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Perceptions of threat occupy a central place in race relations in Blumer's theory of prejudice but few direct efforts to study such perceptions exist. Extending Blumer's reasoning, we hypothesize that such perceptions are driven by a group's feelings of racial alienation within the larger social order The more that members of a particular racial group feel collectively oppressed and unfairly treated by society, the more likely they are to perceive members of other groups as potential threats. We also examine whether such perceptions spring from simple self-interest, orthodox prejudice such as negative feelings and stereotyping, or broad beliefs about social stratification and inequality. We use data from the 1992 Los Angeles County Social Survey, a large multiracial sample of the general population, to analyze the distribution and social and psychological underpinnings of perceived group competition. Our results support the racial alienation hypothesis as well as the hypotheses positing effects for self-interest, prejudice, and stratification beliefs. We argue that Blumer's group-position framework offers the most parsimonious integration and interpretation of the social psychological processes involved in the formation of perceptions of group threat and competition.
Ongoing immigration from Asia and Latin America and the earlier internal migration of African Americans out of the rural South have made most large cities in the United States remarkable multiracial conglomerations (Waldinger 1989). An immediate sociological concern raised by the growing heterogeneity of urban areas is whether members of different groups view one another as direct competitors for scarce economic, political, and social resources (Olzak 1993). Such perceptions may influence the potential for coalition formation and cooperation among groups as well as the prospects for open antagonism and conflict.
We pose two questions about the nature of interracial tension in modern urban centers: (1) To what extent do Whites, Blacks, Latinos, and Asians view one another as locked in competitive social relations; and (2) what are the social and psychological underpinnings of such outlooks? Although these questions are often the subjects of media attention and speculation, the extant sociological research on interracial attitudes provides limited descriptive or theoretical guidance in answer to these questions.
Most research mapping the basic distribution of racial attitudes focuses almost exclusively on Whites' views of African Americans (Hyman and Sheatsley 1956; Taylor, Greeley, and...