Persistent Injustice Research Articles

Erika Apfelbaum 1979 Revisited

This series of essays serves as a historic reappraisal of the intellectually and politically pioneering work of Erika Apfelbaum. Participating writers include Erika Apfelbaum, Frances Cherry, Michelle Fine, Patricia Gurin, Aida Hurtado, Liliane Kandel, Rosemarie A. Roberts, Abigail Stewart and Alyssa Zucker. We ask, ‘What is our responsibility as public intellectuals, as psychologists no less, profoundly disturbed by persistent social injustice at the end of the 20th century?’ To answer this question we found ourselves reaching back 20 years to an essay written by Erika Apfelbaum. Reflecting on our scholarship, our activism, and the troubles of the late 20th century, we organize this Special Feature to review the biography and legacy of one activist scholar, Erika Apfelbaum, and to invite collective critical reflection on our responsibilities as social scientists struggling at the nexus of social change.

Sometimes a good excuse is just not enough

The article presents research findings which shows that race differences may impact the dynamics of both excuse-giving and excuse-receiving. Professors Martin N. Davidson and Raymond A. Friedman, studied the effects of race on the persistent injustice effect, or why some, but not all, observers of unjust acts continue to feel a sense of injustice despite receiving an excuse or explanation for the act. They performed four studies that examined the differences between black and white managers' reactions to a hypothetical incident in which a manager appears to treat his subordinate in an unjust manner. They found that a white manager treating a black subordinate unjustly evoked the highest perception of percieved injustice.

When Excuses Don't Work: The Persistent Injustice Effect Among Black Managers

We thank Joel Brockner, Don Conlon, Len Greenhalgh, Bruce Barry, William Smith, Mary Dieterich, and Yu Shyr for their careful comments and criticism of earlier drafts of this paper, and participants at seminars at Vanderbilt University, Dartmouth College, Northwestern University, MIT, Washington University, and Cornell University for their feedback and insights. We also thank Keith Murnighan, and three anonymous ASQ reviewers for their helpful advice. In this paper, we examine the underlying dynamics of the differences between blacks' and whites' responses to social accounts-explanations or excuses for negative actions and events. Across four studies we found that when black respondents observed unjust behaviors toward a hypothetical black victim, social accounts had a weak impact on perceptions of injustice, confirming the presence of what we call the injustice effect. We also found that social accounts have a weaker impact on perceptions of injustice than on disapproval of the harm-doer and posit that the persistent injustice effect results from a combination of in-group identification with the victim and the respondent's personal experiences with injustice. These two factors, we theorize, combine to create greater empathy for the victim.'