What Happens When Racism and Sexism Go Mainstream?

When do we express prejudices toward other groups? Social psychologists suggest that a key factor involves the degree to which the negative attitude in question is considered normative. That is, not all negative attitudes toward groups are considered to be nasty or unacceptable; some are considered normative and even supported (and thus likely to be expressed).

For instance, in a sample of American undergraduates, Crandall and colleagues (2002) found that most people considered it unacceptable to express negative attitudes toward Black and Indigenous populations, and especially unacceptable to be negative toward blind people. However, respondents felt that it is completely acceptable to express negative attitudes toward rapists, child abusers, men who beat their wives, and terrorists. And the correlation between perceived normativity of prejudice and personally held negative attitudes toward a group was r = .96 (that is, almost perfectly correlated)¹. We express negative attitudes toward groups when we perceive that it is normative, or socially acceptable, to do so.

This phenomenon has consequences for our current political landscape. Many people feel that President Donald Trump expresses views that are racist and sexist. His political opponents now openly label him as racist. In public polls, most Americans feel that Trump has made racial relations worse, and that he does not do enough to distance himself from white nationalists and disavow prejudice.

Regardless of your own views on his levels of racism or sexism, it is evident that communications that openly disparage marginalized groups have become more common and more frequently expressed lately, even by people of prominence (politicians, business people, celebrities) who ordinarily are considered pillars of the community. Does the normalization of prejudicial attitudes have an effect on hate crimes and acts of sexual violence?

The short answer is arguably “yes”. Consider the following trends in the immediate wake of the 2016 US Presidential election, where racial tensions were openly stoked for political gain, and bragging about the unwanted groping of women was dismissed as mere “locker-room” talk. FBI crime statistics indicate that hate crimes overall jumped 17% in 2017, with some groups particularly targeted (religious-based hate crimes were up 23%; anti-Semitism was up 37%). Shockingly, we have now learned, based on a Pentagon report, that sexual assaults in the military rose 38% from 2016 to 2018.

As a social scientist, I find these figures staggering and jarring. We typically observe much more modest rises and declines in violent crime data. What we are presently experiencing truly is cause for concern. Of course, the causes of such spikes in violence are likely to be complex and multifaceted. But the coarsening of public discourse, and the open refusal by some to distance themselves from prejudicial views, is plain to see and represents a disturbing trend from a psychological perspective. We should not get distracted in debates about whether these prejudicial views cause violence, or whether violence causes prejudicial views, or whether some third unknown variable is causing both to rise. (Those are interesting questions, but largely for social scientists like me to unpack). What is clear is that public norms about civility, and the acceptability of outgroup-disparaging views, have changed radically over the past few years, which has coincided with a staggering rise in behaviour that hurts other groups and risks destabilizing society.

Fortunately, the social psychology literature is also helpful in pointing to solutions. Norms are malleable, as are the perceptions of norms. In a previous column, I have stressed the importance of being anti-racist, not just non-racist. I argued that norms have a central role to play in mitigating bias, just as they do in fostering bias. Research shows that the presence of a single dissenting voice who expresses anti-racist views induces, in others, less acceptance of prejudice (Blanchard et al., 1994). Other research has shown that people adjust their own racial views to be more aligned with people in their social groups (Stangor et al., 2001). Put simply, if others around you disavow prejudice, you’re more likely to disavow prejudice in turn. Any effort, therefore, to lower the perceived acceptability of racism and sexism is likely to reduce expressions of prejudice in the public domain.

Footnote 1: A comparable correlation of .94 was found by Graziano and colleagues (2007)