Thread by @docrussjackson

#Thread
Privilege: Effects of a White Privilege Message Intervention and Conservative Media Use on Freedom Threat and Racial Attitudes."

Summary of new research into the effectiveness of '#WhitePrivilege' messaging to white audiences in the USA.

tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108…

'White privilege' is a controversial phrase, which produces a wide range of responses, from offended dismissal to complete embrace.

For example, UK Minister for Equality, Kemi Badenoch said: "We don't want our teachers to give their white students lessons on White Privilege."

I can see why the phrase is problematic for some audiences, & how it can have a counterproductive impact eg implying to poor or otherwise struggling people that they are 'privileged' will cause a negative reaction. It is, nonetheless, easy to understand:

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1218101791369441281

The research contextualises racial/ethnic inequality in the USA:

Ethnic/racial minorities in the US (but also across the 'western' world, including here in Britain) - particularly African Americans - face an array of social & economic disadvantages compared to White Americans.

For example, African Americans are significantly more likely to suffer from poor health, encounter harsher legal penalties as juveniles, are over-represented in American prisons, & lag behind White people in accumulation of wealth/income.

However, attempts to address these various disparities are often met with resistance or indifference from White Americans, who are more likely to underestimate the extent of these disparities than other ethnicities, with many indicating that 'there are no differences'.

More importantly, over the course of the twenty-first century, & despite the overwhelming & reliable evidence across multiple important measures & outcomes, many White Americans have become more likely to believe that *they* face greater hardships than African Americans do.

Considering the gap in what White Americans believe about racial disparities & what the research shows, various tactics have been used to help White people understand their *relative* social/cultural advantages.

One strategy is to encourage White people to recognize their “privilege,” (benefits that certain social groups enjoy by being part of that group). However, research exploring the outcomes associated with communicating to White people about privilege offers contradictory findings.

For example, while teaching White Americans about privilege *can* increase their ability to identify specific racial inequities, it can also lead to less favourable racial attitudes & increased focus on their own hardships.

THIS study examines potential mechanisms at work in order to understand why these divergent effects exist.

First, it explores the conditions under which White Americans will either look to dismantle, deny, or distance themselves from racial privilege.

It also examines if Fox News viewing & White racial group identification affect reactions to a message focused on racial privilege.

Second, it examines if perceived threats to one’s freedom can help explain why certain White people react negatively to 'white privilege' messages.

There's a lot of fascinating detail & nuance in the original article which I'll leave out of this #THREAD (not least because it's a Twitter thread!) & instead briefly outline the experiment & then fast forward to the results & discussion offered by the authors.

338 White US residents were included in the online experiment. Just over half (50.7%) were women. Their ages ranged from 18 to 100 (M = 44; SD = 15).

31.4% identified as Democrat, 40.5% identified as Republican, & 24.9% reported that they did not identify with either party.

Participants read a short White privilege article & the control group did not. Participants were randomly assigned to article condition & (as a cover) participants were informed that they would be assigned to read 'a news article about a topic of national interest or no article'.

Basically, a large number of white people with different backgrounds & different news viewing habits, were given an 'intervention message' which comprised a short article around racial inequality from a popular news blog/website which was short & easy to digest.

To reiterate, this study set out to explore the conditions under which White privilege messages were likely to succeed or fail.

Unsurprisingly, those who read the message/article reported less unawareness of racial privilege & less unawareness of institutional discrimination.

Second, the results showed that if exposure to the racial privilege message produced a perceived *freedom threat* to participants, they were significantly more likely to deny that institutional racism & even blatant racism exist.

The study also examined how exposure to media that often dismisses White racial privilege (ie Fox News) affects heavy viewers.

I find this interesting because GB "News" has morphed into a British Fox News, & Murdoch's TalkTV, launching early 2022, will inevitably do the same.

The finding that exposure to the intervention message was directly linked to general acknowledgment of racial privilege & institutional discrimination speaks to the potential of White privilege messaging to reduce colorblind racism & to help dismantle structural differences.

