Some Correlates of Civil Rights Activism

The relation of intergroup contact to civil rights activities is examined among both whites and Negroes. The major hypotheses are (1) that equalitarian contact is associated with greater activism, but more particularly for whites than for Negroes, and (2) that contact leads to an interpenetration of perspectives. The data modestly support both hypotheses. Alternatives to the contact hypothesis are explored; namely, that activism is related to the individual's (1) sense of powerlessness, (2) degree of status concern, and (3) liberalism-conservatism. The data indicate that a generalized liberal ideology is least relevant for explaining civil rights activism; and that the basis for activism among Negroes remains problematic. T he revolution in civil rights has been the dramatic event of the decade in the United States; yet despite the flood of literature that seeks to interpret the Negro movement, it is not possible to say that we understand very well what the motives and conditions are that encourage or sustain participation. This is true notwithstanding the fact that behavioral scientists have concentrated an enormous amnount of attention on the problem of intergroup relations, and specifically on the study of anti-Negro prejudice. An excellent case in point can be found in the literature on contact and prejudice-, where the evidence seems eminently clear in its substance but very cloudy in its applicability to the problems of civil rights action. We refer in particular to the well-documented proposition that equal-status contact is associated with more favorable attitudes toward minorities. That this is so seems hardly debatable by now; but whether this fact has any relevance to the engagement of Negroes or whites in civil rights activities is an open question. For Negroes, it is a very dubious matter, indeed, for there have been few studies of the relation of contact to Negro attitudes, and those that have been done suggest that the principle does not hold in the same degree for that group. Thus, Robin Williams concludes that ". . . intergroup contact is more closely related to majority-group preju(lice toward minorities than to minority feelings toward the majority group."2 We propose here to examine this question of the applicability of an established thesis in the intergroup literature to the domain of civil rights action. If civil rights participation, or favorable attitudes toward such participation, are conceived as simply further exemplifications of prejudiced or nonprejudiced attitudes in general, then one would expect that, among * The preparation of this work was greatly assisted by the members of the first author's seminar on "Leadership and Social Structure." Their assistance in the construction of the questionnaire is gratefully acknowledged. Computing assistance was obtained from the Health Sciences Computing Facility at U.C.L.A., sponsored by NIH grant FR-3. A helpful reading of an earlier draft was provided by Raymond J. Murphy. 1 The most recent evidence on this point is contained in Robin Williams, Stranigers Next Door (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1964). UsefuIl summaries of the evidence on contact are given in Gordon Allport, The Nature of Prejudice (Cambridge: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1954); and Daniel Wilner, et al., Humian Relationts in Interracial Hous$ing (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1951). 2 Williams, op. cit., p. 159. The same result is reported in Donald L. Noel and Alphonso Pinkney, "Correlates of Prejudice: Some Racial Differences and Similarities," Ainerican Joutrnial of Sociology, 69 (May 1964), pp. 609-622. An earlier study by Ernest Works, however, supports the contact hypothesis among Negroes, though his data afford no direct contrast for whites as against Negroes; cf. "The Prejudice-Interaction Hypothesis from the Point of View of the Negro Minority Group," Amlericant Journal of Sociology, 67 (July 1961), pp. 47-52. Interestingly enough for the present study, Works finds that contact seems to be less important for "disposition to action" than for "attitudes and feelings" (p. 52). This content downloaded from 207.46.13.114 on Thu, 26 May 2016 06:13:14 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms