Chapter 3 When White Southerners Converse About Race

Abstract

Like other authors in this volume, we examine white Americans’ attitudes toward AfricanAmericans. Unlike the other chapters, this one focuses on one region of the country: the South. Whereas the other authors use time-tested, individual-level measures of prejudice and racial attitudes, we employ a new and thus untested methodology that is best suited for group comparisons such as those commonly found in psychology. We seek an answer to one question: how much racial prejudice is there in the South these days?