Psychological Science Is Not Race Neutral

The Problem of Racial Ignorance

Researchers are, in fact, people first. This reality clearly reveals one fundamental challenge facing White authors, editors, and participants in the study of race: racial ignorance. Racial ignorance, a concept long explored in sociological traditions, refers to a general lack of knowledge about how race shapes the experiences of people in society (Mills, 2014; Mueller, 2020)—and it serves as both driver and consequence of the extreme Whiteness in psychology. A combination of structural and motivational factors conspire to heighten racial ignorance among White people relative to people of color. In structural terms, the U.S. context is set up so that racial segregation is the rule (Massey & Denton, 1993; Rothstein, 2017). Americans—White Americans especially—grow, live, and work in racially homogeneous neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces, spending relatively little time in integrated contexts. When integration is proposed (or even passed) as law, White people tend to actively resist these policies through collective action (Dubois, 1899/1973; Ewing, 2018; Shapiro, 2020; Shedd, 2015). The segregation that characterizes much of the U.S. context obscures the magnitude of racial inequality in society, allowing White people to go about much of their everyday lives without confronting racial privilege (Shedd, 2015). Black scholars are forced to navigate “White spaces,” often finding themselves subject to subtle and more deliberate cues that they do not belong (Anderson, 2015). Segregation constitutes a significant barrier to the understanding of race and racism and the mitigation of racial inequality.

Critically, for White scholars, this segregation means that a fuller understanding of racism must be discovered in books rather than through lived experience. This challenge must not be minimized. Personal experiences can be particularly informative for rejecting dominant narratives of race and racism in the context of social science (e.g., Dubois, 1903; Hill Collins, 1991) and for learning how race shapes seemingly neutral or objective scientific practices, including the methods used to collect data for our studies (Zuberi & Bonilla-Silva, 2008). Psychological science must be informed by this personal experience if it is to meaningfully advance our understanding of race and racism.

Beyond segregation, motivational factors heighten racial ignorance. One such factor, as social psychological research reveals, is the tendency to deny racial privilege. Specifically, White people benefit from obscuring the existence of the racial inequality from which they benefit (Mueller, 2020). This creates a motivated tendency among White people, across many contexts, to deny racial privileges that they incur as a function of their elevated status (Lowery et al., 2007). For example, White parents tend to avoid mentioning race in conversations with their children because they view such conversations to be negative or unnecessary (Abaied & Perry, 2020; Perry et al., 2019).

We see a similar pattern among adults: White people tend to discount their racial privileges and endorse more meritocratic conceptions of society except in very specific circumstances in which, for example, their personal characteristics are affirmed (e.g., Knowles & Lowery, 2012; Phillips & Lowery, 2018). This pattern of racial ignorance aligns with research demonstrating that White people underestimate racial inequality’s magnitude in society (Kraus et al., 2017) and in the institutions that they are a part of (Boykin et al., 2020; Ray, 2019). Those who are more likely to underestimate such inequality are also less likely to hire racial minorities or support equity-enhancing policies (Dupree et al., 2020).

What does this mean for psychological science? Racial ignorance prevents White researchers, editors, and participants from “tackl[ing] diverse questions from diverse perspectives” (Roberts et al., p. 1303). It prevents White authors from seeing the relevance of race to a myriad of social and psychological experiences, it prevents White editors from seeing the relevance of race to a so-called general audience, it prevents academic hiring committees from addressing their lack of institutional diversity, and it prevents White participants from contributing to research that applies to more than one narrow slice of humanity. Ultimately, this ignorance produces research that reinforces the notion that psychological processes are race-neutral—a self-perpetuating cycle whereby racial ignorance begets racial ignorance.

The Problem of Belonging

Racial inequality in psychological science undermines the ability of underrepresented minority scholars of color to feel a sense of belonging within our field. Belonging is a fundamental human need (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Edmondson, 1999) and is crucial for educational contexts (Good et al., 2012; Steele, 1988; Walton & Cohen, 2007). The vast underrepresentation of scholars of color in our field has negative interpersonal, cognitive, and institutional impacts on these scholars as they attempt to conduct research. Interpersonally, stereotypes continue to depict Black Americans as socially inferior (Dupree et al., 2020; Lei & Bodenhausen, 2017) or biologically inferior (Williams & Eberhardt, 2008). These stereotypes contribute to Black scholars facing patronizing interpersonal behaviors from even well-intentioned White colleagues (Dupree & Fiske, 2019). Cognitively, Black scholars sometimes contend with additional cognitive demands that stem from deciphering whether the behavior of others is benign, or motivated by racial animus (Shelton & Richeson, 2006; Trawalter et al., 2009).

Structurally, research on tokenism highlights how being the only member of a social-identity group leads to inferences and observations suggesting that institutions are hostile toward members of that group (King et al., 2010). For example, tokenism means that many scholars of color are not rewarded by the institution for much of the work that they do. Their typical work activities are overloaded by service requests as universities attempt to make good on promises of campus diversity (Rodríguez et al., 2015; Syed, 2017). When citation counts and other metrics of impact are typically used in promotion-and-tenure decisions, these additional service requirements represent unaccounted for scholarly contributions that exacerbate racial inequality in our field. Moreover, tokenism on journal editorial boards means that scholars of color face additional burdens in their editorial and reviewing responsibilities, sometimes being called on to prevent the publication of scientific racism within our journals. Scholars of color are acutely aware of the disconnect between the work they are asked to do and the work that they are rewarded for. Psychologists of color who do not see themselves represented at any level of the publication process or whose research, featuring minorities, is rejected because it lacks a White comparison may come to feel that the field does not view their identity as valid or experiences as interesting. Together these conditions can threaten a sense of belonging for scholars of color, creating another self-perpetuating cycle where threats to belonging prevent retention and full participation in our field, which further reduces belonging.

