Group Dominance Beliefs Connected to Interracial Stereotypes & Opposition to Transracial Adoption

Race, gender, religion, political party, sexual orientation, age, etc., no matter how you identify (or are identified by others) you have been exposed to, espoused or been enraged by a stereotype about your group (or perceived group). As such, it should come as no surprise that there are stereotypes concerning interracial relationships. It may shock you, or not, that scientists have investigated exactly who openly endorses these stereotypes.

Researchers investigated whether people who believed that one group should be dominate over other groups believed in stereotypes about interracial relationships[1]. Those who more strongly endorsed this social dominance perspective were more likely to also endorse negative stereotypes about interracial relationships (e.g., “White men who date Black women think Black women are exotic” or “Blacks who hate Whites hate themselves”). The research group suspected that interracial relationships pose a threat to the group separation that those high in SDO endorse in order to maintain the hierarchy. As such, denigrating interracial relationships could be understood to "legitimize" (read sarcastic air quotes) a race-based hierarchy. The authors were able to support their suspicions based on the data, but that may be where the obvious ends.

The researchers found that the relationship between these thoughts and stereotype endorsement was only true for White participants and not those who identified as Black. Furthermore, greater endorsement of the SDO among White Participants was also related to less support for interracial relationships and transracial adoption, but not among Black participants. That the same ideology can be held by two groups but have different implications was expected. This has been called the Ideological Asymmetry Hypothesis and has been tested by other researchers.

The authors were able to explain, in part, the attitudes toward interracial relationships for their Black participants.

Black participants that scored higher on a measure of Black Nationalist ideology - which stresses the uniqueness of being Black [2] - had less favorable opinions toward interracial relationships and transracial adoption, were less open to interracial dating, and held more stereotypical views of Black/White interracial relationships. It is worth noting that the researchers did not find an association between Black Nationalist Identity and SDO, suggesting that Black participants who were aware of the uniqueness of the African American experience and may have advocated that community concerns be addressed from within did not necessarily agree or disagree with the sentiment that any group should be dominant over others.

There is a lot going on in this study and it raises some interesting questions. Is there a comparable racial identity ideology for White participants as Black Nationalist is for Black participants? What does it mean to have group pride with no inclination that one group should dominate over another and what does that mean for interracial relationships?

References:

[1]Lalonde, R. N., Giguère, B., Fontaine, M., & Smith, A. (2007). Social dominance orientation and ideological asymmetry in relation to interracial dating and transracial adoption in Canada. Journal Of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 38(5), 559-572. doi:10.1177/0022022107305238

[2]Sellers, R. M., Smith, M. A., Shelton, J. N., Rowley, S. J., & Chavous, T. M. (1998). Multidimensional model of racial identity: A reconceptualization of African American racial identity. Personality And Social Psychology Review, 2(1), 18-39. doi:10.1207/s15327957pspr0201_2