I'm Not Prejudiced,But…: A Deeper Look at Racial Attitudes*

Black and white people experience race relations from different social positions, thus, interpret questions about race relations differently. Structured interviews were conducted with a random sample of residents from Philadelphia and Meridian, Mississippi. These data indicate that there is a wider gap between these blacks and whites regarding their perceptions of discrimination than the gap documented by national surveys. There are interesting differences in the way the two groups interpret themselves as racist, or not, and how they remember their communities’interracial history. Content analysis is used to demonstrate differences in the understanding of race relations, segregation, and perceived danger from racially motivated violence.