Problem Finding in Ethnic and Racial Studies
Michael Banton
Abstract
Sociological explanations of observations about ethnic and racial relations are the less
developed because priority has been accorded to research into policy issues. The
identification of distinctively sociological problems would be facilitated were a
clearer distinction to be drawn between the practical language of everyday life and the
theoretical language of science. As the two languages have different tasks, they
employ different sorts of concept. Yet they overlap, interact, and are not always easily
distinguishable. Perceptions of racial and ethnic relations in Britain up to the end of
the 1950s were influenced by the imperial-colonial relationship and by the implicit
idea of a colour scale. Some of the research by sociologists has addressed the
problems of public policy resulting from New Commonwealth settlement and has
used the practical language. Other research has advanced general theories about
interpersonal relations and urban ecology. The collection of better data on relative
preferences might stimulate the finding of theoretical problems that in turn would lead
to better explanations of differential educational attainment and different group
trajectories.
_____________________________________________
Sociological explanations of observations about ethnic and racial relations are the less
developed because priority has been accorded to research into policy issues. The
identification of distinctively sociological problems would be facilitated were a
clearer distinction to be drawn between the practical language of everyday life and the
theoretical language of science. Many writers have recognised a distinction of this
kind though they have used a variety of names for the two discourses and the kinds of
concept on which they rely. There are ordinary language concepts built into the
institutions of particular societies that may be called folk concepts. The names that are
used to designate groups, and the concepts employed to explain the character of these
groups, change as the relations between the groups change. Such alterations reflect the
politics of nomenclature.
There are also analytical concepts with a technical significance, like the concepts in
economics of demand, supply, and inflation. Analytical concepts are transcultural;
unlike folk concepts they can be applied independently of place and time. The
identification of theoretical problems calling for explanations stimulates the
development of more powerful analytical concepts, some of which are later taken into
the practical language. Yet the scholar who uses analytical concepts to advance a
technical argument still has to place them in sentences that use ordinary language. Not
even the most abstruse argument can be expressed in mathematical symbols alone. So
the distinction has to be one between kinds of concept rather than kinds of language.
Some words can be used as either folk or analytical concepts; the key criterion is the
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purpose that the word has to serve. Problems can be either practical or theoretical.
Marx was arguing to similar effect when he distinguished between phenomenal form
and essential relations. American anthropologists speak of a distinction between emic
and etic constructs. The distinction is also paralleled by the contrast between the
concepts a patient uses to describe his or her symptoms and the doctor’s diagnosis of
the patient’s condition.
Analytical concepts may not be evident in research of a data-gathering kind, though
they may underlie the strategy adopted. When conducting a survey it is necessary to
use words that will be understood by those to whom the questions are addressed. The
best explanation of the findings of a survey, however, may be one that relies on
concepts understood only by specialists. One of the obstacles to the growth of any
science, physical, biological or social, is the intellectual influence of the social worlds
within which the scientists live. In the present epoch unconscious reliance upon
ethnocentric assumptions is a major obstacle to the development of social science.
Folk concepts can stray into a realm where they do not belong. This may be compared
with the traffic in the opposite direction when concepts developed in social science
are adopted in ordinary language as more practical than those they replace. The use of
the expression `ethnic relations’ in place of `racial relations’ is sometimes seen as an
example of this.
This essay discusses the attempts of sociologists in Britain to elaborate better
explanations of various features of the relations between the indigenous populations
and members of the ethnic minorities that have become established as a result of New
Commonwealth immigration. It summarises first some of the changes in those
relations since the end of World War Two in order to sketch the world from which
sociologists had to seek independence if they were to improve their explanations.
Then it reviews, selectively, the kinds of concept that have helped to this end.
Nomenclature
In 1903 DuBois famously predicted that the problem of the twentieth century would
be the problem of the colour line. From Victorian times there was indeed a colour line
in Britain, yet, because of the empire, it was weaker than the colour scale. Where
there is a colour line, individuals are divided into distinct social categories. Where
there is a colour scale, individuals are ranked by socio-economic status with
complexion as one of the constituent elements that is taken into account. In the USA
the colour scale was weak. In Britain it was much stronger.
