Aversive Affect Versus Racism as Predictors of Racial Discrimination in Helping

We examined aversive affect and racism as predictors of differences in helping White versus Black targets. According to aversive racism theory, Whites may express egalitarian attitudes but experience discomfort in interracial interactions, producing discrimination. Participants completed racism measures and reported their likelihood of helping White or Black targets. Racism negligibly predicted discriminatory helping across studies. In Studies 2 and 3, participants experiencing aversive affect were less likely to help Black than White targets. Results demonstrate negative feelings, more so than racial biases, impacts discriminatory helping. We hope to inspire future research examining why White bystanders experience aversion in interracial helping.     

Racism experiences and psychological functioning in African American college freshmen: is racial socialization a buffer?

Previous research has documented the negative effects of racism on the psychological health of African Americans. However, consideration of racial socialization as a potential buffer against racism experiences has received limited attention. The present study investigated whether two types of parental racial socialization messages reduced the impact of racism on psychological functioning in a sample of 247 African American college freshmen (M=18.30). Results indicated that students who reported more racism experiences also had poorer levels of psychological functioning as indicated by higher levels of psychological stress and psychological distress. Parental messages emphasizing the use of African American cultural resources to cope with racism reduced the impact of racism on psychological stress only. Cultural pride messages predicted less psychological distress while messages emphasizing the use of cultural resources predicted greater psychological distress. However, neither message type moderated the relationship between racism experiences and psychological distress. These results suggest that racial socialization messages have complex relations to psychological functioning in African American college students.     

Environmental and Family Associations With Racism1

Environmental and family factors related to racism in college students were investigated. Students (N=114) at a southern liberal‐arts college filled out an extensive survey about childhood activities and family of origin, and 40 of their mothers completed a similar survey. The Attitudes Toward Blacks ( Brigham, 1993 ) scale measured racism. Several hypotheses were supported. Students who exhibited less racism also reported that they made more diverse friends in school, came from a more diverse hometown, had diverse encounters and friendships at an earlier age, and had more positive foreign travel experiences. In addition, more racist students perceived their mothers as being more prejudiced while they were growing up, and they perceived their fathers as being more prejudiced currently. Finally, students judged their mothers as less racist than their fathers, and also reported that their mothers exhibited less racist behaviors than did their fathers. The importance of racially diverse experiences and friendships early in life are discussed as means to decrease racism.     

Gendered Racism and Mental Health among Young Adult U.S. Black Women: The Moderating Roles of Gendered Racial Identity Centrality and Identity Shifting

Sex Roles - Black women are uniquely located at the intersection of two marginalized identities which puts them at risk of experiencing a combined discrimination known as gendered racism. Among...     

Everyday antiracism in interpersonal contexts: Constraining and facilitating factors for ‘speaking up’ against racism

Everyday conversations among non‐Indigenous Australians are a significant site in which racism towards Indigenous Australians is reproduced and maintained. This study explores the possibilities of everyday antiracism by asking how people negotiate racist discourses in interpersonal contexts. Twelve first year psychology students (10 female, 2 male, aged 18–50) who had completed a compulsory Indigenous studies course were recruited as participants. Semi‐structured interviews were thematically analysed for the constraints and facilitators for responding to racism in everyday contexts. As constraints against speaking up, participants offered ‘social expectations to fit in’, ‘fear of provoking aggression and conflict’, assessments of ‘the type of relationship’, whether they ‘could make a difference’ and the ‘type of racism’. As a facilitator for speaking up, participants reported they were confident in challenging erroneous statements when they felt well informed and authoritative about the facts. The research suggests that everyday antiracism requires a preparedness to deal with possible discomfort and ‘bad feeling’ which participants reported avoiding. The paper concludes with suggestions for stimulating critical thinking and intergroup dialogue in relation to everyday antiracism. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Developing conceptions of racism among young white adults in the context of cultural diversity coursework

Despite substantial research on racial attitudes and racial identity development among young white adults, little is known about the development of their conceptions about racism. The present study assessed a five-step, empirically based contextualist model of the development of conceptions about racism in young white adults, adapted from the research of Perry (1970), Kitchener and Fischer (1990), and others. A total of 55 young white adults participating in cultural diversity coursework responded to questionnaires about the nature and causes of racism and responses were classified according to the five-step model. Results indicated that many first-year white college students think about racism in dualistic terms, comparable to those described by Perry (1970) in some first-year students' epistemological concepts. Over a semester, many students showed transitions to higher steps, conceptually integrating more dimensions of the problem. Such developmental transitions may be highly context-specific. Implications for educational interventions are discussed.     

