Erica Rodriguez

The study in the article, "Racial Prejudice and Spending on Drug Rehabilitation: The Role of Attitudes Toward Blacks and Latinos" by Amie L. Nielson, Scott Bonn, and George Wilson was completed in order to get a better understanding of the prejudice phenomenon called "color coding" among white people. Also, this study researches to discover if there is an association between racial prejudice and the policy of spending money on drug rehabilitation. Racial prejudice is an antipathy upon a faulty and inflexible generalization. The study shows the attitudes toward Blacks and Latinos. The method used to collect the data for this study was done by a General Social Survey (GSS). The samples used in the study are nationally representative of the English speaking U.S. adult population living in non-institutionalized settings. Since this survey was about racial attitudes, only white respondents were used for the analyses. The independent variable was racial and ethnic attitudes toward Blacks, Latinos, and Whites were included as a control. To assess the independent variable, respondents were asked if they would favor or oppose living in a neighborhood where half of their neighbors were Black or Latino, and if they would favor or oppose if a relative married a Black or Latino person. The dependent variable was "drug rehabilitation spending". To assess the dependent variable respondents answered if they thought we're spending "too little", "about right", or "too much" on drug rehabilitation. The question on drug rehabilitation spending was asked during 1990 and 2000. Thus, the data recorded from these two years was used for the study. Only respondents asked all of the questions on the survey were included, and there was 864 respondents in total in this study. The findings of this study show that the p value was below .05, so there was a significant relationship between racial and ethnic attitudes with drug rehabilitation spending. 62% of respondents said too little money was being contributed to drug rehabilitation, 55% opposed whether they would favor a relative marrying a Black person, and 40% opposed living in a neighborhood where half of their neighbors were Black or Latino and if a relative married a Black or Latino person. There was a higher mean for Black and Latino stereotypes than for White stereotypes which suggests that Black and Latino people are viewed as not as hard-working and less intelligent than White people. In the Bivariate analyses there is an association between drug rehabilitation spending with racial and ethnic attitude. Those who opposed living in a neighborhood with and a relative marrying a Black person were less likely to view spending inadequate. Those who opposed living in a neighborhood with and a relative marrying a Latino person were also less likely to consider spending too low.