Survey-based research on Whites' racial attitudes in the USA has characterized their views as either `tolerant' or `ambivalent'. We argue that surveys on racial attitudes have systematically underestimated the extent of prejudice in the White population. The legal and normative changes created by the civil rights movement of the 1960s brought a new racial ideology (`color blind racism'), with new topics and a new form. These matters were examined by collecting survey and interview data from college students in three universities. The main findings were that White respondents appear to be more prejudiced in the interviews than in the survey, use a new racetalk to avoid appearing `racist', and that the themes and arguments that they mobilize are congruent with what other analysts have labeled as `laissez faire' or `competitive' racism.

Information on Cuban immigrants from the recent ' Measuring Cuban Opinion Project ' survey is used to determine the extent to which race matters. We use multivariate binomial logistic regression models to determine if race can be predicted by key demographic and economic characteristics of the respondents, their use of mass media outlets in Cuba, their evaluation of and integration to the Cuban state and their participation in the dissidence in the island. The conclusion is reached that race cannot be predicted because these immigrants are, in general terms, very similar. However, some racial differences in mode of immigration and likelihood of immigration were found.