Symbolic racism (also known as modern-symbolic racism, modern racism,
symbolic prejudice, and racial resentment) is a coherent belief system that reflects an underlying one-dimensional
prejudice
Prejudice can be an affective feeling towards a person based on their perceived group membership. The word is often used to refer to a preconceived (usually unfavourable) evaluation or classification of another person based on that person's per ...
towards a racialized
ethnicity
An ethnic group or an ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include common sets of traditions, ancestry, language, history, ...
. These beliefs include the
stereotype
In social psychology, a stereotype is a generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group. The type of expectation can vary; it can be, for example ...
that
black people are morally inferior to white people, and that
black people
Black is a racialized classification of people, usually a political and skin color-based category for specific populations with a mid to dark brown complexion. Not all people considered "black" have dark skin; in certain countries, often in s ...
violate traditional
White American
White Americans are Americans who identify as and are perceived to be white people. This group constitutes the majority of the people in the United States. As of the 2020 Census, 61.6%, or 204,277,273 people, were white alone. This represented ...
values
In ethics and social sciences, value denotes the degree of importance of something or action, with the aim of determining which actions are best to do or what way is best to live (normative ethics in ethics), or to describe the significance of dif ...
such as hard work and independence. However, ''symbolic racism'' is more of a general term than it is one specifically related to prejudice towards black people. These beliefs may cause the subject to
discriminate against black people and to justify this
discrimination
Discrimination is the act of making unjustified distinctions between people based on the groups, classes, or other categories to which they belong or are perceived to belong. People may be discriminated on the basis of race, gender, age, relig ...
.
Some people do not view symbolic racism as prejudice since it is not linked directly to
race
Race, RACE or "The Race" may refer to:
* Race (biology), an informal taxonomic classification within a species, generally within a sub-species
* Race (human categorization), classification of humans into groups based on physical traits, and/or s ...
but is indirectly linked through social and
political
Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studies ...
issues.
David O. Sears
David O’Keefe Sears (born June 24, 1935, in Urbana, Illinois) is an American psychologist who specializes in political psychology. He is a distinguished professor of psychology and political science at the University of California, Los Angeles w ...
and P.J. Henry characterize symbolic racism as the expression or endorsement of four specific themes or beliefs:
# Black people no longer face much prejudice or discrimination.
#The failure of black people to progress results from their unwillingness to work hard enough.
# Black people are demanding too much too fast.
# Black people have gotten more than they deserve.
Symbolic racism is a form of modern
implicit racism
Aversive racism is a theory proposed by Samuel L. Gaertner & John F. Dovidio (1986), according to which negative evaluations of racial/ethnic minorities are realized by a persistent avoidance of interaction with other racial and ethnic groups. As ...
, as it is more subtle and indirect than
more overt forms of racism, such as
Jim Crow laws
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the Sout ...
. As symbolic racism develops through
socialization
In sociology, socialization or socialisation (see spelling differences) is the process of internalizing the norms and ideologies of society. Socialization encompasses both learning and teaching and is thus "the means by which social and cultur ...
and its processes occur without conscious awareness,
an individual with symbolically racist beliefs may genuinely oppose racism and believe they are not racist. Symbolic racism is perhaps the most prevalent contemporary form of racism.
The concept of symbolic racism has been criticized for being inconsistent in measurement and concept over time.
New experiments also provide evidence that responses do not differ when groups other than African Americans are referenced.
Definition
In the aftermath of the
Civil Rights Movement
The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, Racial discrimination ...
