Modeling Determinants of White Racial Identity: Results from a New National Survey

Identity Form Matters: White Racial Identity and Attitudes Toward Diversity

“…In sum, there are congruencies between the identity forms proposed by Croll (2007), Helms (1984), Knowles and Peng (2005), Perry (2002), and Phinney and colleagues (2007). All of these researchers propose the existence of a weakly identified form (contact, White-as-norm, low, or diffuse), a strongly identified, prideful form that predicts anti-diversity attitudes (reintegration, post-cultural, defensive, or foreclosed), and a strongly identified, power-cognizant, form that predicts pro-diversity attitudes (autonomy, power-cognizant, progressive, or achieved).…”

“…Others have made this argument before, notably Croll (2007), Helms (1984Helms ( , 1993, Knowles and Peng (2005), and Phinney and colleagues (2007). None to our knowledge, however, have used identity forms to categorize participants a priori to predict varied attitudes toward diversity.…”

“…Many authors have suggested that racial identity is not simply a unidimensional continuous construct (e.g., Knowles & Peng, 2005;Leach et al, 2008). Others suggest that people with the same identification score on a given scale may have different beliefs about their group membership (Croll, 2007;Jackson & Smith, 1999). These differences may be due to variability in perceived identity content (Postmes & Jetten, 2006).…”

“…In addition, these three identity forms appear to explain variation in attitudes toward diversity. For example, Croll (2007) concluded that highly identified Whites tend to adopt a power-cognizant progressive or prideful defensive identity form that predicts very pro-diversity or very anti-diversity attitudes, respectively. In contrast, he reports that Whites with weak White identities tend to have relatively neutral attitudes toward diversity.…”

“…Croll (2007) categorized participants based upon their attitudes toward diversity, rather than by aspects of their White identification. Helms (e.g., Helms & Carter, 1991) did categorize people based upon their White identification, but did so using a heavily criticized measure (e.g., Rowe et al, 1994).…”