“Past injustice and present prejudice”: Reducing racial bias and increasing sympathy by framing historical racism as recent

2021 ◽  
pp. 136843022110058
Author(s):  
Mason D. Burns ◽  
Erica L. Granz
Keyword(s):  
Racial Discrimination ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Racial Bias ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
Prejudice Reduction ◽  
Causal Connection ◽  
Subjective Perceptions ◽  
Past Injustice ◽  
Past Injustices

Racial privity judgments – or the perceived causal connection between historical racial discrimination and current suffering among Black Americans – predicts sympathy for the victims of past injustices and perceptions of contemporary racial inequality. Four studies investigated the ideological roots of privity judgments; focusing on subjective temporal perceptions associated with privity judgments (e.g., subjective perceptions that past discrimination occurred more, versus less, recently). Study 1 revealed that liberals perceived historical instances of racial discrimination as having occurred more recently than conservatives, and that temporal perceptions of recency were associated with less anti-Black bias. Studies 2–4 manipulated temporal perceptions of recency by framing past discrimination as having occurred more recently. Results revealed that increasing perceived temporal recency resulted in reduced anti-Black bias and greater sympathy for present-day victims of racial discrimination across political ideology. Discussion surrounds how framing historical information as subjectively recent has implications for prejudice reduction.

Racial Justice and Criminal Justice

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Valls
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Racial Bias ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Black Neighborhoods

The criminal justice system in the United States both reflects racial inequality in the broader society and contributes to it. The overrepresentation of African Americans among those in prison is a result of both the conditions in poor black neighborhoods and racial bias in the criminal justice system. The American system of criminal justice today is excessively punitive, when compared to previous periods and to other countries, and its harsh treatment disproportionately harms African Americans. In addition, those released from prison face a number of obstacles to housing, employment, and other prerequisites of decent life, and the concentration of prisoners and ex-prisoners in black communities does much to perpetuate racial inequality.

scholarly journals Color Crit: Critical Race Theory and the History and Future of Colorism in the United States

2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert L. Reece
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Census Data ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
The United States ◽  
Skin Tone ◽  
Critical Race ◽  
Race Theory ◽  
American Society

Critical race theory teaches that racism and racial inequality are constants in American society that stand outside of the prejudices of individuals. It argues that structures and institutions are primarily responsible for the maintenance of racial inequality. However, critical race theorists have neglected to formally examine and theorize colorism, a primary offshoot of racial domination. Although studies of colorism have become increasingly common, they lack a unifying theoretical framework, opting to lean on ideas about prejudice and preference to explain the advantages lighter skinned, Black Americans are afforded relative to darker skinned Black Americans. In this study, I deploy a critical race framework to push back against preference as the only, or primary, mechanism facilitating skin tone stratification. Instead, I use historical Census data and regression analysis to explore the historical role of color-based marriage selection on concentrating economic advantage among lighter skinned Black Americans. I then discuss the policy and legal implications of developing a structural view of colorism and skin tone stratification in the United States and the broader implications for how we conceptualize race in this country.

scholarly journals Christian America in Black and White: Racial Identity, Religious-National Group Boundaries, and Explanations for Racial Inequality

2018 ◽  
Vol 80 (3) ◽  
pp. 277-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel L Perry ◽  
Andrew L Whitehead
Keyword(s):  
Racial Inequality ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
General Social Survey ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
Group Boundaries ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Group Identities

Abstract Recent research suggests that, for white Americans, conflating national and religious group identities is strongly associated with racism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia, prompting some to argue that claims about Christianity being central to American identity are essentially about reinforcing white supremacy. Prior work has not considered, however, whether such beliefs may influence the racial views of nonwhite Americans differently from white Americans. Drawing on a representative sample of black and white Americans from the 2014 General Social Survey, and focusing on explanations for racial inequality as the outcome, we show that, contrary to white Americans, black Americans who view being a Christian as essential to being an American are actually more likely to attribute black–white inequality to structural issues and less to blacks’ individual shortcomings. Our findings suggest that, for black Americans, connecting being American to being Christian does not necessarily bolster white supremacy, but may instead evoke and sustain ideals of racial justice.

scholarly journals On the Methodological Difficulty of Identifying Implicit Racial Beliefs and Stereotypes

2020 ◽  
Vol 85 (6) ◽  
pp. 1117-1122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moa Bursell ◽  
Filip Olsson
Keyword(s):  
Social Influence ◽  
Implicit Association Test ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Racial Bias ◽  
Implicit Bias ◽  
Analytic Approach ◽  
Implicit Association ◽  
Methodological Difficulty ◽  
Stereotype Content ◽  
Status Characteristics

In “Status Characteristics, Implicit Bias, and the Production of Racial Inequality,” Melamed, Munn, Barry, Montgomery, and Okuwobi present an innovative and intriguing study on social influence, status beliefs, and implicit racial bias. To capture status-based expectancies, the authors measure implicit racial status beliefs using an Implicit Association Test (IAT) with words related to high and low status. We identify an important flaw in the study’s analytic approach that severely limits the conclusions that can be drawn based on the study. We argue that the authors neglected to separate the valence of the words included in the racial status IAT with the stereotype content of these words. It is therefore possible that the study’s racial IAT only captures implicit racial evaluations, and not status-based implicit racial beliefs.

