Measuring acceptance of immigrant groups in the U.S.: The importance of the semantic differential scale in conjunction with the Social Distance Scale

Immediately following the attacks of September 11th, 2001, prejudice and discrimination against particular immigrant/ethnic groups in the United States increased immensely. I sought to understand if this backlash was consistent with previous times of war and the degree to which college students in New Jersey would tolerate prejudice, discrimination and a lessening of civil liberties.;A literature review of existing materials helps provide a context for my findings. The two opening chapters discusses historical immigration to the United States, and provide a backdrop and context of the current situation surrounding prejudice, discrimination and civil liberties of immigrants. Chapter Three describes prejudice and discrimination post-9/11 in the U.S. And, Chapter Four examines the work of Emory Bogardus and subsequent sociologists, to understand under what circumstances prejudice correlates directly with discrimination.;Utilizing data from studies conducted between 1920 and 2001, I compare these to my own study of social distance. I also include a semantic differential measure of prejudice to use in conjunction with the social distance measure to get a more complete measure of prejudice towards various pan-ethnic groups. Including questions about civil liberties, I measure if respondents are accepting of prejudice and discrimination at the personal level and/or national/governmental level. Primary conclusions of this study include: (1) Respondents indicate greater allowances and acceptance of the hindrance of civil liberties during both times of war and perceived terrorist threats. These threats may or may not be real and one must not take an impediment on civil liberties lightly given the potential of grave consequence (for example, the imprisonment of an innocent person for life without due process of law.) (2) The realization that the Bogardus Social Distance Scale is not an effective measure by itself when calculating the degree of prejudicial attitudes towards a particular group. Since semantic differential measures can provide a more complete analysis of prejudicial attitudes by measuring the degree of positive and negative attributes towards that group, results from these two scales should be averaged together to provide a more accurate reading of a group's total acceptance into society.