Our final hypothesis pertains to the social significance of the backdoor-to-eugenics phenomenon. We have argued that a belief in essential differences between racial groups is a key component of the overall process of racism. However, if beliefs in racial difference are not strongly connected to other components of racism, then even if Duster’s hypothesis is correct, it may not have a meaningful impact on the larger problem of racism. To assess this, we examined whether our core dependent variable—belief in essential racial differences—is significantly associated with three other measures of racism among non-Hispanic whites.4
