The Impact of City on Racial Attitudes

Abstract

Probability samples of approximately 175 black and 175 white respondents were drawn from each of fifteen American cities. This report deals with the extent and ways in which racial, urban, and certain other attitudes are influenced by city of residence. The initial evidence is formal in character and simply shows that city of residence accounts for significant proportions of variance in a wide range of attitudes-proportions not greatly different from those accounted for by five individual background variables (age, sex, education, income, and occupation) and largely independent of these background variables. Attitudes best explained by city seem to be those with some urban content, and specially those that involve individual perceptions of the immediate urban environment. The outcomes are similar for black and white respondents, and for some specific attitudes there is surprising similarity in the ranking of cities across race. Questions are raised about the relation of attitudes to urban riots: Detroit, which had a major riot, is moderate relative to other cities in attitudes presumed to be relevant to open racial conflict. Particularly promising is the finding that black dissatisfaction with life conditions in their city goes down as black percentage of the population goes up-possibly because the city government becomes more responsive to black needs. Liberal racial attitudes on the part of the white population are closely associated with variations in white educational levels by city. While part of this relatioship is simply a reflection of individual level correlations, part appears to be due to the indirect effects of education on the general climate of opinion in a city. City of residence would seem to be a useful explanatory variable in studies of attitudes.