ABSTRACT
The process of alienation to be quite similar among blacks and whites, but there are important differences within this essential similarity. Alienated black people who are relatively comfortable with their own anger are likely to be revolutionary in their orientations to American national politics whereas those who are less able to handle their political rage comfortably tend to become reformers or, especially among black men, to move toward a withdrawn political orientation. The broad outlines of the model appear confirmed: alienation is strongly associated with nonconformist orientations toward political behavior and the demographic location and personality structure of the alienated person allows us to predict toward the specific behavior orientation he is likely to adopt. Of course, attention to politics and political involvement generally can result in a variety of behaviors and our findings that alienation + group affiliation leads to the behavior of maintaining or increasing of attention to politics needs a great deal of corroboration and extension.