The Problem of Assumed Racial Progress

The magnitude of racial inequality in psychological science described by Roberts et al. was undoubtedly shocking to many readers. It likely engendered reactions that affirmed progressive values and a commitment to diversity—indeed, both tend to characterize higher education institutions. However, this magnitude of racial inequality, more than 400 years after the first arrival of enslaved Africans to this continent, raises a crucial concern: Even among a collection of scholars who value diversity, our understanding of the collective action needed to counteract such conditions is wholly insufficient. Research finds that people in the U.S. context tend to make assumptions about the automatic nature of the unfolding of racial progress in society (Eibach & Ehrlinger, 2006; DeBell, 2017; Kraus et al., 2019; Seamster & Ray, 2018). This assumption, buttressed by narratives about the American Dream or the belief in meritocracy, that society becomes more equitable as time passes, underappreciates and dangerously ignores the significant collective struggle that is necessary to bring about real change (Boykin et al., 2020).

This belief in automatic, naturally occurring racial progress can stand directly in the path of actual progress. Sustainable racial justice and diversity among tenured psychological scientists will mean explicitly contending with a history of racial inequality within our field—whose spaces, canon, and methods have all been exclusionary up to this point in history. An authentic and effective welcoming of demographic diversity in psychological science will require support for more radical forms of scholarship. This includes forms of scholarship that have historically been led by people of color (Hill Collins, 1991) and are openly critical of the institutions that must then promise to train, graduate, hire, promote, tenure, and sustain those same scholars. Continued belief in the natural and automatic unfolding of racial progress makes authentic and effective embrace of diversity in our field impossible. For psychological science, this assumption of racial progress negates critical examination of current practices, reconciliation with past and present racism, and the necessary transfer of editorial power.

The Way Forward

Despite the abolishment of slavery and a civil-rights revolution, psychological science remains overwhelmingly White, with no change in sight. This racial inequality contributes to a “White standard” that renders the experiences, value, and variability of people of color moot (Shelton, 2000). Ultimately, the Whiteness of the field mitigates our science’s generalizability, applicability, and social impact. How can psychological science remedy this inequity and enact actual change? Thankfully, Roberts and colleagues provide a number of tangible solutions to remedy the racial inequality in our field—and the myriad of negative consequences for both producers and consumers of knowledge.

We consider two promising recommendations that Roberts and colleagues pose for journals and authors to reduce racial inequality in our field. For journals, the authors recommend greater diversity of “individuals across all levels of the publication process” (p. 1304). This means increasing the number of editors, reviewers, authors, and participants that hail from underrepresented groups. The authors do not suggest an arbitrary target—rather, they suggest that scholars producing knowledge for journals from, for instance, the U.S. context must be broadly representative of the racial demographics of that context. This strikes us as the most promising course of action. Because people of color are less subject to racial ignorance and the presumption of racial progress, diversifying the editors, reviewers, authors, and participants involved in such work will attenuate the systemic inequality in psychology research. Although not all people of color support reducing inequality, they are more likely to do so.

Diversification across the publication process can also reduce the lack of belonging experienced by scholars of color by allowing them to see themselves and their experiences represented in the editorial boards and pages of journals. This goal may seem abstract, but Roberts et al. provide a number of specific policy changes to reach it, including posting diversity statements, creating diversity task forces, releasing diversity numbers annually, and creating badges to distinguish publications that do not rely exclusively on WEIRD (White, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) samples or research teams (much like those we already have that distinguish publications with preregistered studies or publicly available data sets).

It is worth noting that increasing diversity alone cannot make the field more inclusive; it is crucial that White psychologists be open to and welcoming of other views, perspectives, and voices. Otherwise editorial boards, departments, and labs may find scholars of color fleeing the very spaces that presumably welcomed them. Both long-term diversification of and inclusion within the field will require more than “image work” (Ahmed, 2012). White scholars must also be wary of the confidence gained from cursory steps, which can lead people to make unreasonable claims (see Lewis & Wai, 2021). Despite a recent rush to purchase antiracism books (Grundy, 2020), most White people—White psychologists included—are not experts. There is much more to learn and do. The field needs more racial diversity, not more well-intentioned White scholars—diversifying the field will require long-term learning and work.

Roberts and colleagues also suggest that authors more firmly and explicitly center race in their scholarship by detailing and justifying the racial demographics of their samples. This alone could help prevent researchers from relying exclusively on mostly White convenience samples (Rowley & Camacho, 2015) and help encourage making generalizability statements (a separate but related recommendation; Simons et al., 2017).

The time is now for bold, field-wide action in the service of racial equity. Any combination of these concrete steps can reduce the racial inequality pervasive in our science and departments. However, all of us must participate in these actions; effective change will not occur if it is based solely on the unrewarded efforts of junior scholars of color.

Conclusion

Our field has two choices in interpreting the scholarship we have outlined here: We can continue with business as usual, ignoring the evidence suggesting that the racial inequalities represent a significant and problematic organization of our subfields and its practices. Or we can proceed as scientists, taking to heart the available evidence suggesting that these conditions damage our collective capacity to understand the psychological experiences of people throughout the world. As two people who see the inherent value and importance of psychological approaches to the study of race and racism, we urge the field to take the latter path, for it is one that takes us all toward greater equity and justice.