ABSTRACT
Affirmative action means different things to different people. For too many Americans over too many years the words have connoted a clash of interests between majority and minority ethnic groups or between men and women. Certainly, Whites have been less active in their support of affirmative action than people of color have, and men have been less active than women (Sincharoen & Crosby, 2001). Among African Americans and Latinos, furthermore, the stronger a person's ethnic identity, the stronger the support for affirmative action. This association has been interpreted as being consistent with “realistic group conflict” theory (Schmermund, Sellers, Mueller, & Crosby, 2001). Until recently, most people seem to have assumed that White men stand to gain little from affirmative action.
