Social identification and political preferences for one nation: The role of symbolic racism

Abstract

The relationship between measures of racial prejudice and support for Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party was examined in two postal surveys based on a random sample of names from electoral rolls covering the McMillan electorate (a marginal rural Victorian seat). Support for Pauline Hanson and likelihood of voting for One Nation were strongly related to a scale measuring an Australian version of the construct of symbolic racism, and were moderately related to a measure of blatant, old-fashioned racism. Symbolic racism is defined as the use of affective responses and beliefs that are well accepted within a dominant majority racial group as justifying its advantaged position. Symbolic racism was strongly related to a measure of relational orientation, reflecting concern over the relative position of one's own and other racial groups. This suggests that symbolic racism beliefs may be motivated by social identity processes, where white European Australians regard their culture as the real, mainstream Australian culture, and resent special concessions to groups such as Aborigines and Asian migrants, whom they exclude from their narrow self-identity as Australians.