The Significance of Affirmative Action for the Souls of White Folk: Further Implications of a Helping Model

Hostility and aggressiveness. Ultimately, the act of hate sets up a vicious cycle identified by Frederick Douglass and by research on the justification of cruelty: Cruelty requires justification and a hardening of the soul, which in turn increases the likelihood of more aggression.

The Moral Pickpocket: Selective Aid and the Maintenance of Power

Perhaps one of the most astute observers of America's race relations in the 20th century was Branch Rickey, the general manager and part owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball club who hired Jack Robinson to break the color barrier in the national pastime (see Pratkanis & Turner, 1994a, 1994b). After his retirement from the game, Rickey visited with many of the nation's political and business leaders to urge them to hire Blacks and to continue with racial progress.

He was particularly frustrated by those who wanted a slower pace of change. As Rickey put it in 1956:

How long will the white citizens of this country go on ignoring the agony of the Negro? How long will he [the Negro] be tempted to look elsewhere for equal rights--not only civil, political, and educational rights--but simple human rights?

They call you an extremist if you want integration now--which is the only morally defensible position. To advise moderation is like going to a stickup man and saying to him: "Don't use a gun. That's violent, Why not be a pickpocket instead?" A moderate is a moral pickpocket. (Monteleone. 1995, p. 90)

Antecedents of Aversive Racism

Rickey's analogy of the moral pickpocket makes clear the underlying basis of aversive racism. On the one hand, taking affirmative action to stop and prevent the negative effects of racism on African Americans is the only morally defensible position. A democracy demands that the rights of all citizens to life, liberty, and happiness be protected. On the other hand, racism brings with it the fruits of social domination (Sidanius, 1993). In Rickey's mind, racial inequality was stealing: taking from Black Americans their jobs, labor, and financial resources. To resolve this dilemma, the moderate became a moral pickpocket, continuing with the racist practices and pretending it to be otherwise. In his analysis of White support of slavery, Thomas Jefferson recognized the same dilemma. As Jefferson put it, "We have a wolf by the ears; and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice in one scale, and self-preservation in the other" (quoted in O'Reilly, 1995, p. 29). Today, this conflict is most often refe rred to as Myrdal's (1944) American dilemma: The demands of democracy are in direct conflict with race relations practiced in America.

The Wildly Variable Behavior of Aversive Racism

As Festinger (1957, p. 7) noted, Myrdal's dilemma established the conditions of cognitive dissonance: the White person holds two conflicting beliefs (support for democracy and for racism) that create an unpleasant tension state. In other words, the White person with the wolf by the ears must constantly live in fear of exposure as a hypocrite. In an attempt to resolve this dissonance, the behavior of the White person can be wildly variable, embracing a range of responses. For example, Allport (1954) listed four basic strategies for resolving the American dilemma: (a) denial (there is no problem), (b) defensive rationalizations of bolstering (selectively gathering "evidence" to show the outgroup is inferior), shifting blame (accusing others of the problem), and bifurcation (accepting some Negroes as "good"), (c) compromise solutions (accepting current racism because things are better), and (d) integration or true resolution.