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What do white Americans really think about race? All political correctness aside, what degree of racial prejudice exists in turn-of-the-century America?
 Indiana University's Edward (Ted) G. Carmines, Rudy Professor of political science at IU Bloomington Photo by Heather Hill |
Indiana University's Edward (Ted) G. Carmines, Rudy Professor of political science at IU Bloomington, and Stanford University colleague Paul M. Sniderman devised an innovative method of survey-based experimental research to find out.
The resulting book, Reaching Beyond Race, published by Harvard University Press, recently won the coveted Gladys M. Kammerer Award, given annually by the American Political Science Association for the outstanding book in American national politics.
Carmines and Sniderman note that every systematic survey has shown that while racial prejudice still exists, it is no longer the norm. Skepticism has remained, however, because many people believe that white Americans won't risk being labeled racist by saying what they really think. To test that conjecture, they developed an innovative approach to public opinion surveys.
While their data confirm that a "hardcore" of white prejudice remains--roughly among the same 20 percent of the white population that are anti-Semites--they show that percentage dwindling in recent years. The results also suggest that racism has lost much of its power, indicate a sincere good will of whites for blacks, and point to a general "moral universalism."
"During the height of the civil rights movement," said Carmines, "one issue dominated the agenda--whether African Americans were going to be given the rights that other Americans already enjoyed. Not surprisingly, opposition to equal rights was concentrated among those whites who were most prejudiced against blacks while support was found mainly among those who were racially tolerant.
"This picture has been altered by the introduction of new issues. Contemporary racial politics are far more complex and multi dimensional," said Carmines. "Our analysis indicates, for example, that whites who are racially tolerant are only slightly more supportive of affirmative action than those who are racially bigoted."
This finding leads Carmines and Sniderman to believe that while racial prejudice is more common among conservatives, it's more powerful in shaping the political thinking of liberals.
"The reason is that conservatives favor limited government when it comes to the general welfare of the citizenry--even unprejudiced conservatives tend to oppose activist government efforts to redress the economic and social inequalities between blacks and whites," Carmines explained.
| Results of the experiment, designed to test racial tolerance in whites, indicated that white Americans were not dishonest about their professed good will toward blacks, even when offered a perfectly good reason to do so. This somewhat foundational discovery lends strength to what the researchers believe is be the most crucial information provided in the book--that liberalism has been making the wrong kind of arguments. |
As an award winner, Reaching Beyond Race was praised as a remarkable book, not only for its "passionate advocacy and writing elegance," but also for its innovative technical sophistication. Carmines and Sniderman doubted skeptics' assumptions that whites would simply lie in surveys about their professed good will toward blacks, but as social scientists, recognized the possibility should be seriously considered.
"We used survey-based experimentation," Carmines explained. "It relies on computer-assisted telephone interviews to embed complex, genuinely randomized experiments in public opinion and carry them out in a way that is invisible to the person being interviewed. The external validity advantages of survey research are combined with the internal validity advantages of experiments."
Results of an experiment particularly designed to test racial tolerance in whites, (see story, this issue) indicated that white Americans were not dishonest about their professed good will toward blacks, even when offered a perfectly good reason to do so. This somewhat foundational discovery lends strength to what the researchers believe to be the most crucial information provided in the book--that liberalism has been making the wrong kind of arguments.
Rather than framing policy as action to be taken only because of historic injustice done to blacks, say Carmines and Sniderman, liberals would do well to think universally. Liberal American moral conviction is defined by compassion and support for the disadvantaged--not because they are disproportionately black, but because it is the right stance to assume.
"The strongest arguments in behalf of programs to deal with issues of race," write Carmines and Sniderman in their book, "need not be confined to considerations of race. Indeed, the most effective way to increase the coalition in support of policies that directly improve the lives of the worst-off blacks is to reach beyond race itself and appeal to moral common ground--to principles that apply regardless of race."
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