Racial Identity and Preferences for Social Change Strategies among African Americans

Abstract

Historically, African Americans have struggled against oppression in a variety of ways. Two of the major strategies have been nationalism and inclusionism; the first emphasizing efforts to establish a separate nation, society or path of development, and the second emphasizing efforts to attain equal opportunity within U.S. society. This article describes an exploration of African American preferences for a range of social change tactics related to these general strategies and the relationship between these preferences and racial identity attitudes. The results indicated that assimilation-oriented Blacks were less likely to prefer organized, collective, policy-related strategies than bicultural Blacks. Other findings led to suggested refinements of the nationalist-inclusionist dichotomy and of racial identity attitudes theory.