Symbolic Racism

Abstract

Symbolic racism is the expression by suburban whites in terms of abstract ideological symbols and symbolic behaviors of the feeling that blacks are violating cherished values and making illegitimate demands for changes in the racial status quo. In this paper, the correlates of symbolic racism from a sample of seminary students and of voters in a Los Angeles suburb are presented. Measures of symbolic racism predicted voting preferences for a white incumbent over a black challenger in the 1969 Los Angeles mayoralty election, and symbolic racism was itself correlated negatively with sympathetic identification with the underdog and with education. It was positively correlated with Republican party identification and with measures of traditional or conventional religious and secular American values. Symbolic racism was not correlated with measures of occupation, income, tolerance of ambiguity, alienation, social rootlessness, self‐concept, or relative deprivation. It is proposed that symbolic racism rests upon antiblack racial socialization and conservative political and value socialization, and some speculations are offered to account for why symbolic racism has emerged at a time when traditional measures of racism indicate a decline in antiblack prejudice.