Traditional Racism Research Articles

Is it racism? The belief in cultural superiority across Europe

ABSTRACT Are Europeans racist if they maintain that some cultures are superior? Theorists of cultural racism argue so and suggest that modern racism in Europe is expressed as a belief in cultural superiority. But this claim has been based on theoretical arguments, not on empirical tests. The current research investigated how widespread a belief in cultural superiority was in European countries and tested how such a belief related to biological racism. Analyses of data from the European Social Survey (21 countries, total N > 33,000) showed large differences across countries in tendencies to endorse the belief in cultural superiority. But in nearly all countries, a factor model consistent with the theory of cultural racism had much better support than a factor model building on the assumption that culturalism is distinct from racism. Even when the factor analysis was able to maintain a distinction between racism and culturalism, the two factors had a very strong correlation. The present research suggests that although a belief in cultural superiority may harbour different views, expressed beliefs in cultural superiority and cultural concerns are strongly associated with traditional racism.

Masculinities, Post-Racialism and the Gates Controversy: The False Equivalence Between Officer and Civilian

On Thursday, July 16, 2009, white male police officer James Crowley was called to the home of prominent black male scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on a report of a potential break-in. After confirming that no break-in had occurred and Gates’s identity, Crowley arrested Gates for disorderly conduct. Gates was promptly released without charges, and claimed he had been racially profiled. After the event became a national controversy, some people said that Gates was the true racist for assuming Crowley was racist. Only the parties “beer summit” with the President and Vice-president cooled the controversy. This article asks why Crowley arrested Gates and why some view Gates as the culprit. The answer to the first question is that this was not just racial profiling, but also a masculinity contest. The arrest can be conceived of as resulting from the ways the parties challenged each others’ masculinities, which resulted in a masculinity contest. Specifically, Gates’s violation of the unofficial rule of deference to the badge created a masculinity challenge for Crowley and resulted in a masculinity contest between the parties that Crowley resolved by arresting Gates. The answer to the second question is that race was indeed the dominant factor, but because of post-racialism, not traditional racism. Whereas colorblind ideology presumed the best way to reach an egalitarian society was to pretend race does not matter, post-racial ideology assumes we have reached that state. The ironic result of Obama’s election was to make it harder for the mainstream to see Crowley as implicitly biased and easier for them to see Gates as the true racist for having called Crowley racist. The complicated nature of the Gates arrest and controversy reveals the need for a scholarly program demonstrating that norms of masculinity, while invisible, strongly influence behavior and that post-racialism, while explicitly progressive, hides implicit bias from view.

What Drives Views on Government Redistribution and Anti-Capitalism: Envy or a Desire for Social Dominance?

