Fear, Institutionalized Racism, and Empathy: The Underlying Dimensions of Whites’ Racial Attitudes

• Published in: PS, political science & politics Vol. 53; no. 4; pp. 639 - 645
• Main Authors: DeSante, Christopher D., Smith, Candis Watts
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, USA Cambridge University Press 01.10.2020
• Subjects: Attitudes; Black white relations; Congressional elections; Cooperation; Critical theory; Election results; Emotions; Empathy; Factor Analysis; Fear; Ideology; Inequality; Intellectuals; Political Attitudes; Political Science; Politics; Prejudice; Public opinion; Race; Race relations; Racial Attitudes; Racial Bias; Racial differences; Racial Factors; Racial Identification; Racism; Resistance (Psychology); Scientists; Social attitudes; Social scientists; Validity; White people; Whites; United States > US
• ISSN: 1049-0965; 1537-5935
• DOI: 10.1017/S1049096520000414

For nearly 75 years, scholars of American public opinion have sought to measure whites’ attitudes toward blacks: social scientists have invented and revised ways to measure what we could refer to as “racial prejudice.” With each revision, scholars who believe they have captured new forms of racial animus are met with opposition from those who believe that old-fashioned anti-black affect is a thing of the past. We directly answer these claims by collecting a surfeit of attitudinal measures to simultaneously estimate the relationship between cognitive beliefs about the racial status quo and emotional reactions to racism. First, we uncover that two higher-order dimensions undergird whites’ racial attitudes. Second, we validate a four-item version of our new battery using the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study.