Derogatory labels are offensive words that can be reclaimed by a stigmatized group; however, the process of reclaiming can carry risks.
Issue
"Academics cannot stay silent about anti-Black racism, nor can they remain silent in the face of racial violence and injustice. We need to engage in the critical work to dismantle anti-Black racism within ourselves, others, and in the system."
-Jeannette Mejia, University of Florida Counseling Psychology Doctoral Student
In this blog post, I will discuss research showing how framing ethnic inequality in terms of White advantage versus minority disadvantage impacts how Whites and minorities understand inequality and thus how we should address inequality.
Race is a topic that has been explored throughout the history of social psychology research. Typically, this research has focused on how our conceptions (or preconceptions) of race affect our attitudes and behaviors. There is a long line of research examining phenomena such as prejudice, stereotypes, discrimination, in-group bias, stereotype threat, self-fulfilling prophecies, and a whole range of related issues. One could argue that an underlying assumption of this research is that all humans are fundamentally equal, regardless of race. In the academic world, there has been consistent support for this notion (Anderson & Nickerson, 2005; Sternberg, Grigorenko, & Kidd, 2005); however, folk notions of race, as a fundamental biological difference, still persist in the United States and many countries around the world (Jayarantne, Ybarra, Sheldon, Brown, Feldbaum, et al., 2006;Smedley & Smedley, 2005; Williams & Eberhardt, 2008).
Issue