Examining the consequences of exposure to racism for the executive functioning of Black students

Recent research has demonstrated that interracial interactions, reminders of stigmatized identities, and exposure to ambiguous racism can deplete the self-control resources of minority group members. In the current study we examined whether hearing blatant racism expressed in an interracial context would deplete the self-control of Black participants and whether this depletion would be moderated by participants’ level of racial centrality. After listening to a Black or a White confederate express either support for racial profiling (racist condition) or increased campus parking fees (neutral condition), Black participants completed a Stroop color-naming task to assess self-control depletion. Participants experienced self-control depletion following interracial encounters, regardless of whether the views expressed were racist. As expected, however, racial centrality moderated the depletion effect when racism was involved, with participants higher in centrality showing greater depletion following an encounter with racism from a White partner.     

Victim Blaming in Rape: Effects of Victim and Perpetrator Race, Type of Rape, and Participant Racism

Stereotypes about Black sexuality fostered hypotheses that racial factors and racism influence rape victim blaming. Predominantly White and Asian college students (170 men, 162 women) completed the Modern Racism Scale and evaluated a rape vignette varying victim race, perpetrator race, and rape type. As predicted, racial factors determined victim blaming. Compared to intraracial rapes, interracial rapes were less uniformly judged as "definitely rape" and were judged as having more culpable and less credible victims, and less culpable perpetrators. For men, racism scores positively predicted victim blaming in all rapes. For women, racism scores moderated victim blaming in interracial acquaintance rapes. In our conclusions, we emphasize the durability of racial stereotypes about rape and their influence on discriminatory adjudication outcomes.     

Why can't we just get along? Interpersonal biases and interracial distrust

The authors review a series of studies that illustrate how one form of contemporary racial bias of Whites, aversive racism, can shape different perspectives of Blacks and Whites in ways that can undermine race relations. This research demonstrates that contemporary racism among Whites is subtle, often unintentional, and unconscious but that its effects are systematically damaging to race relations by fostering miscommunication and distrust. In particular, the authors examine the effects of aversive racism on outcomes for Blacks (e.g., in selection decisions), on the ways that Whites behave in interracial interactions, in the impressions that Whites and Blacks form of each other in these interactions, and on the task efficiency of interracial dyads.     

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.     

Perceptions of ambiguously unpleasant interracial interactions: a structural equation modeling approach

Despite a general consensus in the United States that overtly racist acts are unacceptable, many ambiguous situations in everyday life raise questions of whether racism has influenced a person's behavior in an interracial encounter. The authors of the present study sought to (a) examine simultaneously an array of variables thought to be related to perceived racism and (b) investigate how the contribution of these variables may differ with respect to the asymmetry hypothesis, which suggests that acts of discrimination from a dominant person toward a subordinate person will be viewed as more biased than if the situation were reversed. The authors used a dual structural equation modeling approach. Results indicated that ethnic identity significantly predicted perceived racism. In addition, the extent to which cognitive interpretation style significantly predicted perceived racism depended on the ethnicity of participants involved in the interaction.     

College Students' Racial Attitudes

Factor analyses of responses from white ( N = 260) and black ( N = 81) college students in two neighboring universities were utilized to develop contemporary measures of racial attitudes and of the degree of interracial contact experienced by blacks and by whites. Two sets of 112 attitudinal statements were utilized for the initial factor analyses, one set for black respondents and one for whites. About 60% of the items in the two sets were identical or the same except that the racial designations were reversed. Two 20-item racial attitude scales were derived from the factor analyses, one for blacks and one for whites. For students of each race, scores on the attitude measure showed a weak but significant relationship with a 16-item self-report scale of amount of interracial contact experienced, past and present. The relationship of these scales to earlier racial attitude measures (symbolic racism, modern racism, the MRAI, value rankings) were assessed. Second-order factor analyses suggested that the black students' racial attitudes were more heterogeneous than were the white students' racial attitudes. In general, black respondents tended to show more support than whites for programs designed to increase opportunities for, and recognition of, blacks. Black students also tended to endorse a greater degree of social distance between the races than white students did. The pattern of relationships between racial attitudes and sociopolitical issues differed for whites and blacks.     

Racism: What It Is and What It Isn't

The words `racist' and `racism' have become so overused that they nowconstitute obstacles to understanding and interracial dialogue aboutracial matters. Instead of the current practice of referring tovirtually anything that goes wrong or amiss with respect to race as`racism,' we should recognize a much broader moral vocabulary forcharacterizing racial ills – racial insensitivity, racial ignorance,racial injustice, racial discomfort, racial exclusion. At the sametime, we should fix on a definition of `racism' that is continuouswith its historical usage, and avoids conceptual inflation. Isuggest two basic, and distinct, forms of racism that meet thiscondition – antipathy racism and inferiorizing racism. We should alsorecognize that not all racially objectionable actions are done froma racist motive, and that not all racial stereotypes are racist.     