Modern Racism Attitudes Among White Students: The Role of Dominance and Authoritarianism and the Mediating Effects of Racial Color-Blindness

ABSTRACT

Among 342 white college students, we examined the effects of social dominance orientation (SDO), right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), and racial color-blindness on modern racism attitudes. Structural equation modeling was used to test the indirect effects of SDO and RWA on modern racism attitudes through color-blind racial attitudes. We found strong indirect effects of SDO and RWA on modern racism through racial color-blindness. We did not find support for an alternative model, in which we tested racial color-blindness as a moderator of the effects of SDO and RWA on modern racism. Findings suggest that highly dominant and authoritarian white students endorse color-blind racial attitudes, although likely for different reasons. In turn, this predicts their modern racism attitudes. These findings indicate racial color-blindness is important to address as part of anti-racism education.     

Racism and White Counselor Training: Influence of White Racial Identity Theory and Research

White counselors currently and in the future are projected to constitute the majority of counseling practitioners. In a racist and culturally diverse society, White counseling students need to learn to effectively counsel racially diverse clients. In this article, the inclusion of awareness, knowledge, and skills around racism and racial identity development is discussed as critical to counselor training programs with White counseling students. Intentional and strategic efforts to assist White counseling students recognize their personal racial identity and privileges of racism are presented as tools to assist the counseling profession to reduce the perpetuation of racist attitudes and racism.     

The effect of self-affirmation on perception of racism

Two studies tested the hypothesis that a self-affirmation manipulation can eliminate group differences in perception of racism. Latino and White students completed a questionnaire manipulation of self-affirmation followed by a survey measuring perception of racism against stigmatized groups. Results in both studies revealed a predicted main effect such that Latino participants perceived greater racism than did White participants. However, this difference was qualified in both studies by a hypothesized interaction. The group difference in perception of racism was true only of participants in the no-affirmation condition; it was reduced (Study 1) or eliminated (Study 2) among participants who received a self-affirmation treatment. Additional analyses challenge prevailing discourse about motivational sources of ethnic differences in racism perception. Although results provide tentative evidence that the affirmation treatment attenuated perception of racism among Latino participants, they provide stronger evidence that the affirmation treatment facilitated perception of racism among White participants.     

Legacies of Racism

This article offers a qualitative review of the narratives presented in this special issue of the Journal of Counseling & Development on racism. The author describes some of the collective themes that emerge from the narratives associated with the devastating, multifaceted effects of racism in the United States. The narratives individually and collectively help to deconstruct myths and stories that perpetuate racism and other forms of prejudice. A critical thinking model is presented that professionals in the fields of mental health and education might use to encourage students and others to take a closer look at racism and discover ways to move beyond prejudice and intolerance.     

Color-Conscious Multicultural Mindfulness Training in the Counseling Field

The Color-Conscious Multicultural Mindfulness (CCMM) training focuses on addressing intercultural relationship ruptures, individual inequity, and systemic disparities. In this randomized control study, the authors examined the CCMM training effectiveness with 39 prelicensed counselors and counseling students using repeated measures analyses of covariance. Participants reported statistically significant changes in multicultural competence; mindfulness; and color-blind racial attitudes related to privilege, institutional discrimination, and blatant racism. Implications for counselor training practices and future research are provided.     

The psychological sting of stigma: The costs of attributing ostracism to racism

Laboratory-based research with university students demonstrates that ostracism is reflexively painful, depletes fundamental needs, and is highly resistant to variations in situational context or individual differences. Employing a representative sample of 614 US White and African American adults, we sought to (1) demonstrate the utility of using Cyberball on a broader non-college sample, and examine (2) whether attributing ostracism to racial prejudice mediates recovery. Participants in an Internet version of Cyberball were either included or ostracized by two other players (both White or both Black), and reported their level of distress before and after making attributions for treatment during the game. Overall, reflexive needs were threatened by ostracism, but more so for Blacks. Whites attributed ostracism to racism when the other players were Black. Blacks attributed ostracism to racism when the other players were White or Black. Within a few minutes, participants reported feeling less distress, but attributing ostracism to racial prejudice impeded their recovery.     

