White liberals dumb themselves down when they speak to black people, a new study contends
A new study suggests that the words you use may depend on whether the club secretaryâs name is Emily (âa stereotypically White name,â as the study says) or Lakisha (âa stereotypically Black nameâ).
If youâre a white liberal writing to Emily, you might use words like âmelancholyâ or âeuphoricâ to describe the mood of the book, whereas you might trade these terms out for the simpler âsadâ or âhappyâ if youâre corresponding with Lakisha.
But if youâre a white conservative, your diction wonât depend on the presumed race of your interlocutor.
This racial and political disparity is among the discoveries made by a pair of social psychologists in a paper forthcoming in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the American Psychological Association. Cydney Dupree, an assistant professor of organizational behavior at the Yale School of Management, and Susan Fiske, a professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton, documented what they call a âcompetence downshiftâ exhibited by white liberals in interactions with racial minorities, and with black people in particular.
The findings, based on what the authors stress is âpreliminary evidence,â raise difficult questions about aspirations for a so-called post-racial society. The results reveal how subtle forms of discrimination may coincide with progress toward equal treatment, or what the paper identifies as âa significant reduction in the expression of explicit prejudice and endorsement of negative stereotypes.â
If youâre a white liberal writing to Emily, you might use words like âmelancholyâ or âeuphoricâ to describe the mood of the book, whereas you might trade these terms out for the simpler âsadâ or âhappyâ if youâre corresponding with Lakisha.
But if youâre a white conservative, your diction wonât depend on the presumed race of your interlocutor.
This racial and political disparity is among the discoveries made by a pair of social psychologists in a paper forthcoming in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the American Psychological Association. Cydney Dupree, an assistant professor of organizational behavior at the Yale School of Management, and Susan Fiske, a professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton, documented what they call a âcompetence downshiftâ exhibited by white liberals in interactions with racial minorities, and with black people in particular.
The findings, based on what the authors stress is âpreliminary evidence,â raise difficult questions about aspirations for a so-called post-racial society. The results reveal how subtle forms of discrimination may coincide with progress toward equal treatment, or what the paper identifies as âa significant reduction in the expression of explicit prejudice and endorsement of negative stereotypes.â
