Beyond Black and White: General Support for Race-Conscious Policies Among African Americans,Latinos,Asian Americans and Whites

The study of racial attitudes in the U.S. has largely focused on white attitudes toward African Americans and policies designed to assist African Americans. We go beyond this black-white dichotomy by comparing African American, Latino, Asian American, and white attitudes toward opportunity-enhancing and outcome-directed policies. Data from the Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality, 1992-1994 are used to test the effects class and ethnic/racial identities play in shaping respondent’s policy preferences. Because both of these programs are designed to apply equally to African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans, we model general support for these policies. In other words respondents who supported each program for all three groups were coded as favoring the particular policy. Our coding method more accurately captures the real world application of these programs. We find that even when we control for class status, measures of racial prejudice, as well as a host of other factors, ethnic and racial differences persist. African Americans strongly support both policies, while whites were the least supportive. Latinos and Asian Americans in varying degrees took intermediate positions on these issues. The research considers the reasons for the persistence of ethnic and racial differences on race-conscious policies and suggests future avenues for research.