Reported Speech in Talking Race on Campus

In talking race, university students sometimes report the speech of others, or themselves, to recreate what happened during an incident. Reported speech is used within narratives to vividly convey what was said, purportedly through the actor's own words or as evidence to support general claims. The speaker is not merely reporting speech but also assessing the problematic character of the actions performed through others’words. Reported speech is relevantly tied to assessment. Assessment reveals the reporting speaker's positioning toward the reported speech. The reported speech used in talking race presents the other as ignorant, biased, racist, ridiculous, or honest. African Americans discursively portray Whites as unwilling to admit racism, as stereotyping, or as duplicitous in intergroup relations. Whites, on the other hand, frame African Americans as exaggerating racism or as overemphasizing their ethnicity. Representing others’actions through invoking their words is a way of criticizing, challenging, or resisting such troublesome racialized events.     

Black students' experiences of “acceptable” racism at a UK university

Our research, conducted with 30 Black students at a predominantly White institution, used mixed qualitative methods to investigate Black students' sense-making of experiences that signalled their non-belonging. All participants experienced both overt and covert racism including the n-word, racist humour, and negative stereotyping; and this occurred in public and intimate spaces. Our reflexive thematic analysis centred on interactional dynamics that can explain how racism on campus is rendered acceptable; and how and why this is consequential for how Black students can act. We found that White students' practices of “acceptable” racism entailed the denial of responsibility and the privileging of White experiences to deflect responsibility. Importantly, these devices signal that the use of racist discourses does not always arise from unconscious bias or naivety. The perceived power dynamics whereby White students decide who belongs and what is acceptable contributed to Black students' inability to act on their own terms.     

The Relationship Between Racism and Racial Identity Among White Americans: A Replication and Extension

The purpose of this investigation was to assess the influence of White racial identity attitudes on racism. A total of 234 White undergraduate students participated in this investigation. The students completed the White Racial Identity Attitude Scale (Helms & Carter, 1990) and the New Racism Scale (Jacobson, 1985). Consistent with findings in previous research, White racial identity attitudes were predictive of racism. We also found gender and age differences in White racial identity attitudes. Implications of these findings are discussed in terms of the role of counselors in addressing racial awareness on college campuses.     

‘I don't think racism is that bad any more’: Exploring the ‘end of racism’ discourse among students in English schools

In this paper, we present findings on lay constructions of racism from a focus group study (11 groups, n = 72) with a mixed sample of secondary‐school students in England. We show that racism was, on the whole, ‘othered’: It was located in other times, places, and people or was denied altogether. We show that this way of talking about racism had different uses depending on the identity stakes involved in different interactional contexts. Even in the cases where racism was constructed as common, participants worked hard to make an ‘irrefutable’ argument, which suggests that they were anticipating reputational damage by making a claim for the persistence of racism. We discuss these findings with regard to the different levels of analysis involved in constructions of racism (micro‐interactional, local and broader normative context) and with regard to an ‘end of racism’ discourse that appeared to provide the normative framework for participants' accounts.     

Teaching Effectively in Racially and Culturally Diverse Classrooms

Abstract. Issues of racial and cultural diversity and racism pose particular challenges for effective teaching and learning in diverse theological classrooms. In this essay the author outlines specific strategies to confront racism and engage racially and culturally diverse students. Through the use of a model for understanding multicultural dynamics of teaching and learning, the author helps readers consider four epistemological categories: knowing our students, knowing ourselves as instructors, knowing how we teach, and knowing what we teach.     

Racism or Sexism? Attributional Ambiguity and Simultaneous Membership in Multiple Oppressed Groups1

This study examines short‐term psychological effects of prejudice attributions on African American women. Black female college students (N= 112) imagined themselves in an audiotaped scenario in which White male students made negative evaluations of them. Participants completed self‐report measures of psychological stress and state self‐esteem after they rated the likely contributions of various causal attributions to the negative evaluations. Attributions included personal characteristics of the participant and classmates, as well as 3 kinds of prejudice: racism, sexism, and ethgender prejudice (the interaction of racism and sexism). Attributions to racism and ethgender prejudice predicted increased stress and decreased state social self‐esteem. Results contradict assertions that prejudice attributions are self‐protective and imply that prejudice might involve internal and external causal dimensions.     

A qualitative study of adaptation experiences of 1.5-generation Asian Americans

Adaptation experiences of 1.5-generation Asian American college students (N = 10) were examined using the consensual qualitative research method. Results indicated 4 domains of adaptation experiences: preimmigration experiences, acculturation and enculturation experiences, intercultural relationships, and support systems. Participants reported that English proficiency played a significant role in their initial adjustment. Currently, most of the participants reported feeling identified with both the U.S. and Asian cultures. Some participants reported having experienced racism in the past. Many participants noted that they currently have no difficulty establishing friendships with culturally different persons. Participants reported currently feeling most close to friends of a similar background and that they usually seek support from friends, family, and religious organizations, but not from a psychologist or counselor.