Are White Women Showing Up for Racial Justice? Intergroup Contact, Closeness to People Targeted by Prejudice, and Collective Action

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 335-347 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda R. Tropp ◽  
Özden Melis Uluğ
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Women Of Color ◽  
White Women ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Willingness To Participate ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
White American ◽  
Positive Contact ◽  
White American Women ◽  
Justice Studies

Although scholars have suggested that relationships with people of color can enhance White people’s commitment to racial justice, many women of color have questioned whether White people, and White women in particular, actually “show up” to protest for racial justice. Focusing on the contact experiences and closeness White women have with people from racial and ethnic groups different from their own, we tested how these relationships may predict their reported motivations to engage in protests for racial justice. With a broad online sample of White American women (Study 1), and White women who attended the 2017 Women’s March (Study 2), our results showed that both positive contact and closeness to people targeted by prejudice predicted White women’s willingness to participate in protests for racial justice (Studies 1 and 2). Only closeness to people targeted by prejudice significantly predicted actual participation in collective action for racial justice (Studies 1 and 2) and also predicted motivation for racial justice among those who attended the 2017 Women’s March (Study 2). Findings suggest that White women’s inclinations to protest for racial justice may be linked to the close relationships they have with people targeted by prejudice, while more general forms of positive contact may not be related to such action. Additional online materials for this article are available on PWQ ’s website at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/0361684319840269 . Online slides for instructors who want to use this article for teaching are available on PWQ' s website at http://journals.sagepub.com/page/pwq/suppl/index

scholarly journals Intersectionality, Identity Politics and Violence Against Women of Color

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw
Keyword(s):  
Violence Against Women ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Women Of Color ◽  
White Women ◽  
Racial Violence ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Racial Stratification ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Experiences Of Women

Identity-based politics has been a source of strength for people of color, gays and lesbians, among others. The problem with identity politics is that it often conflates intra group differences. Exploring the various ways in which race and gender intersect in shaping structural and political aspects of violence against these women, it appears the interests and experiences of women of color are frequently marginalized within both feminist  and antiracist discourses. Both discourses have failed to consider the intersections of racism and patriarchy. However,  the location of women of color at the intersection of race and gender makes our actual experience of domestic violence, rape, and remedial reform quite different from that of white women. Similarly, both feminist and antiracist politics have functioned in tandem to marginalize the issue of violence against women of color. The effort to politicize violence against women will do little to address the experiences of nonwhite women until the ramifications of racial stratification among women are acknowledged. At the same time, the anti-racist agenda will not be furthered by suppressing the reality of intra-racial violence against women of color. The effect of both these marginalizations is that women of color have no ready means to link their experiences with those of other women.

In the Time of Plastic Representation

2017 ◽  
Vol 71 (2) ◽  
pp. 32-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristen J. Warner
Keyword(s):  
Women Of Color ◽  
White Women ◽  
Pop Culture ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Racially Diverse ◽  
Black Representation ◽  
Education Community ◽  
Spectrum Shift ◽  
Do So ◽  
Complex Characters

To many men and women of color, as well as many white women, meaningful diversity occurs when the actual presence of different-looking bodies appears on screen. For them, this diversity serves as an indicator of progress as well as an aspirational frame for younger generations who are told that the visual signifiers they can identify with carry a great amount of symbolic weight. As a consequence, the degree of diversity became synonymous with the quantity of difference rather than with the dimensionality of those performances. Moreover, a paradoxical condition emerges whereby people of color have become more media savvy yet are still, if not more, reliant on overdetermined and overly reductive notions of so-called “positive” and “negative” representation. Such measures yield a set of dueling consequences: first, that any representation that includes a person of color is automatically a sign of success and progress; second, that such paltry gains generate an easy workaround for the executive suites whereby hiring racially diverse actors becomes an easy substitute for developing new complex characters. The results of such choices can feel—in an affective sense—artificial, or more to the point, like plastic. Black representation, as it's been understood in a popular sense, has been dominated by the circulation of mediated imagery yielding deleterious effects for the groups depicted. The fear of the effects of such “poor” representation has resulted in a set of binary, nonscientific, underdeveloped metrics—positive and negative—that constitute a nebulous catch-all system wherein the characteristics that define each pole on the spectrum shift depending on the era and the expectations of the audience. What marks a representation as “positive” or “negative”? Responses are often aligned with class (good job, education, community minded), behavior (hypersexual, well-spoken, “woke”), or with characterizations of character that either successfully assimilate into normative culture or fail to do so. However, such a scale oversimplifies the complexities of black identity that require audiences, pop culture critics, and scholars to invest in screen characters through experiencing nuances developed over time and ironically reinforces the stereotypes that operate as industry shorthand. The rationale for solely demanding plastic representation is understandable as a sanity-preserving tactic that can also build esteem and confidence, but it is not nearly enough. Meaningful, resonant diversity is a more difficult, underdeveloped approach that requires all stakeholders to think harder about what on-screen difference looks and feels like. But if representation truly matters, then it is an approach worthy of pursuit.

