New Approaches to Understanding Racial Prejudice and Discrimination

Abstract

This chapter reviews and critiques recent work on prejudice, discrimination, and racism, with an emphasis on evidence of continuing discrimination in the United States and efforts to understand its basis in prejudice. Three lines of research are the primary subject of the review: recent work on the measurement of discrimination, especially audit methods; theories of new prejudice and new racism following the Civil Rights movement; and research on implicit prejudicial attitudes. The most sophisticated new work on prejudice and discrimination is characterized by a multidimensional understanding of prejudice and/or the use of experimental methods. This review argues that research on implicit prejudice, largely developed by psychologists, provides an important new understanding of the basis of discrimination and should be incorporated in sociological accounts.