Whites See Racism as a Zero-Sum Game That They Are Now Losing

2011/05/01 by Michael I. Norton, Samuel R. Sommers · 2 citations
Social Sciences · Psychology · #Social and Intergroup Psychology #Racial and Ethnic Identity Research #Cultural Differences and Values #Racism #White (mutation) #Social psychology #Prejudice (legal term) #Perception #Psychology #Politics #Implicit bias #Racial bias #Zero (linguistics) #Sociology #Political science #Gender studies

paper · doi:10.1177/1745691611406922

openalex publication_date 2011/05/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06

Abstract

Although some have heralded recent political and cultural developments as signaling the arrival of a postracial era in America, several legal and social controversies regarding "reverse racism" highlight Whites' increasing concern about anti-White bias. We show that this emerging belief reflects Whites' view of racism as a zero-sum game, such that decreases in perceived bias against Blacks over the past six decades are associated with increases in perceived bias against Whites-a relationship not observed in Blacks' perceptions. Moreover, these changes in Whites' conceptions of racism are extreme enough that Whites have now come to view anti-White bias as a bigger societal problem than anti-Black bias.

Citations

• The Symbolic Racism 2000 Scale
• A Decade of System Justification Theory: Accumulated Evidence of Conscious and Unconscious Bolstering of the Status Quo
• Social dominance orientation: A personality variable predicting social and political attitudes.
• Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination

Cited by

• Racial Progress as Threat to the Status Hierarchy
• Reverse racism [wikipedia]