White Privilege + Collective Threat = Anti-Black Prejudice

• In Event: 4467 - Section on Social Psychology Refereed Roundtables (Cosponsored with Section on Sociology of Emotions)
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 6: Race and Bias

Abstract

This paper explores whether and how racial threat, and collective emotions in White Americans more generally, represent a social force in the production of anti-Black attitudes. After reviewing the relevant literature, I explore the association between collective emotions – threat, guilt, and shame – and a range of socio-political attitudes. Lastly, I test if threat is a social force, using ordinal logistic regressions which include identity elements, emotions, and socio-demographic variables as predictors of anti-Black attitudes. The findings demonstrate that there is a significant and substantial relationship between feelings of collective threat in White Americans and the manifestation of both traditional and contemporary racist sentiment.

Author

• Ashley Veronica Reichelmann, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University