The Myth of the Gender Gap

2019 ◽  
pp. 189-218
Author(s):  
Angie Maxwell ◽  
Todd Shields
Keyword(s):  
Gender Gap ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
White Women ◽  
White Men ◽  
White Identity ◽  
Equal Rights Amendment ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
White American ◽  
Traditional Gender Roles ◽  
White American Women

Taking their cue from anti-feminist leader Phyllis Schlafly, the GOP celebrated traditional gender roles and demonized feminism as part of a Long Southern Strategy. The Republican Party dropped the Equal Rights Amendment from its platform in 1980, which many feminists believed would cost the party women voters. When the gender gap emerged during the next election cycle with more women than men voting for Democrats, a myth took hold. However, the gender gap is not universal because anti-feminism and Modern Sexism remain deeply burrowed into southern white identity where they have been reinforced religiously and politicized continually by the GOP. When geography and identity are brought to bear on the myth of the gender gap, it looks remarkably different. Where it does not disappear completely, it is reversed, with southern white women proving more conservative than southern white men and dramatically more so than white American women as a whole.

Living Arrangements and ‘Successful’ Ageing among Ever-Married American White Women 77–87 Years of Age

1993 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 365-387 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice T. Day ◽  
Lincoln H. Day
Keyword(s):  
Living Arrangements ◽  
Representative Sample ◽  
White Women ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Living Alone ◽  
Successful Ageing ◽  
White American ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
White American Women

ABSTRACTData on a nationally representative sample of ever-married white American women born in 1900–1910 show living arrangements to be closely associated with the quality of the ageing experience (with, that is, whether these women were ageing ‘successfully’). The proportions ageing ‘successfully’ were highest among those living only with their husbands, and lowest among those living with kin other than their husbands. In between, but much closer in position to the women living only with their husbands, were those who were living alone. The paper looks at explanations accounting for these differences and considers some of the policy implications of these findings.

“America’s Gunpowder Women”

2019 ◽  
Vol 88 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-207
Author(s):  
Chris Suh
Keyword(s):  
White Women ◽  
Equal Rights Amendment ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
White American ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
National Woman's Party ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
White American Women ◽  
Feminist Movements

This article uncovers the little-known story of how the novelist Pearl S. Buck used her authority as a popular expert on China to pose a direct challenge to her white middle-class American readers in the post-suffrage era. Through provocative comparisons between Chinese and white American women, Buck alleged that educated white women had failed to live up to their potential, and she demanded that they earn social equality by advancing into male-dominated professions outside the home. Although many of her readers disagreed, the novelist’s challenge was welcomed by the National Woman’s Party (NWP), which sought to abolish all gender-based discrimination and preferential treatment through the introduction of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). This story revises our understanding of the post-suffrage era by showing the vibrancy of feminist debates in the final years of the Great Depression, and it provides a new way into seeing how racialized thinking shaped American conceptions of women’s progress between first- and second-wave feminist movements.

