Black Confederates Research Articles

Seeing racial avoidance on New York City streets.

Here, using publicly available traffic camera feeds in combination with a real-world field experiment, we examine how pedestrians of different races behave in the presence of racial out-group members. Across two different New York City neighbourhoods and 3,552 pedestrians, we generate an unobtrusive, large-scale measure of inter-group racial avoidance by measuring the distance individuals maintain between themselves and other racial groups. We find that, on average, pedestrians in our sample (93% of whom were phenotypically non-Black) give a wider berth to Black confederates, as compared with white non-Hispanic confederates.

Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth by Kevin M. Levin

Reviewed by: Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth by Kevin M. Levin Tracy L. Barnett (bio) Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth. By Kevin M. Levin. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019. Pp. 240. $30.00 cloth; $22.99 ebook) The image is an all too familiar one: a white and Black man sitting side-by-side, both armed to the teeth, both attired in rebel grey. To neo-Confederates, this is undeniable proof of the Black Confederate soldier. To most scholars, however, this an image of enslavement, indicative of a carefully-cultivated myth rather than any real form of racial equality. In Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth, Kevin M. Levin traces the development of this myth over the course of a one hundred fifty-year period. The myth, he concludes, took hold among Confederate heritage organizations in the 1970s as a direct response to the Civil Rights movements and [End Page 539] scholars increasing efforts to place slavery—not states’ rights—as the central tenet of secession, Confederacy identity, and the Civil War. Organized both chronologically and thematically, Levin begins in 1861. Planters’ sons, marching off to war, occasionally took slaves with them. These “camp slaves” served their white owners and reinforced the South’s racial hierarchy by performing menial tasks—cooking, hauling, mending—associated with slavery. While living in military encampments, these Black men were not soldiers; only white men were Confederate soldiers. To be sure, the Confederacy relied heavily on enslaved labor (allowing more white men to bear arms) and, in the final months of the war, briefly considered more. But, as Levin rightly notes, “at no point during the debate over enlistment was it ever revealed that Black men were already serving in the Confederate army as soldiers” (p. 5). Post-war veterans reunions and publications, steeped in Lost Cause notions, only served to reinforce the image of the benevolent master and the devoted slave. Some former camp slaves qualified for postwar aid, but these pensions never classified these men as soldiers; they were “Indigent Servants of Soldiers or Sailors of the Late Confederacy” (p. 6). Only in the late twentieth century did the Sons of Confederate Veterans transform “camp slaves” into roughly 200,000, or so, “Black Confederate soldiers.” Responding to increased emphasis placed on slavery by scholars and the general public, Confederate heritage organizations crafted the story of the Black Confederate soldier in the 1970s to promote their interpretation of the war and their political agenda. The myth gained little traction at first, Levin argues, but it, nonetheless, set the narrative. In the 1990s, it began to spread over the web and, then, later, on blogs and social media. Indeed, the internet has transformed the discipline. For professionals, it offers new possibilities in the form of innovative digital humanities projects and online archives. For the layman, it provides an unregulated forum to spread alarmist information and misinformation. With a touch of Photoshop, inauguration crowds suddenly double in size and Black Confederate soldiers appear one hundred fifty years after the fact. [End Page 540] During the sesquicentennial, the myth gained traction among the Confederate heritage community and found a small but vocal number of African American supporters. Most mainstream Americans, however, have rejected it. Bold and provocative, Levin pushes for “an honest national conversation about the history and legacy of slavery,” which “can happen only if we put aside the myth of and self-serving narratives of loyal slaves and brave Black Confederate soldiers that have long played a role in maintaining the color line in American life” (p. 11). And, in our present era of deadly white supremacist rallies and debates over Confederate monuments, it is time for this conversation. A must read for academics, undergraduates, and general readers alike, Searching for Black Confederates forces us to confront the construction of racialized mythology and, in doing so, calls upon us, as a nation, to reckon with the meaning of white supremacy. [End Page 541] Tracy L. Barnett TRACY L. BARNETT is a PhD student at the University of Georgia. Copyright © 2020 Kentucky Historical Society

Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War's Most Persistent Myth by Kevin M. Levin

