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

Second, help can be given for both egotistic and altruistic motivations. Worchel (1984) describes the dark side of helping. Although aid may bring about positive outcomes, under certain conditions, it defines a power hierarchy. The donor is cast in the role of a powerful figure, whereas the recipient is relegated to the position of neediness and low power. Pratkanis (2000) describes the helping role as establishing a dependency relationship, with the supplicant reliant on the good graces of the donor and expected to accept aid unquestioningly and with gratitude. Similarly, Batson (1991) argues that helping can be motivated by egoistic concerns--that is, helping to make oneself feel good and look good in the eyes of others. However, not all helping has a dark side. Worchel (1984) argues that cooperation, or the mutual working together for a common goal, does not necessarily create a power hierarchy. Cooperation requires mutual and equal exchange between parties and thus does not create the dependency relation ship found in some forms of help. To illustrate the point, Worchel, Wong, and Scheltema (1989) found that, after a competition, an offer of cooperation improved intergroup attraction, whereas an offer to help led to negative intergroup relations. In a similar vein, Batson (1991) argues that help can sometimes be altruistic--that is, given with the primary motivation of increasing another's welfare. This is most likely to occur when a person empathizes with another person seen as similar on important dimensions. Thus, just as the nature of affirmative action as help affects the well-being of the target or recipient, it also affects the psychology of the donor.

Third, the decision to help and how to help is made, at least in the United States, within what Jones (1997) calls a culture of racism. According to Jones, cultural racism is the wholesale emphasis through individual prejudice and societal institutions of the superiority of one race over another. The assumption of superiority of Whites over Blacks serves as a constant background factor in the decision to help, providing the norms and stereotypes that determine when help is appropriate, in what form, and what will be the consequences to those who might help.

Taken together, these three factors result in three routes of helping or delivering affirmative action. First, the potential helper can reject the opportunity to lend assistance. In terms of helping as affirmative action, this rejection is most likely to occur when the derogation of an outgroup helps the White person deal with a threat to self-esteem. The use of minorities as scapegoats triggers a social psychological process in which the White person must adopt an increasingly narrow and aggressive self-identity. In the second route, help is (sometimes) begrudgingly given as a result of a basic conflict faced by White Americans: on the one hand, their creed says that the negative effects of racism on Blacks should not be tolerated, and yet on the other hand, the culture of racism prevents them from acting. The result is ambivalent aid that maintains the current power relationships. (It is this form of aid that the recipients of affirmative action find most threatening.) Such aid leaves White souls with a fu ndamentally unresolved dilemma and in serious danger of actually believing that they are superior to other races. Finally, help can be rendered as cooperation or, in this case, as working together toward the goals of a democratic society. Helping an outgroup member is seen not as a form of remedial care but as a basic responsibility of a citizen in a democracy to protect the rights of minorities and thus one's own rights. The antecedents of this form of affirmative action include a sense of inclusion and empathizing with the outgroup member and a devotion to democratic principles. The consequence is the opportunity to learn from diverse others and to grow and develop as a person.