“I Have a Dream” of a Colorblind Nation? Examining the Relationship between Racial Colorblindness, System Justification, and Support for Policies that Redress Inequalities

Abstract

One of Dr. Martin Luther King's most memorable quotes came from his famous "I have a dream" speech, which arguably called for a racially colorblind society. Today, colorblindness represents a complex ideology used in education, businesses, and governments, with both positive and negative implications for intergroup relations. On the one hand, colorblindness is used to promote fairness and equality between groups by asking people to ignore group membership and treat everyone the same. On the other hand, colorblindness serves a system-justifying function by holding minority groups responsible for their current disadvantages. The present research utilizes a nationally representative sample of majority group New Zealanders (N = 8,728) to examine the implications of colorblindness on support for policies that redress inequalities between the indigenous (Māori) and majority (European) population through resource redistribution and symbolic incorporation into the nation's identity. Additionally, we examine the indirect effect

Intersectional Oppression: Multiple Stigmatized Identities and Perceptions of Invisibility, Discrimination, and Stereotyping

“…In particular, more research involving larger samples of individuals who identify with three or more stigmatized groups is needed, as is more research involving a variety of designs, including experimental work. In addition, more work situated in cultures outside of the United States is needed in order to understand cultural influences on multiple stigmatization (e.g., Yogeeswaran, Verkuyten, Osborne, & Sibley, ).…”

System justification theory at 25: Evaluating a paradigm shift in psychology and looking towards the future

“…A central claim made by system justification theory is that people endorse system‐justifying beliefs – beliefs that legitimize, defend, and reinforce the status quo – in order to satisfy their epistemic, existential, and relational needs (Hennes et al ., ; Jost & van der Toorn, ). Accordingly, many belief systems have been argued to support the status quo including the protestant work ethic (Jost et al ., ), meritocracy (Jost, Pelham, Sheldon, & Sullivan, ; Sengupta & Sibley, ; Tan, Liu, Huang, & Zheng, ), belief in a just world (Jost & Burgess, ), colour‐blind ideology (Yogeeswaran, Verkuyten, Osborne, & Sibley, ), and conservatism (see Jost & Hunyady, ). Because the core aspects of a conservative belief system focus on opposition to change and acceptance of inequality (Jost, ), conservatism is ‘a prototypical system‐justifying ideology’ (Jost, Blount, Pfeffer, & Hunyady, , p. 63) that should be particularly effective at satisfying one's epistemic, existential, and relational needs.…”

It’s All in the Definition: Color‐Blind Interpretations of School Diversity

“…If there is evidence that color-blind conceptions of school diversity are a tool for justifying practices that might be perceived as racialized (picking whiter schools), it suggests that the ambiguity and malleability of the term diversity affords individuals the opportunity to "ignore" racialized practices involving schools. Language matters and in certain situations-such as when working to redress racial segregation-not specifically referencing race allows racism to persist because no one 470 Petts person or institution is found to be at fault (Mueller 2017;Perez and Salter 2019;Yogeeswaran et al 2018). A study in one California school found that because administrators were silent about race when talking publicly about issues in the school, there was no easy way to handle school racial inequalities (Pollock 2009).…”