Color Blind: Race and the Ethical Reasoning of Blacks on Journalism Dilemmas

This study used a controlled experiment to investigate the effects of a story subject's race on black journalism students' ethical reasoning by changing only the race of the people in the photographs. Contrary to what in-group and identification theories would predict, these black students did not show preference to people of their own race in ethical dilemmas; instead they treated both blacks and whites as equals. Seeing photographs also had an effect on ethical reasoning; those who saw photographs, regardless of race, made significantly better ethical decisions than those who did not.