Race, racial resentment, attentiveness to the news media, and public opinion toward the Jena Six

Proximity and the principle-policy gap in white racial attitudes: Insight from views of student assignment policies in Wake County, North Carolina

We use a survey of residents of Wake County, North Carolina to test a proximity explanation for what scholars call the "principle-policy gap" in whites' views of government action on race. The derived hypothesis is confirmed when underlying broad views of race are represented by ideology. We show that whereas liberals are materially more supportive of racial diversity in student bodies than are moderates and conservatives, this difference is reduced to statistical insignificance as respondents' personal situations are more directly affected by the policy-a condition denoted by having a child of school age. Liberals with school-aged children are particularly wary of racial integration when they are asked to support the diversification of classrooms as opposed to schools. Having a school-aged child has no material conditioning effect on views of diversity when attitudes are represented by a more explicit measure of racial views.

The racial foundations of whites' support for child saving

Scholars emphasize that attitudes toward rehabilitation and views about punitive polices are distinct phenomena with seemingly unique etiologies. However, few existing studies examine the sources of public views about juvenile rehabilitation, or "child saving," and none engage a measure of racial attitudes. At the same time, recent theoretical work implicates racial concerns as a central foundation of public opinion about youth justice. This paper thus provides the first assessment of whether whites' perceptions of the racial makeup of delinquents and animosities toward blacks are associated with their views about juvenile rehabilitation. Findings show that whites who more strongly associate delinquency with blacks and those who are racially resentful both tend to be less supportive-in absolute and relative terms-of rehabilitation. The results also suggest that contextual threat moderates the effect of racial typification of delinquency, but not that of racial resentment, on whites' views about rehabilitation.

Racial Identity, Perpetrator Race, Racial Composition of Primary Community, and Mood Responses to Discrimination

Studies suggest that racial identity, race of the perpetrator, and prior race-related experiences influence responses to racial discrimination. This study employed a visual imagery paradigm to examine how racial centrality (or the significance of one’s race), perpetrator race, and the racial composition of one’s primary community were associated with mood responses to racial discrimination vignettes. Participants were 129 self-identified African American young adults (55% female) recruited from a southeastern university in the United States. Participants completed measures of sociodemographic characteristics and racial centrality and rated their mood following exposure to vignettes consisting of blatant and subtle discrimination with Black and White actors. Individuals with higher racial centrality endorsed greater anger and disgust and had stronger overall mood ratings following the subtle discrimination condition. Also, participants reported significantly higher levels of distress and disgust when the perpetrator was White. These results suggest that individual and situational factors help shape affective responses to discrimination. We discuss implications of the findings and highlight being connected to one’s racial identity as a healthy psychological response to racism.