Study: White people react to evidence of white privilege by claiming

greater personal hardships

David edwards
28 sep 2015 at 17:10 et
Researchers at Stanfords Graduate School of Business have found that white people
respond to evidence that they are privileged by their race by insisting that they face
greater hardships in life.
In a study published in the November issue of Journal of Experimental Social
Psychology, L. Taylor Phillips and Brian S. Lowery point out that progress on racial
equality is limited by the fact that many whites deny the existence of inequities.
Despite this reality, policy makers and power brokers continue to debate whether racial
privilege even exists and whether to address such inequity, the researchers noted. One
reason for this inaction might be an unwillingness among Whites to acknowledge racial
privilege acknowledgment that may be difficult given that Whites are motivated to
believe that meritocratic systems and personal virtues determine life outcomes.
However, claiming personal life hardships may help Whites manage the threatening
possibility that they benefit from privilege.
The researchers argued that understanding the reaction to evidence of racial inequality
was important because whites who did not feel that they personally benefited from their
ethnicity would be less willing to support policies that were designed to reduce racial
inequality.
Subjects in the study were separated into two groups. The group that was shown
evidence of white privilege claimed more hardships than those not exposed to evidence
of privilege, the study found.
A second experiment suggested that people claim more life hardships in response to
evidence of in-group privilege because such information is threatening to their sense of
self. Researchers observed that whites who read self-affirming statements before

completing the survey claimed less hardships, and they found that self-affirmations
could actually reverse the denial of white privilege.
Furthermore, Whites claims of life hardships mediated their denials of personal
privilege, supporting our hypothesis that hardship claims help people deny they
personally benefit from privilege that White privilege extends to themselves,
Phillips and Lowery wrote. Importantly, these denials of personal privilege were in
turn associated with diminished support for affirmative action policies policies that
could help alleviate racial inequity.
Researchers recommended that efforts to reduce racial inequalities also include the
education of advantaged populations.
Our work suggests that privilege reduction efforts might need to focus not only on
convincing or educating advantaged group members about privilege, but also on
reducing the feelings of self-threat this information induces, Phillips and Lowery
explained. The existence of hardships does not reduce racial privilege, since racial
privilege entails comparison to someone of a different race with equivalent hardships.
People may erroneously think privilege entails complete ease in life and that the
presence of any hardships denotes an absence of privilege.
In conclusion, the study postulated that whites may claim hardship to maintain not
only a positive sense of self, but also the material benefits associated with racial
privilege.
Whites claims of hardship might also serve to legitimize the racial advantages they
enjoy, and thereby justify a system that benefits their group.
Taken from Raw Story: http://www.rawstory.com/2015/09/study-white-people-react-toevidence-of-white-privilege-by-claiming-greater-personal-hardships/