The colour line and the colour scale are concepts used to explain interpersonal
behaviour, not ideology. While the interpersonal and the ideological levels interact, it
can be important to distinguish them when defining problems and seeking
explanations. On the ideological or category level, differences in physical appearance
are taken as a signs of unequal development. Inequalities of development have been
attributed to differences of race and, since the end of the eighteenth century, two
conceptions of race have contended, one cultural, the other biological.
To illustrate what is involved, I quote from the opening sentence of a booklet
Coloured Peoples in Britain published in 1952 by a group associated with the
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Conservative Party, the Bow Group. It set out `to examine briefly the lives of those
coloured (or racially non-European) people who are residing in the United
Kingdom’1. By the conventions of the time, this terminology was correct. The word
colour designated appearance and related to the interpersonal level. To say that the
people in question were racially non-European was to refer to their descent and to the
categorical level. Whether their descent was distinctive culturally or biologically was
left open.
Others, of course, assumed that the causes of racial differences were biological. In
forecasting that the century would be one of the colour line rather than a racial line,
DuBois had no reason to apprehend that a pre-Darwinian conception of race would be
revived in Germany and exploited with ghastly result. The perceived need after 1945
to combat racist doctrine, together with the use in the USA of the expression race
relations, led intellectuals in Britain to prefer the idiom of race to that of colour. Some
of its MPs had introduced parliamentary bills to outlaw what was called the colour
bar. Then in 1958 the Labour Party published a pamphlet entitled Racial
Discrimination and undertook to legislate against it. Race was the intellectuals’ word
whereas in popular speech most references were to colour. A series of BBC talks in
1964-65 was titled Colour in Britain (Hooper, 1965) while, somewhat ironically, the
1969 report of the Survey of Race Relations in Britain was given the title Colour and
Citizenship (Rose, 1969).
Britain differed from the United States in that relations between white and coloured
residents were perceived within an imperial framework. The government files about
the West Indians who in 1948 disembarked from the S. S. Empire Windrush were
titled West Indian Migrant Workers in England and responsibility for their reception
lay with the Welfare Department of the Colonial Office. The influence of this
connection upon white attitudes can be seen in the findings of opinion surveys in 1951
and 1956 (Banton, 1983). The first of them was a government survey that included
questions `on the public’s attitudes towards Colonial peoples in this country’ because:
`Further relationships between this country and the Colonies may partly depend
upon the impressions these people obtain over here. This would be particularly
true in the case of students – many of whom will occupy important positions on
their return home…’
Since the findings of this survey were kept confidential, I conducted a smaller survey
in 1956 that repeated many of the questions asked five years earlier. Some new
questions were added. One was:
`Coloured people born in our Colonies are, of course, British subjects like
ourselves. Do you think that they should, therefore, be admitted to this country in
preference to European foreigners like Italians and Poles?’
This obtained a 71 per cent `yes’ response. In 1951 74 per cent and in 1956 69 per
cent of the samples believed that Britain would be `worse off’ without the colonies.
The temporary presence of colonials in Britain was regarded as part of the price to be
paid for the benefit of being an imperial power.
This sentiment started to change after 1956 for three reasons. Firstly, the colonies
were on the road to independence. The influx of workers from India and Pakistan was
increasing, and these were not colonial countries. Secondly, it began to look as if the
newcomers might be settlers rather than migrant workers. Thirdly, the new
immigration changed the class composition of the minority population. University
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colleges in Africa and the West Indies were becoming independent universities ready
to educate more home students, so fewer young people came to study in Britain. The
higher proportion of unskilled black and Asian workers started to weaken any
assumption that there was a continuous colour scale from the Maharajah down to the
former stowaway.
