Barriers to Biculturalism: Historical Negation and Symbolic Exclusion Predict Longitudinal Increases in Bicultural Policy Opposition

Abstract

The colonial ideologies of historical negation and symbolic exclusion (i.e., the “Dark Duo”) promote inequality between settler colonizers and Indigenous peoples by denying the contemporary relevance of past injustices and excluding Indigenous culture from the nation’s identity, respectively. Although their correlates are established, the temporal ordering of the relationship between the Dark Duo and bicultural policy opposition is unclear. We address this oversight by utilizing nine annual waves of panel data from a nationwide random sample of New Zealand adults ( N = 31,104) to estimate two multigroup RI-CLPMs using the Dark Duo to predict symbolic and resource-based policy opposition (and vice versa). Results revealed that within-person increases in historical negation and symbolic exclusion predicted subsequent increases in symbolic and resource-based bicultural policy opposition for both majority and minority ethnic groups. These relationships were, however, bidirectional, demonstrating a self-perpetuating cycle, whereby the Dark Duo undermines biculturalism and antibiculturalism strengthens the Dark Duo.