,
old-fashioned racism
Old-fashioned racism (OFR) is a type of racism that asserts that minorities are biologically inferior to white people. OFR is also associated with the belief that minorities should be segregated from white society, and that minorities do not des ...
declined along with
segregation Segregation may refer to:
Separation of people
* Geographical segregation, rates of two or more populations which are not homogenous throughout a defined space
* School segregation
* Housing segregation
* Racial segregation, separation of humans ...
in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
. Some people believe that newer forms of racism began to replace older forms of racism. ''Symbolic racism'' is a term that was coined by David Sears and John McConahay in 1973 to explain why most White Americans supported principles of
equality
Equality may refer to:
Society
* Political equality, in which all members of a society are of equal standing
** Consociationalism, in which an ethnically, religiously, or linguistically divided state functions by cooperation of each group's elite ...
for Black Americans, but less than half were willing to support programs designed to implement these principles. The original theory described three definitive aspects of symbolic racism:
#A new form of racism had replaced old-fashioned
Jim Crow
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the Sout ...
racism, as it was no longer popular and could no longer be influential in politics, as only a small minority still accepted it.
#Opposition to black politicians and racially targeted policies is more influenced by symbolic racism than by any perceived or true threat to whites' own personal lives.
#The origins of this form of racism lay in early-socialized negative feelings about blacks associated with traditional
conservative
Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization i ...
values.
The concept of symbolic racism has evolved over time, but most writings currently define symbolic racism as containing four themes:
#Racial discrimination is no longer a serious obstacle to black people's prospects for a good life.
#Black people's continuing disadvantages are largely due to their unwillingness to work hard enough.
#Black people's continuing demands are unwarranted.
#Black people's increased advantages are also unwarranted.
History
The term ''symbolic racism'' was first implemented in the 1970s, as a way to describe discrimination against blacks post-Jim Crow. It was used to differentiate between older, more overt forms of racism and newer forms of discrimination.
Attacks on busing shortly after integration of schools became widespread have been posited as early examples of symbolic racism.
However, Kinder has stated that older forms of racism are still prevalent in modern society.
Following the Jim Crow era, when older, overtly racist business practices were outlawed, some turned to more discreet methods of racism. While realtors in the late 1960s and early 1970s could no longer outright deny selling a home to a black person because they were black, they often gave the black person a higher price point than they would have if they were a white person.
Discrimination also pervaded
loan
In finance, a loan is the lending of money by one or more individuals, organizations, or other entities to other individuals, organizations, etc. The recipient (i.e., the borrower) incurs a debt and is usually liable to pay interest on that d ...
offices, where black people continued to be less likely to get a meeting with a loan officer, less likely to be approved for a loan, and less likely to receive all the necessary information.
In 1981,
Howard Schuman
Howard Schuman (1928 - 2021) was an American sociologist and professor of sociology at the University of Michigan. He is known for his work on survey research, such as the design of polling questions.
Education and career
Schuman received his A.B. ...
replicated a study originally performed in 1950 to test discrimination in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
restaurants on the
Upper East Side
The Upper East Side, sometimes abbreviated UES, is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 96th Street to the north, the East River to the east, 59th Street to the south, and Central Park/Fifth Avenue to the wes ...
.
He discovered only minor changes in discrimination levels.
Terminology
The term ''symbolic racism'' derives from the fact that the opinions expressed characterize black people as an abstract group ("as in the anonymous 'they' in 'if they would only…'") rather than as specific individuals. People hold prejudices because of the cultural stereotypes attributed to the group rather than because of any personal individual experience with the group in question.
Researchers have given the concept of symbolic racism many different names, usually to emphasize one aspect over another. These names include ''modern racism'', ''racial resentment'', and ''
laissez-faire
''Laissez-faire'' ( ; from french: laissez faire , ) is an economic system in which transactions between private groups of people are free from any form of economic interventionism (such as subsidies) deriving from special interest groups. ...
'' ''
racism
Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism ...
''. While slight differences exist between the different terms, all share the same bottom line of prejudice towards black people.
While similar in nature, symbolic racism is distinguished from
aversive racism
Aversive racism is a theory proposed by Samuel L. Gaertner & John F. Dovidio (1986), according to which negative evaluations of racial/ethnic minorities are realized by a persistent avoidance of interaction with other racial and ethnic groups. As ...
based on the relationships between the defining characteristics. Aversive racism involves "separate, disassociated positive and negative components, which are in conflict, and thus, may sometimes be experienced as ambivalence."
