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Thursday | November 10, 2005
Serving UNC Wilmington since 1948
Volume LVIII Number 10
UNCW professors conduct study on racial views
ABC News
Primetime:
scheduled to air
program about the
2004 murders of
UNCW students
Jessica Faulkner
and Christen
Naujoks
When:
Tonight@ 10 p.m.
Where:
Your local ABC
channel «
Students are
encouraged to watch
the program and send
any comments to:
editor@theseahawk.
org
Benjamin Mahan
Staff Writer
James Johnson was sitting in a barbershop four years ago
when a group of white police officers walked past the window.
Someone in the shop said that the officers looked like members
of the Klu Klux Klan.
Shocked by the seemingly off-handed assumption that a few
white police officers in a group must be associated with the
KKK, Johnson asked the 10 other young blacks in the shop if
they thought that all white people share the same beliefs of the
Klan. They said yes and believed that the typical white person is
only suppressing their true feelings.
This experience, and others hke
it, compelled Johnson, a professor of
psychology at UNCW, to investigate
further into anti-white biases and
prejudices held by some blacks.
His efforts and the efforts of
fellow psychology professor Len
Lecci, have resulted in a compara
tive article on anti-white bias, which
is scheduled for publication in an
upcoming issue of the psychology
journal “Personality and Individual
Differences.”
The article, “Predicting Perceived
Racism and Acceptance of Negative
Behavioral Intergroup Responses:
Validating the Johnson-Lecci Scale
in a College and Community Sample
of Blacks,” is based on a 2003 study
conducted by Johnson and Lecci,
which measured anti-white bias
amongst college students from pre
dominantly black universities and
blacks from the local community.
When compared to black mem
bers of the community, the students
who attended the predominantly
black university were more likely to
perceive and confront racism when
it may or may not be there; they were
more likely to participate in white
discriminatory behaviors with their
peers and high-bias blacks were
least hkely to interact with whites,
Johnson said.
“No conspiracy theory involv
ing whites harming blacks can be
too extreme for high-bias blacks,”
Johnson said. “For example,
they believe that: the levees
in New Orleans were broken inten
tionally to kill and/or displace
blacks; and white authorities send
drugs into the black community to
reduce the black population.”
Blacks that attend colleges with
few white students may be predis
posed to anti-white bias because
of their university environment,
according to the report.
However, Johnson has seen
evidence that suggests strong anti
white bias has more to do with
racist encounters than it does with
educational experiences.
Johnson spoke about a friend’s
confrontation with racism. When
his friend was young, his moth
er worked as a maid for a white
household. She became ill and was
hospitalized. The family visited her
once, not out of concem of her well
being, but instead they wanted to
know when she was coming back
Len Lecci
James Johnson
to work.
“I don’t know why white people
are surprised,” said Rashid Shabazz,
interim director of the Upperman
African-American Cultural Center.
“With the history of this country
and the way the country is going
currently, I don’t know why this
would be newsworthy.”
Shabazz said that anti-white bias
feelings are so prevalent within
black universities because they are
an isolated community.
According to Lecci, anti-white
biases are difficult to quantify
because of their complexity.
Lecci said that previous scales
were inadequate because they sim
ply inverted anti-black sentiments
held by whites and applied them
toward anti-white attitudes held by
blacks.
“Terms like prejudice and bias
are terms coined by whites to
describe the out-group,” Lecci said.
Consequently, the professors
scrapped the old paradigm and
devised the first empirically vali
dated scale - the Johnson-Lecci
scale, a four factor analysis based
on 38 ambiguous statements devel
oped to predict racial perception
tendencies of blacks.
Some of the statements that
drew the strongest bias response
were, “I believe that most whites
would discriminate against blacks
if they could get away with it,” and
“I believe that most whites think
that they are superior to blacks.”
“I am concerned about the high-
bias student because when a white
professor is lecturing they miss out
on content because they are looking
for racial remarks,” Johson said.
Johnson also said that high-
biased students are more likely to
blame a poor grade on a racist
professor
Currently, Johnson and Lecci are
investigating whether or not anti
white bias views are detrimental to
those who hold them. Johnson is
also involved in researching cancer
patients who may discontinue their
chemotherapy treatments because
of their mistrust of white doctors.
Join your fellow students and UNCW faculty at a ceremony to commemorate Veteran’s Day
Where | Campus Commons in front of Randall Library
When I 10:30 a.m. Nov. 11
A moment of silence will be observed at 11:11 a.m.
marked by the chiming of the clock tower.