The Significance of Affirmative Action for the Souls of White Folk: Further Implications of a Helping Model

Journal of Social Issues, Winter, 1999 by Anthony R. Pratkanis, Marlene E. Turner

Our helping model of affirmative action, derived from Nadler and Fisher's (1986) work on recipient responses to aid, is based on two premises: (a) given racial and gender stereotypes, affirmative action recipients are often viewed as in need of help (to obtain and maintain a desired status) and (b) some forms of help can be threatening to the recipient.

Affirmative action is threatening to the recipient when it (a) implies that the recipient lacks qualifications and is inferior, (b) appears or is made to appear to conflict with societal norms and values about when help is appropriate, and (c) does not concretely deal with the reasons for why help is needed in the first place--that is, the discriminatory barriers that resulted in the material disadvantage to the outgroup. Under these conditions, affirmative action can raise self-doubts in a recipient and produce defensive behaviors in an attempt to deal with the threatening situation. In the long run, recipients may disengage from the situation unless they can develop their own coping mechanisms. However, not all affirmative action is threatening to the recipient. Turner and Pratkanis (1994) find that affirmative action that is specifically directed at removing discriminatory barriers (as opposed to remedial efforts to reform the target) do not engender this self-doubt and can provide lasting benefits to bot h the recipient and the donor of affirmative action.

But What About the Souls of White Folk?

Interestingly, whereas much has been written about the effects of racism on the outgroup member, very little has been written on the psychological effects of being a racist (for an exception, see Bowser & Hunt, 1996). Certainly, there is a vast and important literature on how one becomes a racist (e.g., Aboud, 1988) and the nature of that prejudice (Allport, 1954; Dovidio & Gaertner, 1986). But what are the psychological effects of prejudice that accrue from holding this attitude? Does prejudice eat at and destroy the souls of White folk? Does it serve to constrain and limit the freedom of the donor of racism as it does that of the recipient? And what does true equality bring?

Perhaps fittingly, one of the first Americans to write about the potential effects of racism on Whites was Thomas Jefferson. In his Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson (1782/1944) argued for at least three effects of slavery on the White owner. First, slavery (and, we might add, other forms of racism) is marked by a master engaging in a "most unremitting despotism" (as Jefferson put it) and a slave whose submission is degrading. Jefferson was worried that children would see such an exchange and come to imitate and accept this behavior as normal. For Jefferson, this despot-submissive relationship was too reminiscent of the king-subject relationship dismissed by the American Revolution. Second, according to Jefferson, slavery transformed a nation into despots and their enemies; it destroyed the morals of the tyrant and the love of country of those held in bondage. Finally, slave labor allowed the creation of a leisure class and thus destroyed the industry of the White owner.