So, from round about 1958 for a further ten years, there was a new phase in which the
public saw relations with people from the New Commonwealth through the distorting
lens of anxiety about immigration control. The same decade saw the adoption by the
United Nations General Assembly in 1965 of the International Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and in Britain the enactment of the
1965 and 1968 Race Relations Acts. The effect of the legislation was to move many
kinds of relationship out of the private sphere and make them subject to controls
devised to regulate the public sphere. By the end of the sixties the political balance
had changed significantly. People from the West Indies were not challenged when
they insisted `We’re here to stay’ and `We were invited’. Distinctive communities had
been established. In the new phase it was the whites who were challenged to make a
reality of their profession of equality in the rights of citizenship.
The changes in relations were reflected in changes in nomenclature. The migrant
workers became immigrants. By 1968 the name Community Relations Commission
recognised that the immigrants had become settlers, while use of the word
`community’ avoided any definition of the nature of the groups and their interrelations. There were political battles over the names used to designate persons of
New Commonwealth origin. They included a brief campaign to maximize the
minority constituency by assigning everybody to one of two categories, Black and
White (Banton, 1985:61-62)2. Most Asians opted out of the attempt to classify them
as Black and to institutionalise the colour line. Because racist doctrines had been so
thoroughly discredited, many in minority ethnic groups saw the idiom of race as
empowering them. When newspaper reports referred to a `race’ issue they started a
train of thought that led on to suspicions of racism. There were other reasons for
continuing with the idiom. Thus when the Home Secretary sought a name for a
successor body to the Community Relations Commission he chose Commission for
Racial Equality because he was convinced that `race’ had become firmly established
in public usage and that official policy should challenge mistaken beliefs about race
(Banton 2002: 128). In preparation for the census of 1981 there were tests of a
question inviting persons to assign themselves to a `racial or ethnic group’ offering
nine options reflecting national origins (i.e., national rather than ethnic); this proved
politically controversial, and the question was dropped. In the 1983 election campaign
the Conservative Party displayed posters of a respectably dressed young black man
with the caption (in capitals) `Labour says he’s black. Tories say he’s British’. The
text at the side of the poster began `With the Conservatives, there are no `blacks’, no
`whites’, just people. Conservatives believe that treating minorities as equals
encourages the majority to treat them as equals’.
To implement official policies for the avoidance of discrimination and the promotion
of equality various kinds of decisions and outcomes had to be monitored. A system of
categories for this purpose was introduced piecemeal (Banton, 2001). The census of
1991 included a question headed `Ethnic group – Please tick the appropriate box’ but
added an instruction addressed to `the person descended from more than one ethnic or
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racial group (italics added). The 2001 census form avoided using the word race. In
many organisations special forms of training were introduced during this period. Even
judges were required to undergo such training, while the Benchbook produced for
their use includes advice on the nomenclature to be adopted when addressing or
referring to members of ethnic minorities3.
What made `racial relations’ distinctive?
The first social scientists to develop an analytical approach were the psychologists in
the USA. They demonstrated that racial prejudice was not an inherited disposition but
was learned; they showed the importance of stereotyping to inter-group attitudes and
plotted the distribution of IQ scores in different groups. They uncovered the dynamics
of the authoritarian personality and the association between expressed prejudice and
social position. The techniques of economics were first applied to the analysis of
inter-group exchanges at the end of the 1950s and the understanding of group
differences in attainment were then enhanced by application of new techniques for the
measurement of human capital. In the post-war period the lawyers made a major
contribution of a different order. The purpose of legal language is to control
behaviour, not to explain it. The lawyers in the Bow Group maintained that
discrimination would be difficult to prove and that legislation would focus attention
on differences instead of similarities. Experience has shown that they were mistaken.
It is possible to identify actions on racial grounds and to offer victims restitution4. The
notion of race used for this purpose has to be the popular one, not a technical one.
Law exemplifies the most refined form of practical language.
