Political threat from subordinate groups gets mislabeled as individual prejudice

Evidence

As a result, it might be expected that the concept of symbolic racism would be operationalized with questions concerning clearly emotional and stereotyped orientations toward blacks. The general strategy, however, has been to rely on questions concerning a number of contemporary racial problems and disputes, especially attitudes toward black political activism and influence. From the present perspective, when attitude questions concerned with black protest and political influence are used to index symbolic racism, a theory of prejudice has incorporated elements of group conflict and group conflict motives (Bobo, 1983). Questions that explicitly invoke concern about real-world political actors and events, and that arguably tap a dominant groups’ sense of political threat from a contentious subordinate group are being treated as indicators of prejudice. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3404

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Top officials treated black racial-identity activism as threatening while ignoring white supremacists — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 207