Attitudes Toward the Black Political Movement: Trends, Meaning, and Effects on Racial Policy Preferences

Abstract

This paper examines the influence of prejudice and of conflict-based concern with protecting group position on people's attitudes toward the black political movement. Analyses of national survey data show the existence of black-white differences in trends in attitudes toward the black political movement; in part, these trends reflect differential strategic adaptation to changes in the political context. For many whites, attitudes toward the black political movement are related to other conflict attitudes (perceptions of conflicting group objectives and fraternal deprivation) and to general social protest orientations net of the effects of measures of prejudice. Attitudes toward the black political movement also influence racial policy preferences. Each of the conflict attitudes, however, is related strongly to measures of prejudice. Implications of the results of the group conflict and prejudice approaches to racial attitudes are discussed. The political activism and demands of black Americans are a major force in changing black-white relations in the United States. Yet there has been only limited concern with the changing character and determinants of public opinion regarding the civil rights movement, black militancy, and other forms of black political activism. My general hypothesis is that reactions to the black political movement involve both racial prejudice and real political conflict between whites and blacks as members of social groups that are respectively the target public and the constituency public of that movement. This paper develops and then tests ideas that differentiate (where possible) prejudicebased and realistic conflict-based sources of attitudes toward the black political movement. The theoretical argument emphasizes a group conflict perspective on racial attitudes because ideas about these types of factors are

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