Symbolic racism explains racial policy preferences independent of conservatism.

Evidence

Symbolic racism is rooted in racial affect and individualistic values, which contribute to it both additively and through perceptions of Blacks that merge the two (Sears & Henry, 2003). Although once criticized as merely reflecting political conservatism, symbolic racism empirically relates about equally to it and to traditional prejudice (Sears & Henry, 2003). The effects of symbolic racism on racially relevant dependent variables are not materially reduced by controlling for political conservatism (Sears et al., 1997). — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2179

Numerous studies have shown that symbolic racism is strongly associated with whites’opposition to racially targeted policies, typically outweighing the roles of other important political attitudes, such as ideology, party identification, and attitudes toward the size of government, as well as of more traditional racial attitudes (e.g., Alvarez and Brehm 1997; Bobo 2000; Henry and Sears 2002; Hughes 1997; Kinder and Sanders 1996; Sears et al. 1997; Sidanius et al. 1999). — Christopher Tarman and David O. Sears, The Conceptualization and Measurement…, 8

First, the two subscales correlated very similarly with the composite racial policy scales in both the NES (r = . and .52), and the LACSS (both r = .58), as shown in Table 2. Two other possible subscales, dominant ideology and political resentment, also proved to have almost identical correlations with the composite policy scales in both the NES (r = . and .52) and in the LACSS (r = . and .60), as also shown in Table 2. At the bivariate level, then, it appears not to matter at all which of the conventional measures of symbolic racism is used: they have almost identical effects on racial policy preferences. This is further evidence for the internal consistency of the symbolic racism belief system. — Christopher Tarman and David O. Sears, The Conceptualization and Measurement…, 95

We estimated the increment to R2 that each subscale added in a second stage of hierarchical regression equations, after the other subscale had been entered in the first stage. As shown in the bottom panel of Table 3, the increment in R2 that either subscale added in the second stage was very small relative to the shared variance explained in the first stage. That is, they explain mainly overlapping variance in policy preferences; each subscale explains little unique variance apart from the other. — Christopher Tarman and David O. Sears, The Conceptualization and Measurement…, 121

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the general debate about whether modern resentment measures are mere conservatism proxies, echoing critiques from Sniderman’s work. — connects to: Symbolic racism scales may measure opposition to big government, not racial attitudes. — Christopher Tarman and David O. Sears, The Conceptualization and Measurement…, 28; Whether racism or conservatism drives white policy opposition determines who must change — Christopher Tarman and David O. Sears, The Conceptualization and Measurement…, 34; Symbolic racism scales measure a construct distinct from the policy preferences they predict. — Christopher Tarman and David O. Sears, The Conceptualization and Measurement…, 141 (+4 more)
• QUESTION: Directly relevant to the reader’s concern: if symbolic racism scales conflate threat perception with the policy attitudes they predict, this ‘association outweighing ideology’ claim would be partly tautological.
• corroborated: 5 independent passages support this claim — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice: Fifty Years…, 2179; Christopher Tarman and David O. Sears, The Conceptualization and Measurement…, 8; Christopher Tarman and David O. Sears, The Conceptualization and Measurement…, 95 (+1 more)