The Structure of Racial Attitudes of Blacks

Previous research has indicated that, although the racial attitudes of whites appear to be organized around a number of different content areas, there is still enough coherence in response to warrant the use of a single summary score to represent overall racial attitude, Factor analyses of the responses of black students to a parallel attitude measure indicated the pre sence of two relatively independent factors: items dealing with feelings toward whites and items referring to the desirability of various race-related policies. These findings suggest that the structure of blacks' verbal racial attitudes differs from the structure of whites' attitudes. It is suggested that the use of a single summary score to represent the overall attitude of blacks is not justifiable; scores representing each of the two major factors should be utilized.