Blacks Emotionally Coping with Racial Discrimination

• In Event: Affective Experiences and Current Political Environments

Abstract

Experiences of racial discrimination have resulted in anger running deep in the lives of many Black Americans. But, how do Black Americans cope when feeling angry about racial discrimination? And can a politician help Black Americans alleviate their anger? Scholars in social psychology have largely focused on two coping strategies that reduce people’s negative feelings – problem-focused coping and emotion-focused coping. We argue that Black Americans may be less inclined to feel less angry after pursuing confrontive strategies on issues related to their marginalization. Instead, they are likely to receive a bigger reduction in anger by engaging in an emotion-focused coping strategy (distancing). However, we examine when presented with a co-racial representative, will a confrontive strategy prove more effective. We also explore the downstream behavioral consequences of these coping strategies. To test these arguments, we focus on the case of racial discrimination in employment – using two survey experiments conducted through YouGov with a nationally representative sample of adult Americans. We will present the findings from these experiments at the conference.

Authors

• Antoine J. Banks, University of Maryland

• William Bishop

• Jennifer L. Merolla, University of California, Riverside

• Heather Hicks, Colorado State University