Symbolic racism, on the other hand, "reflects the unique assimilation of individualistic values and negative racial affect."
The components of aversive racism remain disassociated within the individual; whereas, the components of symbolic racism blend to produce racial attitudes.
While both types of racism predict similar behavior, they are the consequences of different processes.
Causes
Whitley and Kite cite six underlying factors that contribute to symbolic racism. They are to this day believed to have been some of the biggest influences on modern racism.
#Implicitly anti-black affect and negative stereotypes.
#Racialized belief in traditional values.
#Belief in
equality of opportunity
Equal opportunity is a state of fairness in which individuals are treated similarly, unhampered by artificial barriers, prejudices, or preferences, except when particular distinctions can be explicitly justified. The intent is that the important ...
.
#Low belief in
equality of outcome
Equality of outcome, equality of condition, or equality of results is a political concept which is central to some political ideologies and is used in some political discourse, often in contrast to the term equality of opportunity. It describes a ...
.
#Group
self-interest
Self-interest generally refers to a focus on the needs or desires (''interests'') of one's self. Most times, actions that display self-interest are often performed without conscious knowing. A number of philosophical, psychological, and economi ...
.
#Low knowledge of black people.
According to Whitley and Kite, those who hold symbolic racist beliefs tend to hold implicitly negative attitudes, most likely gained in
childhood
A child (plural, : children) is a human being between the stages of childbirth, birth and puberty, or between the Development of the human body, developmental period of infancy and puberty. The legal definition of ''child'' generally refers ...
, towards black people that may or may not be conscious.
These attitudes may not be characterized by outright hatred but rather fear, disgust, anger, contempt, etc. In addition, those who hold symbolically racist beliefs may also believe in traditional American values such as hard work, individuality, and self-restraint.
However, these beliefs become racialized.
Many people believe that black individuals do not hold or act in accordance with these values
but that they instead rely on public assistance, seek government favors, and act impulsively.
As Whitley and Kite note, "The fact that White people also accept public assistance, seek government favors, and act impulsively is not relevant to people with symbolic prejudice; it is their perception (usually in stereotypic terms) of Black people's behavior that they focus on."
Furthermore, those with symbolic prejudice tend to believe in the equality of opportunity, which includes access to resources such as education, housing, and employment.
However, they tend not to believe in equality of outcome. This explains how people can support the principle of
racial equality
Racial equality is a situation in which people of all races and ethnicities are treated in an egalitarian/equal manner. Racial equality occurs when institutions give individuals legal, moral, and political rights. In present-day Western society, ...
but not support initiatives to achieve it, such as
affirmative action. Government intervention when individuals do not have the same talent, effort, or historical background would violate traditional values of equality of opportunity.
Thus, "people can simultaneously endorse equality of opportunity and reject government intervention to bring about equality of outcome."
Finally, Whitley and Kite state most whites do not have extensive personal experience with black people, so the negative stereotypes they hold about blacks do not have the opportunity to be dispelled.
Evidence
Measures
Much of the initial research conducted by researchers on symbolic racism utilized McConahay's (1986) modern racism scale (MRS). However, citing a number of measurement problems, Sears and Henry published the Symbolic Racism 2000 (SR2K) Scale in 2002 in the journal ''
Political Psychology
Political psychology is an interdisciplinary academic field, dedicated to understanding politics, politicians and political behavior from a psychological perspective, and psychological processes using socio-political perspectives. The relations ...
''.
It consists of a series of statements relating to race and politics in which participants must state their degree of agreement on a scale ranging from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree".
Statements included on surveys by the
American National Election Studies
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
and most commonly used in
political science
Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and la ...
research include:
*
Irish
Irish may refer to:
Common meanings
* Someone or something of, from, or related to:
** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe
***Éire, Irish language name for the isle
** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...
,
Italians
, flag =
, flag_caption = The national flag of Italy
, population =
, regions = Italy 55,551,000
, region1 = Brazil
, pop1 = 25–33 million
, ref1 =
, region2 ...