Psychosocial costs of racism to Whites: Understanding patterns among university students

This investigation adds to the growing body of scholarship on the psychosocial costs of racism to Whites (PCRW), which refer to consequences of being in the dominant position in an unjust, hierarchical system of societal racism. Extending research that identified 5 distinct constellations of costs of racism (L. B. Spanierman, V. P. Poteat, A. M. Beer, & P. I. Armstrong, 2006), the authors used multinomial logistic regression in the current study to examine what factors related to membership in 1 of the 5 PCRW types during the course of an academic year. Among a sample of White university freshmen (n = 287), the authors found that (a) diversity attitudes (i.e., universal diverse orientation and unawareness of privilege) explained PCRW type at entrance, (b) PCRW type at entrance explained participation in interracial friendships at the end of the year, (c) 45% of participants changed PCRW type during the course of the year, and (d) among those who changed type, particular PCRW types at entrance resulted in greater likelihood of membership in particular PCRW types at the end of the year. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).     

Aversive racism in Britain: the use of inadmissible evidence in legal decisions

The aversive racism framework (S. L. Gaertner & J. F. Dovidio, 1986 ) suggests that bias against Blacks is most likely to be expressed by Whites when it can be explained or justified along non‐racial grounds. The present experiment adopted a 2 (Evidence: admissible vs. inadmissible) × 2 (Defendant Race: White vs. Black) between subjects design, asking White participants, whose self‐reported prejudice was assessed, to judge a legal case. As predicted, increased guilt ratings and longer sentencing recommendations were forwarded for the Black (vs. White) defendant only when DNA evidence linking the defendant to the crime had previously been ruled inadmissible. This result was not qualified by self‐report racial attitudes. The implications for evidence inadmissibility in interracial contexts are considered, along with the repercussions of finding experimental evidence of aversive racism outside of North America. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Discussion of “Unraveling Whiteness”: Commentary on Paper by Melanie Suchet

In this discussion I consider several influences on the contemporary project of deconstructing racism and the concept of racialized subjectivity. This discussion applauds the turn in Suchet's work toward self-examination in a consideration of the experience of race and racism. Suchet's work moves the debates about racialized subjectivities into a deeper and more complex understanding of all the ways in which identifications and attachments cross race and class lines for many individuals. This discussion focuses on Suchet's treatment of the power of hybridic and biracial identifications, beginning with autobiographical material from Suchet's own childhood in South Africa. In this discussion of “Unraveling Whiteness” I integrate psychoanalytic concepts of enigmatic signification (the work of Laplanche) into a discussion of early attachment, and relational configurations with children and nonparental caretakers. The question of trauma or potential transformation in interracial experience is discussed, and some distinctions between American and South African experience are considered.     

Negotiating Interracial Interactions: Costs, Consequences, and Possibilities

ABSTRACT— The United States is becoming increasingly diverse, yet interracial contact continues to be awkward, if not stressful, for many. Indeed, recent research suggests that individuals often exit interracial interactions feeling drained both cognitively and emotionally. This article reviews research examining how interracial encounters give rise to these outcomes, zeroing in on the mediating role of self-regulation and the moderating influence of prejudice concerns. Given that interracial contact may be the most promising avenue to prejudice reduction, it is important to examine factors that undermine positive interracial contact experiences, as well as those that facilitate them.     

Perceiving outgroup members as unresponsive: implications for approach-related emotions, intentions, and behavior

In 2 studies, the authors investigated the determinants of anger and approach-related intentions and behavior toward outgroup members in interracial interactions. In Study 1, White and Black participants who were led to believe that their interracial interaction partner was not open to an upcoming interaction reported heightened anger and approach-related intentions concerning the interaction, including viewing their partner as hostile, intending to ask sensitive race-relevant questions during the interaction, and planning to blame the partner if the interaction went poorly. Results of Study 2 showed that White participants who received negative feedback about their Black partner's openness to interracial interactions behaved in a hostile manner toward their interaction partner. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for the quality of interracial interactions.     

Racial microaggressions in everyday life: implications for clinical practice

Racial microaggressions are brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults toward people of color. Perpetrators of microaggressions are often unaware that they engage in such communications when they interact with racial/ethnic minorities. A taxonomy of racial microaggressions in everyday life was created through a review of the social psychological literature on aversive racism, from formulations regarding the manifestation and impact of everyday racism, and from reading numerous personal narratives of counselors (both White and those of color) on their racial/cultural awakening. Microaggressions seem to appear in three forms: microassault, microinsult, and microinvalidation. Almost all interracial encounters are prone to microaggressions; this article uses the White counselor--client of color counseling dyad to illustrate how they impair the development of a therapeutic alliance. Suggestions regarding education and training and research in the helping professions are discussed.     

