Psychologists on the Harms of Color-Blind Racial Ideology

According to the psychologists who conducted a recent study, their discipline can significantly contribute to the elimination of systematic racism by first advancing our understanding of its causes.

Researchers have provided proof that ignoring structural racism increases racism, not decreases it.

To eradicate systemic racism, psychologists advise acknowledging it rather than dismissing or downplaying it.

Researchers examined 83 prior studies where specific types of color-blind ideology were found to enhance anti-Black perspectives and provide a pass to racist behaviors and attitudes in a review study that was published online on May 23 in the Journal of Counseling Psychology. More specifically, these undesirable consequences were caused by power evasion (the denial of racism), not necessarily by color evasion (ignoring race).

https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/cou-cou0000618.pdf

Counseling psychologists can aid in eradicating institutional racism by assisting people in better understanding the individual-level attitudes and behaviors that fuel anti-Black prejudice, according to the study's authors.

The study's principal investigator, Jacqueline Yi, a clinical-community psychology doctoral student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said in a press release that these results can inform best practices for mental health professionals and other people who work in industries like education, social work, and various nonprofits.

According to Yi, the denial of structural racism appears to be a significant obstacle to racial fairness since it promotes victim-blaming justifications for systematic inequity. The likelihood that white people and institutions would accept responsibility for the ongoing effects of structural racism decreases the more BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, and People of Color] persons are held responsible for racial inequality.

The effects of color and power evasion were studied. Separately

A belief system that guides one's understanding of and response to racial stimuli is referred to as "racial ideology" by psychologists. To conduct the study, the researchers collected data from 83 other investigations into the impact of color-blind racial beliefs on anti-Black prejudice and openness to racial variety or racial empathy.

The researchers divided color blindness into two categories: power evasion and color evasion. The first is emphasizing human similarities rather than differences due to racial group membership, or ignoring someone's race or ethnicity to lessen prejudice and potential conflict. The second, power evasion, involves downplaying and distorting institutional racism's existence. The current review's studies were all either concerned with power evasion, color evasion, or both.

The studies that were examined involved more than 25,000 individuals and were conducted between 1995 and 2019.

According to the review, attempting to "get over" or confront structural racism by using power evasion was ineffective and only served to increase anti-Black prejudice. However, there was no correlation between color avoidance and higher degrees of prejudice.

The researchers also concluded that people who denied structural racism were more likely to hold strong beliefs, such as that societal inequality is acceptable, and they reported fewer intentions to engage in social justice behaviors. They also found that the denial of structural racism was more closely linked to anti-Black prejudice than to prejudice against other people of color.

The study's shortcomings were recognized by the researchers. Since responses from study participants were not broken down by race or ethnicity, attitudes towards power and color evasion from Black, white, and non-Black people of color were pooled. Additionally, the majority of the analysis studies primarily included white participants.

The first step in addressing systemic racism is to better understand why it persists.

According to clinical psychologist and owner of the personal and professional coaching business Intentional Activities, Barbara Ford Shabazz, PsyD, deeper comprehension of the attitudes that lead to systemic racism would ultimately aid in its eradication. The author claims that "awareness and appreciation of the pernicious impacts of structural racism are not as ubiquitous as they could and should be."

Following the tragic death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, there were widespread demonstrations against racial violence against Black people. Derrick Johnson, president and chief executive officer of the NAACP, responded at the time, saying, "This is about the systemic and pervasive nature of racism in this nation that must be addressed."

In a 2020 New England Journal of Medicine paper, physicians made a similar argument that systematic racism is what causes racial disparities in COVID-19 infections and fatalities.

According to Dr. Shabazz, research like the latest study by Li and her team provides a foundation for addressing the particular mental health issues that victims of racism encounter and ultimately ending institutional racism.

According to Jocelyn Smith Lee, Ph.D., an assistant professor of human development and family studies at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro, "color-blindness may be an attractive ideology because it allows people who benefit from a racist society to ignore their privilege and lets them off the hook for contributing to it."

Dr. Smith Lee continues, "That method is equally damaging," even though the data from this research did not indicate that color avoidance contributes to anti-Black attitudes.

Shabazz concurs. "White comfort, power, and privilege are further reinforced by the purposeful avoidance of recognizing the diversity and [not] looking at racial imbalances, making this approach utterly counterproductive," the author writes.

The researchers suggested future research objectives based on their findings, including creating a tool to gauge color-blind racial ideology, examining the effects of color-blindness across ethnic groups, and researching the causes.