Race in context: Does familiarity breed amity or contempt?

The research question addressed here is what the impact of proportion black in a given contextual unit is on white racial attitudes and policies preferences concerning black Americans. The data used is the 1992 American National Election Study merged with the 1990 United States Census. The first issue addressed is the conceptualization and measurement of racial attitudes and policy opinions. Traditional indices purporting to measure symbolic racism are criticized for their lack of precision and their tendency to politicize the study of white racial attitudes. Alternative measures of cognitive and affective attitudes toward blacks are then presented. The next issue addressed is the construction of an individual-level model of white policy opinions concerning black Americans. An attempt is made to include variables testing symbolic racism theory, group position theory, and principled politics theory all in the same model. While none of the theories are rejected, the evidence presented indicates that white racial policy opinions are largely determined by a combination of racial attitudes and commitment to traditional American values such as egalitarianism, moralism, and individualism. This finding is most consistent with symbolic racism theory. The next task is to investigate the effect of proportion black in a given contextual unit on white racial attitudes. Higher proportions of blacks in a census tract are found to predict improved white affect toward blacks, but only if other whites in the census tract are above a certain minimal level of education. This finding is consistent with earlier experimental studies indicating that interracial contact improves attitudes only under certain favorable conditions. At the county level, higher proportions of blacks are found to predict more negative white cognitive evaluations of blacks, which is consistent with the racial threat hypothesis. The final issue addressed by this research is the effect of proportion black on white racial policy opinions. The only evidence of such an effect is the case where higher proportions of blacks in the county are found to predict greater white opposition to school integration. This suggests that whites racial policy preferences are motivated more by a desire for avoidance rather than social dominance.