,
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
, and many other
minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same without any special favors.
*Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for Blacks to work their way out of the lower class.
*Over the past few years, Blacks have gotten less than they deserve.
*It's really a matter of some people not trying hard enough; if Blacks would only try harder they could be just as well off as Whites.
This updated scale attempted to address the issues with previous forms of measurement including internal
reliability
Reliability, reliable, or unreliable may refer to:
Science, technology, and mathematics Computing
* Data reliability (disambiguation), a property of some disk arrays in computer storage
* High availability
* Reliability (computer networking), a ...
,
construct
Construct, Constructs or constructs may refer to:
* Construct (information technology), a collection of logic components forming an interactive agent or environment
** Language construct
* ''Construct'' (album), a 2013 album by Dark Tranquillity ...
validity
Validity or Valid may refer to:
Science/mathematics/statistics:
* Validity (logic), a property of a logical argument
* Scientific:
** Internal validity, the validity of causal inferences within scientific studies, usually based on experiments
** ...
,
predictive validity In psychometrics, predictive validity is the extent to which a score on a scale or test predicts scores on some criterion measure.
For example, the validity of a cognitive test for job performance is the correlation between test scores and, for e ...
, and
discriminant validity In psychology, discriminant validity tests whether concepts or measurements that are not supposed to be related are actually unrelated.
Campbell and Fiske (1959) introduced the concept of discriminant validity within their discussion on evaluating ...
, and
generalizability
Generalizability theory, or G theory, is a statistical framework for conceptualizing, investigating, and designing reliable observations. It is used to determine the reliability (i.e., reproducibility) of measurements under specific conditions. I ...
.
Examples
Bobocel et al. (1998)
found that prejudice can be
rationalized as a concern for
justice
Justice, in its broadest sense, is the principle that people receive that which they deserve, with the interpretation of what then constitutes "deserving" being impacted upon by numerous fields, with many differing viewpoints and perspective ...
. Opposition to preferential affirmative action programs (which assign more weight to certain demographics and give preference to target groups) was uniquely predicted by an individual's belief in merit principles. That is, regardless of prejudice level, individuals tend to oppose preferential treatment programs because they violate traditional
norms of
meritocracy
Meritocracy (''merit'', from Latin , and ''-cracy'', from Ancient Greek 'strength, power') is the notion of a political system in which economic goods and/or political power are vested in individual people based on talent, effort, and achiev ...
. However, the higher an individual's level of prejudice, the more likely he was to construe an ''undefined'' affirmative action program (e. g. not necessarily preferential) as violating the merit principle and, in turn, oppose the undefined affirmative action program.
These high-prejudice individuals were able to rationalize their prejudice as a concern for justice, although no traditional justice norms had been explicitly violated.
In this way, symbolic racism functions through rationalization as a concern for traditional norms without conscious awareness.
Public opinion
Public opinion is the collective opinion on a specific topic or voting intention relevant to a society. It is the people's views on matters affecting them.
Etymology
The term "public opinion" was derived from the French ', which was first use ...
researchers polled White Americans in the early 1970s on their backing for racial equality and their support for government intervention that would enforce that equality. The results revealed high levels of support from White Americans, ranging from 75% to nearly 100%, regarding the principles for school integration, equal opportunity employment, and open housing. Support from the same White Americans was significantly lower regarding the implementation of more abstract principles at approximately 50%.
