Title
Referencing race = Racist? Examining perceptions of references to a target’s race as offensive
Student Major/Year in School
Psychology, Senior
Faculty Mentor Information
Dr. Don Saucier, Psychological Sciences, Kansas State Univeristy
Abstract
Racial slurs derogate the racial group of targets, while non-racial insults derogate targets as individuals. Race-marking describes targets as members of their racial group. Our research examined how race-marking interacts with non-racial insults to potentially become racial slurs. We found participants perceived any references to race (as slurs, noun descriptors, or adjective descriptors) as similar in how much they derogated both the individual target and the racial group of the target. Our findings suggest racial descriptors in many forms have the potential to derogate, with references to race being perceived as offensive by default.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Recommended Citation
Smith, Bayleigh (2019). "Referencing race = Racist? Examining perceptions of references to a target’s race as offensive," Kansas State University Undergraduate Research Conference.
Referencing race = Racist? Examining perceptions of references to a target’s race as offensive
Racial slurs derogate the racial group of targets, while non-racial insults derogate targets as individuals. Race-marking describes targets as members of their racial group. Our research examined how race-marking interacts with non-racial insults to potentially become racial slurs. We found participants perceived any references to race (as slurs, noun descriptors, or adjective descriptors) as similar in how much they derogated both the individual target and the racial group of the target. Our findings suggest racial descriptors in many forms have the potential to derogate, with references to race being perceived as offensive by default.
