Steven A. Tuch

Race, Class, and Perceptions of Discrimination by the Police

Previous research has shown that Blacks are more likely than Whites to hold unfavorable opinions of criminal justice agencies in America, but the literature has rarely examined whether social class also affects these opinions. Using recent national survey data on perceptions of racial discrimination by the police and the criminal justice system, this study examines the effects of race and class on citizen attitudes. The findings indicate that (1) race is a strong predictor of attitudes and (2) class affects several of these views. An important finding is that middle-class Blacks are sometimes more critical of the police and justice system than are lower-class Blacks.

Determinants of Public Satisfaction with the Police

This article examines the determinants of citizen satisfaction with police. Using data from a recent nationwide survey of Whites, Hispanics, and African Americans, the authors test several hypotheses about how situational and structural factors shape attitudes toward the police. Much has been written about Black-White differences in views of the police, but most of this literature does little to explain why these differences exist. Moreover, very little is known about Hispanics’ relations with the police. We take a step toward closing this gap by developing a model of relations between police and minority-group members that focuses on such explanatory factors as personal contacts with officers, neighborhood crime conditions, and policing practices in accounting for variations in satisfaction with police.

Urbanism, Region, and Tolerance Revisited: The Case of Racial Prejudice.

This research examines whether the propositions of Wirth (1938) and Stouffer (1955) concerning the effects on tolerance of urbanism, region, and particular geographic migration patterns can be generalized to racial tolerance. Using prejudice toward blacks as the outcome measure, an analysis of national survey data for the years between 1972 and 1985 indicates that (a) consistent with Wirths and Stouffers arguments, urbanites and non-Southerners are more racially tolerant than their nonurban and Southern counterparts; (b) contrary to some previous research, the net effects of urbanism on tolerance have increased over time while region effects have decreased; (c) the effects on tolerance of urban to nonurban migration confirm Wirths notion of the permanence of urbanisms influence but not Stouffers culture-shock hypothesis; and (d) the implications of regional migration are more complex than previous research has indicated.

Gender Differences in Whites' Racial Attitudes: Are Women's Attitudes Really More Favorable?

Studies of gender differences in orientation toward others have found that women are more strongly concerned than men with affective processes and are more likely to be other-focused, while men tend to be more instrumental and more self-oriented. Recent research has extended this finding to include gender differences in racial attitudes, and reports that women also are more favorable than men in their racial outlooks. In this study we examine differences between white men and white women across a broader spectrum of racial attitudes with more diverse national samples than were employed previously, including the 1988-2000 General Social Surveys and the 1988-1994 American National Election Studies. We find that gender differences in racial attitudes are small, inconsistent, and limited mostly to attitudes on racial policy. Our findings are consistent with the views that white womens and white mens racial attitudes are rooted in their shared sense of group position, and that gender-differentiated value socialization plays only a small role in racial attitude formation.

Whites’ Racial Policy Attitudes in the Twenty-First Century: The Continuing Significance of Racial Resentment

A topic of long-standing interest in racial attitudes research is whites’ support for principles of racial equality on one hand coupled with their intransigence on policies designed to redress that inequality on the other. Much has been written on possible explanations of this “principle-policy gap” and what the gap reveals about the state of contemporary American race relations. In this article, the authors provide an update and partial replication of their 1996 study of whites’ views of racial policies in what has been referred to as our post-racial society. Using both General Social Survey and American National Election Survey data, the authors assess the current state of whites’ racial policy attitudes and the factors that shape those attitudes and consider whether any meaningful change has occurred in recent decades. Among the explanations of the principle-policy gap that the authors examine, one stands out as especially powerful: racial resentment, a variant of stratification ideology that focuses on the role of racial individualism in shaping white resistance to meaningful policy change. Moreover, the authors find no evidence that whites’ racial policy views have changed since the 1980s.

Race and life satisfaction in the middle class

This article examines Black‐White differences in life satisfaction among members of the middle class. Using national survey data for the period 1984 to 1994, its analysis shows that although the sources of satisfaction do not differ appreciably by race, middle‐class Blacks express lower absolute levels of satisfaction with several facets of their lives than middle‐class Whites. Controls for sociodemographic and social participation variables do not alter these findings. It is concluded that, even among the ranks of the materially successful middle class, race continues to exert a significant impact on subjective well‐being.

Economic Sector and Job Satisfaction

In this article the relationship between economic sector and job satisfaction is explored. Given the absence of previous research, a framework relying on job satisfaction, dual labor market, and economic-segmentation literature is used to create two alternative hypotheses. If the externally defined objective characteristics of jobs are the critical factor in producing job satisfaction, then the “better” jobs in the core sector will result in job satisfaction differences favoring workers in the core. If individual needs and characteristics and the “fit” between these and job rewards are the critical factors in producing job satisfaction, then the workers in the core do not necessarily have an advantage; in fact the reverse may be true. These two hypotheses are tested using data from the 1973 Quality of Employment survey and two alternate measures of economic sector. Findings support the second hypothesis in that workers in the peripheral (or local and regional) sector have significantly higher levels of reported job satisfaction than those in the core (or monopoly) sector. We conclude that researchers need to consider economic sector as a source of variation in job satisfaction in addition to more conventional structures at the job and organizational level. Paradoxically, a consideration of economic sector may contribute to our understanding of the processes by which individual characteristics and job characteristics combine to create satisfied workers.

The Determinants of Marital Instability: Some Methodological Issues.

In this paper we note the inconsistent findings that characterize research on marital instability and propose several potential methodological sources of these inconsistencies. The issues addressed range from problems of external validity introduced by limited samples to the constraints imposed by the various multivariate analytic techniques utilized in previous research. An illustrative application to data from two recent nationally representative probability samples highlights the methodological pitfalls that characterize this area of inquiry. It is argued that, unless more attention is devoted in the literature to issues of method and measurement, little consensus on the determinants of marital disruption can be expected.

Voting in professional associations: The case of the American sociological association revisited

Who votes in ASA elections? This article examines data on voter turnout from two recent presidential contests of the American Sociological Association in an analysis of the determinants of election participation. Extending the 1981 Ridgeway and Moore study of voting dynamics in the ASA, we hypothesize that intraorganizational networks and particular demongraphic characteristics link ASA members to the discipline in a manner analogous to the way such factors operate in the national electorate. On the basis of data compiled from 1985 and 1986 ASA election returns, we find that network factors are the most salient determinants of voting behavior. We conclude that those organizational ties that effectively link members, however directly or indirectly, to the larger Association are the most predictive of propensity to vote.

A multivariate analysis of response structure: Race attitudes, 1972–1977

A particular kind of latent class model is used to characterize the unobservable variable measured by six discrete indicators of racial stance in 1972 and 1977. Methods recently introduced by C. C. Clogg and L. A. Goodman (unpublished manuscript, Pennsylvania State University, 1982, 1983) for the simultaneous latent structure analysis of two multidimensional contingency tables are employed in across-year homogeneity tests on the latent class proportions. Trends in multivariate response patterns over the 5-year interval are then examined by cross-classifying the predicted latent variable with selected demographic characteristics of respondents in each year. The results indicate that (1) no significant changes in the distribution of the latent variable occurred over the 5-year time period, and (2) the status of certain demographic variables as predictors of racial stance fluctuated between the two survey years.