"Black Rage" or Conscious Dream?: A Demographic Profile of African Americans' Prejudice

By David C. Wilson

The lack of nationally representative studies of the African American population has left many questions unanswered with regard to sensitive topics such as blacks' prejudice toward whites. One such question centers on who is most likely to be prejudiced within the black population, and more curiously, why.

There is evidence to suggest that middle-class professional blacks are the most likely candidates, because they are highly susceptible to social frustration, disillusionment, alienation, and mistrust. This group includes blacks with higher incomes and more education, and others who are seeking economic upward mobility.

Although not all research supports this proposition, it is a compelling one that calls for continued exploration. What can survey research reveal about the notion that some have called "Black Rage" in the upper and middle classes of black America, and what demographic characteristics are most associated with blacks' prejudice?

Two fundamental viewpoints appear in studies of this subject. The "sense of group position model" predicts that those demographic groups who are most likely to be in economic, social, and political competition with other groups should also be most likely to perceive their racial environment as negative and potentially threatening. The consequence for educated, middle-class blacks is a pessimistic outlook, and a greater likelihood to report being prejudiced.

Other researchers believe that the black middle class is not disillusioned. In a 2002 analysis, Paul M. Sniderman and Thomas Piazza provided evidence that more-educated and higher-income African Americans are more likely than their lower-income and less-educated counterparts to believe that their financial situation will improve, and that there is hope for the future--in other words, that the black middle class still believes in the American dream.

Is or is not the black middle class disillusioned with the American dream? Are the views of blacks of higher socioeconomic status (SES) optimistic or pessimistic? This study attempts to answer these questions by testing the notion that segments of the black population who are most prejudiced are also most likely to perceive a negative racial context. If the optimistic view is correct, then higher SES African Americans should be less likely to report perceiving a negative racial context and less likely to be prejudiced. If the pessimistic view is correct, then demographic groups that represent the black middle class should be more likely to perceive a negative racial context and to be prejudiced, suggesting that middle-to upper-class blacks are less naïve about the American dream and more sensitive to the role that race can play in social, economic, and political differences.

Segmentation analyses are typically used in research to extrapolate which demographic attributes best relate to outcomes, attributes, or behavior. This analysis focuses on eight demographic variables--education, income, age, gender, "urbanicity," black population density, and employment status--and employs three years' worth of data collected from the 1997-99 Gallup Poll Social Audits on Black/White Relations, also known as the Gallup Race Relations Social Audits (GRRSA). Black respondents' prejudice was measured using an eleven-point index (ranging from zero to ten) of self-reported prejudice against whites, and their sense of group position was measured using a combination of variables that attempted to account for how blacks might view their racial environment. These indexes were used to compare scores for the different demographic segments comprising the black samples in the surveys.