Internalized Racism: A Systematic Review of the Psychological Literature on Racism's Most Insidious Consequence

Abstract

Racism is often thought of as existing and operating at the interpersonal and institutional levels. One aspect of racism that has been relatively forgotten, however, is its internalized component: racism that exists and operates at the internalized level. Surprisingly, even psychology—the field that is arguably best equipped to study the internalized component of racism—seems to have lagged in investigating and addressing this construct. Thus, we conducted a systematic literature review of psychological work on internalized racial oppression to better understand what is currently known, what the recent surge in scholarship has contributed, and where the research and service gaps are in order to identify areas for future growth. Overall, psychological attention on internalized racism seems to be increasing, and there have been some exciting conceptual (e.g., cognitive behavioral conceptualization, moving toward “appropriated racial oppression”) and empirical (e.g., development of scales, correlates with mental health variables) developments. However, our review also revealed a need for more work that: (1) utilizes qualitative or mixed methods; (2) focuses on the experiences of different racial and ethnic groups; (3) investigates how internalized racism intersects with other forms of internalized oppression; (4) clarifies the connection of internalized racism with other theoretically similar phenomena; and (5) incorporates social justice and advocacy in clinical and community services to balance unequal power dynamics that perpetuate racism—the root cause of internalized racism.

The Acquisition of Gender Stereotypes about Intellectual Ability: Intersections with Race

“…Less research has brought in-as we did in the current study-additional social identities that perceivers might hold beyond those targeted by the stereotypes under investigation (e.g., the stereotypes that White participants vs. participants of color have about men and women). Although gender stereotypes are widely endorsed (e.g., Glick et al, 2000;Williams & Best, 1990), there is also some evidence that perceivers' race matters (e.g., Dugger, 1988;Nosek et al, 2007;O'Brien et al, 2015; see also David, Schroeder, & Fernandez, 2019). For example, O'Brien et al (2015) found that Black women were less likely than White women to implicitly associate STEM with men (see also Evans, Copping, Rowley, & Kurtz-Costes, 2011), and these implicit stereotype differences predicted Black women's greater likelihood of majoring in STEM fields relative to White women.…”

“…Less research has brought in—as we did in the current study—additional social identities that perceivers might hold beyond those targeted by the stereotypes under investigation (e.g., the stereotypes that White participants vs. participants of color have about men and women). Although gender stereotypes are widely endorsed (e.g., Glick et al., ; Williams & Best, ), there is also some evidence that perceivers’ race matters (e.g., Dugger, ; Nosek et al., ; O'Brien et al., ; see also David, Schroeder, & Fernandez, ). For example, O'Brien et al.…”

Forging Diversity‐Science‐Informed Guidelines for Research on Race and Racism in Psychological Science

“…Specifically, publications in these journals commonly include samples from racial and ethnic minorities, which can assist researchers in developing theoretically informed hypotheses that do not simply anchor on research findings from racial majority populations. For example, this issue of the Journal of Social Issues includes articles with racially and ethnically diverse participant samples (Albuja, Gaither, Sanchez, Straka, & Cipollina, 2019;Castillo-Lavergne & Destin, 2019;Jaxon, Lei, Shachnai, Chestnut, & Cimpian, 2019) or articles that review research examining mostly racial and ethnic minority individuals (David, Schroeder, & Fernandez, 2019;Ozier, Taylor, & Murphy, 2019). The authors of these papers also reflect racially and ethnically diverse research teams.…”

The Associations Between Internalized Racism, Racial Identity, and Psychological Distress

“…Internalized racism is conceptualized as the product of systems of privilege and societal values that, over time, erode an individual's sense of value and undermine the collective action of a minority racial and/or ethnic group (Jones, 2000). Scholars argue that internalized racism represents a multidimensional construct, distinct from racial discrimination (e.g., Bailey et al, 2011;David et al, 2019), that includes: belief in a biased representation of history (acceptance of distorted historical facts that favor the White majority; Clarke, 1991), internalization of negative stereotypes (accepting the negative stereotypes about African Americans; Cokley, 2002), and alteration of physical appearance (an individual's conscious or unconscious desire or attempts to change their appearance to fit a Eurocentric aesthetic including perceptions of hair; Parmer et al, 2004). Clark and colleagues' (1999) biopsychosocial model of racism posits that racism results in psychological and physiological stress responses that can be linked to negative psychological wellbeing, and Jones ' (2000) model categorizes internalized racism as a stressor for African Americans.…”