IDEOLOGY AND RACIAL STRATIFICATION: A THEORETICAL JUXTAPOSITION

Structural explanations of racial stratification are weakened by a failure to in-corporate attitudinal and ideological factors into their theories. But attitudinal researchers have tended to focus on racial prejudice and tolerance and neglected non-racially specific beliefs that support white dominance. This article reviews the limits of each approach, discusses the problem of ideology for race relations theory and explores how, through the analysis of ideology, attitudinal and structural analysis might be synthesised. Findings on the relation between adherence to individualist explanations of poverty, perceptions of racial discrimination in employment and attitudes toward affirmative action programs are used to exemplify the power of class ideologies in shaping beliefs about racial inequality and vice versa. An exploration of ideologies of local autonomy and attitudes toward public housing and residential desegregation might elicit similar findings.