Racial Attitudes in an Age of Immigration

• In Event: 172 - Regular Session. Race and Ethnicity: Boundaries and Classification

Abstract

While theories of immigrant assimilation focus on changing group boundaries, we know surprisingly little about how immigration is changing Americans’ perceptions of social distance along racial lines. Existing scholarship focuses on either perceptions of immigrants or perceptions of racial groups, but not the interaction between them, ignoring the reality of today’s diversity. I use a survey experiment to explore native-born Americans’ stereotypes of native and foreign-born members of the four largest ethnoracial groups—Whites, Blacks, Latinos, and Asians, as well as how respondents’ own ethnic/racial identities influence these stereotypes. I find that while immigrant status changes the social distance Whites perceive between themselves and out-groups, nativity is not a key axis of differentiation for the perceptions of U.S.-born Blacks and Latinos. Black and Latino Americans perceive differences across out-groups, but not by nativity status within them. Rather than simply increasing or decreasing social distance among groups, as competing theories of assimilation predict, immigration seems to be changing the very nature of groups, in different ways for White, Black and Latino Americans.

Author

• Ariela Schachter, Washington University in St. Louis