Changes in the Connotations of Racial Concepts and Color Names: 1963–1970

Abstract

This study was a 1970 replication of a 1963 study which assessed the connotative (affective) meanings of color, color-person, and ethnic concepts among Caucasian college students at Wake Forest University. The purpose was to determine whether including the development of the black identity movement during intervening years, had modified the affective meanings of these concepts. The results showed no significant change in the color (e.g., White and Black) or ethnic concepts (e.g., Caucasian and Negro). The meanings of the color-person concepts (e.g., White Person and Black Person) were shown to have shifted away from the related color concepts and toward a greater similarity to the related ethnic concepts. Factor analyses yielded similar factor structures for the color-person concepts and the ethnic concepts, with little evidence of interpretable factors among the color concepts. It was concluded that for Caucasian students the events of the black identity movement during 1963–1970 were associated with a greater tendency toward the equation of color-person and ethnic concepts, with no appreciable changes in the affective meanings of ethnic concepts themselves.