Antiprejudice among White Americans and the Proactive Fight to End Discrimination Toward Black Americans

Despite social pressure for White Americans to be nonprejudiced, Black Americans still regularly experience discrimination. We argue that bias persists because although many White Americans espouse nonprejudiced beliefs, far fewer actively work to combat discrimination. Previous research on a newly developed scale of antiprejudice, or the belief that White people should proactively fight discrimination, indicates that higher levels of antiprejudice are associated increased proactive support among White people for multiple actions that would help put an end to discrimination. Drawing from research on prescriptive moral convictions (i.e., what people should do), we predicted that teaching White Americans four reasons why White people should be proactive in the fight against systemic racism would increase perceptions that White involvement is necessary in order for real change to occur and increase antiprejudiced beliefs. Results of a pilot study supported our predictions. Moreover, in a second study we replicated our results and extended them by demonstrating that our intervention not only increased perceptions about the necessity of White involvement and antiprejudice, it was also associated with a greater likelihood of volunteering for an equal rights organization.