Socialization, Life Situations, and Gender-Role Attitudes regarding the Family among White American Women

1995 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Futing Liao ◽  
Yang Cai
Keyword(s):  
Educational Attainment ◽  
Gender Role ◽  
White Women ◽  
General Social Survey ◽  
Gender Role Attitudes ◽  
The United States ◽  
White American ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
And Gender ◽  
White American Women

There are two major theoretical perspectives explaining differences in gender-role attitudes: the socialization or social-learning theory, and situational theory in the form of macrosituational and microsituational (microstructural) hypotheses. In this article, we synthesize the two theories. We use data from the 1985 General Social Survey to evaluate this synthetic theory for white women in the United States. The findings show that socialization, represented by women's educational attainment being influenced by their mothers' educational attainment, has no direct impact on gender-role attitudes. Socialization does indirectly influence attitudes via women's life situations, as represented by women's life course stages and the kin composition of their social networks. Life situations are more contemporaneous than socialization and, thus, have direct effects on family-related gender-role attitudes.

The Postwar Rise and Decline of American Fertility: The Pace of Transition to Motherhood Among 1950–1969 Marital Cohorts of White Women

1987 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 421-436 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vijayan K. Pillai
Keyword(s):  
Structural Changes ◽  
White Women ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Working Women ◽  
Theoretical Argument ◽  
White American ◽  
Transition To Motherhood ◽  
First Child ◽  
The Social ◽  
White American Women

This study supports the theoretical argument that historical experiences of the marital cohorts, and the changes in the social and demographic composition of the cohorts, determine the pace of childbearing among white American women married during 1950–1969. During the period 1965–1969 environmental factors supported a delay in the birth of the first child among working women. This may be the result of socioenvironmental responses to the threshold proportion of working women in the 1965–1969 cohort In the past, compositional changes, such as an increase in the proportion of working women, have resulted from structural changes absorbing women into the labor market. These trends might have brought about attitudinal and environmental changes during these years enabling many women to become more work committed Thus, both structural and environmental changes now support delayed childbearing.

Count Me In!: Ethnic Data Disaggregation Advocacy, Racial Mattering, and Lessons for Racial Justice Coalitions

JCSCORE ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-124
Author(s):  
OiYan A. Poon ◽  
Jude Paul Matias Dizon ◽  
Dian Squire
Keyword(s):  
Asian American ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Racial Equity ◽  
Equity In Education ◽  
Case Study Analysis ◽  
Data Disaggregation ◽  
Racial Solidarity ◽  
The University

This article presents a case study of the 2006-2007 Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) student-led Count Me In! (CMI) campaign. This successful campaign convinced the University of California (UC) to account for 23 AAPI ethnic identities in its data system. Celebrated as a victory for AAPI interests in discourses over racial equity in education, which are often defined by a Black- white racial paradigm, CMI should also be remembered as originating out of efforts to demonstrate AAPI solidarity with Black students and to counter racial wedge politics. In the evolution of the CMI campaign, efforts for cross-racial solidarity soon faded as the desire for institutional validation of AAPI educational struggles was centered. Our case study analysis, guided by sociological frameworks of racism, revealed key limitations in the CMI campaign related to the intricate relations between people of color advocating for racial justice. We conclude with cautions for research and campaigns for ethnically disaggregated AAPI data, and encourage advocates and scholars to address AAPI concerns over educational disparities while simultaneously and intentionally building coalitions for racial equity in higher education.

scholarly journals Whites for racial justice: How contact with Black Americans predicts support for collective action among White Americans

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (6) ◽  
pp. 893-912 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hema Preya Selvanathan ◽  
Pirathat Techakesari ◽  
Linda R. Tropp ◽  
Fiona Kate Barlow
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Intergroup Contact ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Group Efficacy ◽  
Total N ◽  
Group Members ◽  
White Guilt

Advantaged group members have an important role to play in creating social change, and intergroup contact has tremendous implications in shaping intergroup relations. However, little research has examined how intergroup contact predicts advantaged group members’ inclinations toward collective action to support the interests of disadvantaged groups. The present research investigates how contact with Black Americans shapes White Americans’ willingness to engage in collective action for racial justice and support for the Black Lives Matter movement. Three studies of White Americans (total N = 821) consistently reveal that positive contact with Black Americans predicts greater support for collective action through a sequential process of fostering greater feelings of empathy for Black Americans and anger over injustice. These findings hold even when taking into account other relevant psychological factors (i.e., White guilt and identification, negative contact, group efficacy, and moral convictions). The present research contributes to our understanding of how advantaged group members come to engage in social change efforts.

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