In debates over the roles of law and government in promoting the equality of income or in redistributing the fruits of capitalism, widely different motives are attributed to those who favor or oppose capitalism or income redistribution. According to one view, largely accepted in the academic social psychology literature (Jost et al. 2003), opposition to income redistribution and support for capitalism reflect an orientation toward social dominance, a desire to dominate other groups. According to another view that goes back at least to the nineteenth century origins of Marxism, anti-capitalism and a support for greater legal efforts to redistribute income reflect envy for the property of others and a frustration with one’s lot in a capitalist system. In this paper I expand and test the social dominance thesis using sixteen nationally representative General Social Surveys conducted by the National Opinion Research Center between 1980 and 2004. Because few questions of interest were asked in most years or of most respondents, the sample sizes used for analyses vary from 535 to 15,743. I first show that respondents who express traditionally racist views (on segregation, interracial marriage, and inborn racial abilities) tend to support greater income redistribution. Traditional racists also tend to oppose free-market capitalism and its consequences, wanting the government to guarantee jobs for everyone and fix prices, wages, and profits. Next, I report a similar pattern for those who express intolerance for unpopular groups on the fifteen Stouffer tolerance questions (regarding racists, homosexuals, communists, extreme militarists, and atheists). Those who express less tolerance for unpopular groups tend to favor income redistribution and oppose capitalism. Then I present the results of six full latent variable structural equation models. The latent variables traditional racism (Model 1: r=.27) and intolerance (Model 2: r=.31) predict the latent variable income redistribution. Similarly, the latent variables traditional racism (Model 3: r=.33) and intolerance (Model 4: r=.36) predict anti-capitalism. Controlling for education, income (log), gender, and age (Models 5 and 6), the effects of the racism and intolerance predictors on redistribution and intolerance are reduced, but remain significant. Thus the preference against income redistribution, for example, is not just the result of income or education - rather, the data are consistent with racism and intolerance continuing to play a small, but significant role in explaining the support for income redistribution and anti-capitalism. The data are broadly inconsistent with the standard belief in the social psychology literature that pro-capitalist and anti-redistributionist views are positively associated with racism. I then explore an alternative hypothesis, showing that, compared to anti-redistributionists, strong redistributionists have about two to three times higher odds of reporting that in the prior seven days they were angry, mad at someone, outraged, sad, lonely, and had trouble shaking the blues. Similarly, anti-redistributionists had about two to four times higher odds of reporting being happy or at ease. Not only do redistributionists report more anger, but they report that their anger lasts longer. When asked about the last time they were angry, strong redistributionists were more than twice as likely as strong opponents of leveling to admit that they responded to their anger by plotting revenge. Last, both redistributionists and anti-capitalists expressed lower overall happiness, less happy marriages, and lower satisfaction with their financial situations and with their jobs or housework. Further, in the 2002 and 2004 General Social Surveys anti-redistributionists were generally more likely to report altruistic behavior. In particular, those who opposed more government redistribution of income were much more likely to donate money to charities, religious organizations, and political candidates. The one sort of altruistic behavior that the redistributionists were more likely to engage in was giving money to a homeless person on the street. Evidence from sixteen national representative samples from 1980 through 2004 tends to suggest that Social Dominance Orientation has been in part misconceived. In the United States, segments of the academic community seem to have reversed the relationship between pro-capitalism and income redistribution on the one hand, and racism and intolerance on the other. Those who support capitalism and oppose greater income redistribution tend to be better educated, to have higher family incomes, to be less traditionally racist, and to be less intolerant of unpopular groups. Those who oppose greater redistribution also tend to be more generous in donating to charities and more likely to engage in some other altruistic behavior. The academic assumption that anti-capitalism and opposition to income redistribution reflect an orientation toward social dominance seems unwarranted.

Two Forms of Racism and Their Related Outcomes: The Bad and the Ugly.

Two experiments investigated the related outcomes of two forms of racism among college students (413 in the first and 374 in the second experiment) enrolled in a program leading to careers in law enforcement such as police officers. The two forms of racism were the overt, traditional type whereby visible minorities are denigrated on the basis of innate characteristics, and the subtle type called neoracism, which incorporates egalitarian values and negative beliefs in the blame of visible minorities for undeserved gains and overall social problems. The design of the experiments allowed for a reality check in that they pertained to racial issues relevant to training and work in law enforcement. Experiment 1 showed, as hypothesized, that although both forms of racism are linked, only neoracism is associated with covert attitudes (i.e., unfavourable reactions to employment equity), and traditional racism is related to overt discriminatory behavioural intentions. Experiment 2 investigated the impact of priming a negative reaction to a visible minority on the pattern of these links. Under such conditions the observed links strongly suggest that respondents regress to old norms as neoracism is then associated with both covert negative attitudes and overt discriminatory behavioural intentions. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Economics, Racism, and Attitudes toward Immigration in the New Germany

A number of different theories have been advanced to explain support for policies which may benefit minority groups. This paper utilizes eco nomic-self interest, traditional racism, and conservative values to explore attitudes of German citizens toward granting political asylum and resi dency to immigrants. The linear structural relations (LISREL) analysis on a 1991 sample of German citizens suggests that the structure of attitudes is different depending upon which section of Germany (the West or the former German Democratic Republic [GDR]) is considered. East Germans tend to "fuse" traditional racism with conservative values to express a racism argued by "symbolic" theorists while the West Germans tend to separate the concepts, possibly because of the more mature democratic development of West German parties and institutions. In explaining im migration policy, traditional racism tends to dominate the West German model, while economic self-interest partially explains policy attitudes in the former GDR. Still, even in the East, ethnocentrism is a very strong factor in understanding support for restrictive immigration policies. We discuss the implications of the analysis in terms of the literature on Ameri can racism and policy reasoning.

