This study uses a nationally representative survey to examine the relationship between attitudes about genetics and race. We focus on the ways in which negative out-group behavior can be explained as innate and genetic (Pettigrew’s “ultimate attribution error”), and how this may underlie racial prejudice and racial individualism—the notion that individual capabilities, not structural inequality or discrimination, drive racial stratification. We examine the relationship between attitudes about genetics and racially ameliorative policies. We find whites are more accepting of genetic explanations for blacks’ traits and behaviors. Our analyses show that racialized genetic attribution, among other factors, increases opposition to racial policies. When linked with racial individualism, though, genetic attribution can actually reduce opposition to racial policies—a finding that paints a disconcerting picture of how biological determinism is embedded in white racial ideology. Findings are discussed in relation to efforts to reduce racial inequality.
BlissCatherine. 2012. Race decoded: The genomic fight for social justice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
2.
BoboLawrence D.CharlesCamille Z.KrysanMariaSimmonsAlicia D.2012. The real record on racial attitudes. In Social trends in American life: Findings from the General Social Survey since 1972, ed. MarsdenPeter V., 38–83. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
3.
BoboLawrence D.KluegelJames R.SmithRyan A.1997. Laissez-faire racism: The crystallization of a kinder, gentler, antiblack ideology. In Racial attitudes in the 1990s: Continuity and change, eds. TuchSteven A.MartinJack K., 15–42. Westport, CT: Praeger.
4.
BoboLawrence D.SmithRyan A.1998. From Jim Crow racism to laissez faire racism: The transformation of racial attitudes. In Beyond pluralism: The conceptions of groups and identities in America, eds. KatkinWendy F.LandsmanNedTyreeAndrea, 188–220. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
5.
BoboLawrence D.TuanMia. 2006. Prejudice in politics: Group position, public opinion, and the Wisconsin treaty rights dispute. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
6.
Bonilla-SilvaEduardo. 2013. Racism without racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in America. 4th ed.Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
7.
Bonilla-SilvaEduardoFormanTyrone A.2000. “I am not a racist, but…” Mapping white college students’ racial ideology in the USA. Discourse & Society11 (1): 50–85.
8.
BraunLundyHammondsEvelynn. 2012. The dilemma of classification: The past in the present. In Genetics and the unsettled past: The collision of DNA, race, and history, eds. WailooKeithNelsonAlondraLeeCatherine, 67–80. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
9.
CarminesEdward G.SnidermanPaul M.EasterBeth C.2011. On the meaning, measurement, and implications of racial resentments. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science634:98–116.
10.
ConditCeleste M.GronnvollMaritaLandauJamieShenLijangWrightLanelleHarrisTina M.2009. Believing in both genetic determinism and behavioral action: A materialist framework and implications. Public Understanding of Science18 (6): 730–46.
11.
ConditCeleste M.ParrottRoxanne L.BatesBenjamin R.BevanJennifer L.AtcherPaul J.2004. Exploration of the impact of messages about genes and race on lay attitudes. Clinical Genetics66 (5): 402–8.
12.
DiTomasoNancy. 2013. The American non-dilemma: Racial inequality without racism. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
13.
DuncanTerry E.DuncanSusan C.LuFuzhong. 1998. A comparison of model- and multiple imputation-based approaches to longitudinal data with partial missingness. Structural Equation Modeling5 (1): 1–21.
14.
DusterTroy. 2003. Backdoor to eugenics. 2nd ed.New York, NY: Routledge.
15.
EmersonMichael O.SmithChristianSikkinkDavid. 1999. Equal in Christ, but not in the world: White conservative Protestants and explanations of black-white inequality. Social Problems46 (3): 398–417.
16.
EndersCraig K.2001. A primer on maximum likelihood algorithms available for use with missing data. Structural Equation Modeling8 (1): 128–41.
17.
FreeseJeremyShostakSara. 2009. Genetics and social inquiry. Annual Review of Sociology35:107–28.
18.
GabrielAbram. 2012. A biologist’s perspective on DNA and race in the genomics era. In Genetics and the unsettled past: The collision of DNA, race, and history, eds. WailooKeithNelsonAlondraLeeCatherine, 43–66. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
19.
GossettThomas F.1965. Race: The history of an idea in America. New York, NY: Shocken.
20.
GravesJoseph L.2001. The emperor’s new clothes: Biological theories of race at the millennium. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
21.
HaasR. GlenKatzIrwinRizzoNinaBaileyJoanMooreLynn. 1992. When racial ambivalence evokes negative affect, using a disguised measure of mood. Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin17:83–92.
22.
HughesMichael. 1997. Symbolic racism, old-fashioned racism, and whites’ opposition to affirmative action. In Racial attitudes in the 1990s: Continuity and change, eds. TuchSteven A.MartinJack K., 45–75. Westport, CT: Praeger.
23.
HughesMichaelTuchSteven A.2000. How beliefs about poverty influence racial policy attitudes: A study of whites, African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians in the United States. In Racialized politics: The debate about racism in America, eds. SearsDavid O.SidaniusJamesBoboLawrence, 165–90. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
24.
HughesMichaelTuchSteven A.2003. Gender differences in whites’ racial attitudes: Are women’s attitudes really more favorable?Social Psychology Quarterly66:384–401.
25.
HugheyMatthew W.2012. White bound: Nationalists, antiracists, and the shared meanings of race. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
26.
HuntMatthew O.2007. African American, Hispanic, and white beliefs about black/white inequality, 1977–2004. American Sociological Review72:390–415.
27.
