Racial integration, ethnic diversity, and prejudice : empirical evidence from a study of the British National Party

• Main Author: Lennox, Clive S.
• Other Authors: Nanyang Business School
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DRNTU::Social sciences::Political science
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/99172; http://hdl.handle.net/10220/17223
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Does contact with ethnic minorities exacerbate or lower the racial prejudice of whites? To provide empirical evidence on this question, I examine the recruitment of members by the British National Party (BNP), which has a long history of supplying hate-creating stories about ethnic minorities. I find that the BNP recruits fewer white members from communities in which: (i) whites interact more frequently with nonwhites, (ii) whites are exposed to greater racial diversity within the nonwhite population, and (iii) there are more mixed-race offspring from white and nonwhite parents. Further tests suggest that these results are not attributable to self-segregation or economic conditions. Overall, there is compelling evidence that contact with ethnic minorities reduces the racial prejudice of whites.