Sociologists in the USA had, before 1945, developed analytical concepts explaining
how the colour line was maintained despite contrary pressures, but these were of little
assistance to the new generation of research workers in Britain. The pioneer, Kenneth
Little, travelled to Cardiff in the summer vacation of 1940 to measure the heads of
children who exemplified what he called the `Anglo-Negroid cross’. He found the
sociology more interesting than the physical anthropology and changed the direction
of his research. The brief discussion of `colour-class-consciousness’ in his subsequent
book was the first description of the colour scale but it was not clearly identified as a
research problem (Little, 1948:232). In the early fifties Little directed a series of
inquiries concerned with colonial students and other Africans in Britain. After my
return from Sierra Leone I prepared a synthesis of them that was sent to my publishers
with the provisional title `Race, Class and Englishmen’. At the publishers’ suggestion
it later appeared under the title White and Coloured (1959). The book did not use the
expression `colour scale’ but it could be read as an elaboration of this problematic5.
My first project began in 1950 as a study of the colonial stowaway and resulted in a
book called The Coloured Quarter about the neighbourhood of Cable Street in
Stepney. In a review of it Howard S. Becker declared it `unfortunate that Banton
exhibits the same sociological naiveté that characterized Kenneth Little’s earlier and
similar study of race relations in Cardiff. These studies are in the old “survey”
tradition, long on moralizing and short on theoretical perspective… There is a
continual preaching at the wrongdoers who disapprove of the activities of these
Negroes, mixed with apologetic explanations of why the Negroes sometimes do bad
things’. No other critic advanced the same complaint though a later American
5
commentator on my work, and that of contemporary sociologists of this field,
concluded that we were `empowered by a strong sense of moral entrepreneurship’ and
that we `claimed the right to speak for the Black migrant in Britain’ (Waters,
1997:217). We claimed no such right, but at that time there was no one else able to
represent the Black migrant’s perspective6. In response to Becker, it should be
acknowledged that we gave much of our attention to the discussion of public policy
issues and that this was partly because we had not succeeded in identifying strictly
sociological problems in our material7.
Sociological publications are to be judged by the contribution they make to the
advancement of knowledge. There are many humdrum research reports that display
little imagination. Progress often comes in bursts. One of the most celebrated was that
of the Chicago school in the 1920s. Its leaders adopted ideas developed in the study of
ecology. They noted that the growth of cities led to changes in the value of land.
Market value, which varied so as to create a series of circles stretching out from the
centre, determined the use that was made of the land. A scheme like this can inspire a
research programme that identifies problems for investigation. The Chicago model
was adopted and modified by Rex and Moore (1967) to explain features of the
housing of New Commonwealth immigrants in Birmingham. Their introduction of a
concept of housing class opened a radically new perspective onto the explanation of
the housing choices made by immigrants and, in particular, the nature of the
alternatives available to them. It was an example of problem finding.
After race relations
Some of the differences in the kinds of problem selected for study in the social
sciences can be traced to the material on which they work. Economists concentrate
upon accounting for changes and differences in the measures of economic activity of
states, industries and organizations. Most of the statistics they use are routinely
collected by official bodies. Psychologists, on the other hand, concentrate upon
accounting for differences in the reactions of individuals to stimuli presented to them
by research workers in the form of tests, experiments and questions. They create their
own material. Sociologists, social anthropologists and political scientists work with
very varied material, including official statistics, survey findings, press reports,
archives, interviews and the direct observation of behaviour through field work. The
present discussion focuses on the part of their work that attempts to account for the
differences in the activity of persons assigned to different social categories or for
differences in their responses to questions.
