A Common Destiny Blacks and American Society (1989) / Chapter Skim
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Racial Attitudes and Behavior
Racial Attitudes and Behavior
Pages 113-160
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From page 114... ...
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From page 115... ...
As one survey analyst wrote (Smith, 1987:441~: The attitudes white Americans hold toward their black counterparts probably comprise the longest running topic in public opinion research. Yet, despite this prominence of race-relations topics in scientific sample surveys, until recently black Americans-long the minority group most identified with "racial matters" in the United States-were virtually invisible to serious students of American values.
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From page 116... ...
We trace change in the racial attitudes of white Americans, and we examine actual practices of discriminatory or equal treatment in black-white relations. The literature on the attitudes of whites is extensive, but is focused on a few particular types of issues: openness to integration, support for racially equalitarian treatment, and other matters involving evaluations of blacks, integration, or racial equality.
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From page 117... ...
· Black Americans have supported racially equalitarian principles as far back as there are data. · There has been a steady increase in support among white Americans for principles of racial equality, but substantially less support for policies intended to implement principles of racial equality.
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From page 118... ...
Thus, recently, even cohort replacement was weakening as a mechanism for producing change in whites' attitudes toward blacks. WHITE ATTITUDES The Scientific American Reports Until fairly recently the most widely known and best studies of change in racial attitudes were based almost exclusively on data collected in early surveys by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC)
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From page 119... ...
In a subtle manner, the content and tenor of the Scientific American reports on racial attitudes changed as key social issues and events in the nation changed. While the first two articles stressed the strength of a positive trend in racial attitudes, the third article in the series (Greeley and Sheatsley, 1971)
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From page 120... ...
Even assuming that social pressures for "correct" answers affected responses and that attitudes were only tenuously connected to behavior, the change had been impressive. One analyst characterized this research as having shown such sweeping progress that questions on some issues, for example, desegregation of public transportation and of schools, had become obsolete; that the survey data provided no support for the white backlash hypothesis; that changes in racial attitudes were closely linked to the liberalization of public opinion on other issues; and that both cohort replacement and individual change in attitudes contributed to the trends documented in the Scenic American reports (Seeman, 1981:394~.
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From page 121... ...
" Yet, Greeley and Sheatsley noted, blacks were far from uniform in their attitudes toward school busing, and whites' support for the principle of school desegregation continued to grow. They concluded that opposition to busing could not be reduced to simple racism.
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From page 124... ...
All three of the social distance questions concerned with residential contact undergo positive change. This result is surprising for the "great numbers" question, which otherwise behaves very much like the question on majority black schools; both show low absolute levels of support and are not strongly related to level of education.
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From page 125... ...
Racial principle questions addressed attitudes about the general goals of integration and equal treatment of the races; they did not cover what steps or policies should be undertaken to achieve these ends. Implementation questions addressed the steps that might be taken, usually by the federal government, to put the principles regarding; black-white relations into con .
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From page 126... ...
Moreover, support for implementation policies has seldom shown as much positive change as has support for the principles. Although the implementation questions usually do not span as many years as the principle items, there ~ .
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From page 127... ...
found in a 1985 national telephone survey that support for school busing among whites was higher than 40 percent when the question referred to busing blacks to predominantly white schools. That the observed change occurs disproportionately among younger and southern whites is consistent with the claim that actual experience with school desegregation and busing is weakening the previously solid wall of white opposition to this method of desegregating schools.
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From page 128... ...
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From page 129... ...
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From page 130... ...
In contrast, several of the implementation questions have undergone negative change from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s. Like whites, blacks show a decline in support for federal involvement in school desegregation efforts.
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It is premature, if not clearly mistaken, to conclude that blacks are repua~aung government intervention In radar matters because they are basically satisfied with the civil rights accomplishments of the 1960s. For example, we suspect that declines in black support of implementation policies like school busing are related to white resistance and a feeling in the black community that costs of school desegregation are disproportionately borne by black pupils and their parents (see Chapter 2~.
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From page 132... ...
created what they termed an "alienation from white society index," on the basis of data on the racial attitudes of Detroit-area blacks. The index is based on black responses to 11 questions dealing with whether individual whites and white institutions could be trusted, in particular, trusted to treat blacks fairly.
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From page 134... ...
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The Reagan administration was then perceived by many black leaders as the most aggressively anti civil rights administration since before the civil rights movement, and many polls at that time showed that blacks gave President Reagan extremely unfavorable ratings (Cavanagh, 1985~. Thus, the greater coherence in black attitudes found in the 1982 data may be a result of a renewed sense of challenge or "threat" to black civil rights gains.
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The higher the proportion espousing equal treatment, the lower is the area of contact on the rank ordering. Thus, types of group contact are ranked according to how large a proportion of whites desire unequal treatment.2 2.
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From page 138... ...
