When coupled with anti‐egalitarianism, colour evasion predicts protection of the status quo during a university‐wide movement for racial justice

Abstract

Movements for racial justice on college campuses can have wide‐ranging implications for promoting justice and well‐being. In this research, we sought to better understand how the dominant ideology of colour evasion might serve to protect the inequitable status quo. Believing that ‘people should not see race anymore’ can have different implications for efforts to reduce racial inequities depending on how this belief system is construed. Although one perspective can promote efforts to reduce inequitable outcomes between groups, through another lens this colour‐evasive ideology can serve to strengthen existing inequalities. We examined whether adhering to colour evasion might be associated with protecting the status quo on a college campus for those students who endorse hierarchy among social groups. We tested these predictions during a large, university‐wide movement for racial justice. In a cross‐sectional study of students (N = 255), we found that, for relatively anti‐egalitarian, but not egalitarian, students, the more they endorsed colour evasion, the less they supported the Black Student Coalition's demands, the less social justice action they took, the less effective they deemed the demonstrations, the less satisfied they were with student leaders and the more they thought the demonstrations were promoting intergroup conflict. This work makes contributions to the social dominance theory and colour evasion literatures and student activism scholarship generally, as well as to applied work endeavouring to promote efforts to reduce racial inequities.