Racism, Rational Choice, and White Opposition to Racial Change: A Case Study of Busing

Despite significant declines in traditional prejudice, white resistance to desegregation and affirmative action has led some to argue that a new symbolic racism has emerged as the principal impediment to racial change in America. Studies of opposition to busing, however, suggest a nonracial or rational choice explanation; whites oppose busing because it is believed to have too many costs and not enough benefits. Using data from a mediumsized midwestern city, this study estimates a multiple indicator model for the effects of traditional prejudice, symbolic racism, and rational choice on four types of opposition to busing-attitudes toward two-way busing, one-way busing, protest, and white flight. Traditional prejudice and symbolic racism are found to be partially independent dimensions whose effects on busing opposition are entirely mediated by certain expected costs of busing. Thus, the findings support both racism and rational choice explanations. There is, however, no support for the notion that symbolic racism is a more important source of opposition to racial change than is traditional prejudice. McKee J. McClendon is Professor of Sociology at the University of Akron, Ohio. This paper is a revised version of a paper presented at the 1983 meetings of the American Sociological Association in Detroit, August 31-September 4. The author wishes to thank Fred P. Pestello and the anonymous reviewers for POQ for their helpful suggestions. The author also expresses gratitude to Elizabeth Mutran and Robert Nash Parker for their consultation on LISREL. All deficiencies are the sole responsibility of the author. Public Opinion Quarterly Vol. 49:214-233 C) by the Trustees of Columbia University Published by Elsevier Science Publishing Co., Inc. 0033-362X/85/0049-214/$2.50 This content downloaded from 207.46.13.28 on Tue, 30 Aug 2016 05:14:47 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms A CASE STUDY OF BUSING 215 tional racial prejudice may no longer be an important factor in perpetuating racial inequality. If the principle of equal opportunity now enjoys widespread white support, such does not appear to be the case for many concrete efforts to change the racial status quo. Antipoverty programs, welfare for blacks, black militance, affirmative action, and busing for school integration are opposed by many whites (McConahay and Hough, 1976; Lipset and Schneider, 1978; Kinder and Rhodebeck, 1982; Pettigrew, 1979; Kinder and Sears, 1981). One reason for white opposition to affirmative action is that many whites now believe that opportunities for blacks to get ahead have improved greatly, and that today blacks have an equal or better than equal chance to get ahead (Kluegel and Smith, 1982; 1983). Thus, many whites seem to feel that there is little discrimination and that blacks are benefiting from preferential treatment or reverse discrimination. The existence of such beliefs and attitudes about blacks' opportunity and programs for racial change, coupled with the decline in traditional prejudice, has led some to argue that a new "symbolic racism" has emerged (McConahay and Hough, 1976; Kinder and Sears, 1981). As conceptualized by McConahay and Hough, symbolic racism consists of negative affect toward blacks and the belief that black demands and government efforts to help blacks are violating cherished values embodied in the Protestant Ethic. Since blacks are believed to have equal opportunity, affirmative action and busing are symbolic of illegitimate black demands. Instead of being based upon traditional racist doctrines of white superiority and de jure segregation, symbolic racism is a hostile sense of racial injustice which emerged when the civil rights movement began to attack de facto segregation in the North (McConahay and Hough, 1976). Since traditional prejudice appeared to be at a low level in the North at that time, it has been stated that symbolic racism became the major source of opposition to racial change (Kinder and Sears, 1981:416). This notion implies that either traditional prejudice now has little or no effect on opposition to change, or minimally, that symbolic racism has a stronger effect than traditional prejudice, particularly in the North. The validity of this thesis, however, has not been adequately tested by previous research. Given that symbolic racism and traditional prejudice are both said to be expressions of an underlying negative affect toward blacks (McConahay and Hough, 1976), symbolic racism may overlap to a great extent with traditional prej-udice (Kluegel and Smith, 1983). With the possible exception of Bobo (1983), however, there has been little or no research to determine the degree, if any, to which symbolic racism is empirically independent of traditional prejudice. Moreover, there has also been no test of the notion that symbolic racism has a stronger effect on opposition to racial change than does traditional prejudice. This paper This content downloaded from 207.46.13.28 on Tue, 30 Aug 2016 05:14:47 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 216 McKEE J. McCLENDON will test the independence and relative effects of the two types of racism through an analysis of white opposition to busing, a prototype for other types of affirmative action. It has been noted (Kluegel and Smith, 1983) that the literature on symbolic racism often seems to equate all opposition to affirmative action programs with racism; opposition to busing, for example, has been treated as a measure of symbolic racism (Kinder and Sears, 1981). There is, however, a nonracial explanation for busing opposition which must be