This study examines how racial contexts relate to Americans’ opinion toward immigration. Survey data analysis reveals that racial surroundings correspond to public attitudes differently, depending on race and geographic unit. For non-Hispanic white Americans, proximity to Asians correlates with positive attitudes toward immigrants, whereas those living with Hispanics are more likely to harbor negative stereotypes. Conversely, African Americans living with Asians are more likely to be prejudiced against immigrants. Furthermore, the positive effects of racial contexts are more salient in the neighborhoods than in larger areas. These findings suggest the significance of racial integration in alleviating interethnic tension.
Alba, Richard, and Victor Nee.2003. Remaking the American mainstream: Assimilation and contemporary immigration. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
2.
Allport, Gordon W.1954. The nature of prejudice. Cambridge, MA: Addison-Wesley.
3.
Blalock, Hubert M., Jr.1967. Toward a theory of minority-group relations. New York: Wiley.
4.
Blumer, Herbert.1958. Race prejudice as a sense of group position. Pacific Sociological Review1 (1): 3-7.
5.
Bonacich, Edna.1973. A theory of middleman minorities. American Sociological Review38 (5): 583-94.
6.
Borjas, George J.1999. Heaven’s door: Immigration policy and the American economy.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
7.
Burns, Peter, and James G. Gimpel .2000. Economic insecurity, prejudicial stereotypes, and public opinion on immigration policy. Political Science Quarterly115 (2): 201-25.
8.
Card, David.2005. Is the new immigration really so bad? Economic Journal115 (507): F300-F323.
9.
Chavez, Leo. R.2001. Covering immigration: Popular images and the politics of the nation. Berkeley: University of California Press.
10.
Citrin, Jack, Donald P. Green, Christopher Muste, and Cara Wong.1997. Public opinion toward immigration reform: The role of economic motivations. Journal of Politics59 (3): 858-81.
11.
Cummings, Scott, and Thomas Lambert.1997. Anti-Hispanic and Anti-Asian sentiments among African Americans. Social Science Quarterly78 (2): 338-53.
12.
Dixon, Jeffrey C.2006. The ties that bind and those that don’t: Toward reconciling group threat and contact theories of prejudice. Social Forces84 (4): 2179-204.
13.
Gay, Claudine.2006. Seeing difference: The effect of economic disparity on black attitudes toward Latinos. American Journal of Political Science50 (4): 982-97.
14.
Hetherington, Marc J., and Suzanne Globetti .2002. Political trust and racial policy preferences. American Journal of Political Science46 (2): 253-75.
15.
Hood, M.V., and Irwin L. Morris .1997. ¿Amigo o enemigo? Context, attitudes, and Anglo public opinion toward immigration. Social Science Quarterly78 (2): 309-23.
16.
Huntington, Samuel P.2004. Who are we? The challenges to America’s national identity. New York: Simon and Schuster .
17.
Joyce, Patrick D.2003. No fire next time: Black-Korean conflicts and the future of America’s cities. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
18.
Kim, Claire Jean.2000. Bitter fruit: The politics of Black-Korean conflict in New York City. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
19.
King, Gary, Michael Tomz, and Jason Wittenberg .2000. Making the most of statistical analyses: Improving interpretation and presentation. American Journal of Political Science44 (2): 347-61.
20.
Logan, John R.2001. Ethnic diversity grows, neighborhood integration lags behind. Albany, NY: Lewis Mumford Center. Available from http://mumford1.dyndns.org/cen2000/ .
21.
Logan, John R., Brian J. Stults, and Reynolds Farley .2004. Segregation of minorities in the metropolis: Two decades of change. Demography41 (1): 1-22.
22.
McClain, Paula D., Niambi M. Carter, Victoria M. DeFrancesco Soto, Monique L. Lyle, Shayla C. Nunnally, Thomas J. Scotto, J. Alan Kendrick, Jeffrey D. Grynaviski,
23.
Gerald F. Lackey, and Kendra Davenport Cotton.2006. Racial distancing in a southern city: Latino immigrants’ view of black Americans. Journal of Politics68 (3): 571-84.
24.
Martinez, Ramiro, and Abel Valenzuela .2006. Immigration and crime: Race, ethnicity, and violence. New York: New York University Press.
25.
Massey, Douglas S., and Nancy A. Denton .1993. American apartheid: Segregation and the making of the underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
26.
Morris, Irwin L.2000. African American voting on Proposition 187: Rethinking the prevalence of interminority conflict. Political Research Quarterly53 (1): 77-98.
27.
Nie, Norman H., Jane Junn, and Kenneth Stehlik-Barry.1996. Education and democratic citizenship in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
28.
Oliver, J. Eric, and Janelle Wong.2003. Intergroup prejudice in multiethnic settings. American Journal of Political Science47 (4): 567-82.
29.
Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant.1994. Racial formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s, 2nd edition. New York: Routledge.
30.
Pettigrew, Thomas F.1998. Intergroup contact theory. Annual Review of Psychology49:65-85.
31.
Piore, Michael J.1979. Birds of passage: Migrant labor and industrial societies . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
32.
Quillian, Lincoln.1996. Group threat and regional change in attitudes toward African Americans. American Journal of Sociology102 (3): 816-60.
33.
Sampson, Robert J., Jeffrey D. Morenoff, and Thomas Gannon-Rowley.2002. Assessing "neighborhood effects": Social processes and new directions in research. Annual Review of Sociology28:443-78.
34.
Scheve, Kenneth F., and Matthew J. Slaughter .2001. Labor market competition and individual preferences over immigration policy. Review of Economics and Statistics83 (1): 133-45.
35.
Schmidley, A. Dianne.2001. Profile of the foreign-born population in the United States: 2000. U.S. Census Bureau Current Population Reports, Series P23-206. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
36.
Stein, Robert M., Stephanie Shirley Post, and Allison L. Rinden .2000. Reconciling context and contact effects on racial attitudes. Political Research Quarterly53 (2): 285-303.
37.
Taylor, Marylee C.1998. How white attitudes vary with the racial composition of local populations: Numbers count. American Sociological Review63 (4): 512-35.
38.
Tichenor, Daniel J.2002. Dividing lines: The politics of immigration control in America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
39.
Tomz, Michael, Jason Wittenberg, and Gary King.2003. CLARIFY: Software for interpreting and presenting statistical results, version 2.1. Available from http://gking.harvard.edu/.
40.
Waters, Mary.2001. Black identities: West Indian immigrant dreams and American realities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
41.
Welch, Susan, Lee Sigelman, Timothy Bledsoe, and Michael Combs.2001. Race and place: Race relations in an American city. New York: Cambridge University Press.
42.
Wilkes, Rima, and John Iceland.2004. Hypersegregation in the twenty-first century. Demography41 (1): 23-36.
