The principle-implementation gap in attitudes towards racial inequality (and how to close it)

Research on attitudes towards racial equality has identified an apparent paradox, sometimes described as the ‘Principle-Implementation gap’. White Americans accept equality as an ideal yet reject interventions designed to achieve that ideal. In this paper, we provide a critical review of empirical and theoretical work in the field and outline some directions for future research. Drawing on a programme of research conducted in post-apartheid South Africa, we argue for the value of: (1) widening the field beyond its traditional focus on white policy attitudes in the United States; (2) developing relational models that encompass more fully the perspectives of historically disadvantaged as well as historically advantaged communities; (3) making greater use of methods that elucidate how ordinary people themselves construct the meaning of the Principle-Implementation gap and how this informs, and indeed justifies and normalises, associated patterns of behaviour; and (4) prioritizing the difficult question of how to promote social change in societies where most citizens embrace equality as a noble end but often reject the means through which it might be accomplished. With regards to the latter – and given the ascendancy of prejudice-based explanations of the Principle-Implementation gap - the paper evaluates in particular some strengths and limitations of a prejudice-reduction model of social change.