Prejudice and politics: Symbolic racism versus racial threats to the good life.

TLDR

White prejudice theories are well catalogued but rarely tested empirically, and prejudice research is often overlooked. The study aimed to compare realistic group conflict theory, which posits tangible threats from blacks, with symbolic racism, which posits abstract moral resentments, as explanations for white prejudice. The authors examined suburban white voters’ choices in two Los Angeles mayoral elections featuring the same black and white candidates, using voting behavior as the key dependent variable. Symbolic racism emerged as the primary determinant of anti‑black voting in both elections, while direct racial threats had little effect, indicating symbolic racism outweighs realistic threat concerns.

Abstract

Although theories of prejudice have been extensively catalogued, empirical confrontations between competing theories are surprisingly rare. The primary goal of the present research was to test two major theoretical approaches to prejudice by whites against blacks: realistic group conflict theory, which emphasizes the tangible threats blacks might pose to whites' private lives; and a sociocultural theory of prejudice termed symbolic racism, which emphasizes abstract, moralistic resentments of blacks, presumably traceable to preadult socialization. The main dependent variable in our analysis is suburban whites' voting behavior in two mayoral elections in Los Angeles, both strongly influenced by racial issues, that matched the same two candidates, one black and one white. In both elections, symbolic racism (sociocultural prejudice) was the major determinant of voting against the black candidate for people removed from possible personal threats posed by blacks as well as for those at risk. Direct racial threats to whites' private lives (to their jobs, their neighborhoods, their children's schooling, their families' safety) had little effect on either antiblack voting behavior or symbolic racism. The article closes by developing the implications of these results for theories of prejudice and, more speculatively, for interpretations of the effects of voters' private lives on their political behavior. Theories of racial prejudice suffer from benign neglect. Although the theories themselves have been extensively and ably catalogued (most notably, by Allport, 1954; Ashmore & DelBoca, 1976; LeVine & Campbell, 1972), empirical confrontations between alternative theories occupy surprisingly little