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Racial Resentment and White Opposition to Race‐Conscious Programs: Principles or Prejudice?
Author(s) -
Feldman Stanley,
Huddy Leonie
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
american journal of political science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.347
H-Index - 170
eISSN - 1540-5907
pISSN - 0092-5853
DOI - 10.1111/j.0092-5853.2005.00117.x
Subject(s) - resentment , prejudice (legal term) , opposition (politics) , racial formation theory , ideology , social psychology , racism , race (biology) , racial equality , white (mutation) , psychology , criminology , political science , politics , gender studies , sociology , law , biochemistry , chemistry , gene
White racial resentment is associated with opposition to a broad range of racial policies but it is unclear whether it derives from racial prejudice or stems from ideological principles. To resolve this ambiguity, we examined the impact of racial resentment on support for a college‐scholarship program in which program beneficiaries' race and socioeconomic class was experimentally varied. The analyses yield a potentially troubling finding: racial resentment means different things to white liberals and conservatives. Among liberals, racial resentment conveys the political effects of racial prejudice, by predicting program support for black but not white students, and is better predicted by overt measures of racial prejudice than among conservatives. Among conservatives, racial resentment appears more ideological. It is closely tied to opposition to race‐conscious programs regardless of recipient race and is only weakly tied to measures of overt prejudice. Racial resentment, therefore, is not a clear‐cut measure of racial prejudice for all Americans.