Reflections on American Racism

Abstract

In response to Kinder's critique of our assessment of the symbolic racism research program, we cite both the research procedures and actual writings of symbolic racism researchers, paying particular attention to contradictions between positions previously taken by Kinder and those he now takes in response to our paper. We also maintain the following: (a) there is no persuasive evidence that symbolic racism represents a new, qualitatively different form of racism—one cannot, after all, establish that there is a new kind of racism without demonstrating that it is in fact different from the old; (b) the term “symbolic racism” is logically defensible only if one adopts a definition of the construct that Kinder eschews; and (c) symbolic racism research systematically blurs the distinction between racist and nonracist sources of white opposition to policies to assist minorities and, in the process, politicizes both the concept of racism and the social science research process. We conclude by sketching a constructive agenda for research on racial policy reasoning.