Predicting support for racial transformation policies: Intergroup threat, racial prejudice, sense of group entitlement and strength of identification

Abstract

Policies and programs designed to challenge the effects of racial discrimination (such as affirmative action) are hotly contested. Factors which have been proposed to explain opposition to these policies include racial prejudice, group threat and self-interest, and perceptions of intergroup justice. We report the results of two random national telephone surveys which tested a theoretically based model of the predictors of policy support in post-apartheid South Africa. The results provided limited support for Blumer's group position model. Compensatory and preferential treatment policies had different underlying predictors: Violated entitlement featured in the models of compensatory policy attitudes, but not preferential treatment policy attitudes, where threat was the strongest predictor. In addition to threat and violated entitlement, policy attitudes among the black sample were related to ingroup identification but those of the white sample were related to prejudice. The effects of these variables were in the opposite directions for the two samples: Policy support was associated with strong ingroup identification and high levels of threat among the black sample (i.e. prospective beneficiaries of the transformation policies), but with low levels of prejudice and threat among the white sample. We conclude by considering the implications that these findings have for social change programs.

Marry who you love: Intergroup contact with gay people and another stigmatized minority is related to voting on the restriction of gay rights through threat

“…Perceived differences between the ingroup and outgroup constitute another aspect of symbolic threat (Aberson, 2015;Durrheim et al, 2011;Stephan, Diaz-Loving, & Duran, 2000).…”

Racial Contact and Change in South Africa

“…Black people are more strongly in favor of policies directed at transformation and integration than other groups. Whites are most opposed to policies such as affirmative action, land redistribution, and racial quotas in sports teams, and this policy opposition is strongly related to racial prejudice and to threat perceptions (Durrheim, 2003; Durrheim et al, in press). In a qualitative study, Durrheim and Dixon (2005) also found that Black and White perceptions of desegregation were rooted in a sense of threat among Whites: “The form that desegregation has taken, with Blacks entering previously exclusive White spaces, is experienced as loss by Whites but as gain by Blacks” (p. 169).…”

Virtual special issue on theory and research on collective action in the European Journal of Social Psychology

“…Specifically, Wohl, Giguere, Branscombe, and McVicar (2011) showed that identification with a group whose distinctiveness might be lost in the future increased the effects of threat upon endorsement of ingroup protective action. Durrheim, Dixon, Tredoux, Eaton, Quayle, and Clack (2011) found that among Black respondents, high levels of threat and ingroup identification were associated with support for racial transformation policies, whereas among White respondents, low levels of threat and prejudice predicted their support for affirmative actions. Costello and Hodson (2011) further illustrate that the relation between threat and solidarity-based action (empowerment and assistance of immigrants) depends on individual's social dominance orientation (SDO): Higher SDO predicted greater resistance to assist immigrants upon exposure to realistic or symbolic threats.…”