Reviewed by: Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War's Most Persistent Myth by Kevin M. Levin James G. Mendez Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War's Most Persistent Myth. Kevin M. Levin. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2019. ISBN 978-1-4696-5326-6. 240 pp., cloth, $30.00. Whether African Americans fought as soldiers in the Confederate army is a popular topic today, one being discussed among history buffs, Civil War round-table participants, and academics alike. Kevin M. Levin's book, Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War's Most Persistent Myth, provides a definitive and convincing argument on the existence of black Confederates. He provides a [End Page 421] very well-researched case that African Americans did not serve as soldiers in the Confederate army. Yes, they were camp slaves, and, yes, they were laborers, but they were not soldiers. Levin meticulously and methodically lays out his argument and explains why black men were not Confederate soldiers and how they actually functioned in the Confederate army. He then explains how the myth of black Confederate soldiers began, its relationship to the Lost Cause narrative, and how the storyline of African Americans fighting as soldiers in the Confederate army has continued more than 150 years after the war's end. Context is very important to Levin's book. He argues that to understand how the legend of the black Confederate was created and perpetuated, one must understand the context of the explanations and what else was happening at the same time in American society. First, the maintenance of white supremacy, preeminent in Southern culture, is the underlying theme before, during, and long after the war, but especially in the Jim Crow era. Immediately after the war ended, Confederates articulated the Lost Cause narrative to help them grasp the reality of losing the war and having their slavery-based society vanish forever. A central part of the narrative is that the war was over not slavery but instead states' rights and Confederate efforts to stop an invasion of their land. To help perpetuate this storyline, it had to be argued that black people actually supported the war, fought alongside their masters, and then remained loyal to them long after the war ended. Henceforth, they were soldiers in the war. Looking at the period right after the war, Levin pays particular attention to the story of Andrew and Silas Chandler, central figures representing the relationship between master and slave and whose famous photograph (on the cover of the book) has been used through the decades to verify the existence of black Confederate soldiers. Supporters explain that the two went to war as master and slave and that throughout the war slaves like Silas remained loyal to the cause and their benevolent masters. Silas remained a faithful slave and former soldier, and proof of that relationship helps counter the emancipation narrative—thereby making it appear Confederates treated their slaves admirably. According to Levin, what the supporters forget or ignore is that camp slaves like Silas might have remained loyal because they had relatives at home who would have been treated cruelly if they did not help their masters and return home. Even more important, explains Levin, were the thousands of runaways who at their first chance ran toward Union lines, never to be seen again. Levin argues one need only study the debate among Confederate leaders—from the war's start to its end—about whether slaves should be allowed to become soldiers. The records show that these leaders believed making black men soldiers undercut the main reason for the war. The war was being fought to protect slavery and white men's supremacy over black men. However, today's advocates of the black Confederate [End Page 422] soldier theory ignore this well documented discussion among the Confederate leadership, including President Jefferson Davis. They also neglect the fact that in all the primary-source records about this argument, "not a single office or soldiers suggested that slaves were already serving as soldiers in the Confederate army" (39). Levin also argues how former Confederates' need to reestablish white supremacy after the Reconstruction era meant a need to explain...

Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth by Kevin M. Levin

Reviewed by: Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth by Kevin M. Levin Scott Hancock (bio) Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth. By Kevin M. Levin. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019. Pp. 240. Cloth, $30.00.) We now have a manual for how to respond to anyone insisting that enslaved black men served as soldiers in the Confederate army. In Searching for Black Confederates, Kevin Levin systematically dismantles the myth of slaves fighting in gray. He explicates the myth’s origins, its reliance on faulty evidence, and the motives behind it. The book is not only an incredibly useful manual but also an excellent model for undergraduates in a historical methods course on how to situate careful research within broader contexts such as the politics of race. It is a valuable study of how race and memory have worked in tandem, constantly adapting to changing social circumstances to perpetuate “the myths and self-serving narratives of loyal slaves and brave black Confederate soldiers that have long played a role in maintaining the color line in American life” (11) from the end of the Civil War to the present. Levin draws a bold line from the past to the present, particularly in the introduction and in the conclusion, pointing to the ways this history shapes present realities politically and at times violently. The first chapter verifies that nearly all alleged black Confederates were in reality “camp slaves” whom Confederate soldiers brought into military [End Page 593] campaigns. Levin does not give attention to female camp slaves; an understandable absence since the myth focuses exclusively on black men. Camp slaves lived long days with a heavy workload, though much of their behavior challenged paternalism. Some worked reluctantly, at risk of severe punishment, and some attempted escape. Nonetheless, Levin argues that genuine bonds formed because of the shared experience of hardship and danger, as many camp slaves were perilously close to combat lines. Confederates’ assumptions that slaves shared their commitment to the South’s cause, however, were not supported by slaves’ actions. When slaves stayed with masters, often it was not because of a commitment to a cause, but rather out of a desire to return to their own families, among other reasons. Similarly, images of slaves in Confederate uniforms are evidence only of slaves being dressed up by owners for staged photos or of slaves having acquired an abandoned uniform because it conferred some status among other slaves. The second chapter describes camp slaves’ battlefield experience. Levin notes that although many slaves stayed with masters during the Gettysburg campaign, many others escaped as a result of their proximity to the North. Gettysburg, then, a debatable military turning point, in reality signaled “a crisis of confidence in soldiers’ belief in their slaves’ unwavering fidelity” (52). Additionally, Confederate soldiers routinely ridiculed slaves near the battlefield, and “at no point did soldiers in the field report that blacks were . . . serving as soldiers” (60). Levin hammers this vital point home repeatedly: Confederates across ranks typically thought the idea of slaves as soldiers was ludicrous and viewed such a concept as an affront to white manhood. Colonel Howell Cobb’s testimony along these lines is just one of numerous excellent examples Levin provides. Cobb, adamantly against the notion of slaves as soldiers throughout the war, was mentioned as being at Antietam by Dr. Lewis Steiner. Steiner’s account, used ubiquitously to promulgate the myth, describes sixty-five thousand black men among the ranks. And yet “at no time did Cobb ever admit that the men observed by Steiner or any other group of free and enslaved black men attached to the army were serving as soldiers during the war” (61). The men were slaves and workers, not soldiers. The first two chapters firmly establish an absence of any reliable wartime testimony of slaves serving as soldiers and provide ample testimony that slaves were never enlisted. The third chapter explores postwar memory. Into the 1940s, camp slaves were remembered only as slaves, never as armed combatants. Remembering them as soldiers would have undermined the Lost Cause’s emphasis on southern white men nobly standing [End Page...

Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistence Myth by Kevin M. Levin

Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistence Myth by Kevin M. Levin

Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War's Most Persistent Myth by Kevin M. Levin

Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War's Most Persistent Myth by Kevin M. Levin

Jurors' cognitive depletion and performance during jury deliberation as a function of jury diversity and defendant race.

Racial diversity in juries, meant to ensure representation of minority voices, can also reduce racial bias in verdicts and improve group performance during deliberation (Sommers, 2006). Although jury diversity might increase cognitive depletion because it involves interracial interactions (Richeson & Shelton, 2003), it might also reduce racial disparity in verdicts and deliberation quality by improving the quality of deliberation for Black defendants. In 6-person juries that included 2 White or 2 Black confederates, White jurors viewed trial evidence including a defendant race manipulation (White, Black) and completed measures of cognitive depletion and case facts recall. Deliberation transcripts were coded for the number of total, correct, and new case facts mentioned by jurors. As predicted, jurors in diverse versus all-White juries were more depleted after deliberation, but depletion was not related to deliberation performance. For the Black defendant, jurors on diverse (vs. homogeneous) juries discussed more case facts; for the White defendant, the effect was not significant. Jurors on all-White juries discussed more case facts when they judged a White (vs. Black) defendant, but this difference was not significant for jurors on diverse juries. Thus, jury diversity reduced racial disparity in the quality of deliberation. Before and after deliberation, jurors were less likely to convict the Black (vs. White) defendant regardless of jury composition. These findings reinforce the importance of constructing racially diverse juries, given that they may be better equipped to evaluate trial evidence for both Black and White defendants despite the cognitive demand of deliberating within a diverse group. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Jefferson Davis's Final Campaign: Confederate Nationalism and the Fight to Arm Slaves by Philip D. Dillard

