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Abstract
This paper uses innovative survey questions from the 1998 Detroit Area Study to examine how whites communicate their views about racial matters across three affirmative action hiring scenarios. Results suggest that most whites prefer explanations for not hiring blacks based on the abstract and decontextualized application of the principles of liberalism. Justifications that were initially offered emphasizing qualification thresholds, broad criteria, and contextual concerns, usually in support of hiring the black applicant, were largely withdrawn when the scenario was changed from one with equal scores to one with scores slightly favouring the white applicant. Concrete and contextualized concerns about workforce homogeneity and the slightness of score differences were raised in a conciliatory manner when scores were equal, but then were seldom maintained when scores favoured the white candidate. Whites also more readily voiced opposition when the reason for hire was changed from ‘diversity’ to ‘make up for past discrimination’, offering ‘reasonable’ responses about ‘the past is the past’ that don't deny concrete historical events, but dismiss their connection to today's racial order. Taken together, the evidence suggests that the language of universalism and minimization of racism allow most whites to communicate their views about affirmative action using rhetorical strategies that seem reasonable and moral.
Notes
1. In contrast to Oliver and Mendelberg (Citation2000), Stephan et al. (Citation2002) argue that the matter of threat has to be studied symbolically, that is, what matters most is not so-called realistic threats but the perceptions of threat.
2. Though not offered as a response category, ‘Neither agree or disagree’ was recorded for respondents who volunteered it.
3. Telephone-to-residence matching software was used to identify household addresses for face-to-face interviewing.
4. Scenario 2 was not asked if the respondent opposed the Scenario 1 decision (their opposition to Scenario 2 is presumed). All respondents were asked Scenario 3, though the question prelude was slightly different for Scenario 2 answerers to make it clear they were comparing to Scenario 1.
5. The added emphasis and different question preambles intended to focus the respondent on the essential differences across scenarios.
6. Values shown include ‘neither’ as support. These values are more conservative. Excluding ‘neither’ as support does not change the interpretation and gives the following values from top to bottom: for whites – 59.0 per cent, 18.5 per cent, 37.9 per cent, 66.0 per cent, 42.1 per cent; for blacks (not shown) – 67.1 per cent, 38.2 per cent, 60.0 per cent, 41.2 per cent, 19.6 per cent.
7. As indicated in , the changes are statistically significant. The results for blacks show that they are 30 to 50 per cent less likely than whites to change to oppose the second and third scenarios: 44.3 per cent are score sensitive and 25.0 per cent are reason sensitive (80.3 per cent agree with the equal scenario, while only 44.7 per cent agree with the different score scenario and 65.8 per cent agree with the different reason scenario). These findings, while smaller in size, are consistent with other findings that suggest that many blacks are influenced by the themes of the dominant colour-blind racial ideology (Bonilla-Silva and Forman Citation2000).
8. Results are reported as frequencies of respondents because use of percentages for small numbers is misleading.
9. Percentage differences are statistically significant at a p<.05 level. See Appendix for question wording.