Racial resentment is perhaps the most contentious – albeit most frequently used – measure of racial prejudice in American political behavior research. Where proponents see a reasonable measure with desirable statistical properties (e.g., consistently high reliability, unidimensional structure) and predictive power when it comes to things such as attitudes about racial issues, skeptics challenge the validity of the individual questions that compose the scale and suggest that such questions may be conflating several latent constructs. Perhaps the most vocal critics have argued that observed responses to the racial resentment questions that suggest racial prejudice are just as likely a product of adherence to conservative ideological principles. I, following others, refer to this perspective as the “principled conservatism thesis.” CONT.
Adam M. Enders (U. of Louisville), Political Behavior