Finding Antiracists: Construction of an Antiracism Attitude Scale

Abstract

ABSTRACT While there have been many antiracism discussions, an instrument is needed to capture the degree of support of a popularized form of this philosophy. Such an instrument, contextualized to contemporary racial controversies, can be an upgrade from older measures of racial attitudes, such as the racial resentment scale. Furthermore, a scale assessing antiracism differs from previous scales by measuring racial progressiveness or radicalism rather than racial conservatism or overt racism. Exploratory factor analysis of survey data from two samples indicates that five statements—BLM, white fragility, slavery, government request, and blacks deserve—loaded .6 or higher on the first factor for both samples, and these statements have Cronbach’s alphas higher than .8 and explain more than half the variance. Two other statements—white supremacy and racist society—barely missed qualifying for the index, but further analysis with confirmatory factor analysis indicates that their inclusion in the index should be done with caution. Qualitative scale assessment indicates that respondents reflected themes from popular antiracism literature. The scale was tested with a national sample and found to be statistically sound with predictive validity. This scale assesses the degree to which racial attitudes reflect popular antiracism ideals and can assess the prevalence of antiracism.