Offhand comments can expose underlying racism, UW study finds

Blatant racism is easy to identify -- a shouted racial slur, a white supremacist rally, or the open discrimination, segregation and violence of the pre-civil rights era.



The concept of microaggressions has garnered greater attention in today's political environment, explained lead author Jonathan Kanter, a UW research associate professor of psychology.

"Our study results offer validation to people of color when they experience microaggressions. Their reactions can't simply be dismissed as crazy, unreasonable or too sensitive," Kanter said. "According to our data, the reaction of a person of color -- being confused, upset or offended in some way -- makes sense, because they have experienced what our data show: that people who are more likely to make these comments also are more racist in other ways."

The study appears online in the journal Race and Social Problems.


In the "current events" scenario -- the one that yielded the highest percentage of "likely" responses from whites -- respondents were to imagine talking about topics in the news, such as police brutality and unemployment. More than half of white respondents said they would think or say, "All lives matter, not just black lives," while 30 percent said they might say, "I don't think of black people as black," and 26 percent said they were likely to think or say, "The police have a tough job. It is not their fault if they occasionally make a mistake." More than half of black respondents identified each of those statements as racist.

Responses on the CCAS were then related to several validated measures of racism and prejudice, to determine if one's likelihood of making microaggressive statements was related to these other measures. An additional scale controlled for social desirability -- the idea that respondents might answer in ways that put themselves in the best possible light.


The statement that yielded the highest statistical relation to other measures of racism among white respondents came from the "diversity workshop" scenario, in which a class discusses white privilege. Though only about 14 percent of white respondents said they were likely to think or say, "A lot of minorities are too sensitive," the statement had the highest correlation with negative feelings toward blacks. Nearly 94 percent of black respondents said the statement was racist.


"It doesn't mean that on a case-by-case basis, if you or I engaged in microaggressions, that we have cold or racist feelings toward blacks," he said. "But the study says that regardless of the intention behind a microaggression or the feelings of the specific person who uttered it, it's reasonable for a black person to be offended. On average, if you engage in a microaggression, it's more likely that you have cooler feelings toward black people, and that whether you intended it or not, you've participated in an experience of racism for a black person."


"It can come as a bit of a shock to a lot of white people that their behavior and attitudes are under scrutiny," said Kanter, who pointed out that as a white male, he has had to confront realizations about his own behavior over time. "The nature of how we're looking at racism is changing. We're now able to look at and root out more subtle forms of bias that weren't focused on before because explicit racism was taking a lot of the attention."




University of Washington