But a second group of researchers disagreed. They found that whites today simply articulate racial prejudice in new ways.

For example, according to national survey data, high school seniors are increasingly expressing a form of prejudice that sociologist Tyrone Forman calls “racial apathy” — an “indifference toward societal, racial, and ethnic inequality and lack of engagement with race-related social issues.”

Racial apathy is a more passive form of prejudice than explicit articulations of bigotry and racial hostility. But such apathy can nonetheless lead white people to support policies and practices that align with the same racist logic of the past, like a lack of support for social programs and policies designed to address institutional racism or an indifference toward the suffering of people of color.

Other researchers question the ability of surveys to capture honest responses from whites about race-related questions or to describe the complexity of whites’ perspectives on race.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4085768&forum_id=2#36876394)

“Racism was a problem when all those slaves were around and that, like, bus thing and the water fountain. I mean, everything was crazy back in the olden days. … But now, I mean, since Martin Luther King and, like, Eleanor Roosevelt, and how she went on the bus. And she was African-American and sat on the white part. … After the 1920s and all that, things changed.”

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4085768&forum_id=2#36876596)