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METASTEREOTYPES AND THE BLACK-WHITE DIVIDE: A Qualitative View of Race on an Elite College Campus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2004

Kimberly C. Torres  and
Camille Z. Charles
Kimberly C. Torres
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania
Camille Z. Charles
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania
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Abstract

We employ qualitative in-depth and focus group data to examine how racial stereotypes affect relations between Black and White undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania. Specifically, we employ the concept of metastereotypes—Blacks' knowledge and perceptions of the racial attitudes that Whites have of Blacks. Our interest is in the accuracy of Black students' beliefs about Whites' racial attitudes to their group, and the consequences of metastereotypical thinking for Black students' academic performance. We find that the Black students in our sample possess some clear and largely negative metastereotypes concerning how Whites generally think about Blacks, and these metastereotypes are quite accurate. Moreover, these negative group images are at the heart of a key campus “problem”—Whites' hostility to affirmative action and the assumption that Blacks are not qualified to be at the university; and, ironically, most Blacks seem to have internalized a piece of these negative stereotypes. These results are a tangible manifestation of double-consciousness—Blacks' perceptions of themselves both through their own eyes and through the eyes of Whites, and evidence of Steele's theory of stereotype threat, in as much as Black students expend considerable energy attempting to debunk the myth of Black intellectual inferiority.

Keywords

Racial AttitudesIntergroup RelationsContact HypothesisStereotype ThreatAcademic AchievementEducation
Type
STATE OF THE ART
Information
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , March 2004 , pp. 115 - 149
Copyright
© 2004 W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research

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