Shades of White: How White Identity Shapes Support for Black Lives Matter

• In Event: Understanding Support for the Black Lives Matter Movement

Abstract

Research on white identity has largely focused on a white racial consciousness associated
with racial conservatism. However, I argue that there are multiple dimensions to white
identity that reflect distinct racial narratives and are associated with different attitudes
towards racial politics. Most existing work focuses on the first dimension, consciousness,
which indicates political awareness of group position. I theorize a second dimension,
called valence, which indicates how positively or negatively individuals view whiteness as
a structure. Using an original measure—the white advantage scale—I find that awareness
of the racial narrative of the social, political, and economic advantages that come with
being white motivates support for both the Black Lives Matter movement and associated
policies, like police reform and reparations. This paper uses a mixed-methods approach
that combines a case study of the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area in Minnesota
both before and after the 2020 uprising, and a nationally representative survey of white
Americans. I find empirical support for the two dimensions of white identification and
evidence that where individuals fall on these dimensions are associated with distinct
patterns of attitudes about Black Lives Matter and racial justice policies.

Author

• Geneva Cole, William and Mary