Social Distance Reexamined: European Ancestry Groups in the Early Twentieth‐Century United States

Emory Bogardus' 1926 social distance survey revealed, not surprisingly, that native‐born Americans tended to view Southern, Central, and Eastern (SCE) Europeans as far less desirable than Northern and Western (NW) Europeans for most social relationships. This well‐known finding has been attributed to both racial/ethnic prejudice and social class prejudice. The present study investigates the relative contributions of these two forms of prejudice to the total prejudice against SCE Europeans, testing the prediction that social distance attitudes toward European groups in Bogardus' pioneering survey were significantly influenced by group differences in socioeconomic status (SES), net of the NW‐SCE European distinction. The prediction is supported in analyses that consider survey respondents' uniquely intense desires for social distance from those SCE Europeans that were visible because of their relatively high SES, notably, Russian‐ancestry Jews. The study concludes that social class prejudice substantially affected divisions among European ancestry groups in early twentieth‐century America.