Reviewed by: Jefferson Davis's Final Campaign: Confederate Nationalism and the Fight to Arm Slaves by Philip D. Dillard Colin Woodward (bio) Jefferson Davis's Final Campaign: Confederate Nationalism and the Fight to Arm Slaves. By Philip D. Dillard. (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2017. Pp. 285. $35.00 cloth) Philip Dillard examines the Confederate debate to arm the slaves in three states: Virginia, Georgia, and Texas. His book builds upon the work of Bruce Levine, Chandra Manning, Robert Durden and others who have examined the Confederacy's late-war effort to alter the relationship between master and slave. For most of the book, Dillard undertakes a state-by-state examination of the emancipation debate, which did not begin in earnest until late 1864 and concluded with Congress passing a bill to arm African Americans, though the original bill did not emancipate any slaves. Dillard sees Jefferson Davis's role as critical in promoting debate and facilitating emancipation and black recruitment (what little of it took place). Dillard argues that the Confederacy ultimately chose independence over the racial status quo. Writers on the Confederate black enlistment debate usually fall into two camps. On the one hand, there are those who think the debate was a half-hearted, last-ditch effort by a Confederacy that had [End Page 123] run out of options. On the other hand, there are those who see it as evidence of a revolution within a revolution, whereby Davis and his supporters wanted emancipation on the South's terms. Dillard's book will appeal to the latter camp, though his book mostly focuses on newspaper's role in shaping public opinion—not the inner workings of Davis, his cabinet, or the Confederate armies. Dillard's examination of Davis's role in the enlistment debate will contain little new information for scholars, and his exploration of how nationalism factored into the debate does not go far enough. What I found most interesting and original in the book was its attention to events in Texas. Unlike most Confederate states, Texas did not suffer serious wartime destruction. Dillard's analysis of public opinion there provides an interesting contrast to Virginia and Georgia, where battles where large and bloody and the war's effect on the civilian population dramatic. Texas, he shows, was resistant to emancipation because most of the state had not seen a Yankee. With the cotton trade and slavery thriving in Texas, why mess with success? Dillard's attention to changes in public opinion in Texas, Georgia, and Virginia are good, but the book, surprisingly, cites no manuscript sources. Thus, we get little sense of what those outside the newspaper world or high-ranking political circles thought. Had Dillard mined the vast archival sources available to him, he might have cut down on the book's repetitiveness. I lost track of how many times he reminds us of the Confederacy's late 1864 losses at Savannah and Nashville. He also quotes Howell Cobb as saying "if slaves will make good soldiers our whole idea of slavery is wrong" not once but twice (pp. 106–107, 132). Strictures aside, Dillard has written a good book. I am afraid it does not surpass Bruce Levine's Confederate Emancipation—still the best monograph on the subject. Even so, Dillard's work is focused, relevant, and timely. He has done the profession a valuable service. His book further undermines the absurd notion of there being armies of black Confederates troops at any point in wartime. After all, if there were tens of thousands of black Confederate troops in [End Page 124] existence before March 1865, why would Confederates have engaged in such a widespread debate on the subject? Sadly, many individuals will continue to believe whatever they want to believe. Nevertheless, with the help of Dillard and other historians writing on the topic of black Confederates, wrong-minded people will have even less reason for ignorance. Colin Woodward COLIN WOODWARD received his PhD in history from Louisiana State University–Baton Rouge. He is the author of Marching Masters: Slavery, Race, and the Confederate Army during the Civil War (2014) and is working on a book titled Country Boy: The Roots of Johnny...

Some evidence for the nonverbal contagion of racial bias

Four experiments provide evidence for the hypothesis that we can “catch” racial bias from others by merely observing subtle nonverbal cues. Video recordings were made of white participants (with varying levels of racial bias) interacting with a neutral black confederate. Videos contained subtle expressions of positivity or negativity, corresponding to white participants’ levels of bias. Participants randomly assigned to observe the subtle anti-black bias videos (vs. pro-black) formed more negative impressions of the black person (Experiment 1), adopted more negative racial stereotypes (Experiment 2), and demonstrated greater anti-black bias themselves (Experiment 3). Participants only demonstrated increased bias when they knew that a black person was the target (vs. white; Experiment 4). Results suggest that nonverbal expressions of racial bias affect more than simply the actor and target—they affect passive, naïve observers. The good news, however, is that the same is true of pro-black bias. Implications for organizations are discussed.

