An uptick in U.S. White Americans’ structural understanding of racism alongside opposition to critical race theory (CRT) and acknowledgement of the historical and pervasiveness of racism reflects a social paradox. How is it that the U.S. White Americans can seemingly acknowledge structural racism without supporting its logical corollary arguments? CRT itself might have the answer in the form of interest convergence. CRT posits that U.S. White Americans only support aspects of anti-racist ideology that benefit their group, suggesting that something about supporting structural racism is beneficial. In two studies (N = 968), we test whether differences in the construal of structural racism in concrete versus abstract ways can help explain this paradox, assuming that construing structural racism in more abstract ways absolves the self, and one’s group, from racial wrongdoing. Across multiple operationalizations of abstraction (i.e.., the use of “I”, “we”, Brysbaert Concreteness Index, and a concreteness manipulation) we find partial evidence that abstraction leads to a reduction in support for the historic and endemic nature of racism for U.S. White but not Black Americans. We discuss the implications of our findings for the future of CRT and the fight for justice.

Previous research has shown that people hold an implicit gender inversion assumption regarding descriptive stereotypes of gay men and lesbian women. More specifically, people believe that the hobbies and preferences of gay men are similar to straight women, while lesbian women’s hobbies and preferences are similar to straight men. However, research to date has not provided a full understanding regarding the competencies of gay men and lesbian women when they engage in gender counter-normative activities. Across five studies (two pre-registered, N = 2454) we show a divergence between what gay men and lesbian women are expected to do and how well they are expected to do them. Gender inversion did not adequately explain in what domains people anticipated competence from gay men and lesbian women. Instead, gay men and lesbian women were seen as relatively incompetent compared to straight men and women across occupations (Studies 1A – C), skills (Study 2), and general domains (Study 3), particularly by straight people (Studies 1C and 3). Furthermore, this assumption was found implicitly (Studies 2 and 3), as even gay and lesbian participants were more likely to associate straight people with competence and gay/lesbian people with incompetence. We discuss the implications of these findings for gender inversion theory and the study of stereotypes more broadly.