According to these orderings, while few whites strictly desire unequal treatment in employment, school attendance, and residential living, a substantial majority would feel very uneasy or somewhat uneasy about intermarriage. In light of the data reviewed, it is difficult not to conclude that at some fundamental level the attitudes of a majority of whites toward blacks are ambivalent.
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From page 139... ...
Yet as the 1980s began, signs of resistance to black progress had intensified. For example, some corporations conducting equal employment training programs encountered greater resistance from management.
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From page 140... ...
RACIAL ATTITUDES AN D DISCRIMI NATION I N HOUSI NO A major factor in the differential treatment of blacks is white behavior that is motivated by attitudes and preferences against social settings in which a significant proportion of the people involved are black. One of the most important domains in which this behavior is prevalent is residential housing.
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From page 141... ...
Such surveys show that white attitudes about racially mixed neighborhoods have changed considerably from attitudes of the 1940s (see Table 3-1 and Chapter 2~. However, many whites also hold other beliefs that help to foster residen .
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In the late 1960s, HUD supported an investigation of the causes of residential segregation by race. This study was conducted by the National Research Council (Hawley and Rock, 1973~.
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From page 143... ...
These findings have been replicated in the 1980s (John Yinger, 1986~. Black attitudes are also important for assessing residential segregation.
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From page 144... ...
More generally, most blacks said they would be comfortable in any neighborhood except one in which they were the only black resident. Nearly all blacks were willing to be the third black to move into a predominantly white area, and many were willing to be second.
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In contrast to the situation among blacks, residential segregation of AsianAmericans and whites declines as income and, especially, education increases. This implies that social and economic factors account for some of the residential segregation of Asian-Americans since segregation levels varied by 145
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From page 146... ...
Methods of statistical estimation of discrimination vary somewhat but most are based on the same idea. Discrimination is defined as unequal treatment to individuals with equal productive characteristics.
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Since the mid-1970s, disparate treatment cases declined in significance as overt discrimination gave way to more subtle forms of discrimination (U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 1984:215~.
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From page 148... ...
lower proportions of whites accept equaltreatment statements when large rather than small proportions of blacks are specified; (3) approval of equal treatment is less for close, personalized relations than for impersonal, public contexts; (4)
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. Similarly, Americans who support black-white equality as an abstract goal often oppose particular civil rights measures.
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From page 150... ...
These beliefs help explain why blacks and whites differ so sharply in levels of support for equal opportunity policies such as affirmative action and why, in particular, white opposition to such policies is so high. In The Anatomy of Dial Attitudes Apostle and colleagues (1983)
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From page 151... ...
First, and most important, it ignores the third basic finding from studies of white attitudes and beliefs concerning equal treatment in race relations: whites want considerable social distance from blacks. And, especially with regard to housing, the evidence shows that many whites will go to considerable efforts to maintain that distance.
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From page 152... ...
We might suppose, then, that there exists a three-directional ambivalence in the attitudes of many whites toward racial equality: support for it in principle, and support for it in practice, but only if certain preference boundaries are not overstepped-too many blacks or interracial contact is too close. The competing values hypothesis explains why whites can be in favor of equal treatment in principle but reject policies to implement it.
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From page 153... ...
Attitudes toward affirmative action policies tended to be more highly correlated with attitudes toward equalitarian values than with individualistic values (Bobo, 1989; Kinder and Sanders, 1987; Sears, 1988~. This finding has been interpreted to mean that for many people low levels of support for affirmative action flow more from low levels of commitment to equality and a lack of awareness of social structural causes of inequality (coupled with prejudice)
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From page 154... ...
This general psychological bias toward dispositional attributions when joined with possible self-interest motivations to protect a historically privileged group status may reflect a reasoned opposition of some whites to black advancement. In addition, the traditional American belief that the country is a land of abundant opportunity for those who want to work hard is another important contributor to low levels of support for equal opportunity policies (Kluegel and Smith, 1986~.
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From page 155... ...
White attitudes concerning black-white relations have moved appreciably toward endorsement of principles of equal treatment. Yet there remain important signs of continuing resistance to full equality of black Americans: principles of equality are endorsed less when social contact is close, of long duration, or frequent and when it involves significant numbers of blacks; whites are much less prone to endorse policies to implement equal participation of blacks in society.
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From page 156... ...
Annual Renew of Psychology 36:219-243. Campbell, Angus 1971 White Attitudes Towards Black People.
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From page 157... ...
Scientific American 225:13-19. 1974 Attitudes towards racial integration.
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From page 158... ...
Public Opinion 1~1~(March/April) :38-44 McCloskey, Herbert 1964 Consensus and ideology in American politics.
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From page 159... ...
Sheatsley 1984 American attitudes toward race relations. Public Opinion 640ctober/November)
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From page 160... ...
Milton 1986 Black Americans and Predominantly White Churches. Paper prepared for the Committee on the Status of Black Americans, National Research Council, Washington, D.C.
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