Images of leadership: Black vs. White

Abstract

The following study is a descriptive analysis of differences in the perceptions of the messages of sets of six eminent Black and six white political leaders, respectively, by groups of Black and white junior and senior level college students. It was found that the messages of these Black leaders were judged to be different from those of their white counterparts on half of the 60 communication dimensions tested. It was further found that groups of Black and white students differed on the importances placed on the standards of message judgment for about 30% of these dimensions. Interactions between race of judge and race of leader occurred on nearly 28% of the dimensions, with whites generally rating the white leaders higher and Blacks rating the Black leaders higher.

Notes

Carolyn Calloway‐Thomas (Ph.D., Indiana University, 1976) is Assistant Professor of Speech Communication and Raymond G. Smith (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, 1950) is Professor of Speech Communication at Indiana University.