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Racial Reconciliation in South Africa:Interracial Contact and Changes over Time
Author(s) -
Gibson James L.,
Claassen Christopher
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
journal of social issues
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.618
H-Index - 122
eISSN - 1540-4560
pISSN - 0022-4537
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-4560.2010.01644.x
Subject(s) - prejudice (legal term) , contact hypothesis , social psychology , equating , racial bias , racial group , psychology , racism , contact theory , racial differences , race (biology) , demography , ethnic group , gender studies , sociology , developmental psychology , political science , law , structural engineering , engineering , rasch model
Relying upon Gibson's (2004) theory equating lack of prejudice with interracial “reconciliation,” we investigate racial attitudes based on a 2004 nationally representative survey of South Africans. We begin by documenting substantial group‐based differences in intergroup prejudice, with Blacks being considerably less reconciled with Whites as compared to the three racial minorities’ levels of reconciliation with Blacks. We also discover that the Black majority has become less reconciled with Whites over the period from Gibson's survey (in 2001) to the current survey (in 2004). Improvement in racial attitudes is observed among the other three groups. We next investigate intergroup contact as an explanation of differences in attitudes, finding some effects of mere contact and powerful effects of intimate contact. However, the consequences of contact differ across the various racial groups.