Racial Reconciliation in South Africa:Interracial Contact and Changes over Time

Relying upon Gibson’s (2004) theory equating lack of prejudice with interra- cial “reconciliation,” we investigate racial attitudes based on a 2004 nationally representative survey of South Africans. We begin by documenting substantial group-based differences in intergroup prejudice, with Blacks being considerably less reconciled with Whites as compared to the three racial minorities’ levels of reconciliation with Blacks. We also discover that the Black majority has become less reconciled with Whites over the period from Gibson’s survey (in 2001) to the current survey (in 2004). Improvement in racial attitudes is observed among the other three groups. We next investigate intergroup contact as an explanation of differences in attitudes, finding some effects of mere contact and powerful effects of intimate contact. However, the consequences of contact differ across the various racial groups.