Ethno-Racial Attitudes and Social Inequality

Abstract

Ethno-racial attitudes, beliefs, and identities play a fundamental constitutive role in the experience, re-production, and process of change in larger societal patterns of ethno-racial inequality and relations. Recognizing there is a strong bias in sociology toward what might be termed structural over-determination, we summarize the record on ethno-racial attitudinal change, review major models of racial prejudice, and describe key social psychological processes and outcomes in three spheres of social life: the labor market, residential segregation, and politics. A core subtext of this review is that race is the quintessential domain in which heavy and explicit reliance on social psychological concepts, process, and theories is unavoidable if we are to understand the durable patterns of ethno-racial inequality.