On White Ignorance,White Shame,and Other Pitfalls in Critical Philosophy of Race

This article examines Samantha Vice's essay ‘How Do I Live in This Strange Place?’ (2010), which sparked a storm of controversy in South Africa, as a starting point for interrogating understandings of whiteness and racism that are dominant in critical philosophy of race. I argue that a significant body of philosophical scholarship on whiteness in general and by white scholars in particular obfuscates the structural dimension of racism. The moralisation of racism that often permeates philosophical scholarship reproduces colourblind logics, which provide individualistic explanations for structural problems, thereby sustaining white dominance. In the process, I show that notions of white guilt, white habits, white ignorance, white invisibility, white privilege, and white shame as they are theorised in much critical philosophy of race share a crucial limitation: they minimise white people's active interest in reproducing the racist status quo. Studies, such as Vice's, that frame racism as a moral dilemma while silencing its institutionalisation and the central cause for its existence and longevity – that is, white people's investment in maintaining economic, political, and symbolic power – further naturalise white supremacy.     

Is racial bias malleable? Whites' lay theories of racial bias predict divergent strategies for interracial interactions

How do Whites approach interracial interactions? We argue that a previously unexamined factor-beliefs about the malleability of racial bias-guides Whites' strategies for difficult interracial interactions. We predicted and found that those who believe racial bias is malleable favor learning-oriented strategies such as taking the other person's perspective and trying to learn why an interaction is challenging, whereas those who believe racial bias is fixed favor performance-oriented strategies such as overcompensating in the interaction and trying to end the interaction as quickly as possible. Four studies support these predictions. Whether measured (Studies 1, 3, and 4) or manipulated (Study 2), beliefs that racial bias is fixed versus malleable yielded these divergent strategies for difficult interracial interactions. Furthermore, beliefs about the malleability of racial bias are distinct from related constructs (e.g., prejudice and motivations to respond without prejudice; Studies 1, 3, and 4) and influence self-reported (Studies 1-3) and actual (Study 4) strategies in imagined (Studies 1-2) and real (Studies 3-4) interracial interactions. Together, these findings demonstrate that beliefs about the malleability of racial bias influence Whites' approaches to and strategies within interracial interactions.     

Let’s talk about race, Baby! When Whites’ and Blacks’ interracial contact experiences diverge

The present study investigated whether the conditions that make interracial contact anxiety-provoking for Whites differ from those that make it anxiety-provoking for Blacks. Specifically, the present work examined interracial anxiety as a function of discussant race (i.e., White or Black) and discussion topic (i.e., race-related or race-neutral). To that end, we examined the nonverbal behavior of White and Black participants during brief interpersonal interactions. Consistent with previous research, White participants behaved more anxiously during interracial than same-race interactions. Additionally, White participants of interracial interaction behaved more anxiously than their Black interaction partners. Furthermore, whereas White participants of interracial interactions found race-related discussions no more stressful than race-neutral discussions, Black participants of interracial interactions found race-related discussions less stressful than race-neutral discussions. The implications of these racial and contextual differences in interracial anxiety for improving interracial contact and race relations, more broadly, are discussed.     

Interracial Relationships in Hawaii

SUMMARY

Given the increase in rates of intermarriages, it is vital that we understand the issues and benefits of interracial relationships and the ways in which therapists might assist interracial couples. Our focus in this article is on interracial relationships in Hawaii. Because of its history of promoting interracial ties and its plural character, Hawaii is, in many ways, a unique setting for interracial relationships. At the same time, there are relational issues, benefits, and needs faced by both mainstream U.S. interracial couples and interracial couples in Hawaii. There are a variety of therapeutic interventions that could be used to help interracial couples. This chapter examines the factors in Hawaii's past and present that contribute to its particular history of interracial relationships, the common challenges that face interracial couples, personal and relational benefits of interracial relationships, and the therapeutic interventions from which interracial couples may benefit.     

Acculturation,gender, and views on interracial relationships among Chinese Canadians

Acculturation to mainstream and heritage culture has been shown to influence attitudes and behaviors related to romantic relationships. Few studies have examined its influence on views regarding interracial relationships and whether the psychological processes underlying these relations vary across gender. Among Chinese Canadian participants (N = 248), mainstream acculturation, but not Chinese acculturation, was associated with more personal openness to and less cultural values conflict about interracial relationships. Among men, stronger egalitarian gender role ideology mediated the relations between mainstream acculturation and the above interracial relationship variables. For women, fewer concerns about cultural preservation mediated the relation between mainstream acculturation and less cultural values conflict. The importance of understanding cultural influences on interracial relationships through a gendered lens is discussed.     

What is being revealed in 2020?

The Covid-19 pandemic is exposing how humans have long related to nature, and revealing aspects of classism and racism that have long been ignored. Drawing on spiritual resources, such as Luther, might the polarizing, self versus other tendencies be overcome and the long pandemic rooted in economic class and racism more effectively addressed today? Can this result in a “new normal”?