Judging Intentions for Racial Justice Civic Engagement: Do “Allies” get Judged More or Less Positively?

• In Event: The Development of “Allyship” and Critical Action among White People over the Lifecourse

Abstract

In the USA, the public is interrogating the role of White people in racial justice civic engagement and questioning what qualifies as “good allyship.” People hold both highly positive and highly critical views of White racial justice “allies;” for example, the 2017 Women’s March has been critiqued for centering White women and failing to grapple with intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1990, Stockman, 2017). In a highly polarized political climate, people also judge others differently across political and demographic differences. In a vignette study, we investigate whether judgements of the character and intentions of people involved in racial justice civic engagement differ depending on: the race of the civic actor; aspects of civic engagement; and the race and other background characteristics of study participants making the judgements.
Participants recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk (N=800, 51% female, Mean age = 36) were primarily White (44%) or Black/African American (36%) and 57% were socially liberal. Participants read two of eight possible vignettes, which differed by three theoretically-driven dimensions: “allyship” (actor race: White or Black); attendance (actor attending vs. not attending civic event) and motivation of the actor (“pure” or “mixed” motivation; Table 1). Then, participants answered questions on a scale from 1-4 judging the actor’s: morality, likeability, principledness, rationality, authenticity, and how well-intentioned they were.
Overall, actors were rated positively (scores over 3 on the 4 point scale). We examined judgements across vignette dimensions using 2 (ally vs. ingroup member) X 2 (attend vs. not) X 2 (pure or mixed motives) MANOVAs. Significant main effects emerged for allyship, attendance, and motivation. With respect to allyship, White actors were perceived as significantly less moral, principled, and authentic. Actors who attended the event were rated more favorably on all perceptions, and actors with pure motives were judged as more well-intentioned. The main effects of allyship and attendance were qualified by a two-way interaction, Wilks’ λ = .98, F(6, 753) = 3.00, p = .007, whereby White actors were judged as least moral and rational when not attending the event.
We examined judgments by participant race with a 2 (ally vs. ingroup member) X 2 (participant White vs. Black) MANOVA in a subsample of Black and White participants. Judgments across experimental conditions did not differ by participant racial identification.
We examined whether findings depended on study participants’ background characteristics (political ideology, civic engagement, empathic concern and perspective taking) via regressions. Background characteristics did not moderate the effect of allyship on judgments. The effect of attendance on judgments were moderated: participants who were more liberal, reported higher civic engagement, and were higher in empathic concern, rated those attending the event more favorably (Figure 1).
In general White “allies” were judged positively in the present study but judged less favorably compared to Black actors when they considered, but did not attend, a racial justice event. Results are discussed in light of critiques of White allyship and considering the developmental significance of how others’ perceptions of people's character and intentions may inform the development of antiracist attitudes and behaviors.

Authors

• Parissa J. Ballard, Wake Forest School of Medicine
  Presenting Author

• Lauren Collier-Spruel, Michigan State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Dillon Luke, University of Texas at Austin
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ashley Hawkins, Wake Forest University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ayat Hamza, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  Non-Presenting Author

• William Fleeson, Wake Forest University
  Non-Presenting Author