When white people experience the weight of the past:The role of white identity strategies in linking colonialism to current racial inequalities

How do White Europeans address racial inequalities in times of burgeoningdiscussions about colonialism? The current research explores the strategies that White people in the Netherlands use to manage their racial-ethnic identity in relation to linking colonialism and current racial inequalities. With this, we examined how White identity strategies were related to ideologies legitimizing racial inequalities. Using mixed-methods consisting of qualitative interviews (N = 24) and quantitative surveys (N = 564), we found that White people exhibited different combinations of prideful (“I am a proud person of our ethnic heritage”), dissociated (“My ethnic group does not have a significant impact on how I see the world”), and power-cognizant (“I am a White person with privileges because of my ethnic group”) identity strategies. Moreover, these White identity strategies were associated withlinking colonialism and racial inequalities and, thereby, with ideologies legitimizing them. Specifically, White people holding prideful and dissociated strategies were less likely to link colonialism and racial inequalities than White people who exclusively endorsed powercognizance. Furthermore, power-cognizant people challenged current-day racial inequalities the most. We conclude by discussing how White European people legitimize or question racial inequalities by managing their whiteness and the theoretical and practical implications of these findings

Antecedents and Consequences of Group-Based Guilt: The Effects of Ingroup Identification

Effects of ingroup identification on antecedents and consequences of group-based guilt were examined in two experiments. In the first study, ingroup identification was unrelated to guilt when the negative historical information was said to come from an outgroup source, but was positively related when the same information was said to come from an ingroup source. Among high identifiers it is difficult to dismiss negative information when the source is one's own ingroup. In the second study, people who are low in identification were more in favor of acknowledging the negative aspects of their group's history as a way of alleviating feelings of guilt. We discuss the implications of these results for coming to terms with the legacy of a negative ingroup past