A large body of research attempts to explain a seeming change in the functionality of racism beginning with the premise that racist whites understand that overt racist behavior is, at least, legally forbidden. A distillation of the racial attitudes literature nonetheless suggests that, in most instances, blacks are judged more harshly than whites. This paper examines how racially prejudiced white respondents think blacks and whites ought to behave and, in turn, challenges the assumption that racism has evolved beyond “old fashioned” notions of separate and equal. To do so, respondents in two national surveys were asked to evaluate a written set of music lyrics. Respondents were told that the performing artist was either black or white and either a rock or rap musician. Among racially prejudiced white respondents, the lyrics were perceived to be most offensive when described as performed by a white rapper or a black rock artist. These results suggest that racially prejudiced white respondents prefer that artists perform music within their culturally or ethnically “owned” genre of music.

To test this hypothesis, one of the samples of respondents was asked to report their views about cultural ownership of music genres. Respondents who said that people should perform music that is mostly performed by people of his or her own race found race found the lyrics to be more offensive than those who thought people should perform music of other races. We discuss implications for the study of racial attitudes.

The results were replicated in a third study that asked respondents to evaluate a speech said to be uttered by a black or white candidate for congress or a Baptist church pastor. The results mirror those of the music lyrics studies. A second component of the third study found that when respondents are asked to imagine music lyrics or political speeches for themselves they do not yield a ranking of offensiveness comparable to when respondents evaluate a set of lyrics given to them. I discuss implications for how to study racial attitudes in light of growing public awareness that such attitudes ought to be egalitarian.