Racial ambiguity: Preferences, perceptions, and prejudice towards those who are beyond racial group boundaries
Skinner, Izabella
Citations
Abstract
The United States of America has a long history of discrimination against people of color. With past legislation such as the “one drop rule,†mixed-race individuals have also faced similar levels of prejudice and discrimination to their monoracial minority counterparts. Currently, biracial and multiracial populations have been growing at an exponential rate since the U.S. Census began allowing respondents to select multiple races. This research attempts to add to the current literature by investigating how the majority group (Caucasian) and monoracial minorities perceive and judge racially ambiguous individuals from a multitude of different racial makeups to provide more generalizable evidence of the treatment of multiracial individuals in America by asking 1) Do perceivers judge racially ambiguous/multiracial individuals based on racial stereotypes/ on a rule of hypodescent? 2) Does the majority group have better perceptions/ judgments of other majority group members than racially ambiguous/ multiracial individuals? To answer these questions, participants completed an online survey consisting of various cognitive tasks and questionnaires to determine their perceptions of racially ambiguous individuals to show how the results compare to their judgments of Caucasians. It was found that there were no significant differences in the perceptions of racial minorities and Caucasians, but white participants did report significantly higher positive emotionality towards other Caucasians.