Zero-Sum Beliefs of Racial Progress

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sylvia Perry

With diversity rising in the United States, do people believe that progress for Black Americans means increased discrimination against White Americans? Despite prior evidence of such “zero-sum” beliefs, a provocative new study by Earle and Hodson challenges this narrative with large, nationally representative samples.

2017 ◽  
Vol 114 (5) ◽  
pp. 915-920 ◽  
Author(s):  
Debra Umberson ◽  
Julie Skalamera Olson ◽  
Robert Crosnoe ◽  
Hui Liu ◽  
Tetyana Pudrovska ◽  
...  

Long-standing racial differences in US life expectancy suggest that black Americans would be exposed to significantly more family member deaths than white Americans from childhood through adulthood, which, given the health risks posed by grief and bereavement, would add to the disadvantages that they face. We analyze nationally representative US data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth (n= 7,617) and the Health and Retirement Study (n= 34,757) to estimate racial differences in exposure to the death of family members at different ages, beginning in childhood. Results indicate that blacks are significantly more likely than whites to have experienced the death of a mother, a father, and a sibling from childhood through midlife. From young adulthood through later life, blacks are also more likely than whites to have experienced the death of a child and of a spouse. These results reveal an underappreciated layer of racial inequality in the United States, one that could contribute to the intergenerational transmission of health disadvantage. By calling attention to this heightened vulnerability of black Americans, our findings underscore the need to address the potential impact of more frequent and earlier exposure to family member deaths in the process of cumulative disadvantage.


1998 ◽  
Vol 83 (1) ◽  
pp. 319-327 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter R. Schumm ◽  
Farrell J. Webb ◽  
Stephan R. Bollman

In 1972, Bernard argued that marriage was good for men and bad for women. Subsequent research noted that wives, on average, reported lower marital satisfaction than husbands. Furthermore, when differences within couples existed on marital satisfaction, the wife was usually the less satisfied spouse; however, most previous studies of the gender/marital satisfaction relationship had not been based on nationally representative samples. A nationally representative sample from the 1988 Survey of Families and Households was used to assess the relationship of gender with marital satisfaction. Within-couple analyses indicated that wives were less satisfied with their marriages than husbands and that, when substantial within-couple differences occurred with respect to marital satisfaction, the wife was usually the less satisfied spouse. Results provide at least small support for feminist assertions about the relatively adverse nature of marriage for women in the United States.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian A. O’Shea ◽  
Derrick G. Watson ◽  
Gordon D. A. Brown ◽  
Corey L. Fincher

What factors increase racial prejudice? Across the United States, increased exposure to Black Americans has been hypothesized to increase White Americans’ prejudicial attitudes toward Black Americans. Here we test an alternative explanation: People living in regions with higher infectious disease rates have a greater tendency to avoid out-groups because such avoidance reduces their perceived likelihood of contracting illnesses. Consistent with this parasite-stress hypothesis, we show that both White and Black individuals ( N > 77,000) living in U.S. states in which disease rates are higher display increased implicit (automatic) and explicit (conscious) racial prejudice. These results survived the inclusion of several individual- and state-level controls previously used to explain variability in prejudice. Furthermore, showing disease-related primes to White individuals with strong germ aversion increased their explicit, but not implicit, anti-Black/pro-White prejudice. Domestic out-groups, not just foreigners, may therefore experience increased overt forms of prejudice when disease rates are high.


Author(s):  
Yasuhiko Saito ◽  
Shieva Davarian ◽  
Atsuhiko Takahashi ◽  
Edward Schneider ◽  
Eileen M. Crimmins

The Japanese have the highest life expectancy in the world while the United States (U.S.) has relatively low life expectancy. Furthermore, the Americans have relatively poorer health compared to the Japanese. Examination of the treatment of specific conditions such as hypertension in these two countries may provide insights into how the health care system con-tributes to the relative health in these two countries. In this study, we focus on the treatment of hypertension, as this is the most common condition requiring therapeutic interventions in se-niors. This study examines hypertension diagnoses and controls in nationally representative samples of the older populations (68 years old or older) of Japan and the U.S. Data come from two nationally representative samples: the Nihon University Japanese Longitudinal Study of Aging (NUJLSOA) (n = 2,309) and the U.S. Health and Retirement (HRS) Study (n = 3,517). The overall prevalence of hypertension is higher in Japan than the U.S. Undiagnosed hyperten-sion is about four times higher in Japan than in the U.S., while the control of blood pressure is more than four times higher in the U.S. than in Japan. Thus, the use of antihypertensive medi-cation is much more frequent and more effective in the U.S. The medical care system seems to be more effective in controlling hypertension in the U.S. than in Japan. This may be due to the more aggressive diagnosis and treatment of hypertension in the U.S.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence J. Zigerell

