Over Thirty Years Later: A Contemporary Look at Symbolic Racism

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Publisher Summary

This chapter summarizes the available evidence on twelve controversies surrounding symbolic racism, which was proposed over 30 years ago to explain new forms of racial conservatism appearing after the civil rights era. The conceptualization of symbolic racism was originally somewhat fuzzy and has evolved over time; but the measurement of it has been surprisingly constant over time; and it seems to form a substantively meaningful and statistically consistent belief system, with two highly correlated variants that differ slightly in the language they use but not in their effects. Its effects on racial politics are quite stable and consistent. It is a distinctive construct necessary for the understanding of Whites' responses to racial politics, not merely redundant with other constructs and hence disposable in the service of parsimony. It focuses on antagonism toward Blacks, which has little to do with either symbolic racism or opposition to policies targeted for Blacks.

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The Theory of Symbolic Racism

The concept of symbolic racism was the first of these “new racisms.” It and its brethren have perhaps stimulated the most research and the most controversy. A recent comprehensive social-psychological review of measures of racial attitudes (Biernat & Crandall, 1999) describes measures of symbolic racism as the most widely used measures of explicit racism today. A leading sociological review of racial attitudes treats the theory of symbolic racism as one of the major social-scientific challenges

Controversies About Symbolic Racism

The symbolic racism claim is an important one—that the politics of race are not merely “politics as usual” but instead are significantly distorted by the underlying racial prejudice held by many racial conservatives, and that race-neutral conservative rhetoric often disguises underlying racial animosity. It goes to the substantive core of America's longest-running and most difficult social problem.

Not surprisingly, then, the theory has been controversial and has stimulated some heated

Inconsistent Conceptualization

One critique is that symbolic racism has been conceptualized inconsistently over time (Sniderman & Tetlock, 1986b; also see Bobo 1988, Schuman 1997, Stoker 1998). It began life as an inductively derived, largely intuitive account of the most politically potent form of racism outside the South in the post–Civil Rights era. The concept was heavily influenced by whatever items were available in early surveys. With such beginnings, it would not be surprising if it were not sharply and consistently

Consistency of the Political Effects of Symbolic Racism

As indicated earlier, numerous studies have shown that symbolic racism is strongly associated with Whites' racial policy preferences. Analyses by both supporters and critics of the theory find that its explanatory power typically outweighs that of other important political attitudes, such as ideology, party identification, and attitudes toward the size of the federal government, or of older and more traditional racial attitudes, such as beliefs in Blacks' genetic inferiority, support for racial

Origins of Symbolic Racism

An eighth question concerns the hypothesized origins of symbolic racism. The original theory argued that symbolic racism was rooted in a “blend” of two elements—anti-Black affect and such traditional conservative values as individualism. Until recently, those origins had not been directly empirically examined. Critics thought that approach depicted a “confounded” mixture of prejudice with traditional nonracial values (Sniderman & Tetlock, 1986b). They argued instead for disentangling the two

Distinctiveness of Symbolic Racism from Alternative Constructs

A variety of alternative constructs have been proposed that might explain the apparent political effects of symbolic racism.

Outgroup Antagonism or White Group Consciousness?

A twelfth and final set of questions concern alternative explanations that assume the importance in racial politics of Whites' group consciousness, centered on their racial identity as Whites. Social structural theories, such as those of realistic group conflict (Bobo, 1983), sense of group position (Bobo, 1999), and social dominance (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999), argue that Whites oppose liberal racial policies because they would jeopardize the racial hierarchy that privileges them and their

Summary

We have taken up 12 controversies surrounding symbolic racism. We agree that the conceptualization of symbolic racism has not been terribly clear or consistent over time, though hopefully that has now evolved to a clear and consistent conceptualization. The measurement of symbolic racism has centered on a reasonably constant set of content themes, although the specific items used have varied considerably over time. It seems to form a substantively meaningful and statistically consistent belief

Further Questions

There are a number of other questions that might reasonably be raised about symbolic racism. In these cases we appraise the evidence as less clear. We have seven in mind.

Conclusions

There is mostly good news for the theory of symbolic racism, if not for American society, in this story. Looking back now, the original theory seems itself rather intuitive and unformed, and it has been sharpened considerably by the many scholarly exchanges on this topic. The original research testing it can fairly be said to have been vulnerable to a number of alternative explanations, but in the light of considerable later research, its core propositions have largely proved to be on target.

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    Previous versions of this chapter were presented at the annual meeting of the International Society of Political Psychology, Seattle, July, 2000, and the Attitudes Preconference of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Los Angeles, February 6, 2003. We would like to express our thanks to our colleagues Donald R. Kinder and the late John B. McConahay, with whom the original theory of symbolic racism was developed; to our research collaborators, Harris M. Allen, Mary Carrillo, Sharmaine Cheleden, Jack Citrin, Tom Jessor, Rick Kosterman, Christopher Tarman, Nicholas Valentino, and Colette van Laar; to our colleagues who have given us much valuable feedback over the years, usually without as much gratitude, Lawrence Bobo, Franklin Gilliam, Jr., and Jim Sidanius; and to our critics who have done much to help sharpen our thinking and our research.

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