This finding falls in line with what McIntosh (1989) proposed when she began advocating for greater racial privilege awareness.

Her argument was that learning about racial advantage would spur Whites to see racial inequities more systemically.

For example, understanding that White adults are more likely gain some benefit via their racial background should be linked to some understanding that African Americans along with other racial minorities face significant headwinds.

That noted, there are certainly conditions under which these messages around white privilege can & sometimes do backfire.

One of these risks is when White privilege messaging increases perceived 'freedom threat', a crucial component of psychological reactance.

Exposure to the intervention message predicted the potential for perceived freedom threat, & as this perceived threat increased, denial of blatant racism & unawareness of institutional discrimination also increased.

When a message target perceives a threat to freedom, they can react in a way that does more harm than good by adopting beliefs that deny racial prejudice: when White people feel they have faced a 'meritocratic threat', they can adopt a denial strategy regarding racial privilege.

In fact, the findings suggest that the reaction goes beyond denial as we found that certain White people became more racially antagonistic.

As such, attempts to reduce participants’ perceived threats to freedom in discussions about White privilege are warranted.

These observed boomerang effects are particularly interesting when considering the nature of the intervention article used in the current study: it was chosen because pretests had shown that the message was the most effective in generating awareness of White privilege.

With that noted, the article was informational in nature as it focused on the acknowledgment of White privilege existence. Specifically, the article offered seven separate explanations for the existence of White privilege.

The article did not make forceful arguments attempting to convince readers WP exists: it presented arguments AGAINST WP in first person (eg “I grew up poor") then presents explanations against that argument in second person (eg “WP is about benefits accrued by your Whiteness”).

Even with these quite banal explanations, a perceived 'freedom threat' resulted in the endorsement of attitudes which ignored racial disparities.

NOTE: only one message was used, so it is possible that the article was not representative of other types of interventions.

The finding that the White privilege article decreased unawareness of racial privilege was tempered by the moderating role of Fox News viewing.

Among heavy Fox News viewers, the article did not move the dial on awareness of racial privilege.

Thus, only the light & moderate Fox News viewers were responsive in the predicted direction (reducing unawareness of racial inequality) to the White privilege message & these effects persisted even when controlling for the political party affiliation of the respondent.

The effect Fox News viewership has on the reception of messages explaining racial privilege extends beyond one’s political orientation. These findings are particularly important as Fox News is the most watched cable news network in the USA, with an overwhelmingly White audience.

The researchers argue that these findings probably say something about the worldview of audiences of this network.

Based on previous research exploring how the network covers racial issues, this is not entirely surprising.

Fox News is known for dog-whistle political coverage, for explicitly dismissing/mocking 'White privilege', & its racial coverage reveals a consistent lens of “colour-blind” racism, with attempts to address racial inequities regularly classified as stoking “racial division”.

Thus, it is likely that Fox News viewers have chronically accessible schemata about racial issues that were used to process the White privilege messaging, leading heavy Fox News viewers to be resistant to understanding or even acknowledging racial privilege.

That is, when faced with a message explaining White privilege, the heavy Fox News viewers were simply not open to accepting or learning anything from the message.

Imho, this is a significant finding, which suggests a rethink for reaching FOX News (& thus GB News) viewers.

The overall results of the present study showed that a brief message intervention on White privilege resulted in a stronger awareness of racial privilege & institutional discrimination, which is promising for the development of 'White privilege' style interventions.

However, the researchers identified circumstances where these messages are less effective or even harmful.

First, that there is some risk in cueing freedom threat within these messages, even when the message is quite mild, & that there are carryover effects from these threats.

The participants who felt that their freedom was threatened exhibited boomerang effects & exhibited *more racist* attitudes.

Second, among those adults who were heavy Fox News viewers, reading the article did not change their opinions regarding White privilege.

Thus, future endeavors in discussing racial privilege with White Americans should avoid messages that provoke freedom threat, & they should take into consideration participants’ news consumption habits.