The notion of a colour scale was useful in accounting for differences in observed
behaviour. The concept of a housing class was useful in explaining why New
Commonwealth immigrants were over-represented in particular sections of the
housing market. So far, so good. But John Rex and I had fitted our arguments into a
notion of `race relations’ as if we thought certain observations were to some degree
explained by being located within a distinctive class of social relations. This attracted
justified complaint from Robert Miles (1982:30-42) in a criticism of what he called
the race relations problematic. `Race relations’ is a folk concept and we had used it as
if it were an analytical one. Miles wanted to banish the word race, which is
impracticable so long as it is essential to the criminalisation of incitement to racial
6
hatred and to the prevention of racial discrimination. This objection is one that French
sociologists have also failed to confront (see Schnapper, 1998:395-438). More
importantly, Miles contended that the difficulties attaching to the word race could be
avoided by using instead his concept of racism. This was defined by him, as by many
others, in terms of the function it was said to serve in the capitalist system, and the
concept was deployed for use, not in a deductive explanation, but in the search for an
historical understanding of that system. Like the concepts of anti-Semitism and
Islamophobia, its place is in political argument.
The way to move on from ideas of racial relations is to find new and better theoretical
problems; their solution will promote conceptual refinement. One place to look is
among the differences in educational outcomes. The 2001 census showed that some
minority ethnic groups are better placed than their white peers. This, like the low
attainment of Caribbean males, was not a new finding. The worst placed groups are
Bangladeshis and Pakistanis, but these groups are internally polarised, with
disproportionate numbers of highly qualified and unqualified persons (Modood,
2005:292-293). The variations within the data show the limitations of analyses based
on the average attainments of persons categorised by national origin. Differences
associated with gender and the distinction between academic and vocational
qualifications have also to be taken into account. Discussing the possible causes of
variation, Modood states that other than the matters mentioned earlier, social class is
probably the most important factor. What sort of `factor’ is social class? It appears to
be itself an assemblage of other variables, such as levels of aspiration associated with
parental expectations, teacher and peer group expectations, role models, estimates of
the chances of success and the return upon academic effort, and so on. Some of these
variables may exemplify differences in social capital. They all merit separate
examination8. Measurements of the strengths, in varying circumstances, of the
preferences for peer group pursuits over parental or teacher wishes might explain why
the class differential (as measured by the classification of parental occupation) has
less significance for the interpretation of the findings about Indians and Chinese, and
none at all for those about the Pakistani and Bangladeshi samples (Modood, 2005:
300, 302). The concepts currently in use are inadequate to the task of explaining the
findings. This may be because the data collection has been based on folk concepts
(like national origin) that hide more important variables.
Such findings also lead to another kind of observation summarised by Peach
(2005:200) in his conclusion that
`the Caribbean population seems to be following the Asian trajectory established
by the Irish before them of convergence with the population as a whole. On the
other hand, the Indian population seems to have progressed some way already
along the Jewish trajectory of economic success with social encapsulation
(white-collar, self-employed, suburbanised and owner-occupation but with
significant degrees of in-marriage). The Pakistanis and Bangladeshis are rather
more ambiguously following this latter route’.
At present it is impossible to explain why there should be two routes and what makes
it more likely that those categorised as Caribbean will follow a different route from
those categorised as Asian. Data collected on another basis might facilitate the
discovery of causal relationships.
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Relative values
Underlying these differences in culture, class, and much else, are differences in
relative values or preferences. Here sociologists have much to learn from the kinds of
technique employed by psychologists. For example, a Malaysian research student of
mine conducted a series of interviews in which, among other things, he described a
conflict between an employer of Malaysian-Chinese background and his Malay
workers. It could be predicted that most Chinese interviewees would sympathise with
the employer’s stand and most Malay interviewees with the workers, but how would a
Chinese worker or a Malay employer align himself? Chinese respondents proved no
more likely to side with the Chinese employer than were the Malays. Irrespective of
ethnic origin, respondents with higher incomes were less likely to support the workers
and more likely to blame both sides. Research based upon standardised questions can
uncover patterns of alignment within groups and the factors that causes such patterns
to change.
