Resistance to Affirmative Action

Despite the decade-long debate in the media and in the social science literature over affirmative action programs, relatively little information has appeared about attitudes toward these programs. In this article racial threat or self-interest, new symbolic racism, and old-fashioned racism are examined as predictors of attitudes about affirmative action programs. The data are from a national survey conducted in the late fall of 1978 by Louis Harris and Associates for the National Conference of Christians and Jews. Self-interest, new symbolic racism, and old-fashioned racism are all found to be related to attitudes about affirmative action programs and remain so when a variety of control variables are included in the regression analyses. The new racism scale was clearly the best predictor of attitudes about affirmative action programs but is shown to have many underpinnings from traditional sources of racism. Possible reasons for the effect of self-interest on attitudes about affirmative action programs that had not been related to racial attitudes in earlier studies are discussed.