INTRODUCTION

In the late 1960s a television series titled “All in the Family” became extremely popular among Saturday night viewers in the United States. The leading character of the show, Archie Bunker, is supposedly a caricature of working-class men in America: heavyset and not very bright, usually the victim of his own inadequacies, Archie is really laughable. He is also a racist, though by liberal standards he is a relatively benign one: he does not call black people “niggers,” he refers to them as “jungle bunnies”; he certainly would not want his daughter to marry “one of them,” however, and he worries about them moving into his neighborhood. Archie is also authoritarian: people who disagree with him are “dingbats.”

As a composite picture of the average American worker the character of Archie Bunker is hardly accurate. Archie is not typical of American workers. As one labor publication states the case: “There are a lot of workers who are thin, think everyone deserves a truly equal opportunity, are sincerely compassionate and essentially intelligent” (Focus, April 1972; cited in Eugene (Ore.) Register Guard, April 25, 1972). However, as a television portrayal of sociological theories about racism, the Archie Bunker character is accurate. He is a walking, talking, real-life depiction of how the sociological imagination portrays racists. Who other than an Archie Bunker type would affirmatively answer the following survey questions designed to measure ethnocentrism?