Abstract
Historically, the racialized members of the society, which include Black people, face different forms of prejudices and stereotypes due to conscious and unconscious attitudes or behaviors that stem from social discrimination, also known as microaggression. The society is known for its use of racial categorization to classify individuals based on their personal characteristics such as skin color. As such, people's racialized identity determines the way they are socially perceived, socially accepted, and the form of social relations they will receive from the dominance. This study uses the social dominant theory, social dominance orientation theory, and racial battle fatigue theory to examine how the minoritized individuals, in general, continue to face different forms of conscious and unconscious derogatory attitudes from other races due to their racialized identity. This study uses secondary data from the Project Implicit.org from Harvard University implicit bias dataset to examine if there is any difference in the ways one feels (either warm or cold).
TopIntroduction
Human beings have been classified into different racial categories. Research has shown that race does not have any physical nor inherent meaning, rather, that race is a social construct that is used for the main purpose of detecting social rules and how to deal with a particular racial group. Racial categorization involves social and motivational factors that are not immediately evident. Richeson & Sommers (2016) argue that race is a social construct phenomenon that is historically linked to social discrimination. Research has compellingly shown that race is at the centrality of how Americans organize and hold their social perception, social acceptance, and social relations of other racial groups including the Black people. As a result, the intergroup relations in the U.S. are mostly organized around physical characteristics such as skin color (Telles & Paschel, 2014). This skin color paradigm continues to shape the American’s understanding of human nature, relations, and values between the in-group and the out-group, where the in-group are the dominant group and the out-group, the minority groups. Research has shown that Black people are the most inferior racial group due to in-group’s stereotypic attitudes and beliefs about them to be less than humans (Goff, 2008). Meanwhile, the study has shown that stereotypic judgments that the in-group makes about the out-group could be acquired solely based on the cognitive information processing mechanisms known as illusory correlation (Hamilton & Gifford, 1976). Also, the study illustrates that illusory correlation demonstrates the differential perception of the out-groups based on the way they perceive and process information about the outgroup, in which if the perceiver does not establish any salient event about the out-group, will develop a negative stereotype about the out-group. This negative interpretation of the out-group as research has demonstrated, mostly impact Black people in particular, Chen et al. (2018) assert through the one-drop law that anyone born of one Black parent is racially categorized as Black. Expanding more on this paradigm, Richeson & Sommers (2016) use the social dominance theory (SDO) to show that the existence of group-based social hierarchies in intergroup group relations and the hierarchical levels of human categorization are both detected and maintained by the dominant group. Similarly, through the theoretical frame of social dominance orientation, Hudson et al (2019) demonstrate that the dominant group uses the social hierarchy to maintain power and control over the minorities (in-group). This study shows that racial categorization and its different forms of classifications perpetually subject the out-group (the minorities), to inferiority. Smith (2003), through the racial battle fatigue theory analyzes that race-based prejudices, which is also in the form of microaggression, have social, mental, physiological, and behavioral adverse impacts on the racialized members of the society, including Black people.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Intergroup Relations: Interaction of people in different social groups.
Implicit Bias: This is the unique kind of cultural capital possessed by parents of Color, particularly those of low-socioeconomic status, which they use to achieve school success. This is different from the kind of cultural capital used by middle-class families for school success.
Racial Battle Fatigue: The social, behavioral, psychological, and physiological stress responses due intergroup relation biases.
Black Americans: Anyone living in America who is of African descent.
Minoritized Members: The group members who are treated unequally in the society because of their physical and cultural differences.
Social Dominance Theory (SDT): Examined how inequality is maintained against the subordinate groups through the use of disproportionate social hierarchies.
Social Relations: Interactions between two or more people.
Social Dominance Orientation (SDO): The desire and patterns of behavior to support social hierarchy to maintain one’s in-group superiority to the out-groups.
Microaggression: Any form of daily verbal, behavioral, or/and environmental degradation be it intentional or unintentional, which communicate derogatory, hostile racial insults and slights.
Racialized Group: Those group of people whose identities have a particular assigned race-based label.
Illusory Correlation: A false perception about a person, behavior, or event, even without the existence of such relationships.