ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at three of these ideas: symbolic racism, modern racism, and aversive racism. Each of these ideas proposes, in different ways, that deep-seated, negative attitudes persist in people who may believe themselves to be purely nonprejudiced. The survey researchers at the Institute of Social Research also assessed black racial attitudes during the 1970s. Social psychologists were interested in understanding more about the behavioral consequences of the trends. As with symbolic and modern racism before, the foundation of aversive racism is laid by a cultural context of racist attitudes, values, and beliefs. Therefore, although blacks continued to see things differently in an absolute sense, both blacks and whites were becoming disenchanted with the prospects for, or appropriateness of, federal government intervention in matters of racial equality. The symbolic, modern, and aversive racism analyses show a variety of ways in which racial bias persisted in a time when it was believed to have substantially subsided.
