Shades of White: Identity Status, Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Xenophobia

Abstract

Social identity, cultural socialization, intergroup contact hypothesis and group threat theories were used to examine White middle school adolescents' beliefs and attitudes toward Middle Eastern peers (Chaldeans). Ten focus group interviews in each of five Midwestern schools supported the hypothesized relationships between White majority/minority status in school and the saliency and centrality of White identity, awareness of their disadvantaged position in school, feelings of exclusion and dissonance, exhibition of in-group favoritism and out-group bias. Group threat factors predicating xenophobia for adolescents differ from those identified for adults. Group threat that precipitated White adolescents' xenophobic reactions toward Chaldean adolescents, including the rigidity of boundaries between the two groups, concerns about aggression and being outnumbered by Chaldeans, fear of loneliness and loss of friends, and differential treatment by teachers. Numerical minority status and the subjective perceptions of numerical minority status in the absence of factual numerical minority status were important predictors of xenophobia.