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.

Although past research has long documented religion's salutary impact on adult health-related behaviors and outcomes, relatively little research has examined the relationship between religion and adolescent health. This study uses large, nationally representative samples of high school seniors to examine the relationship between religion and behavioral predictors of adolescent morbidity and mortality. Relative to their peers, religious youth are less likely to engage in behaviors that compromise their health (e.g., carrying weapons, getting into fights, drinking and driving) and are more likely to behave in ways that enhance their health (e.g., proper nutrition, exercise, and rest). Multivariate analyses suggest that these relationships persist even after controlling for demographic factors, and trend analyses reveal that they have existed over time. Particularly important is the finding that religious seniors have been relatively unaffected by past and recent increases in marijuana use.

Persistent racial residential segregation is often seen as the result of the preferences of whites and blacks: whites prefer to live with whites while blacks wish to live near many other blacks. The origin of these preferences and their social psychological underpinnings are hotly debated. Are neighborhood preferences colorblind or race-conscious? Does neighborhood racial composition have a net influence upon preferences or is race a proxy for social class? If preferences are race-conscious, is this more a matter of a desire to be in a neighborhood with one’s “own kind” or to avoid being in a neighborhood with another racial group? We tested the racial proxy hypothesis using an innovative experiment that isolated the net effects of race and social class and followed it with an analysis of the social psychological factors associated with residential preferences. Face-to-face surveys using computer assisted interviewing were conducted with random samples of Detroit and Chicago residents. Respondents were asked how desirable they would rate neighborhoods shown in videos in which racial composition and social class characteristics were manipulated and they also completed—via computer assisted self-interviews—questions tapping into perceptions of discrimination, racial and neighborhood stereotypes, and in-group identity. We find that net of social class, the race of a neighborhood's residents significantly influenced how it was rated. Whites said the all-white neighborhoods were most desirable. The independent effect of racial composition was smaller among blacks and blacks identified the racially mixed neighborhood as most desirable. Hypotheses about how racial group identity, stereotypes, and experiences of discrimination influenced the effect of race of residents upon neighborhood preferences were tested and show that for whites, those who hold negative stereotypes about African Americans and the neighborhoods where they live are significantly influenced by neighborhood racial composition. None of the proposed social psychological factors conditioned African American sensitivity to racial composition of neighborhoods.

During the crisis that followed Hurricane Katrina, many Americans expressed surprise at the dramatic levels of racial inequality captured in the images of large numbers of poor Black people left behind in devastated New Orleans. In this article we argue that, to better understand both the parameters of contemporary racial inequality reflected in the hurricane's aftermath and why so many were surprised about the social realities of racial inequality that social scientists have known about for decades, it is essential to recognize the shifting nature of Whites' racial attitudes and understandings. There is widespread evidence that in the post-civil rights era the expression of White racial prejudice has changed. In fact, during the post-civil rights era subtle and indirect forms of prejudice have become more central to the sustenance and perpetuation of racial inequality than are overt forms of prejudice. We draw on both survey and qualitative data to investigate current manifestations of White racial attitudes and prejudices. Our results indicate that racial apathy, indifference towards racial and ethnic inequality, is a relatively new but expanding form of racial prejudice. We further show that Whites' systematic “not knowing” about racial inequality (White ignorance), which was manifest in the reaction to the crises after Hurricane Katrina, is related to this racial indifference. Racial apathy and White ignorance (i.e., not caring and not knowing) are extensions of hegemonic color-blind discourses (i.e., not seeing race). These phenomena serve as pillars of contemporary racial inequality that have until now received little attention. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and the practical implications of our results for understanding racial dynamics in the post-Katrina United States.

A key finding from previous research on trends in Whites' racial attitudes is that much of the decline in the expression of racial prejudice over the past seven decades can be attributed to the replacement of older, less tolerant White cohorts by younger, more tolerant cohorts of Whites in the U.S. population (i.e., cohort replacement). An implicit assumption of much of this work is that cohort replacement will continue to produce unidirectional liberalizing trends in Whites' racial attitudes because of the more tolerant attitudes of each younger cohort. In this article, we reexamine the cohort replacement hypothesis focusing on young Whites' racial attitudes and whether change is in substance or form. We develop a theoretical argument about the shifting nature of young Whites' racial attitudes and understandings in the post-civil rights era by building on Forman's concept of racial apathy and the expanding literature on color-blind racism, which posits that during the post-civil rights era, subtle forms of racial prejudice have become more prevalent than overt forms. We empirically test this argument by investigating trends in, and determinants of, young Whites' racial attitudes from 1976 to 2000, using nationally representative samples of White high school seniors. Although we find a liberalizing trend for some racial attitudes, we do not find a similar pattern for contemporary forms of prejudice, particularly racial apathy. In addition, we find that the social determinants of young Whites' social distance attitudes (traditional prejudice) and expressions of racial apathy (contemporary prejudice) have been remarkably consistent over time. Collectively, these results indicate the need for greater attention to the expression of subtle forms of prejudice among young Whites generally, and to the potentially destructive force of rising levels of racial apathy specifically.