A widely-cited study reported evidence that White Americans reported higher ratings of how much Whites are the victims of discrimination in the United States than of how much Blacks are the victims of discrimination in the United States. However, much fewer than half of White Americans rated discrimination against Whites in the United States today to be greater or more frequent than discrimination against Blacks in the United States today, in data from the American National Election Studies 2012 Time Series Study or in preregistered analyses of data from the American National Election Studies 2016 Time Series Study or from a 2017 national nonprobability survey. Given that relative discrimination against Black Americans is a compelling justification for policies to reduce Black disadvantage, results from these three surveys suggest that White Americans' policy preferences have much potential to move in a direction that disfavors programs intended to reduce Black disadvantage.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence James Zigerell

A widely-cited study reported evidence that White Americans reported higher ratings of how much Whites are the victims of discrimination in the United States than of how much Blacks are the victims of discrimination in the United States. However, much fewer than half of White Americans rated discrimination against Whites in the United States today to be greater or more frequent than discrimination against Blacks in the United States today, in data from the American National Election Studies 2012 Time Series Study or in preregistered analyses of data from the American National Election Studies 2016 Time Series Study or from a 2017 national nonprobability survey. Given that relative discrimination against Black Americans is a compelling justification for policies to reduce Black disadvantage, results from these three surveys suggest that White Americans’ policy preferences have much potential to move in a direction that disfavors programs intended to reduce Black disadvantage.


2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-20
Author(s):  
Chanhaeng Lee

In this article, I argue that the demographic and political restructuring of city−suburb dynamics in the United States is key to understanding what happened in Ferguson, Missouri, in the summer of 2014. Ferguson, a once-vanilla suburb where the overwhelming majority of residents were white Americans, was deterritorialized from the 1970s onward into a suburb where black Americans became the majority group. However, the whites, as a demographic minority, were still in control and tried to reterritorialize the black suburb. I maintain that the inevitable result of this disjunction between the chocolate suburb and vanilla power was racial antagonism, which exploded in Ferguson in 2014.


2021 ◽  
pp. 194855062110564
Author(s):  
Ethan Zell ◽  
Tara L. Lesick

According to the Marley hypothesis, White Americans are more ignorant of historical racism than Black Americans, which explains their greater tendency to deny racism in the present. We extended the Marley hypothesis by testing whether it explains political differences in perception of racism among White Americans in the United States. Two preregistered studies measured participants’ knowledge of historical racism as well as their perception of present racism in individual cases and in society ( N = 463). White Republicans had less knowledge of historical racism and perceived less individual and systemic racism than White Democrats. Consistent with the Marley hypothesis, political differences in perception of individual racism were significantly mediated by knowledge of historical racism. These findings suggest that ignorance of historical racism may partly explain why White Republicans perceive less racism than White Democrats, and therefore extend the Marley hypothesis to the political realm.


2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard P. Eibach ◽  
Valerie Purdie-Vaughns

AbstractBarack Obama's election as the first Black president of the United States has stimulated much discussion about progress toward racial equality in the United States. Opinion surveys document that White Americans reliably perceive the rate of progress toward racial equality as greater than do Black Americans. We focus on two psychological factors that contribute to these diverging perceptions: (1) the tendency of White Americans and Black Americans to adopt different reference points to assess racial progress, and (2) the general tendency to frame social change as a zero-sum game in which Black Americans' gains entail losses for White Americans. We review research examining how these two factors contribute to racial polarization on the topic of progress toward equality. We also draw on excerpts from Barack Obama's speeches and writings to demonstrate that he often frames issues in ways that, our research suggests, has the potential to substantially bridge these racial divisions.


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