Racial Resentment and White Opposition to Race-Conscious Programs:Principles or Prejudice? (PDF) by Stanley Feldman and Leonie Huddy of Stony Brook University, was brought to my attention by Cobb a while back. He drew an interesting conclusion from the abstract that I find no support for, I stashed the 42 page report; circumstances lead me to dusting it off and giving it the full review.

There's some two-three pages of the report below the fold, enough to judge if you really want to go there. And not for nothin' nor namin' no names, a belated quote of note:

Racial Resentment
Racial Resentment Defined
There are a number of different measures of the new racism – including symbolic racism, modern racism, and racial resentment – but all share a common definition as support for the belief that blacks are demanding and undeserving, and do not require any form of special government assistance

There has been a prolonged debate among researchers of American race relations over
whether white opposition to racial policies is driven by racial prejudice or is grounded in raceblind ideological principles. The controversy has been most heated over race-conscious policies such as affirmative action which are opposed by a majority of white Americans. Pervasive opposition to affirmative action has lead some researchers to question whether opposition really stems from racism or is based instead on a principled objection to the nature of the programs themselves. This “principled” approach has been developed most forcefully by Paul Sniderman and colleagues (Sniderman and Carmines 1997; Sniderman et al 2000), who argue that raceconscious policies violate individualism, equal treatment, and other basic tenets of American culture and are opposed by many whites on ideological grounds. They also present evidence that principled opposition to affirmative action is most pronounced among conservatives (Sniderman and Carmines 1997; Sniderman et al. 1996). From this perspective, white opposition, especially conservative white opposition, represents a reasonable response to a flawed set of policies.

This principled approach has been strongly countered, however, by a second set of researchers who contend that race-conscious policies face opposition from whites that derives more from racial prejudice than any ideological objection (Kinder and Mendelberg 2000; Kinder and Sears 1981; Sidanius et al 1996). In the extreme, racism researchers argue that far from being a reasonable basis from which to critique race-conscious policies, ideology itself has become entwined with racial prejudice, so that a racially tinged form of individualism now fuels opposition to racial programs to a far greater extent than opposition to other government efforts to assist the poor (Kinder and Mendleberg 2000; Jackman 1994; Sidanius and Pratto 1999).

Neither side has produced incontrovertible evidence in support of their position, despite a proliferation of studies, resulting in an impasse that we believe has hindered the advancement of research on white racial policy attitudes. To a very considerable extent, this research stalemate hinges on a further ongoing dispute over the nature and measurement of racial prejudice. On the surface, there is nothing contentious about the notion of general racial prejudice. It is commonly defined as a pre-existing negative attitude toward blacks that is resistant to positive information and can result in discriminatory behavior (following Allport 1954). Contention arises, however, over a second distinction between an overt form of prejudice that is readily detected and an indirect form that is more difficult to measure. The first type of overt prejudice is reflected in a variety of negative attitudes towards blacks that are measured as negative feelings on a positive-negative affect scale and by agreement with racial stereotype questions that portray blacks as inherently inferior to whites. From a research perspective, the major problem with this form of racism is practical, not intellectual – it is easy to define and measure but has declined substantially over time, raising the suspicion that white prejudice is no longer easily assessed by agreement with blatantly racist statements. This leads, in turn, to the concept of new racism, a subtle racial prejudice in which prejudice is conveyed through white opposition to black demands and resentment at their special treatment (Bobo, Kluegel and Smith 1997; Kinder and Sanders 1996; McConahay and Hough 1976; Henry and Sears 2000). 1 New racism is more prevalent than overt prejudice, but unlike overt prejudice it has proven difficult to both define and measure without inviting impassioned research criticism.

Racial Resentment
Racial Resentment Defined
There are a number of different measures of the new racism – including symbolic racism, modern racism, and racial resentment – but all share a common definition as support for the belief that blacks are demanding and undeserving, and do not require any form of special government assistance (Henry and Sears 2002; Kinder and Sears, 1981; Kinder and Sanders 1996; McConahay and Hough, 1976). We focus on Kinder and Sanders’ (1996) concept of racial resentment because it is assessed by questions that have appeared in a number of American National Election Studies (ANES) and is the form of new racism most accessible to empirical scrutiny by political scientists.

Kinder and Sanders (1996) date the emergence of white racial resentment to the urban race riots of the late 1960s, a time of growing black political demands. In their view, resentment was fueled by the subtle racial rhetoric of a series of presidential candidates including George Wallace, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. According to Kinder and Sanders, these political figures helped to create a new form of racial prejudice in which black failure was not the fault of government but rather caused by blacks’ inability to capitalize on plentiful, existing opportunities. They conclude that “A new form of prejudice has come to prominence....At its center are the contentions that blacks do not try hard enough to overcome the difficulties they face and they take what they have not earned. Today, we say, prejudice is expressed in the language of American individualism” (pp. 105-106). They label this new form of prejudice racial resentment.