Many of us would balk at the suggestion that we’re racially prejudiced, and yet many of us nonetheless say and do things that are consistent with what racists do and say. Researchers from UC Berkeley explain in a new book that this might be because we hold certain values that can lock in disadvantages for African Americans.
“Such ‘banality’ makes racial resentment frightening. While the overwhelming focus has been on the overt and blatant racists parading in hoods and capes, the ordinariness of racial resentment works in the same way as racial prejudice,” the authors say. “As a comparison, lynchings were spearheaded by blatant racists, but thousands of everyday citizens were willing participants who cheered, posed for photographs, and departed with souvenirs as if they were state fairs.”
Racial resentment
In Racial Resentment in the Political Mind, the authors outline that while the term “racial resentment” has been around for a long time, they disagree with how the phrase is defined and measured. Instead, they look at various other factors, such as the defense of the status quo and perceived deservingness.
“The underlying theory is that people who are high in racial resentment are more likely to possess attitudes that reject special racial treatment and amelioration because they benefit African Americans and other minorities unjustly and unfairly,” they explain.
The notion rests on the concept that white Americans believe that the American way of life is changing, and that their status is being threatened. What’s more, it’s being threatened by a seemingly undeserving minority. This then legitimizes racial myths.
Multiple causes
The authors explain that the racial attitudes we have can often have multiple causes. They can also be motivated by a wide range of needs, such as the need for security or for our view of the world to be seen as fair and stable.
“Whenever someone receives something, they go through the automatic judgment of whether or not it’s deserved. When people perceive that someone is getting something they don’t deserve and they think that something is very important—a cherished outcome like a scholarship to a university or the ability to buy a house, or even being the first person in line because you got there early—whenever that system of fairness is disrupted, it produces resentment,” they explain. “What we’re saying is that that resentment becomes racialized because of the ways in which people think about systems of merit and beliefs that capitalism is fair.”
While some of these perceptions around deservingness may indeed be driven by prejudice, the authors point out that it might not always be thus. The authors explain that we’re not generally born with prejudices but they instead evolve as we become part of self-enhancing groups that we’re keen to protect. These groups tend to reinforce our notions of ourselves and what is good and bad.
“So, if we’re good people and we have negative attitudes about African Americans, we can do two things: We can realize that we’re not good people, or we can blame African Americans,” they say. “It’s easier to say that ‘it’s your fault and you should work harder’; that’s the deservingness mechanism that’s at play. The myth is that African Americans are not working hard and playing by the rules so, even when they do work hard and play by the rules, those [negative] values persevere and get applied more broadly.”
Changing society
The authors believe that while societal change is inevitable, and that dominant groups can be fully aware of this, that shouldn’t mean that change must be resisted, nor that it should be viewed as some form of reverse racism.
“I think that there are things taking place in society today that can actually give the perception that the status quo for whites is actually changing. For instance, trigger warnings; we have this renewed emphasis on diversity and inclusion; we have this reaction, this backlash toward political correctness; Barack Obama was elected for two terms; and we also have job outsourcing and immigration issues,” they explain. “However, another argument that we make is that it is not unreasonable for whites to perceive that; these things are actually occurring. However, the extent to which African Americans and other minorities are benefiting from these things is misperceived.”
Sadly, the concept of racial resentment was also strongly linked both to our willingness to help minority groups and also resentment of any success they may achieve. For instance, people with high levels of racial resentment often assume that success is either undeserved or at the expense of whites (or both).
It’s an area that the authors believe is largely under-researched, but is crucial to our understanding of the tensions that emerge in multicultural societies.
