Political Protest Orientations Among Black and White Adults

Abstract

The political protest activities of the late 1960s and early 1970s stimulated a flurry of empirical research by social scientists seeking explanations. Most of the research, aimed at explaining individuals' radical political orientations, willingness to use protest and perhaps violence, or actual riot or protest participation, has been guided by either a mass society perspective or some variant of the relative deprivation model. After outlining the basic elements of these two theories as well as an alternative differential socialization theory, central causal features of each theory are integrated into a structural equation model designed to explain individual political protest orientation, and the model (allowing for measurement error in the endogenous constructs) is estimated on separate samples of white and black adults. The results indicate strong race-specific differences in the formation of political orientations. Explanations for these differences are examined; the empirical patterns are interpreted as supporting a theory of differential political socialization.