Terms and conditions apply: symbolic prejudice at the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality

Abstract

ABSTRACT Measures of prejudice like racial resentment and modern sexism neglect how systems of power intersect and shape individuals' attitudes towards others. If these measures depend on which racial, gender, or sexuality subgroup of Black people or women are asked about, prejudice towards these overarching groups cannot be quantified and understood without analyzing the connections between (hetero)sexism and racism. I use a question wording experiment to test whether changing the subject of these batteries affects respondents' answers. Reported prejudice varies by the subgroups asked about and respondents' own ascribed identities. Racial attitudes are relatively fixed; reported sexism towards white and Black women changes by respondent race; heterosexism is pervasive; and the strength of the association between resentment and sexism varies based on the mentioned (sub)groups. These measures should be updated by applying the insights from the work on intersectionality to account for how individuals constitute groups to capture this variation in attitudes.