Color-blind Ideology and Perceptions of Minority Children During a Fictionalized Parent-Child Discipline Scene

ABSTRACT

Belief in color-blind ideology among 200 social service providers and its associations with their evaluations of a fictionalized minority family were examined. Perceptions of the family in the first scenes of the movie Crooklyn included the mother’s competency, abusiveness, supportiveness, and irresponsibility, as well as her children’s respectfulness, obedience, lack of control, and aggressiveness. Color-blind ideology was operationalized as participants’ reported degree of belief that differences should be ignored when encountering others. Significant associations were found between degree of belief in ignoring differences and perceptions of the children as aggressive and out of control. Therefore, as the tendency to believe in ignoring differences increased, the tendency to see the Crooklyn children as aggressive and out of control also increased. Imposing color-blind ideologies when evaluating minority children may be associated with increasingly negative perceptions, and therefore may not be in the children’s best interest. Implications for improving social service provision also are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Black youth
• color blindness
• diversity
• minority children
• misperceptions of
• multiculturalism
• perceptions of
• projective techniques
• racial
• racism
• Spike Lee
• stereotyping

Notes

1. Degree of color-blind ideology was operationalized for the purpose of this analysis via the questionnaire item on a 9-point Likert-type scale: “In your opinion, when you encounter people who are from different cultural, racial, or ethnic backgrounds than you, is it best to ignore differences?”

2. An average of 30.6 participants were invited to participate across the seven sessions (a total of 214), with an average of 28.6 agreeing to participate (a total of 200).

3. A total of 12.5% did not respond to the occupation question.

4. Two percent did not respond to the gender question.

5. Eight and a half percent of participants did not respond to the race/ethnicity question.

6. Ten percent of participants did not respond to the political affiliation question.

7. Four percent of participants did not respond to the diversity training question.

8. The Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale is a conventional survey item that allows correlations to detect whether the group tended to not answer honestly to survey items.

9. The liberal orientation of the participants was indicated by 77.5% self-identifying as either Democrats or Independents, and only 6.5% self-identifying as Republican. Their education was indicated by the 12-to-20 years range and 16.5 average years of schooling reported.

10. A point bi-serial correlation is one conducted on variables with 0 and 1 options only, and is theoretically similar to a t-test.

11. Googling reveals many of the numerous cases of unarmed children and youths being killed.