Modern White Americans broadly support group equality while rejecting explicit racial dominance

Evidence

In sum, three main points seem clear about the contemporary status of the egalitarian side of Allport’s inner conflict. First, a majority of Whites do support general principles of equality for all individuals, but support for formal group equality is far broader, and indeed overwhelming. Second, almost all Whites recognize that individual differences in abilities naturally affect life chances, but almost none are willing to endorse privileged access for Whites or for men as groups. Third, dominance of subordinate groups, in terms of “keeping them in their place,” is now almost entirely repudiated by White Americans, and plays little role in either conventional partisan or racial politics. Thus, and in contrast to Allport’s day, the politics of intergroup relations today begin with the near-universal support for equal treatment of all groups, not explicit support for a racial caste system. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2185

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the chapter structure theme of Allport’s ‘inner conflict’ between egalitarianism and racism; resonates with Dovidio’s aversive racism framework elsewhere in the book. — connects to: Most whites endorse new symbolic racism beliefs while rejecting old-fashioned racism — Christopher Tarman and David O. Sears, The Conceptualization and Measurement…, 41; Whites sustain equality-in-principle while delegitimizing redistributive measures as a coherent ideology — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology: Key Readings, 3339; Most white Americans hold a racial status profile toward the middle, not the extremes. — Erin Cooley, Jazmin L. Brown-Iannuzzi, Nava Caluori, Nicholas Elacqua, and William Cipolli, White Americans who perceive themselves…, 41