Date: 2006-07-12 07:23 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lil-brown-bat.livejournal.com
Interesting article. The trend pointed out in the article, of "not more negative, less positive", makes a lot of sense to me, because I see a lot of it: the desire to believe that one's own group is better/more virtuous/more deserving/more enterprising than others. The way I see this playing out isn't entirely race-based -- there's a great deal of class division here, too -- but race is a big, obvious, in-your-face "like me/not like me" divider. Class is nearly as big and obvious, though, and I'm sure that many so-called "upper middle class" (read: affluent) whites feel a certain virtuous glow for feeling more kinship with people of color who are in their social class than they do for working-class whites. Anyway, I think that when faced with disparities, people who are relatively advantaged need to believe that their advantage is entirely the product of their own virtue...or that it's a matter of factors beyond their control. They have to believe one or the other, or they have to struggle with their own self-image as people who believe in basic fairness.

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