Lawrence D. Bobo

Perceptions of racial group competition : Extending blumer's theory of group position to a multiracial social context

Perceptions of threat occupy a central place in race relations in Blumers theory of prejudice but few direct efforts to study such perceptions exist. Extending Blumers reasoning, we hypothesize that such perceptions are driven by a groups feelings of racial alienation within the larger social order The more that members of a particular racial group feel collectively oppressed and unfairly treated by society, the more likely they are to perceive members of other groups as potential threats. We also examine whether such perceptions spring from simple self-interest, orthodox prejudice such as negative feelings and stereotyping, or broad beliefs about social stratification and inequality. We use data from the 1992 Los Angeles County Social Survey, a large multiracial sample of the general population, to analyze the distribution and social and psychological underpinnings of perceived group competition. Our results support the racial alienation hypothesis as well as the hypotheses positing effects for self-interest, prejudice, and stratification beliefs. We argue that Blumers group-position framework offers the most parsimonious integration and interpretation of the social psychological processes involved in the formation of perceptions of group threat and competition. O ) ngoing immigration from Asia and Latin America and the earlier internal migration of African Americans out of the rural South have made most large cities in the United States remarkable multiracial conglomerations (Waldinger 1989). An immediate sociological concern raised by the growing heterogeneity of urban areas is whether members of different groups view one another as direct competitors for scarce economic, political, and social resources (Olzak 1993). Such perceptions may influ

Prejudice as Group Position: Microfoundations of a Sociological Approach to Racism and Race Relations

This research integrates and elaborates the basic premises of Blumers group position theory of prejudice. It does so in order to make explicit, more fully integrated, and empirically pliable the theoretical foundations of a sociological analysis of the nature of racial prejudice. In so doing, the research identifies important areas of agreement between Gordon Allports approach to prejudice and that of Blumer. Blumer neither provided a full synthetic statement of his several major pieces on prejudice nor pursued sustained empirical research in the area. Hence, the present article (1) identifies the core assumptions of the group position model, (2) summarizes a recent line of empirical work examining claims embedded in the group position approach, (3) specifies how this approach differs from other closely related approaches, and (4) identifies major tasks for future theoretical and empirical work.

EDUCATION AND POLITICAL TOLERANCE TESTING THE EFFECTS OF COGNITIVE SOPHISTICATION AND TARGET GROUP AFFECT

This paper examines the effects of education and cog- nitive sophistication on willingness to extend civil liberties to nonconformist groups. We conducted secondary analysis of the 1984 General Society Survey data. The results show that there is a strong tolerance dimension that cuts across groups and types of actions. We found strong positive effects of education on a multi- ple target group tolerance scale that included both left-wing and right-wing groups. A substantial fraction of the education effect on tolerance is mediated by cognitive sophistication. The effects of education on tolerance are strong even when a person has negative feelings toward the target group. This paper helps iden- tify why and when (e.g., cognitive sophistication and dislike of a target group) education enhances political tolerance. We discuss the implications of the research for debates on the education- tolerance relationship.

Group Conflict, Prejudice, and the Paradox of Contemporary Racial Attitudes

The status of black Americans is the longest standing and most glaring exception to the American promise of freedom and equality. For this, as well as other reasons, social psychologists have long sought to shed light on the ways in which racial attitudes, beliefs, and values affect and are affected by patterns of black-white relations. Blackwhite relations now seem more complex and contradictory than ever before. From basic economic and demographic indicators to indicators of racial attitudes and beliefs, simultaneous patterns of progress, deterioration, and lack of change can be discerned.

Social Dominance Orientation and the Political Psychology of Gender: A Case of Invariance?

Social dominance theory assumes transsituational and transcultural differences between men and women in social dominance orientation (SDO), with men showing higher levels of SDO than women. SDO is a general individual-difference variable expressing preference for superordinate in-group status, hierarchical relationships between social groups, and a view of group relations as inherently 0-sum. Data from a random sample of 1,897 respondents from Los Angeles County confirmed the notion that men have significantly higher social dominance scores than women and that these differences were consistent across cultural, demographic, and situational factors such as age, social class, religion, educational level, political ideology, ethnicity, racism, region of national origin, and gender-role relevant opinion. The theoretical implications are discussed.

A TASTE FOR PUNISHMENT: Black and White Americans' Views on the Death Penalty and the War on Drugs

It is commonly accepted that Black and White Americans hold divergent views about the criminal justice system. Furthermore, many accept the view that U.S. public opinion is unflinchingly punitive where issues of criminal justice policy are concerned, with this punitiveness among White Americans deriving to a significant degree from anti-Black prejudice. Using a series of survey-based experiments and large, nationally representative samples of White and African American respondents, we subject the questions of Black-White polarization, unyielding punitiveness, and the influence of racial prejudice to close scrutiny. Our results, first, confirm large Black-White differences in opinion with Blacks consistently less punitive than Whites. These differences are substantially a result of beliefs about the extent of racial bias in the criminal justice system. Second, the framing experiments suggest that responses to the death penalty are very different than responses to drug-related crimes like crack or powder cocaine use, with the former exhibiting far less malleability than the latter. Third, racial prejudice is a consistently large influence on White public opinion and a weaker, but sometimes important influence among Blacks as well. Implications for discourse on race and crime are also discussed.

