The tendency of some white people to go silent or act “colorblind” onthe topic of race could do more harm than good, new research shows.
White people – including children as young as 10 – may avoid talking about raceso as not to appear prejudiced, but that approach often backfires asblack people tend to view this approach as evidence of prejudice,especially when race is clearly relevant.
These results are from two separate sets of experiments led by researchers from Tufts University and Harvard Business School. Their findings are reported in the October issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and the September issue of Developmental Psychology.
“Efforts to talk about race are fraught with the potential for misunderstandings,”said researcher Evan Apfelbaum, a Ph.D. candidate at Tufts University.”One way that whites try to appear unbiased is to avoid talking aboutrace altogether, a tendency we refer to as strategic colorblindness.”
A 2004 Pew Research Centerfor the People & Press survey revealed that race continues todivide Americans even though a lot of progress has been made in thepast 20 years. The number of Americans who say they have little incommon with people of other races is down to 13 percent (from 25percent in 1988); and the idea of interracial dating among blacks andwhites is now broadly accepted. Apfelbaum’s research, however, showsthat whites are still socially awkward around blacks on the topic of race.
No, you say it
In one of Apfelbaum’s studies, 101 white undergraduate students werepaired with either a white or black female partner who pretended to beanother participant. The pairs were presented with 30 photographs of facesthat varied in race, gender and background color. Each whiteparticipant’s objective was to guess which of the photographs thepartner was holding by asking as few yes-or-no questions as possible.
Even though asking about the race of the person in the photograph was asound strategy for completing the task, white participants were farless likely to do so with a black versus a white partner. Moreover,when the black partner was the first one to have a turn askingquestions, whether she mentioned race had a dramatic effect. Whiteparticipants whose black partner asked about race mentioned race ontheir own turn 95 percent of the time. When the black partner neverasked about race, white participants only did so 10 percent of thetime.
“There was clear evidence the white participants’ behavior wasinfluenced by the precedent set by their partner, but especially whenthat partner was black,” said Samuel Sommers, assistant professor atTufts. He worked with Apfelbaum on the research. “Whites arestrategically avoiding the topic of race because they’re worried thatthey’ll look bad if they admit they notice it in other people.”
Others’ reactions
The researchers also wanted to see how outsiders interpreted suchinteractions. In another experiment, 74 black and white collegestudents evaluated videos of whites engaging in the photo task. Theresults showed that whites’ effort to appear colorblind backfired.Black observers rated whites’ avoidance of asking about race as being evidence of prejudice.
What’s more, when the researchers showed silent video clips of whitesfrom the study to another group of individuals, those whites whoavoided asking about race were judged as less friendly, just on thebasis of their nonverbal behavior.
“The findings suggest that when race is clearly relevant, whites whothink that it is a wise social strategy to avoid talking about raceshould think again,” Apfelbaum said.
Kids do it too
Even children appear to adopt this strategically colorblind approach,Apfelbaum said. In another set of experiments, 101 white childrenbetween the ages of 8 and 11 were asked to perform a similar phototask.
The children were told that asking as few yes-or-no questions as possible would mean they would get a higher score on the task.
The results showed that the older children, ages 10 and 11, avoidedasking about race more than the younger children, even though this ledthem to perform less efficiently than their younger counterparts on thetask.
In a control version where all the faces in the photos were white, theolder children outperformed the younger children, as expected.
“This result is fascinating because it shows that children as young as10 feel the need to try to avoid appearing prejudiced, even if doing soleads them to perform poorly on a basic cognitive test,” said Kristin Pauker, a Ph.D. candidate at Tufts who also was involved in the research.
The authors associated with both studies said their findings offer several important implications.
“Our findings don’t suggest that individuals who avoid talking aboutrace are racists,” Apfelbaum explained. “On the contrary, most arewell-intentioned people who earnestly believe that colorblindness isthe culturally sensitive way to interact. But, as we’ve shown, bendingover backward to avoid even mentioning race sometimes creates moreinterpersonal problems than it solves.”