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Understanding Perceptions of Racism in the Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina: The Roles of System and Group Justification

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Abstract

The present study examined perceptions of racism in events that occurred during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina among a community sample of New Orleans area residents. Drawing on system justification theory, we examined system justification motives (i.e., meritocracy beliefs) and group justification motives (i.e., group identity) as predictors of perceptions of racism among African Americans and European Americans. Compared to African Americans, European Americans perceived much lower levels of racism in Katrina-related events. Furthermore, meritocracy beliefs were negatively related to perceptions of racism among both African Americans and European Americans. However, private regard (a component of group identity) was positively related to perceptions of racism among African Americans, but negatively related to perceptions of racism among European Americans. The results suggest that both system and group justification motives independently predict perceptions of racism in an important real-world event. Furthermore, system and group justification motives appear to operate in opposition for African Americans, but in tandem for European Americans.

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Notes

  1. We also conducted the analyses reported below with the 26 non-residents included, and the results were largely unchanged. The only difference was that the marginally significant meritocracy × ethnicity interaction (β = −.09, p = .057) emerged as significant (β = −.10, p < .05) when non-residents were included.

  2. The ethnic labels used in the scale were African American and White because these labels are used most frequently in the local community. However, we use the term European American throughout the paper in order to use parallel language to describe both ethnic groups.

  3. Participants completed all four items from the original identity centrality subscale; however, for African Americans, the reverse-coded items were uncorrelated with the forward-coded items and including them yielded an unreliable scale. Therefore, for both ethnic groups we created a two-item scale that only consisted of the forward-coded items.

  4. We view system justification motives (i.e., meritocracy beliefs) and group justification motives (i.e., group identity) as independent predictors of perceptions of racism. An alternative approach, however, would be to hypothesize and test interactive effects of system and group justification motives on perceptions of racism. Although we did not make a priori predictions that there would be interactive effects of system justification motives and group justification motives on perceptions of racism, we conducted exploratory analyses in which we tested the three-way interactions that emerge from this approach (ethnicity × meritocracy beliefs × private regard and ethnicity × meritocracy beliefs x identity centrality). These three-way interactions were nonsignificant, and the results reported below were unchanged when the three-way interactions were included in the model.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by Louisiana Board of Regents Grant LEQSF (2007-10)-RD-A-31 to Laurie O’Brien.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, USA

    Alison Blodorn

  2. Department of Psychology, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, 70118, USA

    Laurie T. O’Brien

  3. Department of Psychology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Sapna Cheryan

  4. Department of Psychology, Whitman College, Walla Walla, WA, USA

    S. Brooke Vick

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  1. Alison Blodorn
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  2. Laurie T. O’Brien
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  3. Sapna Cheryan
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Correspondence to Alison Blodorn.

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Blodorn, A., O’Brien, L.T., Cheryan, S. et al. Understanding Perceptions of Racism in the Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina: The Roles of System and Group Justification. Soc Just Res 29, 139–158 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11211-016-0259-9

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