Social responsibility, individualism, and redistributive policies

Previous research supports the “consensus on individualism” hypothesis, which holds that most Americans value hard work and self-reliance, perceive an open opportunity structure, and as a result, oppose redistributive policies, whether targeted by race or designed to help the poor in general. In contrast, this paper shows that one form of egalitarianism, a sense of social responsibility, remains a potent American value. Factor analysis of 18 stratification belief items from the 1984 General Social Survey results in two dimensions—one involving social responsibility and the other economic individualism. Social responsibility is the more powerful predictor of redistributive policy attitudes. Individuals who place a higher priority on social responsibility than on individualism are more likely than those with the opposite priorities to support redistributive policies, but are also disproportionately low income, black, and less politically active. These results suggest that economic individualism appears a hegemonic value in the United States partly because of the lack of political influence and low socioeconomic status of those most committed to social responsibility beliefs.

Race in the American Mind: From the Moynihan Report to the Obama Candidacy

In 1965 Daniel Patrick Moynihan observed that the “racist virus in the American blood stream still afflicts us.” The authors assess the tenor of racial attitudes in white and black America across the ensuing four decades. Their core conclusion is paradoxical. On one hand, a massive positive change in social norms regarding race has taken place that dislodged Jim Crow ideology and now calls for integration and equality as the rules that should guide black-white interaction. On the other hand, negative stereotypes of African Americans, cultural (not structural or discrimination-based) accounts of black disadvantage, and deep polarization over the appropriate social policy response to racial inequality yield an ongoing legacy of tension and division. The authors link these trends in attitudes to broader changes in society (i.e., racial segregation, job discrimination, rates of intermarriage), patterns of intergroup and interpersonal behavior, and national political dynamics.

Race, Racism, and Discrimination: Bridging Problems, Methods, and Theory in Social Psychological Research

Scholars spanning the social sciences and humanities wrestle with the complex and often contested meanings of race, racism, and discrimination. In all of this enterprise, sociologists rightly retain a special claim to illuminating processes of group boundary maintenance, systems of racial inequality and supporting ideologies, and attendant patterns of intergroup behavior (Jackman 1994; Lamont 2000). Mainstream sociological research, however, has focused principally on the structural manifestations of race, racism, and discrimination, particularly as they characterize black-white relations (Wilson 1978). Sociologists have made signal contributions to the understanding of modern ghetto joblessness and poverty (Wilson 1996), of racial residential segregation (Massey and Denton 1993), and of fundamental disparities in accumulated wealth (Oliver and Shapiro 1995). In some critical respects this work has expanded to include multiracial and multiethnic comparisons with respect to both key economic (Lichter and Oliver 2000; Smith 2001; Waldinger 1996) and residential outcomes (Charles 2001; Emerson, Yancey, and Chai 2001). To a surprising degree, however, the micro social processes necessarily embedded in these structural analyses are still largely unaddressed. Yet the basic social processes invoked by the terms race, racism, and discrimination are quintessentially social psychological phenomena; sociologists ignore or downplay this basic insight at the disciplines peril. These concepts concern the meanings of social groupings and how those meanings come to guide patterns of relations among individuals recognized as members of particular groups. They immediately entail the labeling and social learning of group categories, identity, feelings, beliefs, and related cognitive structures. These factors, in turn, are expressed in lines of interaction and behavior that flow from, reinforce and reconstitute, or come to transform those social categorizations. In addition, such categorizations have direct implications for the structure and basic conditions of social organization. That is, race,1 racism,2 and discrimination3 are also, and perhaps most fundamentally, bases and mechanisms of hierarchical differentiation that shape the ordering of social relations as well as the allocation of life experiences and life chances (Zuberi 2001a).

Survey-based Experiments on White Racial Attitudes toward Residential Integration'

Using residential integration as the main focus and experiments within national sample surveys as the primary method, this paper examines several theoretical explanations that have been offered for white opposition to government enforcement of black rights to open housing. Each of the following explanations receives some support: resistance to government coercion generally and especially to coercion from the federal government, concern over social class differences between blacks and whites, concern over the consequences of open-housing laws, and general antiblack prejudice. The weighting of and relations among these various factors is still to be determined, but it appears clear that no single, simple explanation will suffice. The paper also illustrates the value of combining experimentation with traditional survey design in substantive investigations.