Aversive Racism

Nature of the Attitudes

A critical aspect of the aversive racism framework is the conflict between aversive racists' denial of personal prejudice and underlying unconscious negative feelings toward and beliefs about particular minority groups. For example, because of current cultural values in the United States, most Whites have strong convictions concerning fairness, [Page 49]justice, and racial equality; however, because of a range of normal cognitive, motivational, and sociocultural processes that promote intergroup biases, most Whites also have some negative feelings toward or beliefs about Blacks. They may be unaware of these feelings or try to deny them to retain a self-image as unprejudiced, but when engaged in social categorization, for example, they will find that their cultural stereotypes are spontaneously activated.

Identifying Aversive Attitudes

Generally, aversive racists may be identified by a constellation of characteristic responses to racial issues and interracial situations. First, aversive racists, in contrast to old-fashioned racists, endorse fair and just treatment of all groups. Second, despite their conscious good intentions, aversive racists unconsciously harbor feelings of uneasiness toward those of other races (e.g., Blacks) and thus try to avoid interracial interaction. Third, when interracial interaction is unavoidable, aversive racists experience anxiety and discomfort, and consequently they try to disengage from the interaction as quickly as possible. Fourth, because part of the discomfort that aversive racists experience is due to a concern about acting inappropriately and appearing prejudiced to themselves and others, aversive racists strictly adhere to established rules and codes of behavior in interracial situations that they cannot avoid. Finally, their feelings will get expressed, but in subtle, unintentional, rationalizable ways that disadvantage minorities or unfairly benefit the majority group. Nevertheless, in terms of conscious intent, aversive racists intend not to discriminate against people of color—and they behave accordingly when it is possible for them to monitor the appropriateness of their behavior.

Recent research in social cognition has yielded new techniques—such as the Implicit Association Test, which uses response times to pairs of stimuli—for tapping the “implicit” stereotypic or evaluative (e.g., good–bad) associations that people have toward other groups, but possibly without full awareness. These techniques are very useful for distinguishing between aversive racists, who endorse egalitarian views and unprejudiced ideologies but harbor implicit racial biases, and unprejudiced people, who also endorse egalitarian values but do not have significant implicit prejudice or stereotypes. Consistent with the aversive racism framework, whereas the majority of Whites in the United States appear “nonprejudiced” on self-report (explicit) measures of prejudice, a very large proportion of Whites also demonstrate implicit racial biases. Overall, studies have found that Whites' generally negative implicit attitudes and stereotypes are largely dissociated from their typically more positive overt expressions of their attitudes and beliefs about Blacks.

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