Black Confederates Out of the Attic and Into the Mainstream

Black Confederates Out of the Attic and Into the Mainstream Kevin M. Levin (bio) Not long after the beginning of the 2010 school year, William and Mary historian Carol Sheriff decided to review the chapter on the Civil War in her daughter’s fourth grade history textbook. Sheriff noticed a number of factual errors and questionable interpretations in Joy Masoff’s Virginia: Past and Present, but one passage in particular caught her attention: “Thousands of Southern Blacks fought in the Confederate ranks, including two battalions under the command of Stonewall Jackson.” Sheriff reasonably wondered how such a claim could have made it into this book.1 Shortly thereafter, the story broke in the Washington Post and was soon picked up by newspapers around the country and beyond. Sheriff appeared on MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann to discuss the issue.2 Stonewall Jackson biographer, James I. Robertson, confirmed the lack of evidence regarding the presence of African Americans under his command, and fellow academic historians echoed the scholarly consensus that little evidence can be found supporting the existence of significant numbers of black soldiers in the Confederate army. As the controversy flared up, a sharp divide emerged between the academic community and a small but vocal crowd that championed the existence of anywhere between a thousand and a hundred thousand black Confederate soldiers and a racially integrated Confederate military.3 In 2011 a new edition of Masoff’s book, without the offending passage, was approved for Virginia’s fourth graders but the controversy is far from settled. In fact, it is likely that this narrative will be even more entrenched in our public discourse about the Civil War at the end of the Civil War Sesquicentennial than it was at the beginning. The success of the black Confederate phenomena can be traced directly to the expansion of the Internet, including access to rich databases of primary sources and the availability of digital tools such as blogs, wikis, and other platforms that allow practically anyone to publish a Web site and engage and influence a wide readership. This has led to a sharp increase in [End Page 627] the amount of history published online by individuals and organizations with little or no formal training in the field. As a result, the democratization of history through online publishing continues to blur the distinction between professional and popular historians and challenges any presumption of who has the right to research and publish history. While professional historians assume the responsibility of critically assessing the work of their peers, they have yet to explore their role in responding to and evaluating online content. The black Confederate narrative provides academic and public historians with an opportunity to reflect on how they might engage history enthusiasts and the broader general public in an environment that promotes an unregulated marketplace of ideas. The black Confederate narrative includes a number of related claims concerning the roles and status of African Americans within the army as well as their significance to how we remember the Civil War. It is best understood as an extension of the loyal slave narrative, though its most recent incarnation is a direct response to the increased focus on slavery and race as central to our understanding of the Civil War that gradually came to dominate popular memory in the decades following the civil rights movement. Most interpretations that can be found online assume a broad definition of a soldier that encompasses personal body servants, impressed slaves, and free blacks, who performed a wide range of functions both in the army and on large-scale military projects such as the construction of earthworks and railroads. Little attention is given to their legal status, or to any analysis of the coercive nature of the master-slave relationship. Rather the mere presence of these men alongside Confederate ranks is seen as sufficient to count them as soldiers and therefore worthy of the same respect accorded to white citizen soldiers. The result is a picture of an interracial and integrated Confederate army that stands in sharp contrast with segregated Union regiments. Its popularity is difficult to pin down. In response to the South’s rapidly changing demographics, the Sons...

Enfacing others but only if they are nice to you.

