Group-interest incompatibility, not affect, best predicts perceived racial threat

Evidence

51% of whites in 1980 said that blacks were pushing for change at “about the right speed,” an increase of 26% from 1968. Fully 63% of blacks interviewed in 1964 felt civil rights leaders were pushing “at about the right speed.” That figure had dropped to 49% by 1980, as more and more blacks expressed the feeling that things were moving “too slowly.” In addition, the degree of racial polarization on this item was quite striking. For example, in 1964, 74% of whites said blacks were moving “too fast,” compared to only 9% of blacks, a difference of 65 percentage points. The trend analysis was supplemented with data on the correlates of a measure of perceived threat. Bobo found that general (nonracial) beliefs about social protest, along with indicators of the perceived incompatibility of group interests and fraternal deprivation, were strong predictors of the level of perceived threat. Indeed, these effects were substantially independent of intergroup affective orientations, political conservatism, and other background-control variables. The full set of results suggests that, to a considerable degree, attitudes toward the black political movement index concern with a real-world social-protest movement that attempted to affect the distribution of rights and resources between blacks and whites. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3373

Categorization

• CANDY: The 65-point polarization gap in 1964 (74% of whites vs 9% of blacks saying blacks moved ‘too fast’) is a striking, quotable stat.
• XREF: The ‘fraternal deprivation’ mechanism resonates with the sacrifice article’s theme of perceived fairness of resource distribution driving conflict. — connects to: Ethnic identification amplifies white support for anti-immigrant policies under diversity threat cues — Brenda Major and Alison Blodorn and Gregory Major Blascovich, The threat of increasing diversity: Why…, 48