Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: There are two major theories explaining the effects of racial context on racial attitudes: racial
threat and the contact hypothesis. In this paper, we evaluate these theories using the Social
Capital Benchmark Survey—a unique nationwide survey of more than 20,000 respondents. The
survey allows us to merge individual responses with contextual data and, for the first time,
evaluate these theories across multiple races with similar dependent variables. We find that
racial threat explains white behavior towards blacks, Hispanics and Asians, but that contact does
a better job explaining how blacks respond to other groups. Hispanics fall somewhere in
between—they are threatened by blacks, but show some evidence of contact when surrounded by
whites and Asians. These seemingly disparate results are in part explained by the relative
position of each racial group in society. When individuals are surrounded by racial groups
perceived to hold lower positions on the socio-economic totem pole, they respond negatively,
but when individuals are surrounded by groups perceived as more privileged, they respond more
positively.