January 10, 2018
Martin Luther King Jr.
2018 special edition
Protests against racism erupted in Portland and across the nation this summer.
Bias Perceptions Grow
Amid Racial Progress
For some, Obama’s election upset social order
by Eric Tegethoff
The number of white Americans who believe
they face discrimination is on the rise, raising
the question of how this might affect the coun-
try.
According to a recent poll, 55 percent of
white Americans believe their group experienc-
es racial discrimination.
Clara Wilkins, an assistant professor of psy-
chology at Wesleyan University who studies
prejudice, says this perception has grown rap-
idly since Barack Obama was elected president
in 2008.
For many, Obama’s election was a sign of ra-
cial progress, but Wilkins says a subset of white
Americans saw this as upsetting the social or-
der.
Somewhat counter intuitively, her research
finds people who believe the country is fair
and just also are more likely to perceive dis-
crimination against white people in the wake of
Obama’s election.
“For people who think society is fair, they’re
the ones who sort of tend to think that the order
of society where whites have greater access to
wealth, power, status, etc. - that is legitimate
and it’s fair and it’s not based in bias,” she
states. “And so, if you reject those beliefs - you
think that it’s not fair - then those are the people
who actually welcome social change.”
As Wilkins notes, the reality is that vast in-
equalities in wealth and electoral representa-
tion still exist for racial minorities.
She says the growing number of hate groups
nationwide after Obama’s election is one of
the dangers from the perception of prejudice
against white people.
The Southern Poverty Law Center identifies
a number of white supremacist groups in Ore-
gon.
Wilkins and a colleague at Wesleyan have
been able to measure the growing perception
of bias.
In one of their studies, participants either
read an article on racial progress or one that had
nothing to do with race.
Those who read the article on racial progress
were more likely to believe white people expe-
rience discrimination.
And according to Wilkins, further research
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photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images