Black and white thinking: developing modern racism scales
Consensus and Conflict Department
Project head: Prof. Dr. Ralf Wölfer
Project team members: Dr. Ruta Yemane
The population survey of the Discrimination and Racism Monitor follows on from the project "Postmigrant Societies" in terms of content and methodology and forms a central pillar of the racism monitoring. It takes up central questions from the project Postmigrant Societies again, but shifts the focus to racist attitudes, ideologies and beliefs, which - in addition to examining (longitudinal) dynamics, intersections as well as stereotypes and prejudices - are examined with regard to both (modern) conscious and (subtle) unconscious forms of articulation.
The core of this project is the development of modern racism scales. The measuring instruments used in German-language social research to survey racist beliefs are outdated, methodologically improvable and bear little relation to modern and critical racism theory (e.g. Balibar 1990; Rommelspacher 1998; Hall 2004). Thus, the common scales do not do justice to the mutability (Kerner 2009) and diversity of racism and the related discussion and development of concepts such as symbolic or modern racism. The aim of the project is therefore to develop scales that are derived theoretically and through qualitative analyses before they are validated quantitatively so that they meet the quality criteria of research.
Specific foci of the project are the analysis of (a) modern forms of articulation of racism, (b) dynamics, such as the intersection of racism and sexism, and (c) an approach to understanding cause and effect relationships. This project is intended to lay the empirical basis for further surveys to follow in the future in order to be able to observe trends over time. This will make it possible to react to social developments on the one hand and to realise a deeper understanding of specific racism phenomena on the other.
Funding: Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (Institutional funding)