Consensual Racism and Career Track: Some Implications of Social Dominance Theory

Abstract

The study tested some implications of social dominance theory by examining the relationship between consensual racial attitudes and career choice among 5655 American undergraduate and graduate students. Consensual racial attitudes were defined and operationalized as that portion of racial attitude space which different ethnic groups share in common. The specific hypotheses were largely confirmed and showed that: (a) Those students preparing for careers within the power professions (i.e., business and law) were generally found to have higher levels of consensual racism than students in other areas; (b) the level of consensual racism of students preparing for power careers showed the smallest decrease as a function of exposure to university education; (c) use of structural equation analysis disclosed that consensual racial attitudes made significant contributions to choice of academic track even after considering the effects of political ideology. The implications for college as a liberalizing experience and for efforts to reduce discrimination by hegemonic institutions are discussed.