History
After the Civil Rights Act of 1964, many people in America found old-fashioned (or “Jim Crow”) racism dissolving along with segregation. Symbolic racism is a term that was coined by David Sears & John McConahay (1973) to explain why most White Americans supported principles of equality for Black Americans but less than half were willing to support programs designed to implement these principles. While equal rights are fought for vehemently, symbolic racism is still prominent today in the United States and possibly acts as a mask for old-fashioned racism sentiments.
Symbolic Racism was the first described form of modern racism, which has now come to include aversive racism and racism stemming from ambivalent prejudice. The original theory behind the concept of symbolic racism emerged in 1971 and described three definitive aspects of this form of racism:
1. A new form of racism had replaced old-fashioned Jim Crow racism, as it was no longer popular and could no longer be influential in politics as only a small minority still accepted it.
2. Opposition to Black politicians and racially-targeted policies is more influenced by symbolic racism than by any perceived or true threat to Whites' own personal lives.
3. The origins of this form of racism lay in early-socialized negative feelings about Blacks associated with traditional conservative values.
Read more about this topic: Symbolic Racism
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Anything in history or nature that can be described as changing steadily can be seen as heading toward catastrophe.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
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