Despite the decade-long debate in the media and in the social science literature over affirmative action programs, relatively little information has appeared about attitudes toward these programs. In this article racial threat or self-interest, new symbolic racism, and old-fashioned racism are examined as predictors of attitudes about affirmative action programs. The data are from a national survey conducted in the late fall of 1978 by Louis Harris and Associates for the National Conference of Christians and Jews. Self-interest, new symbolic racism, and old-fashioned racism are all found to be related to attitudes about affirmative action programs and remain so when a variety of control variables are included in the regression analyses. The new racism scale was clearly the best predictor of attitudes about affirmative action programs but is shown to have many underpinnings from traditional sources of racism. Possible reasons for the effect of self-interest on attitudes about affirmative action programs that had not been related to racial attitudes in earlier studies are discussed.
Using data from a New York Times poll conducted in 2000, we analyze whites' approval of interracial marriage by examining the contexts in which whites have contact with blacks. The contexts can be ordered by the type of contact they provide, from close and personal to distant or hierarchical. The results of our analysis show that the type of contact engendered by a variety of contexts is important in determining attitudes toward interracial marriage. The contacts in most of the social settings are associated with friendship; the contexts are related to approval of interracial marriage even when friendship, age, gender, income, political party, and region are included in the analysis.
Though a number of authors have noted the increase in interracial marriages in the United States over the past few decades, few researchers have systematically examined variables that affect the opportunity for intergroup marriage among several different groups: Whites, African Americans, Asians, and Hispanics. In this paper we examine several “opportunity” variables and their relationship to intergroup marriage for couples age 40 or younger: immigration, military service, metropolitan residency, age, region, college attendance, and socioeconomic status. We examine these relationships for African, White, Asian, and Hispanic Americans. Results for both males and females are presented. The analysis is based on data from the 1990 census. The propensity to marry within one's own group dropped slightly for all groups but Asian Americans from 1980 to 1990. White and Black Americans continue to have the highest endogamy rates. Hispanic and Asian Americans have lower rates, and regional variations are highest for them as well. The results suggest that the opportunity variables are important factors affecting rates of intergroup marriage.
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