This chapter traces the development of the concept of “symbolic racism,” now more commonly known as “racial resentment,” using explicit measures, unlike the implicit biases featured in other chapters. It was first introduced in a survey about the 1969 Los Angeles mayoral election, as a new form of white racial prejudice, more common and more politically powerful than the “old-fashioned racism” of the prior century, especially in white suburbs and outside the old South. I begin with the historical context of the time, as influenced by national events, the local political situation, and my personal background and that of my principal collaborators. I closely examine the original research as it appeared over the next decade, which seems to have focused more on rejecting the role of traditional racial prejudice than on fully developing the idea of a new racism. The growing clarification of the conceptualization and measurement of the new racisms over the next two decades is described. The case is made for its great, and increasing, utility for understanding the politics of the white mass public over the last half-century. I describe the main critiques of this research and our rejoinders and comment on the acrimony of these controversies.

Chapter 6 addresses the common strategy to appear unprejudiced: racial colorblindness. Are individuals in a color-salient society able to not see color? The chapter begins with empirical research on the question of whether people are able to ignore the race and ethnicity of others. As it turns out, people who attempt to ignore race cannot, and tend to have awkward interactions with people of color. Instead of colorblindness being a good strategy to avoid discrimination, colorblindness facilitates the ignoring of discrimination. The pros and cons of a multicultural perspective as an alternative to racial colorblindness is discussed. Implications of the cultural emphasis on colorblindness is interrogated, such as the implicit belief that white people are true Americans, whereas people of color are only provisionally American. Strategies for prejudice reduction end the chapter and include creating more complex social identities and coalition work – organizing across difference.

This chapter focuses on hate speech in Japan from the perspective of social psychology and adjacent fields. First, the author discusses the definitions of and the debate around the social psychological concepts of stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination, and how these concepts are interrelated. The importance of constructing social norms against hate speech and suppressing opportunities to deliver hate speech are discussed. Second, he discusses a series of applied research conducted mainly in Japan. Quantitative analyses of posts on social media reveal the characteristics of hate speech in Japan, as well as underling beliefs and attitudes. Specifically, themes such as ‘modern or symbolic racism’, ‘old-fashioned racism’, ‘historical revisionism’, and so on, were evident in these posts. Furthermore, these and other studies show that relatively few people are disproportionately able to bias the discourse on politically controversial topics. Questionnaire surveys show a consistent association between Internet usage and negative attitudes towards people from outside Japan. Together, these quantitative studies show how detrimental the information age can be in the absence of sufficient regulations.