Note:
Gunnar Myrdal died in 1987, less than 70 years ago.
Therefore, this work is protected by copyright,
restricting your legal rights to reproduce it.
However, you are welcome to view it on screen, as you do now.
Read more about copyright.
Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - Appendices - 10. Quantitative Studies of Race Attitudes - 3. “Personal” and “Political” Opinions - 4. The Practical Study of Race Prejudice
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.
Appendix io. Studies of Race Attitudes 1141
Americans even in the South who do not declare themselves in favor of much more
equality for the Negro in politics, education, and everything else—^but they want them
far In the future when certain conditions are changed. (The inconsistency in their
attitudes often consists only in their being unwilling to do anything—not even in the
political sphere and often least of all there—to change those conditions.) Generally,
it can be assumed that being able to keep more of a rational and conscious distinction
and relation between one’s personal and political opinions is a function (i) of education
and intelligence on the part of the individual, (2) of his identification with society
(being a “good citizen”), and (3) of his training to think of himself as a would-be
legislator, that is, as a participant in inducing the social change.
But part of this difference between personal and political opinions is irrational^ and
there is then inadequate intellectual connection between the two. In many countries,
again to use an illustration from the population problem, it is possible to prove statis-
tically that a large number of people, who publicly condemn birth control as immoral
and who back legislative measures to prohibit it, must practice it privately. In the Negro
problem there are equally flagrant contradictions between people’s opinions about how
society ought to be and the opinions whereby they defend their own daily behavior.
4. The Practical Study of Race Prejudice
In a footnote on page 52, in Chapter 3, we indicated that we preferred to use the
word “discrimination” rather than “race prejudice.” ^
Discrimination is generally
considered to be the objective aspect of prejudice, and in many areas of life we could
objectively observe discrimination. Race prejudice is a much more controversial subject;
many persons who practice discrimination, consciously or unconsciously, claim they have
no race prejudice. We have not neglected, however, the subjective aspect of discrim-
ination, even though we have not associated our analysis with the term “race prejudice.”
In Chapter 28, for example, we presented the theory of “no social equality” which,
in a sense, is a theory of a certain type of race prejudice.
In this section we shall use the term “race prejudice” as a conceptual tool for
analysis of the motivation of white people’s negative attitudes toward Negroes. We
believe it necessary to continue the practice followed in most attitude measurement
studies, of measuring variations in race prejudice and relating this variation to variations
in other significant variables. We should like to suggest an innovation in these studies:
that the assumption be made that there are several types of race prejudice, types which
are differentiated from each other for practical reasons. It may be discovered that two
white persons, having an equal degree of race prejudice according to an attitude scale,
have different motivations for this prejudice, in such a manner that a given program of
action will reduce the prejudice of one but not of the other. If such be discovered,
we may claim to have a pragmatic classification of race prejudice. Presumably a judicious
choice of questions on an attitude measurement scale would classify white people accord-
ing to the type of prejudice they hold toward Negroes.
Many psychological theories of race prejudices have been advanced.*’ Implicit
throughout our book has been the theory that it is useful to consider race prejudice as
• We have occasionally used the term “race prejudice” in a common-sense way, not in an
analytic way.
**
For an excellent brief summary of these theories, see Henry A. Davidson, “The Anatomy
pf Prejudiic^;” ConpmQn Grpun^ (Wiijtpr^ ip40> pp.
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
