In this commentary, Stone Center postdoctoral scholar Bennett Callaghan explains why discussing the existence of inequality isn’t enough to change public opinion, and can even backfire.
From high-profile instances of anti-Black and anti-Asian American and Pacific Islander violence to the stark racial disparities in Covid-19 infection and death rates, the events of the past year have surfaced the racial inequalities that pervade every domain of life in the United States. In the socioeconomic domain, researchers have highlighted not only how racial inequality has contributed to the disparate impacts of Covid-19, but also how the pandemic itself has worsened such disparities
Given the urgency of these issues and their current prominence in the national conversation, policymakers, the media, and other key communicators have an opportunity — if not a mandate — to discuss racial inequality openly and frankly. Social-psychological research into perceptions of inequality may provide guidance for doing so. This research suggests that those seeking to educate and change minds should not simply point out the existence of racial inequalities, but also convey how these inequalities arise. In addition, the most effective messages are often those that focus attention on the structures that maintain racial inequality: racial inequities in school funding, over-policing, and decreased home values stemming from racist New Deal-era redlining policies, to name a few.
A series of studies suggest that Americans generally recognize the existence of racial inequality but still underestimate — often substantially — its magnitude. For instance, most of these studies investigating economic racial disparities concern the Black-white wealth gap, one of the largest and most persistent disparities. Depending on how perceptions are elicited, survey respondents estimate that a typical Black American household owns between $40 and $90 for every $100 in wealth held by a typical white American household. The actual number is in fact around $11. Those who are most privileged (white, higher-income, and, particularly, higher-income white Americans) tend to underestimate this gap the most, but undue optimism regarding it appears to be the norm rather than the exception.
Overall, these studies reveal a consistent and stubborn tendency to overestimate racial wealth equality in the United States, which speaks to the power of the social and psychological forces that allow Americans to remain uninformed about racial inequality. These include a lack of education on the topic, the sheer inconceivability of the true size of these gaps, and reliance on culturally dominant and optimistic narratives emphasizing equal opportunity and constant progress toward racial equality.
Messages about racial inequalities thus need to clearly and explicitly communicate relevant information, such as statistics on the size of the Black-white wealth gap. Even then, recipients may find it difficult to make sense of this newly learned information without an explanatory framework in which to do so. Specific facts may fade from memory, and many individuals may eventually revert back to their previous patterns of misperception, particularly if they return to the same contexts or frames of mind that allowed for these misperceptions in the first place.
Worse yet, simply providing information about large racial disparities, in isolation, may cause unexpected consequences. For instance, informing white Americans about racial disparities in incarceration can increase support for the types of law enforcement policies (such as habitual offender or “three-strikes” laws) that create these disparities. The authors of one study reasoned that exposure to these inequalities, without discussion of the racist policing practices that cause them, can reinforce racial stereotypes that link Black Americans and crime. Information about large racial economic gaps may similarly risk reinforcing stereotypes, held particularly by majority white audiences, that in effect blame Black Americans themselves for these inequalities.
These scholars suggest that informative messages should not only communicate information about racial inequalities themselves, but also provide — or at least make salient — the context for how these inequalities arise. With respect to economic racial disparities, a key aspect of this context includes the types of structural barriers to economic opportunity mentioned earlier, all of which create an uneven playing field for Americans of various racial backgrounds pursuing the American Dream. Similarly, research shows that providing data that speak to the existence of unequal opportunities for success (for instance, historical trends demonstrating the concentration of income among the wealthiest individuals over time) can lead Americans to question the fairness of our current economic system and boost support for, rather than create backlash against, policies that address economic inequality.
Along with colleagues Leilah Harouni, Cydney H. Dupree, Michael W. Kraus, and Stone Center Affiliated Scholar Jennifer Richeson, I conducted, as part of my doctoral dissertation, some preliminary research investigating whether a short intervention designed to capitalize on these insights could enduringly improve the accuracy with which Americans perceive the Black-white wealth gap. Initial results suggest that messages designed to highlight the structural components of racial inequality were most effective at producing long-standing (over a year) reductions in Americans’ tendency to overestimate Black-white wealth equality. However, the effectiveness of this one-time intervention began to wane over time.
Therefore, educators, journalists, activists, and political leaders may be able to enduringly shift Americans’ understanding of — and perhaps even desires to address — racial inequality, but they might need to craft their messages and communication strategies carefully. Moreover, though racial inequality has recently received a large share of national attention, there is no guarantee that this level of engagement will continue. Larger-scale and more effective interventions to educate the public need to be persistent, and change is likely to be slow.
After all, racial inequalities preceded the events of 2020, and they will remain after the masks have come off, the restaurants and bars have fully opened, and many of us return to lifestyles that resemble what was considered “normal” before 2020. Absent large structural change, the influence of myriad forms of racial inequality may continue to be as deadly as the pandemic itself. Messages about the structural causes of racial inequality can hopefully help cultivate an American public that is both more well informed and motivated to confront these pressing challenges. To communicate these messages effectively, we must sustain and — most importantly — contextualize the moment of racial reckoning we find ourselves in now.
About the Author:
Bennett Callaghan is a social psychologist who researches inequality’s influence on politics and public opinion. His work was previously featured in a research spotlight: “Competence in Politicians Is Valued Differently by Voters Across the Socio-Economic Spectrum.”