Symbolic racism is empirically distinct from old-fashioned racism.

Evidence

Second, symbolic racism seems also to be distinct from more traditional racial attitudes. Combining symbolic racism with either old-fashioned racism or negative black stereotypes in the One Racism Theory model does not fit the data as well as keeping them separate. But this is perhaps our weakest test because we were limited to only two old-fashioned racism items in the 1986 NES, and we were not able to replicate our findings in the 2000 NES since it did not contain any old-fashioned racism measures. For this specific purpose, we turned to recent General Social Surveys because they have the most adequate measures of both racial attitude dimensions (though not of all the other dimensions shown in Figures 3 and 4). We conducted exploratory factor analyses including all available items measuring the four themes of symbolic racism and all available unarguable measures of old-fashioned racism. Table 6 clearly shows that in all cases the two forms of racism are quite distinct. The two factors are modestly 754 Christopher Tarman and David O. — Christopher Tarman and David O. Sears, The Conceptualization and Measurement…, 193

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Early and recent symbolic racism studies both measured the same four themes — Christopher Tarman and David O. Sears, The Conceptualization and Measurement…, 17; Distinct consequences indicate whether symbolic-racism variants are truly separate constructs. — Christopher Tarman and David O. Sears, The Conceptualization and Measurement…, 89; Old-fashioned racism and symbolic racism are theoretically and empirically distinct constructs — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3632 (+4 more)

Related

• Symbolic racism loads on a statistically distinct factor from older racism forms (similarity 0.91)
• Symbolic racism differs from traditional prejudice only in measurement, not theory (similarity 0.91)
• Early and recent symbolic racism studies both measured the same four themes (similarity 0.90)
• Controversy over symbolic racism measures is empirically moot since all variants predict equally. (similarity 0.90)
• Old-fashioned racism and symbolic racism are theoretically and empirically distinct constructs (similarity 0.90)
• Symbolic racism’s discriminant validity from allied constructs is empirically testable (similarity 0.89)
• Distinct consequences indicate whether symbolic-racism variants are truly separate constructs. (similarity 0.89)
• Symbolic racism measurement is internally coherent and unified. (similarity 0.87)
• Different racism constructs predict political outcomes unequally (similarity 0.86)
• Symbolic racism may decompose into separate attitude factors rather than one coherent belief system (similarity 0.86)
• Old-fashioned racism weakly predicts politics; symbolic racism strongly does (similarity 0.86)
• Modern racial prejudice has four coherent measurement themes distinct from old-fashioned racism (similarity 0.85)
• Most whites endorse new symbolic racism beliefs while rejecting old-fashioned racism (similarity 0.84)
• Symbolic racism theory reinterprets the principles-implementation gap as a new prejudice form (similarity 0.84)
• Social scientists have proliferated competing ‘new racism’ concepts since biological racism lost legitimacy (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• Old-fashioned racism and symbolic racism are theoretically and empirically distinct constructs #corroborates (1.00) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3632
• Symbolic racism loads on a statistically distinct factor from older racism forms #corroborates (0.95) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3743
• Symbolic racism differs from traditional prejudice only in measurement, not theory #contradicts (0.90) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3400
• Old and modern racism differ mainly in post hoc justification, not in kind. #contradicts (0.85) — Cristian Tileagă, The Nature of Prejudice, 219