College
A college (Latin: ''collegium'') is an educational institution or a constituent part of one. A college may be a degree-awarding tertiary educational institution, a part of a collegiate or federal university, an institution offering ...
students who had completed a modern-symbolic prejudice measure early in the semester evaluated the
résumés of 10 job applicants. The applicants consisted of three qualified black people, two qualified white people, and five unqualified white people. The students were split into two groups - one containing students rated high in modern-symbolic prejudice and one containing students rated low in this same attribute. Each student received a memo from the president of the company. Half of the students received memos in which the president of the company asked the student to abstain from hiring a worker of a minority group because the person hired would be dealing mainly with white employees. The memo for the second group did not contain this message. The group that did not receive any instructions from the president of the company recommended a black candidate 61% of the time, regardless of the individual's modern-symbolic prejudice rating. In the group that had received justification from the president to abstain from minority hiring, 37% of the students that were low in modern-symbolic prejudice recommended a black candidate, whereas only 18% of the students high in modern-symbolic prejudice recommended a black candidate. These results suggest that symbolic prejudice is expressed most strongly when non-explicitly racist justifications are given for discriminatory action.
Other applications
While symbolic racism was originally conceptualized as a prejudice specifically against black people in the United States, scholars have expanded the concept to apply to other groups and locales. In the United States, research has been conducted on symbolic racism as it relates to
Latino
Latino or Latinos most often refers to:
* Latino (demonym), a term used in the United States for people with cultural ties to Latin America
* Hispanic and Latino Americans in the United States
* The people or cultures of Latin America;
** Latin A ...
s and
Asians
Asian people (or Asians, sometimes referred to as Asiatic people)United States National Library of Medicine. Medical Subject Headings. 2004. November 17, 200Nlm.nih.gov: ''Asian Continental Ancestry Group'' is also used for categorical purpos ...
, as well as modern
sexism
Sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on one's sex or gender. Sexism can affect anyone, but it primarily affects women and girls.There is a clear and broad consensus among academic scholars in multiple fields that sexism refers primari ...
,
anti-fat bias
Social stigma of obesity is broadly defined as bias or discriminatory behaviors targeted at overweight and obese individuals because of their weight. Such social stigmas can span one's entire life, as long as excess weight is present, starting ...
, and
heterosexism
Heterosexism is a system of attitudes, bias, and discrimination in favor of female–male sexuality and relationships. According to Elizabeth Cramer, it can include the belief that all people are or should be heterosexual and that heterosexual ...
.
For example, Mingying Fu conducted an experiment in which symbolic racism was shown to influence attitudes toward
out-group Outgroup may refer to:
* Outgroup (cladistics), an evolutionary-history concept
* Outgroup (sociology)
In sociology and social psychology, an in-group is a social group to which a person psychologically identifies as being a member. By contras ...
members and racial policies.
In addition, Fu found that symbolic racism was the strongest predictor of white as well as Asian and Latino opposition to affirmative action after controlling for
biological racism
Scientific racism, sometimes termed biological racism, is the pseudoscientific belief that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racism ( racial discrimination), racial inferiority, or racial superiority.. "Few tragedies can be mor ...
and
ideology
An ideology is a set of beliefs or philosophies attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely epistemic, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones." Formerly applied pri ...
.
Fraser and Islam (2007) applied the concept of symbolic racism to the
Aborigines and
European Australians
European Australians are citizens or residents of Australia whose ancestry originates from the peoples of Europe. They form the largest panethnic group in the country. At the 2021 census, the number of ancestry responses categorised within Eu ...
in
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
.
In this context, the Australian version of the symbolic racism construct is defined as "the use of affective responses and beliefs that are well accepted within a dominant majority racial group as justifying its advantaged position".
They measured the relationship between racial prejudice and support for
Pauline Hanson
Pauline Lee Hanson (''née'' Seccombe, formerly Zagorski; born 27 May 1954) is an Australian politician who is the founder and leader of One Nation, a right-wing populist political party. Hanson has represented Queensland in the Australian ...
's
One Nation Party
Pauline Hanson's One Nation (PHON or ONP), also known as One Nation or One Nation Party, is a right-wing populist political party in Australia. It is led by Pauline Hanson.
One Nation had electoral success in the late 1990s, before suffering ...
using two postal surveys based on a random sampling of names from electoral registers.
Support for Hanson and voting for the One Nation Party were strongly related to a measure of symbolic racism.
The study also found a relationship between symbolic racism and a measure of relational orientation, or concern over the position of one's own racial group relative to other racial groups.
