The impact of local black residents’ socioeconomic status on white residents’ racial views

This paper extends the study of contextual influences on racial attitudes by asking how the SES of the local black community shapes the racial attitudes of local whites. Using responses to the 1998–2002 General Social Surveys merged with year 2000 census data, we compare the influences of black educational and economic composition on white residents’ attitudes. Finally, the independence of these effects from the impact of white contextual SES is assessed. Across three dimensions of racial attitudes, white residents’ views are more positive in localities where the black population contains more college graduates. However, such localities tend also to have highly educated white populations, as well as higher incomes among blacks and whites, and the multiple influences are inseparable. In contrast, many racial attitude measures show an independent effect of black economic composition, white residents reporting more negative views where the local African American community is poorer.