Social Identity and Racial Attitudes

Ray Block Jr.

Fall Semester, 2020

Overview

We discuss (White) Americans’ racial attitudes in terms of…

  • the political potential of social identity (social ID)
  • group consciousness and its variants (among Blacks)
  • old-school versus new-school racism (among Whites)
  • the racial divide in policy attitudes
  • Research on social ID and racial attitudes (class discussion)

Social Identity’s Political Potential

Social Identity’s Political Potential

Humans seem hard-wired to

  • make us vs. them comparisons
  • value in-group membership
  • derrogate out-group members

Social Identity’s Political Potential

Minimal group paradigm

  • arbitrary differences can trigger in-group/out-group thinking
  • it is therefore easy to induce (and exploit) “groupness”

Social Identity’s Political Potential

Groupness studies focus on:

  1. in-group considerations (among Blacks)
  2. out-group considerations (among Whites)
  3. studies that combine #1 and #2

Group Consciousness, etc.

Group Consciousness, etc.

Marx’s conception of class consciousness…

  • class in itself = objective group membership
  • class of itself = awareness of one’s class status

One of the goals of the socialist project was to make workers conscious of the fact that they were workers

Group Consciousness, etc.

In Political Science, consciousness is defined as:

  • feeling close to members or one’s group
  • awareness the group’s relative position in society
  • collective action to improve/maintain/worsen(?) group’s relative position

Group Consciousness, etc.

Approaches to studying group consciousness:

  • additive (closeness + position + collective action)
  • latent construct (e.g., factor analysis)
  • interactive (see Miller et al. 1981 AJPS)
  • linked fate as a proxy measure (McClain et al. 2006 ARPS)

Old- vs. New- School Racism

Old- vs. New- School Racism

Old racism New Racism
Nicknames for racism Old-fashioned, Jim-Crow, etc. Symbolic, Subtle, Resentment, etc.
Shows up in _____ ways Overt Covert
Informed by _____ conceptions Biological Cultural
Racial attitudes reflect Prejudice Principles

Old- vs. New- School Racism

Measurement problem:

  • Is the shift from old- to new- school racial attitudes real?
  • Is it a polling artifact (e.g., question wording; interviewer race)?
  • Or is it a norm shift (e.g., social desirability)?

The Racial Divide

The Racial Divide

The debate is over whether (or to what degree)…

  • Black and White people live in separate Americas, or
  • there is more common ground between racial groups than is typically believed.

Research on Social ID and Racial Attitudes

Research on Social ID and Attitudes

Some things to ponder WRT this week’s readings…

  • While studies often separate out the studies of racism (among Whites) from consciousness (among non-Whites), I want you to consider how these parallel literatures inform each other.