From page 165... ...
Repeated cross sections are useful to construct time series, such as percentages of white and black people who perceive discrimination against blacks; longitudinal surveys are useful for analysis of changes in individual behavior and attitudes and reasons for them.
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From page 166... ...
Third, they design survey questions to gather objective information or to measure subjective phenomena, often by using scale measures.3 It is essential that the survey questions be reliable and consistent with what the researchers are trying to measure. When developing survey content, researchers consider the general data collection approach (e.g., personal interviews, computer-assisted telephone interviewing, or mail questionnaires)
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From page 167... ...
. A compilation of holdings of the Roper Center archives in 1982 listed some 4,850 questions dealing with race relations (Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, 1982)
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From page 168... ...
used such an experiment within a sample survey to examine whites' racial attitudes and views about welfare using data from the 1991 National Race and Politics Study. The survey respondents were randomly assigned to one of two treat ment groups: Half were asked about their beliefs regarding black welfare mothers and half about their beliefs regarding white welfare mothers.
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From page 169... ...
. As another example, there is evidence that whites' general attitudes toward blacks predict patterns of discrimination, not necessarily any one randomly chosen behavior; by the same token, there is evidence that whites' attitudes toward a specific racial policy or practice (such as busing in a particular school district, housing in a particular neighborhood, or affirmative action in a particular employment or education context)
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From page 170... ...
As the leading historical targets of discrimination in the United States, African Americans may be in the best position to assess the ongoing reality of race in public life. Some scholars, however, suggest that African Americans may have become more sensitive to discrimination because of their socialization since the passage of civil rights legislation, leading them to notice prejudicial actions now more than in the past and producing an upward reporting bias over time (Bobo and Suh, 2000; Brown, 2001; Gary, 1995; Gomez and Trierweiler, 2001; Sigelman and Welch, 1991; Suh, 2000)
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From page 171... ...
suggests investigating different approaches to the wording and placement of questions experimentally through random assignment on existing social surveys. If levels of reported discrimination vary by question wording and order, follow-up work will be needed to explain these variations and establish which wordings and placements yield the most accurate results.
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From page 172... ...
Typical venues included in surveys to date include work, restaurants, stores, interactions with police, schools, housing, public transportation, banks, and government agencies (Brown, 2001; Collins et al., 2000; Gary, 1995; Newport et al., 2001; Smith, 2000)
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From page 173... ...
. Governmental Administrative Data After the passage of the various civil rights acts prohibiting racial discrimination, bureaucratic agencies were established and charged to investigate complaints, monitor compliance, and work to eliminate bias.5 For example, the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA)
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From page 174... ...
, for example, includes acts of anti-Semitic speech in its annual report on anti-Semitism, even though such speech is legal. Because of problems with the quality and completeness of administrative data, the usefulness of these data sets for research purposes is limited.6 Nongovernmental Data In addition to government agencies, many private organizations maintain a record of discriminatory complaints.
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From page 175... ...
. SCALE MEASURES USED IN SURVEYS As discussed above, although survey-based self-reports have been found to be reliable, accurate, and useful ways of measuring experiences of discrimination, the shift from overt to subtle forms of discrimination has made it more difficult to assess the occurrence of discrimination or to capture people's beliefs using survey questions.
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From page 176... ...
. In survey settings, measures of modern racism examine reactions to black Americans as perceived threats to whites' traditional values and economic status (Duckitt, 2001)
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From page 177... ...
Moreover, consistent with the idea of modern racism, the importance that white Americans attach to equality of opportunity, relative to their other core values, correlates with their more specific racial attitudes and policy preferences (Kinder and Sanders, 1996)
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From page 178... ...
The Modern Racism Scale elicits a similarly exaggerated response, either overly positive or overly negative, in simulated hiring decisions. The common thread of all the work on modern racism, symbolic racism, subtle prejudice, and ambivalent racism is that appearing racist has become aversive to many white Americans (Dovidio and Gaertner, 1986)
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From page 179... ...
One such scale measures blatant or explicit prejudice (Pettigrew and Meertens, 1995) , defined as resentment of racial and ethnic minority groups (their allegedly stealing ingroup jobs but also using welfare)
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From page 180... ...
On the other hand, although survey measures cannot capture discrimination directly, results to date suggest that valid and reliable data on racially discriminatory attitudes and experiences can be gathered on social surveys. Conducting repeated cross-sectional surveys is very useful to provide time series; the GSS is the best example of a large-scale survey that collects data on changes over time in racial attitudes and experiences with discrimination through yearly interviews with samples of the population.
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From page 181... ...
To understand changes in racial attitudes and reported perceptions of discrimination over time, public and private funding agencies should continue to support the collection of rich sur vey data: · The General Social Survey, which since 1972 has been the leading source of repeated cross-sectional data on trends in racial attitudes and perceptions of racial discrimination, merits continued support for measurement of important dimensions of discrimination over time and among population groups. · Major longitudinal surveys, such as the Panel Study of Income Dy namics, the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, and others, merit support as data sources for studies of cumulative disadvantage across time, domains, generations, and population groups.
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From page 182... ...
. Between 1997 and 2001, the Gallup Organization and Princeton Survey Research Associates public opinion polls asked nationally representative samples of African Americans to report any discrimination or unfair treatment they had experienced within the past 30 days (Smith, 2001)
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From page 183... ...
By the 1960s, such segregationist attitudes had moderated considerably, with 30 percent of whites still favoring racially separate schools and 11 percent approving of white preferences in hiring. In 1970, 12 percent of whites admitted to favoring racial segregation in public transportation (Schuman et al., 1997)
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From page 184... ...
, these survey researchers found that "the mere mention" of affirmative action, in the context of soliciting from white respondents their views about racial stereotypes, made those whites more likely to agree with negative racial generalizations (e.g., most blacks are lazy)
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From page 185... ...
, and whites perceived African Americans as the least desirable potential neighbors (Charles, 2001)
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