Experiencing tactile facial stimulation while seeing synchronous stimuli on the face of another individual induces “enfacement,” i.e., the subjective illusory experience of ownership of the other's face (explicit measure) and the attribution of the others' facial features to one's own face (implicit measure). Here we expanded previous knowledge by investigating if the tendency to include the other into one's own representation is influenced by positive or negative interpersonal attitudes derived either from consolidated socio-cultural stereotypes or from newly acquired, short-term individual interactions with a specific person. To this aim, we tested in Caucasian white participants the enfacement with a white and a black confederate, before and after an experimental procedure inducing a positive or negative perception of each of them. The results show that the subjective experience of enfacement with in- and out-group others before and after the manipulation is similar. The bias in attributing other's facial features to one's own face after synchronous stroking was, instead, dependent on whether the other person was positively perceived, independently of his/her ethnicity. Thus, we show that realistic positive face-to-face interactions are more effective than consolidated racial biases in influencing the strength of self-attribution of another persons' facial features in the context of multisensory illusions. Results suggest that positive interpersonal interactions might powerfully change the plasticity of self-other representations.

Reverse deterrence in racial profiling: Increased transgressions by nonprofiled Whites.

A controlled experiment tested the possibility that racial profiling-disproportionate scrutiny of a minority racial group by sanctioned authorities-would have a "reverse deterrent" effect on the illicit behavior of members of a nonprofiled majority group. Research participants given a task involving extremely difficult anagrams were given the opportunity to cheat. White participants randomly assigned to a condition in which two Black confederates were obtrusively singled out for scrutiny by the study administrator cheated more than Whites in a White-profiling condition and a no-profiling control condition, and more than Black participants in all three conditions. Black participants cheated at comparable levels across the three experimental conditions. The effect of the profiling of Blacks was consequently a net increase in cheating. The results indicate that racial profiling may be counterproductive.

When White Feels Right: The Effects of In‐Group Affect and Race of Partner on Negotiation Performance

AbstractThis research investigated the unique role of racial in‐group affect, or liking one's racial group, to foster or inhibit integration in negotiations with different race partners. We hypothesized that when the racial backgrounds of the negotiators are salient, threat inherent in negotiations activates in‐group affect for some White negotiators (those more “glad to be White”), triggering divergent negotiation approaches with White versus Black counterparts. In support of our hypotheses, we found that when negotiating with a Black confederate, stronger in‐group affect of White participants was a liability, relating to poorer joint outcomes and a “chilling and competing” negotiation approach. When negotiating with a White confederate, stronger in‐group affect of White participants instead boosted the dyad's joint outcomes by fostering greater trust. The meaning and practical implications of strong in‐group affect in negotiations with diverse counterparts are discussed.

Attitude–goal correspondence and interracial interaction: Implications for executive function and impression formation

The present research examined whether mismatches in implicit racial attitudes and regulatory goals may contribute to well-documented cognitive depletion effects after interracial interactions. Consistent with a mismatch account of regulatory demands, both high and low implicitly-biased Whites showed evidence of cognitive depletion after interacting with a Black confederate, but as a function of oppositely-valenced emotion regulation prompts: Whereas high implicitly-biased Whites showed impaired subsequent performance on a Stroop task when instructed to suppress negative (but not positive) emotional expressions during an interracial interaction, low implicitly-biased Whites showed the opposite pattern. Additionally, attitude–regulatory goal mismatch was associated with more negative impressions of a Black confederate, independent of observers' impressions of the confederate. Implications of attitude–goal correspondence for intergroup interaction and the maintenance of intergroup bias are considered.

When the half affects the whole: Priming identity for biracial individuals in social interactions

In two studies we investigate how the fluid identities of biracial individuals interact with contextual factors to shape behavior in interracial settings. In Study 1, biracial Black/White participants (n=22) were primed with either their Black or White identity before having a race-related discussion with a Black confederate. Study 2 (n=34) assessed the influence of our prime on racial self-identification and examined interactions with a White confederate. Self-reports and nonverbal behavior indicated that when the primed racial ingroup matched that of an interaction partner, biracial participants behaved much like participants in same-race interactions in previous studies, exhibiting lower levels of anxiety. Priming the opposite racial identity, however, led to greater signs of anxiety, mimicking past interracial interaction findings. These results extend previous findings regarding the influence of contextual factors on racial identification for biracial individuals, and are the first to demonstrate the implications of these effects for behavioral tendencies.