The Empirical Relationship between the Constructs of Traditional and Symbolic Racism

The theory of symbolic racism contends that white resistance to social policies such as affirmative action is rooted in prejudiced attitudes towards black people, and represents a more sophisticated form of racism than traditional or rednecked racism. However, the notion of symbolic racism has been severely criticized on theoretical and empirical grounds. The present study sought to clarify the nature of the empirical relationship between symbolic and traditional racism. The Subtle Racism Scale (Duckitt, 1991) and Heaven and Moerdyk's adaptation of Ray's anti-black scale were administered to 150 school-children. The findings revealed no significant difference in mean scores obtained on the measures of symbolic and traditional racism. A series of factor analyses consistently yielded four factors, accounting for 54% of the variance, suggesting that racism involves hitherto unaccounted for components in addition to traditional and subtle expressions of racial prejudice.

Further Validation of a Subtle Racism Scale in South Africa

Obvious and transparent measures of traditional racism no longer appear to adequately assess anti-black prejudice in more sophisticated samples. This, together with a growing tendency for traditional measures to elicit antagonistic responses from subjects, led in an earlier study to the development and preliminary validation of a South African subtle racism (SR) scale. The current research used a new sample, in which the use of traditional measures of anti-black racism would have been very difficult, to cross-validate the SR scale. It also extended the validation of the SR scale by investigating its association with self-reports of actual interracial behaviour. The findings from 303 white students at the University of the Witwatersrand showed a high level of internal consistency on the SR scale, and a strong correlation with an interracial behavioural intention scale. These findings as well as significant correlations with self-reported interracial behaviour support the validity of the SR scale. Contrary to earlier thinking, the findings also indicate a very powerful relationship between anti-black prejudice and authoritarianism.

The Development and Validation of a Subtle Racism Scale in South Africa

Research on the concept of symbolic or modern racism has shown that transparent and obvious measures of traditional racism no longer adequately reflect racial prejudice in many American sub-populations. There are indications that this may also be the case for certain segments of the white South African population, particularly in the case of university students who have been the typical subjects of research on prejudice. Traditional measures of prejudice may also be viewed as offensive by subjects and elicit antagonistic reactions. The present study therefore set out to develop and validate a new, more indirect, and subtle measure of anti-black racial prejudice designed to overcome these problems. The results ( N = 217) indicated that the Subtle Racism scale was unidimensional, highly reliable, and showed powerful associations with a number of validity criteria. It clearly outperformed a more traditional measure of racism in all respects.

“White” fraternity and sorority attitudes toward “blacks” on a deep‐south campus

Surveys of “white” undergraduates on this deep‐South (University of Alabama) campus since its desegregation in 1963 have indicated increasing acceptance of both public and social interaction with “blacks.” The hypothesis that “white” fraternities and sororities retard this integrative process by serving as reservoirs of traditional racism was, however, strongly and consistently supported. Because Greek systems typically operate on‐campus under university aegis, this finding, to the extent it is generalizable, questions the resolve of university administrations in the pursuit of equality.

Beyond the Ring: The Role of Boxing in American Society

Carefully documents the ruin waiting for almost all those ill-advised enough to become professional boxers. He confirms all the legends, of crime, of swindling, of the miserable economic rewards allotted to the vast majority of fighters...the traditional racism of the American ring...No one, reading Sammons, can doubt that it is evil. - Times Literary Supplement.

The Brown Decision: Racism, Education, and Human Values

It is most appropriate to discuss the historic Brown v. Board of Education decison of the United States Supreme Court at a colloquium in memory of Charles H. Thompson. Those of us who had the privilege of knowing Dean Thompson were influenced by his perspective of education, which transcended the limits of educational institutions and their methods. As an editor of the Journal of Negro Education, he was a social philosopher. For him, education had a most important broad social responsibility. Educational institutions, methods, and goals had to be compatible with the democratic and humane goals of the larger society, as well as to be a most solid foundation for the attainment and maintenance of these goals. In many respects, one can view Dean Thompson as one of the quiet architects of the Brown decision. As one carefully analyzes this decision, one sees that it not only deals with the key constitutional problem that racially segregated schools violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution, but that it is also a most profound statement of the nature and purpose of education in a democracy. In discussing this larger approach to education, the Court stated in most simple and eloquent terms fundamental human values and insights which could not be obscured by traditional racism. These were the values and the educational philosophy that Dean Thompson communicated to his students, his colleagues, and to the society long before the Brown decision.