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

Belief in colorblind 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. Colorblind 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 colorblind 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