5 - Civic Fairness and Ethnic Stereotypes

Summary

Civic fairness and group-centrism both expect significant ethnic biases in White’s immigration policy opinions in everyday politics. What they differ on is why. Group-centric models tied to racial identities and prejudices argue that negative stereotypes flow out of defensiveness of white dominance and fear and loathing of minority groups. The civic fairness model argues that negative stereotypes may also serve a heuristic purpose for a far wider universe of people, “filling in the blanks” about whether immigrants are likely to meet criteria tied to civic fairness. Both of these interpretations imply that prejudice plays a role in the formation of opinions about immigration. They disagree about what kind of prejudice is at work: group-centric prejudice is motivated simply by one’s (explicit or implicit) dislike of Latinos, whereas civic fairness-driven prejudice occurs because people assume that Latinos violate civic fairness norms. Accordingly, our goal now is to illustrate how civic fairness plays a role in the anatomy of ethnic discrimination itself.