“It’s just a color of the skin” : How Black and White Parents Justify Racial Sameness Perception

Finn Wintz and Dr. Leoandra Onnie Rogers

Northwestern University

BACKGROUND “MY LIFE WOULD BE THE SAME” CODING SCHEME DISCUSSION

● Color-blindness: the downplaying or denial of the ● Very similar themes and frequencies for
social, political, and/or economic significance of
Black and White participant responses.
race in society.
● Color-blind has become a leading approach for ● Parents justify color-blindness using
promoting racial equality (Apfelbaum et al., 2010). several lines of qualitatively distinct
● Studies suggest this color-blind approach is reasoning.
counterproductive to achieving racial equality ● Significantly more White responses for
(Apfelbaum & Sommers, 2008; Apfelbaum et al., 2010).
“The Human Race” than Black responses.
● Parents transmit racial attitudes and perspectives
to their children, including this color-blindness ● Most common justifications of racial
perspective (Hughes et al., 2006). sameness:
○ “Power Of Me” with 30.18%
RESEARCH QUESTIONS ○ “Generality” with 21.40%
○ “Erasure” with 20.70%.
● How do Black and White parents discuss notions of
color-blindness when reflecting on their own racial ● Most of these respondents uphold existing
experience in the world? racial hierarchies.
● Among parents who report that “life would be the
same” regardless of race, what themes emerge in their
explanations? FUTURE QUESTIONS
● Does the content or prevalence of these themes vary ● Given parents’ varied color-blindness
across Black and White parents? justifications, how do these reasonings
correlate with the responses and
RESULTS perspectives of their children?
METHOD
● Do these observed patterns generalize to
● Data: Drawn from the On Parenting About Race Study
(On PAR study) other races/ethnicities?
● Sample: Black (n=359) and White (n=389) parents of ● What types of interventions can shift this
children ages 8-11 years perspective to a frame that resists
● Question: Participants were asked the following 2 part structural racism?
question.
How do you think your life
would be different if you were REFERENCES
Black/White? Apfelbaum, E. P., Pauker, K., Sommers, S. R., & Ambady, N. (2010). In Blind Pursuit of Racial Equality? Psychological
Science, 21(11), 1587–1592. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610384741
Apfelbaum, E. P., Sommers, S. R., & Norton, M. I. (2008). Seeing race and seeming racist? Evaluating strategic
colorblindness in social interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(4), 918–932.
1. Multiple choice: “Better”, “The same”, or Qualitative https://doi.org/10.1037/a0011990
Hughes, D., Rodriguez, J., Smith, E. P., Johnson, D. J., Stevenson, H. C., & Spicer, P. (2006). Parents’ ethnic-racial
Other
“Worse” socialization practices: A review of research and directions for future study. Developmental Psychology, 42(5),
747–770. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.42.5.747

2. Open-ended prompt: Explain why

● Focus: Parents who answered: My life would be “The ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
same” Dr. Leoandra Onnie Rogers
● Participant demographics: 38.1% of participants Sarah Eisenman
responded “The same”. Closed
○ 111 Black parents, 174 White parents Questionnaire
The D.I.C.E. Lab

● Analysis: Thematic analysis used to develop inductive Dr. Andrew Meltzoff

(University of Washington, Infant and Child Studies Lab)
coding scheme. Subcodes created first, then grouped
Dr. David Chae
into main codes. (Tulane, SHAPE Lab)