Disrupting the Status Quo Within: How Explanatory Belief Configurations Structure Blacks' Support for Race-Based Affirmative Action

• In Event: Race, Gender, and Class Roundtables Session
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 1) Blackness, Community, and Resistance

Abstract

Existing research documents an increasing heterogeneity among blacks' opinions towards race-based affirmative action. However, less attention has been given to whether internal divisions within Black public opinion follow an ordered and systematic pattern rooted in how blacks interpret racial inequalities. Using General Social Survey data, this study constructs a four-category belief typology based on two widely studied explanations for Black–White inequality: discrimination (structural attribution) and lack of motivation (individual attribution). This yields four configurations: structural-only, individualist-only, ambivalent (both), and “none” (neither). I examine how these configurations correspond to support for two policy domains: government aid to Black people and preferential hiring—using OLS regression models. Results reveal a clear and ordered hierarchy. For government aid, structural-only respondents report the highest support, followed by ambivalents, with “none” and individualist-only respondents expressing substantially lower support. A similar pattern emerges for preferential hiring, though overall support levels are lower. Across both domains, the largest reductions in support are observed among respondents who deny discrimination, regardless of whether they endorse motivational explanations. Ambivalent respondents cluster closer to structural-only respondents than to individualists. These patterns persist after adjustment for political ideology and socio-demographic factors. The findings indicate that internal divisions within Black public opinion are structured rather than random. The principal cleavage separates respondents who acknowledge discrimination from those who reject it, suggesting that interpretations of racial inequality organize meaningful ideological differentiation within the group across policy domains.

Author

• Namrata Namrata, Arizona State University-Tempe