Do You See What I See? Effects of Group Consciousness on African American Women's Attributions to Prejudice

Abstract

This study examined the effects of three types of group consciousness among African American women (ethnic, feminist, and womanist) on prejudice attributions and appraised personal significance (centrality) of a negative intergroup event. African American female college students (N = 123) imagined themselves in an audiotaped scenario in which they overheard two European American male classmates make negative evaluations of them. The scenario provided no cause for the negative evaluations and no references to race or gender. Multiple regression analyses revealed that higher ethnic and womanist consciousness were related to increased prejudice attributions and greater centrality appraisals ( p < .05), while feminism had no effect. Results suggest that womanist consciousness may be more relevant than traditional feminist consciousness in predicting African American women's perceptions of prejudice.

Perceived Sexist Events and Psychological Distress of Sexual Minority Women of Color

“…rated perceived sexism as more stressful than women who did not identify as feminist with their sample of racially and ethnically diverse women (sexual orientation not reported). Similarly, African American college student women who endorsed womanism were more likely to appraise a negative intergroup interaction (e.g., prejudice event) as personally relevant (King, 2003). Because stressors appraised as more personally relevant are better predictors of emotion (e.g., anger, anxiety, sadness; Smith, Haynes, Lazarus, & Pope, 1993), King (2003) inferred that women with higher womanism identity would report greater levels of stress associated with their awareness of multiple discrimination experiences and inequality.…”

School-Based Racial and Gender Discrimination among African American Adolescents: Exploring Gender Variation in Frequency and Implications for Adjustment

“…Researchers have established that even infrequent or minor occurrences of racial discrimination may result in diminished psychological well-being (Klonoff and Landrine 1995), lowered self-esteem (King 2003), and higher depressive symptoms, anger, problem behaviors, and psychiatric symptoms (e.g., Fisher et al 2000; Greene et al 2006; Sanders-Phillips 2009), as well as lower academic motivation and achievement (e.g., Chavous et al 2008; Wong et al 2003). …”

What About Disillusionment? Exploring the Pathways to Black Nationalism

“…If a member of a marginalized group believes that she has personally experienced discrimination (or if she thinks that institutional practices continue to treat her group unfairly), this too is likely to prompt a form of dissatisfaction with the current or future state of group relations that increases the attractiveness of nationalist ideologies. There is some evidence of this, for recent studies confirm a link between feelings of group identification and political exclusion and sentiments of group consciousness among Asians and Latinos (see Chong and Kim 2008;Sanchez 2008) and women (Foster 1999;King 2003). More research should be done to determine how generalizable the disillusionment and linked hypotheses are to the study of ethnic and gender nationalism.…”