Fraser and Islam state that this finding suggests that beliefs influenced by symbolic racism may be motivated by
social identity
Identity is the qualities, beliefs, personality traits, appearance, and/or expressions that characterize a person or group.Compare ''Collins Dictionary of Sociology'', quoted in
In sociology, emphasis is placed on collective identity, in which ...
-related processes, "where white European Australians regard their
culture
Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.Tyl ...
as the real, mainstream
Australian
Australian(s) may refer to:
Australia
* Australia, a country
* Australians, citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia
** European Australians
** Anglo-Celtic Australians, Australians descended principally from British colonists
** Aboriginal Au ...
culture, and resent special concessions to groups such as Aborigines and Asian migrants, whom they exclude from their narrow self-identity as Australians."
Examples of symbolic racism also exist in
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
. McLaren (2002) argues that people are hostile towards the European integration due to their perceptions of threats posed by other cultures. In this study, the
independent
Independent or Independents may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups
* Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s
* Independ ...
variables to be gauged were the realistic and symbolic perceptions.
The response choices for the questions given to his participants were dichotomous for each of these variables. The choices were:
* People from
heseminority groups abuse the system of social benefits.
* The religious practices of people from
heseminority groups threaten our way of life.
The findings suggest that perceived cultural threats appeared to have a strong sway on the attitudes toward the
European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...
. It was concluded that attitudes toward the European Union were largely based on a general hostility towards other cultures.
Consequences
Symbolic racism may have implications for legal policies. Green et al. (2006) found a positive
correlation
In statistics, correlation or dependence is any statistical relationship, whether causal or not, between two random variables or bivariate data. Although in the broadest sense, "correlation" may indicate any type of association, in statistics ...
between symbolic racism and more severe crime policies, such as
capital punishment
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...
and
three-strikes laws, and a
negative relationship
In statistics, there is a negative relationship or inverse relationship between two variables if higher values of one variable tend to be associated with lower values of the other. A negative relationship between two variables usually implies that ...
with policies that are intended to assist criminals such as
inmate education.
Individual prejudices and opposition to programs to eliminate inequality of outcomes may contribute to
institutional racism
Institutional racism, also known as systemic racism, is a form of racism that is embedded in the laws and regulations of a society or an organization. It manifests as discrimination in areas such as criminal justice, employment, housing, health ...
, which in turn leads to continued racial inequality.
Additionally, within American society, institutionalized practices have been influenced by
structural racism
A structure is an arrangement and organization of interrelated elements in a material object or system, or the object or system so organized. Material structures include man-made objects such as buildings and machines and natural objects such as ...
resulting in "the subordination and devaluation of minority groups".
It has been argued that common ways the media
framed former U.S. President Barack Obama have helped shaped many audiences' attitudes in ways that support symbolically racist beliefs, such as the idea that America is currently in a post-racial society where discrimination is no longer a concern. When comparing positively framed news stories about Obama to negatively framed news stories about Obama, it was seen in a study of 168 participants that symbolically racist beliefs increased.
Reyna et al. (2009) found that negative attitudes towards
rap music
Rapping (also rhyming, spitting, emceeing or MCing) is a musical form of vocal delivery that incorporates "rhyme, rhythmic speech, and street vernacular". It is performed or chanted, usually over a backing beat or musical accompaniment. The ...
are associated with the idea that African Americans are to blame for their economic plights. The type of rap that was looked at was categorized as
gangster rap
Gangsta rap or gangster rap, initially called reality rap, emerged in the mid- to late 1980s as a controversial hip-hop subgenre whose lyrics assert the culture and values typical of American street gangs and street hustlers. Many gangsta rappe ...
, which is notorious for its violent undertones and explicit language. Additionally, in their second study, they found that anti-rap attitudes are also associated with discrimination towards African Americans. Conversely, when looking at other predominantly black genres of music, such as
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
or
gospel music
Gospel music is a traditional genre of Christian music, and a cornerstone of Christian media. The creation, performance, significance, and even the definition of gospel music varies according to culture and social context. Gospel music is com ...
