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

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Although White Americans increasingly express egalitarian views, how they express egalitarianism may reveal inegalitarian tendencies and sow mistrust with Black Americans (N=1335). Black perceivers accurately inferred underlying racial attitudes and motivations, likeability, and trustworthiness from Whites’ written declarations that they are nonprejudiced and egalitarian (Experiments 1-2). White writers believed their egalitarianism seemed more inoffensive and indicative of allyship than was perceived by Black Americans (Experiment 1A). Linguistic analysis revealed that Black perceivers accurately attended to language emphasizing humanization, support for equal opportunity, personal responsibility, and that equality already exists (Experiment 1B). We found causal evidence that these linguistic cues inform Black people’s perceptions and trust of White egalitarians (Experiment 2). Suggesting potential societal costs of these perceptions, White egalitarians’ underlying racial beliefs negatively predicted Black participants actual trust and cooperation in an economic game (Experiment 3). White Americans’ insistence that they are egalitarian itself perpetuates mistrust with Black Americans.