The Malaysian research was later developed into a technique for the study of ethnic
preferences. Interviewees in a suburb of Kuala Lumpur were presented with a series
of imagined situations asking subjects to predict how one of their peers would
respond in circumstances that obliged him or her to choose between what was called
ethnic loyalty, and financial advantage, or status advantage, or personal obligation to
a workmate (Banton & Mansor, 1992; Banton, 2000:486-492). When interviewees are
asked how they would expect a representative individual to decide between two
alternatives, they can also be asked to predict how certain others would want that
individual to choose, and in this way the strength of pressures from within the family,
the peer group, or other sources can be measured. From the findings it is not possible
to conclude that, say, for a given category of persons, preferences for association with
a co-ethnic outweigh financial reward because much depends upon the particular
relationship, the circumstances, and the size of the reward, but in the accumulated
data on ethnic preferences patterns might be found that would lead to new concepts
and new explanations.
Closer to home, the same logic could be employed in London to ask interviewees
about how they believe their peers would choose a secondary school for one of their
children. How strong would be their preference for a school with a high level of
ethnic mixture in its classrooms or one with most pupils from the same ethnic
category as the interviewee, compared with high or moderate academic standard, and
compared with 10 minute or 40 minute travelling time? Data on such matters might
not yet permit the testing of worthwhile hypotheses but it is highly probable that
sociologists would find in them interesting problems the solution of which might help
the search for the causes of variation.
This line of questioning rests upon assumptions shared with theories in economics
rather than with those of evolutionary psychology. It assumes that humans put prices
upon any taste for association with co-ethnics that can be compared with the prices
they put upon any taste for high academic standards in a school or for a low travelling
time. It does not ask where a taste for association with co-ethnics comes from. Studies
in evolutionary psychology have concluded that humans prefer to associate with those
who are genetically similar to them. For example, they are more likely to marry
partners with similar measurements of wrist and neck circumference. A study of
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several hundred pairs of identical twins, fraternal twins, their spouses and their best
friends found that spouses and best friends are about as similar as siblings, and that
identical twins choose more similar spouses and best friends than do non-identical
twins. On these, and a variety of other measures, it is possible to calculate the extent
to which a taste for similarity is heritable (Rushton, 2005:495-498). Whether these
measures make sufficient allowance for the variable of socio-economic status is open
to question. In the approach from evolutionary psychology the various sciences are
regarded as constituting a hierarchy such that explanations of phenomena at one level
can be reduced to explanations at the next lower level while usually leaving a
remainder that has not been accounted for. So evolutionary psychology leaves some
room for the exercise of choice.
Recent research in Britain has not furnished clear evidence of any preference for
genetic similarity in the composition of school population. In a 1994 survey most
persons in each of six ethnic categories told the interviewer that ethnic composition
would be of no importance to them in choosing a school. It would be an important
consideration for about a quarter of African Asians, Indians and Bangladeshis, and for
about a third of Pakistanis and Caribbeans. Though the percentage of white
interviewees who considered it important was greater than that for any of the minority
categories, nearly half of them affirmed that ethnic mix would be of no importance to
them in choosing a school. Among the minority categories other than the Chinese, of
those persons who thought ethnicity important, the majority wanted a school in which
their co-ethnics made up about half of the school population (Modood, 1997:320322). The way in which the questions were phrased did not permit any measure of
ethnic preference relative to other preferences concerning schools.
In stating his case for the explanatory power of Genetic Similarity Theory, Rushton
(220:504) maintains that `it is because genetic interests are a powerful force in human
affairs that ethnic insults so easily lead to violence’. Social scientists are said to
`condemn the extent to which political leaders or would-be leaders have been able to
manipulate ethnic identity’ but to ignore the question `Why is it always so easy?’
Always? How can the occasions in which there is no attempt at manipulation be
counted? The very concept of ethnic identity should be suspect. It is a word currently
needed in ordinary English language usage but for scientific research it must be
broken down into measurable components, as must `class’. When examining
explanations it is essential to ask what are the observations to be explained. What
percentage can be explained in one way, and what in another, is an important
problem.
Conclusion
Most of the research into ethnic and racial relations in Britain has been oriented to
issues of public policy rather than to the improvement of sociological explanations.