JayaratneToby E.YbarraOscarSheldonJane P.BrownTony N.FeldbaumMerlePfefferCarla A.PettyElizabeth M.2006. White Americans’ genetic lay theories of race differences and sexual orientation: Their relationship to prejudice toward blacks, and gay men and lesbians. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations9 (1): 77–94.
28.
KatzIrwinHaasR. Glen. 1988. Racial ambivalence and the American value conflict: Correlational and priming studies of dual cognitive structures. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology55:893–905.
29.
KinderDonald R.SandersLynn M.1996. Divided by color: Racial politics and democratic ideals. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
30.
KrysanMaria. 2000. Prejudice, politics, and public opinion: Understand the sources of racial policy attitudes. Annual Review of Sociology26:135–68.
31.
LeeSandra S.2012. Waiting on the promise of prescribing precision: Race in the era of pharmacogenomics. In Genetics and the unsettled past: The collision of DNA, race, and history, eds. WailooKeithNelsonAlondraLeeCatherine, 164–80. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
32.
LynchJohnConditCeleste M.2006. Genes and race in the news: A test of competing theories of news coverage. American Journal of Health Behavior30 (2): 125–35.
33.
MeertensRoel W.PettigrewThomas F.1997. Is subtle prejudice really prejudice?Public Opinion Quarterly61:54–71.
34.
MorningAnn. 2008. Reconstructing race in science and society: Biology textbooks, 1952–2002. American Journal of Sociology114 (S1): S106–37.
35.
MorningAnn. 2011. The nature of race: How scientists think and teach about human differences. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
36.
MorningAnn. 2014. And you thought we had moved beyond all that: Biological race returns to the social sciences. Ethnic and Racial Studies Review37 (10): 1676–85.
37.
NelsonAlondra. 2012. Reconciliation projects: From kinship to justice. In Genetics and the unsettled past: The collision of DNA, race, and history, eds. WailooKeithNelsonAlondraLeeCatherine, 20–31. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
38.
PettigrewThomas F.1979. The ultimate attribution error: Extending Allport’s cognitive analysis of prejudice. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin5:461–76.
39.
PettigrewThomas F.MeertensRoel W.1995. Subtle and blatant prejudice in Western Europe. European Journal of Social Psychology25:57–75.
40.
PhelanJo C.LinkBruce G.FeldmanNuami M.2013. The genomic revolution and beliefs about essential racial differences: A backdoor to eugenics?American Sociological Review78 (2): 167–91.
41.
RobertsDorothy. 2011. Fatal invention: How science, politics, and big business re-create race in the twenty-first century. New York, NY: The Free Press.
42.
SchumanHowardSteehCharlotteBoboLawrenceKrysanMaria. 1997. Racial attitudes in America: Trends and interpretations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
43.
SearsDavid O.1988. Symbolic racism. In Eliminating racism: Profiles in controversy, eds. KatzPhyllis A.TaylorDalmas A., 53–84. New York, NY: Plenum.
44.
SearsDavid O.HenryP. J.2003. The origins of symbolic racism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology85 (2): 259–75.
45.
ShostakSaraFreeseJeremyLinkBruce G.PhelanJo C.2009. The politics of the gene: Social status and beliefs about genetics for individual outcomes. Social Psychology Quarterly72 (1): 77–93.
46.
SingerEleanorAntonucciToni C.BurmeisterMargitCouperMick P.RaghunathanTrivellore E.Van HoewykJohn. 2007. Beliefs about genes and environment as determinants of behavioral characteristics. International Journal of Public Opinion Research19 (3): 331–53.
47.
SingerEleanorCouperMick P.RaghunathanTrivellore E.AntonucciToni C.BurmeisterMargitVan HoewykJohn. 2010. The effect of question framing and response options on the relationship between racial attitudes and beliefs about genes as causes of behavior. Public Opinion Quarterly74 (3): 460–76.
48.
SmedleyAudreySmedleyBrian. 2011. Race in North America: Origin and evolution of a worldwide view. 4th ed.Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
49.
SnidermanPaul M.CrosbyGretchen C.HowellWilliam G.2000. The politics of race. In Racialized politics: The debate about racism in America, eds. SearsDavid O.SidaniusJamesBoboLawrence, 236–79. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
50.
SuhayElizabethJayaratneToby E.2013. Does biology justify ideology? The politics of genetic attribution. Public Opinion Quarterly77 (2): 497–521.
51.
TuchSteven A.HughesMichael. 2011. Whites’ racial policy attitudes in the twenty-first century: The continuing significance of racial resentment. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences634:134–52.
52.
WacquantLoic. 1997. For an analytic of racial domination. Political Power and Social Theory11:221–34.
53.
WadeNicholas. 2014. A troublesome inheritance: Genes, race, and human history. New York, NY: Penguin Press.
54.
WailooKeith. 2012. Who am I? Genes and the problem of historical identity. In Genetics and the unsettled past: The collision of DNA, race, and history, eds. WailooKeithNelsonAlondraLeeCatherine, 13–19. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
55.
WailooKeithNelsonAlondraLeeCathernie, eds. 2012. Genetics and the unsettled past: The collision of DNA, race, and history. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
56.
WilderCraig S.2013. Ebony & ivy: Race, slavery, and the troubled history of America’s universities. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Press.
57.
ZuberiTukufu. 2001. Thicker than blood: How racial statistics lie. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
58.
ZuberiTukufuPattersonEvelyn J.StewartQuincy Thomas. 2015. Race, methodology, and social construction in the genomic era. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (this volume).
