Symbolic Racism 2000 Scale
Also known as: SR2K, Symbolic Racism Scale, Racial Resentment Scale, Modern Racism Scale
The Symbolic Racism 2000 Scale (SR2K), developed by Henry and Sears (2002), is an 8-item self-report measure of symbolic racism, a contemporary, subtle form of anti-Black prejudice that blends early-learned negative affect toward a group with traditional moral values such as individualism and the work ethic. It descends from the symbolic-racism construct introduced by Kinder and Sears (1981) and is closely related to the racial-resentment battery used in the American National Election Studies.
Key highlights
- Captures contemporary, socially normative prejudice that old-fashioned racism scales miss, with strong predictive validity for policy attitudes.
- Short, unidimensional, and extensively validated across decades of national survey data.
- Closely aligned with the ANES racial-resentment items, enabling longitudinal and cross-study comparison.
- Predicts political outcomes incrementally over ideology, partisanship, and demographic controls.
Intuition
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How it works
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When to use it
Use the SR2K to measure subtle, value-laden racial prejudice in survey research on policy attitudes, voting, and intergroup relations in the United States. It is appropriate when the goal is to explain opposition to race-conscious policy that overt-prejudice measures fail to predict, and when you must separate racial animus from principled conservatism. Because the items are culturally specific to U.S. Black-White relations, adapt or replace them carefully for other intergroup contexts.
Strengths & limitations
- Captures contemporary, socially normative prejudice that old-fashioned racism scales miss, with strong predictive validity for policy attitudes.
- Short, unidimensional, and extensively validated across decades of national survey data.
- Closely aligned with the ANES racial-resentment items, enabling longitudinal and cross-study comparison.
- Predicts political outcomes incrementally over ideology, partisanship, and demographic controls.
- The construct is contested: critics argue it conflates genuine principled conservatism with prejudice because items reference individualism and government.
- Items are specific to U.S. Black-White relations and do not transfer directly to other targets or countries.
- Mixed response formats require standardization, complicating scoring and comparison.
- Like all self-report prejudice measures, it can be suppressed by social-desirability concerns.
Common pitfalls
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Applications
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Frequently asked
How is symbolic racism different from old-fashioned racism?
Old-fashioned (or biological) racism asserts the innate inferiority of a group and supports formal segregation; it is now socially unacceptable and rare in surveys. Symbolic racism instead frames racial disadvantage as a violation of values like self-reliance, denying that discrimination persists and resenting policies seen as undeserved help. It is more subtle, more prevalent, and a stronger predictor of contemporary policy attitudes.
Is the scale just measuring conservatism?
This is the central critique. Proponents show the scale predicts racial-policy attitudes even after controlling for ideology and nonracial conservatism, arguing it captures something distinct. Critics counter that items invoking individualism and limited government tap principled conservatism that is wrongly labeled prejudice. The debate is unresolved and motivates careful interpretation and the use of additional measures.
What is the relationship to the ANES racial-resentment items?
The racial-resentment battery in the American National Election Studies and the Symbolic Racism 2000 Scale share four core items and measure the same underlying construct. SR2K is the broader academic instrument; racial resentment is the version embedded in the long-running national survey, making the two highly comparable and often used interchangeably in the literature.
Sources
- 1.Henry, P. J., & Sears, D. O. (2002). The Symbolic Racism 2000 Scale. Political Psychology, 23(2), 253-283.
- 2.Kinder, D. R., & Sears, D. O. (1981). Prejudice and politics: Symbolic racism versus racial threats to the good life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 40(3), 414-431.
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Cite this page
ScholarGate. (2026, June 22). Symbolic Racism 2000 Scale. ScholarGate. https://scholargate.app/political-psychology/symbolic-racism-scale