Coalitional Prospects in a Multi-Racial Society: African- American Attitudes Toward Other Minority Groups

Abstract

This paper analyzes the coalitional perceptions of African-Americans after incorporation in their city's dominant political condition. Our research ad dresses two main questions. First, how do African-Americans view their coalition prospects with other major racial and ethnic minority groups? Here we focus on the perceptions of African-Americans in one city, Los Angeles, toward Latinos and Asian-Americans, and compare their attitudes with those of blacks in other cities. Second, how do these coalitional perceptions fit into a fuller model of political attitudes? This analysis provides us with evidence of generational differences in coalitional perceptions and supports the hypothesis of coalitional entropy.