DIVERGENT TRENDS IN WHITE RACIAL ATTITUDES TOWARD BLACKS

In: The international journal of sociology and social policy, Band 6, Heft 1, S. 25-38

Abstract

This article is an investigation of attitudes of White Americans towards Black Americans using General Social Survey data collected by the National Opinion Research Center from 1972 through 1980. Two trends emerge from the data. One trend, predicted by the literature, is one of liberal change among items based on the desirability of racially mixed social contact. A second trend suggests that through the seventies, White Americans become increasingly less willing to condone government spending to alleviate conditions of racial inequality. This inconsistency raises the issue of question validity, which is addressed by an analysis of response patterns of three items in full predictive models. The results suggest that in measuring racial prejudice in a society becoming generally more conservative, questions focussing on public policy should be considered in addition to questions of social contact.