BiblioVault - Books about Racial Attitudes

Black Child, White Child

The Developement of Racial Attitudes

Judith Porter

Harvard University Press

Racial attitudes are learned during the preschool years and directly reflect the attitudes and actions of American society. Using the self-portraits, stories, and doll-play of 400 children 3 to 5 years old, Judith Porter investigated the effects of such sociological variables as age, race, skin color, social class, interracial contact, and sex, both alone and in combination with other variables on the children's racial preferences. She is one of the first to relate these attitudes to actual interaction patterns in integrated kindergartens. Her research sheds new light on the ways in which early encounters with racism and prejudice affect the self-esteem, racial self-concept, and personality development of black children. Her study includes new findings on the effect of social class on the formation of racial attitudes. She concludes with a discussion of the implications of the data for theory, for future research, and for public policy, as well as specific recommendations for the creation of high-quality integrated nursery schools.

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Mobilizing Public Opinion

Black Insurgency and Racial Attitudes in the Civil Rights Era

Taeku Lee

University of Chicago Press, 2002

What motivates us to change our opinions during times of political protest and social unrest? To investigate this question, Taeku Lee's smartly argued book looks to the critical struggle over the moral principles, group interests, and racial animosities that defined public support for racial policies during the civil rights movement, from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s. Challenging the conventional view that public opinion is shaped by elites, Lee crafts an alternate account of the geographic, institutional, historical, and issue-specific contexts that form our political views. He finds that grassroots organizations and local protests of ordinary people pushed demands for social change into the consciousness of the general public. From there, Lee argues, these demands entered the policy agendas of political elites. Evidence from multiple sources including survey data, media coverage, historical accounts, and presidential archives animate his argument.

Ultimately, Mobilizing Public Opinion is a timely, cautionary tale about how we view public opinion and a compelling testament to the potential power of ordinary citizens.

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Racial Attitudes in America

Trends and Interpretations

Howard Schuman, Charlotte Steeh, and Lawrence D. Bobo

Harvard University Press, 1985

This book traces changes in American attitudes toward racial issues that have taken place between the 1940s and the 1980s--a crucial period that encompasses the civil rights revolution, the growth of black militancy and white resistance, and the enactment of affirmative-action legislation.

The authors are the first to compare data about black and white attitudes collected by three major survey organizations: Gallup, the National Opinion Research Center, and the Institute for Social Research. They make careful distinctions between attitudes toward principles of racial equality and attitudes toward government action to implement those principles. The wide research base and methodological sophistication of their analysis yield conclusions quite different from those of earlier, more narrowly drawn studies. For example, they find that while there has been a striking increase in support for principles of equality and fairness, support for some kinds of implementation of these ideals lags far behind or has even declined among both blacks and whites. The implementation measures considered range from busing to achieve integration of schools to laws requiring equal opportunity in employment. In addition to reanalyzing survey data, the authors have also performed several innovative experiments on the wording and context of survey questions to help them interpret the data more accurately.

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Racial Attitudes in America

Trends and Interpretations, Revised Edition

Howard Schuman, Charlotte Steeh, Lawrence D. Bobo, and Maria Krysan

Harvard University Press, 1997

This new edition brings fully up-to-date a book widely praised for its clear and objective presentation of changes in American racial attitudes during the second half of the twentieth century.

The book retains the division of racial attitudes into principles of equality, government implementation of those principles, and social distance, but adds questions concerning affirmative action and beliefs about sources of inequality. A conceptual section now opens the book, evidence on social desirability has been added, and a new chapter deals with cohort effects and with the impact of income, education, and gender. In key instances, randomized experiments are introduced that test hypotheses more rigorously than is ordinarily possible with survey data. Throughout, the authors have reconsidered earlier ideas and introduced new thinking.

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