TRENDS: Racial Resentment and Public Opinion across the Racial Divide

2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
pp. 767-784 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cindy D. Kam ◽  
Camille D. Burge
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Racial Resentment ◽  
Quantitative Examination ◽  
Racial Divide ◽  
Black Public Opinion

Research on racial resentment has been meticulously developed, tested, and analyzed with white Americans in mind—yet black Americans have also responded to this battery for the past three decades. To date, little to nothing is known about the implications of responses to the racial resentment battery among black Americans. A burgeoning literature on blacks’ intragroup attitudes suggests that over time, black Americans have increasingly attributed racial inequality to individual failings as opposed to structural forces. As such, unpacking blacks’ responses to the canonical racial resentment battery may provide further insight into the micro-foundations of black public opinion. Using survey data from 1986 to 2016, we engage in a systematic quantitative examination of the role of racial resentment in predicting black and white Americans’ opinions on racial policies, “race-coded” policies, and nonracialized policies. Along the way, we highlight the existence of wide heterogeneity among black respondents and call for further investigation that identifies similarities and differences in the foundations of white and black public opinion.

Racial inequality and the recognition of racial discrimination in Jamaica

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (6) ◽  
pp. 688-706 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monique D. A. Kelly ◽  
Stanley R. Bailey
Keyword(s):  
Racial Discrimination ◽  
Racial Inequality

Examining Racial Bias in Education

2016 ◽  
Vol 45 (9) ◽  
pp. 508-514 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natasha Warikoo ◽  
Stacey Sinclair ◽  
Jessica Fei ◽  
Drew Jacoby-Senghor
Keyword(s):  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Racial Bias ◽  
School Personnel ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Racial Equity ◽  
Inequality In Education ◽  
Social Psychological Research ◽  
New Perspective

In this article we argue that social-psychological research on implicit racial associations—relatively unconscious associations based on race—is a fruitful area to explore for a greater understanding of how racial bias affects children in schools. We highlight the key insights of research on implicit racial associations and their implications for education. Further, we identify areas for research on implicit racial associations in education, calling for collaboration between scholars of racial inequality in education and scholars of implicit racial associations. This research is likely to provide a productive new perspective for understanding why and when teachers and other school personnel engage in behaviors that reproduce racial inequality, often in spite of best intentions and commitments to racial equity.

scholarly journals The Role of Status in the Emergence of Pro-White Bias in Rural Uganda

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Marshall ◽  
Anton Gollwitzer ◽  
Kellen Mermin-Bunnell ◽  
Tara M Mandalaywala
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Black Community ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Racial Bias ◽  
Black Children ◽  
Racial Prejudice ◽  
White Children ◽  
Black African ◽  
Racial Biases ◽  
Status Cues

Research investigating the early emergence of racial prejudice has been largely limited to contexts in which racial prejudice is most likely to emerge—multiracial societies that have pronounced racial inequality (e.g., United States, South Africa). The present study assessed whether pro-White racial bias is also early emerging in a homogenous Black community that has little exposure to modern media and where children presumably experience less overt discrimination than in past samples (e.g., South Africa). Black African children (N = 214) between 5- and 12-years-old living in rural Uganda exhibited substantial pro-White racial bias, preferring White over Black children 78% of the time. Ugandan children also judged White children as higher status than Black children, and these status judgments predicted their degree of pro-White bias. Our results indicate that pro-White racial biases can emerge even in a homogenous Black community and that, in some contexts, minimal status cues are sufficient for the early development of racial prejudice.

scholarly journals The Most Discriminatory Federal Judges Give Black and Hispanic Defendants At Least Double the Sentences of White Defendants

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Michael Smith ◽  
Nicholas Goldrosen ◽  
Maria-Veronica Ciocanel ◽  
Rebecca Santorella ◽  
Chad M. Topaz ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Racial Disparities ◽  
Racial Discrimination ◽  
Social Problem ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Sentence Length ◽  
Focal Concerns ◽  
Data Limitations ◽  
Federal Judges ◽  
White Defendants

In the aggregate, racial inequality in criminal sentencing is an empirically well- established social problem. Yet, data limitations have made it impossible for researchers to systematically determine and name the most racially discriminatory federal judges. The authors use a new, large-scale database to determine and name the observed federal judges who impose the harshest sentence length penalties on Black and Hispanic defendants. Following the focal concerns framework, the authors (1) replicate previous findings that conditional racial disparities in sentence lengths are large in the aggregate, (2) show that judges vary considerably in their estimated degrees of racial discrimination, and (3) list the federal judges who exhibit the clearest evidence of racial discrimination. This list shows that several judges give Black and Hispanic defendants double the sentences they give observationally equivalent white defendants. Accordingly, the results suggest that holding the very most discriminatory judges accountable would yield meaningful improvements in racial equality.

scholarly journals Developmental Origins of Anti-Black Bias in White US Children: Exposure to and Beliefs about Racial Inequality

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Rizzo ◽  
Tobias Britton ◽  
Marjorie Rhodes
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Early Childhood ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Racial Bias ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
The United States ◽  
Racial Groups ◽  
Developmental Origins ◽  
Structural Racism ◽  
Racial Inequalities

Anti-Black racism remains a pervasive crisis in the United States today. Racist social systems are rooted in prejudicial beliefs that reinforce and perpetuate racial inequalities. These beliefs have their developmental origins in early childhood and are difficult to change once entrenched in adolescence and adulthood. What causes children to form prejudicial beliefs and racial biases—and what steps can be taken to preempt them from forming—remain open questions. Here we show that children’s exposure to and beliefs about racial inequalities predict the formation of anti-Black biases in a sample of 712 White children (4-8 years) living across the United States. Drawing from constructivist theories in developmental science, we outline a novel account of the emergence of racial bias in early childhood: As children observe racial inequalities in the world around them, they develop beliefs about the causal factors underlying those inequalities. Children who believe that inequalities reflect the inherent superiority/inferiority of racial groups develop biases that perpetuate this worldview, whereas those who recognize the extrinsic causes of racial inequalities develop attitudes geared towards rectification. Our results demonstrate the importance of early intervention to disrupt problematic beliefs before they emerge and highlight children’s awareness of structural racism as an important target for anti-racist intervention.

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