Detecting Prejudice From Egalitarianism: Why Black Americans Don’t Trust White Egalitarians’ Claims

Abstract

Although White Americans increasingly express egalitarian views, how they express egalitarianism may reveal inegalitarian tendencies and sow mistrust with Black Americans. In the present experiments, Black perceivers inferred likability and trustworthiness and accurately inferred underlying racial attitudes and motivations from White writers’ declarations that they are nonprejudiced and egalitarian (Experiments 1 and 2). White writers believed that their egalitarianism seemed more inoffensive and indicative of allyship than was perceived by Black Americans (Experiment 1a). Linguistic analysis revealed that, when inferring racial attitudes and motivations, Black perceivers accurately attended to language emphasizing humanization, support for equal opportunity, personal responsibility, and the idea that equality already exists (Experiment 1b). We found causal evidence that these linguistic cues informed Black Americans’ perceptions of White egalitarians (Experiment 2). Suggesting societal costs of these perceptions, White egalitarians’ underlying racial beliefs negatively predicted Black participants’ actual trust and cooperation in an economic game (Experiment 3). Our experiments ( N = 1,335 adults) showed that White Americans’ insistence that they are egalitarian itself perpetuates mistrust with Black Americans.