, the same correlations were not found.
Criticisms and controversies
A major criticism is that new experimental studies show that respondents do not answer the questions presented in the paper by Sears and Henry (2002) differently when groups other than African Americans are mentioned in the survey questions.
This potentially undermines a primary claim made by Sears and Henry - that their measure of symbolic racism is a blend of "anti-Black affect" and "conservatism". Enos and Carney (2018) write:
Across multiple groups and multiple samples on different survey platforms, we find a strong an consistent pattern: the results obtained using groups other than Blacks are substantially indistinguishable from those measured when Blacks are the target group. Decomposing this measure further, we find that political conservatives express only minor differences in resentment across target groups. Far greater differences in resentment toward Blacks and other groups can be found among racially sympathetic liberals. In short, we find that modern racism questions appear to measure attitudes toward any group, rather than African Americans alone.
One criticism of symbolic racism is that it has been conceptualized and measured inconsistently over time.
Sometimes it has been conceptualized as consisting of a single construct and other times as consisting of multiple subdimensions. Most scholars now consistently describe symbolic racism as being composed of the four major components listed by Tarman and Sears.
Tarman and Sears posit that consistently defining it as based on those four themes will eliminate the inconsistency problems. The updated symbolic racism scale, Symbolic Racism 2000 (SR2K), is believed to have addressed many issues in measurement inconsistency.
Another criticism is that symbolic racism is not "true" racism but, rather, is a manifestation of conservative political ideology. For instance, if one believes that a group should receive "special favors" they would answer the question in a manner coded as more racially resentful. Tarman and Sears evaluated this claim and concluded that symbolic racism is an independent belief system encompassing discrete attitudes from those of conservatives.
Some scholars have suggested that the focus has moved prematurely from purportedly older forms of racism to modern racism. In a qualitative study, Mellor (2003) conducted interviews with Aboriginal Australians in which he found that many experience racism and that much of it seems to be old-fashioned rather than modern.
He argues that social scientists may have embraced forms of modern racism too quickly, which could have negative impacts on minorities by helping to maintain discriminatory social institutions.
See also
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Ambivalent prejudice
Ambivalent prejudice is a social psychological theory that states that, when people become aware that they have conflicting beliefs about an outgroup (a group of people that do not belong to an individual's own group), they experience an unpleasan ...
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Benevolent prejudice
Benevolent prejudice is a superficially positive prejudice that is expressed in terms of positive beliefs and emotional responses, which are associated with hostile prejudices or result in keeping affected groups in inferior positions in society. ...
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In-group favoritism
In-group favoritism, sometimes known as in-group–out-group bias, in-group bias, intergroup bias, or in-group preference, is a pattern of favoring members of one's in-group over out-group members. This can be expressed in evaluation of others, ...
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Out-group homogeneity
The out-group homogeneity effect is the perception of out-group members as more similar to one another than are in-group members, e.g. "they are alike; we are diverse". Perceivers tend to have impressions about the diversity or variability of group ...
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Social dominance theory Social dominance theory (SDT) is a social psychological theory of intergroup relations that examines the caste-like features of group-based social hierarchies, and how these hierarchies remain stable and perpetuate themselves. According to the theor ...
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Racism in the United States
Racism in the United States comprises negative attitudes and views on race or ethnicity which are related to each other, are held by various people and groups in the United States, and have been reflected in discriminatory laws, practices and ...
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Ultimate attribution error The ultimate attribution error is a type of attribution error which proposed to explain why attributions of outgroup behavior is more negative (ie. antisocial or undesirable) than ingroup behavior (see '' in-group and out-group''). Ultimate attrib ...
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Southern strategy
In American politics, the Southern strategy was a Republican Party electoral strategy to increase political support among white voters in the South by appealing to racism against African Americans. As the civil rights movement and dismantling of ...
References
{{Racism topics
Racism