Policy issues are often presented in terms of group characteristics with little attention
to in-group variation. Currently there are policy questions, like those relating to
differential educational attainment, to which there are no good answers because the
sociological dimension has been given a lesser priority. Any failure to appreciate the
distinction between practical and theoretical language contributes to this. The
collection of better data on relative preferences might lead to the recognition of novel
9
theoretical problems and stimulate the development of newer and more powerful
concepts.
Notes
1. It was written by the late Anthony McCowan, then a young barrister; from
1989-97 he served as a Lord Justice of Appeal.
2. Any reference to difference of colour was condemned as politically divisive.
Yet, when variations in skin colour have been measured with a
spectrophotometer in 32 groups located in every region of the world, the
results have shown that that in marriages within ethnic groups there is, on
average, a male preference for partners of a lighter skin colour (van den
Berghe & Frost, 1983). In some countries the black consciousness movements
may have changed colour preferences.
3. See http://www.jsboard.co.uk/magistrates/adult_court/06acbb_section4.doc.
4. The lawyers’ greatest contribution has been the refinement of the concept of
discrimination, though it should be noted that there is a difference between the
philosophical concept, as the unequal treatment of like things or persons, and
the legal concept, which usually stems from the statutory definition. To
identify unequal treatment it is necessary to make a comparison, so if there is
no comparator no identification is possible. What things or persons count as
like depends upon a popular judgement. Some forms of unequal treatment are
not prohibited by law. The International Convention prohibits unequal
treatment in public but not private life, and does not regulate the power of a
state to distinguish between citizens and non-citizens. There are some fields of
behaviour to which the British Acts do not apply. In these respects the legal
definition is narrower than the philosophical one, but in another respect
European law is the wider. The EC Directive 76/207 recognises the
legitimacy, in terms of the principle of equal treatment, of protecting a woman
during and after pregnancy, so if an employer dismisses a woman because she
is pregnant this counts as sex discrimination even though it is impossible to
draw a comparison with the treatment of a man in a similar condition.
5. One of my contemporaries, Anthony H. Richmond, doubted whether there was
a colour scale in Britain. Thirty years passed before I discovered that the
source of the differences in our interpretations of the survey data lay in the
problem psychologists had named pluralistic ignorance (Banton, 2005:623625).
6. Waters’ careful and sympathetic discussion can be commended, though at one
point (pp 227-228) he misreads a passage of mine in which I sketched a line of
reasoning without intending that a reader should infer that I agreed with it.
7. Many of the books about racial relations in the USA, like Myrdal’s An
American Dilemma of 1944 were also policy oriented. Robert Park was one of
the first to identify strictly sociological problems in the colour line, followed
by Lloyd Warner and Kingsley Davis.
8. For a very different example of how considerations at the micro level
determine aggregate outcomes, consider the findings of a study of the prices
paid for new automobiles in Chicago (Ayres & Siegelman 1995). Black male
testers inquiring about the possible purchase of particular vehicles were quoted
10
prices $1,100, or 9 per cent, higher than the prices asked of white testers. If the
testers bargained, they could secure price reductions, yet the black-white
disparity remained. Black female testers were quoted prices $280 higher than
white male testers and, though the price was reduced in the course of
bargaining, it finished $400 higher than the final offer made to male testers for
the same vehicle. Initial offers to white female testers were $55 higher than to
white males but the discrepancy in final offers increased to $130. Several
factors apparently contributed to these findings. An earlier study had found
that while 31 of white respondents believed that the prices quoted to them
were not negotiable, 61 per cent of black respondents believed this. Women
were more likely than men to be misinformed about the willingness of dealers
to bargain, though the gender discrepancies were not as great as those between
blacks and whites. The research workers concluded that the main reason for
the price differences were that dealers, wanting to make profits, drew their
own conclusions about how much inquirers might be willing to pay (their
`reservation prices’), and, irrespective of whether the dealership owners or
their sales representatives were black or white, they thought they needed to
concede less to blacks and to females than to white males. Blacks, particularly
black males, were disadvantaged by the dealers’ images of them as customers,
and this explained much of their disparate treatment.
References
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