When White Feels Right: The Effects of In-Group Identification and Race of Partner on Negotiation Performance

Negotiations in which the counterparts are members of different racial groups may be hampered by less effective communication, lower trust, or distracting levels of concern over appearing prejudiced. In Study 1, we confirmed consumer studies showing a disadvantage for minority negotiators, and extended them by showing that the disadvantage can be mutual for their majority group negotiation partners in terms of profitable deals, stress and liking. In Study 2, we replicated this main effect and demonstrated that affective in-group identification (good feelings toward the White group) moderates it. When negotiating with a Black confederate, feeling “glad to be White” was a liability, in that stronger in-group affect of White participants was related to poorer joint outcomes and lower perceived liking. When negotiating with a White confederate, stronger in-group affect of White participants instead boosted the dyad’s connection and performance, resulting in higher joint outcomes, higher individual outcomes, and greater trust, perceived liking, and confidence. We discuss the implications of cross-race negotiations for both majority and minority individuals.

Reverse Deterrence in Racial Profiling: Increased Transgressions by the Non-Profiled Group

A controlled experiment tested the possibility that racial profiling – disproportionate scrutiny of minorities by sanctioned authorities – would have “reverse deterrent” effects on the illicit behavior of members of non-profiled groups (e.g., Whites). Research participants given a task involving extremely difficult anagrams were given the opportunity to cheat. White participants randomly assigned to a condition in which two Black confederates were obtrusively singled out for scrutiny by the study administrator cheated more than Whites in a White-profiling condition and a no-profiling control condition, and more than Black participants in all three conditions. Black participants cheated at comparable levels across the three experimental conditions. The effect of the profiling was therefore a net increase in cheating.

(Close) distance makes the heart grow fonder: Improving implicit racial attitudes and interracial interactions through approach behaviors.

In 4 studies, the authors examined the effect of approaching Blacks on implicit racial attitudes and immediacy behaviors. In Studies 1-3, participants were trained to pull a joystick toward themselves or to push it away from themselves when presented with photographs of Blacks, Whites, or Asians before completing an Implicit Association Test to measure racial bias. In Study 4, the effect of this training procedure on nonverbal behavior in an interracial contact situation was investigated. Results from the studies demonstrated that approaching Blacks decreased participants' implicit racial prejudice and increased immediacy when interacting with a Black confederate. The implications of these findings for current theories on approach, avoidance, and intergroup relations are discussed.

Language planning and French-English bilingual communication: Montreal field studies from 1977 to 1997

This article reviews key elements of the model of multilingual communication (MMC) (Sachdev and Bourhis 2001, 2005) as they pertain to the case of the “two solitudes” in the province of Quebec: the Francophone majority and the Anglophone minority. The first part of the article provides an intergroup analysis of how language laws in Quebec succeeded in changing the respective ethnolinguistic vitality of the Francophone majority and the Anglophone minority in the province. Along with the MMC, communication accommodation theory is used to review the intergroup, normative, and social psychological determinants of bilingual switching behaviors, as well as specific social psychological studies of bilingual communication conducted in Quebec. The second part of the article describes empirical field studies of language accommodation in Montreal conducted in 1977, 1979, and 1991 (Bourhis 1984b; Moise and Bourhis 1994). As a follow-up to our earlier studies, the goal of the 1997 experiment (N = 482) was to monitor the language strategies adopted by pedestrians who were randomly accosted by a white or black female confederate who voiced a plea for directions in either English or French. Results of the 1997 study showed that both Francophone and Anglophone pedestrians overwhelmingly converged to the linguistic needs of the white and black confederate.

The Causes and Consequences of an Avoidance-Focus for Interracial Interactions

The current work examined the causes and consequences of non-Black people's desire to avoid interracial interactions (an avoidance-focus). Expecting to respond with racial bias in inter-racial interactions was argued to result in an avoidance-focus for such interactions, which was hypothesized to have negative implications for the quality of interracial interactions. Across three studies, feedback indicating that non-Black participants would respond with racial bias in interactions with Black people resulted in anxiety and the desire to avoid the interaction. In addition, when participants with an avoidance-focus interacted with a Black confederate (Study 2), they had shorter interactions that were rated as less pleasant by the confederate and participant as compared to those without an avoidance-focus. Avoidance-focused participants were less interested in future interactions and came across as more avoidant and biased to their partner than less avoidance-focused participants. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for racial relations.