Reconceptualizing White Racial Consciousness

N. Kenneth LaFleur, Wayne Rowe, and Mark M. Leach

As a result of recent psychometric analyses, the conceptual model of White racial consciousness has been revised. A summary of the new conceptualization is presented along with a brief description of the Okla- homa Racial Attitudes Scale, which will replace the Oklahoma Racial Atti- tudes Scale-Preliminary Form (S. K. Choney & J. T. Behrens, 1996).

Como resultado de analisis psicometricos recientes, el modelo conceptual de la Concienca Racial Blanca ha sido revisado. Un resumen de la nueva conceptualizacion se presenta junto con una descripcion breve de la Escala Oklahoma de Actitudes Raciales, que reemplazara la Escala Oklahoma de Actitudes Raciales-Forma Preliminar (S. K. Choney & J. T. Behrens, 1996).

hite racial consciousness (Rowe, Behrens, & Leach, 1995; Rowe, Bennett, & Atkinson, 1994) has been proposed as an alternate to W White racial identity (Helms, 1995) for the conceptualization of the

racial outlook of White people. White racial consciousness is deemed to be more parsimonious than White racial identity theory. Because it is not grounded in identity theory, White racial consciousness avoids the implicit problems of identity- based theories such as being prescriptive and highly abstract. In contrast to White racial identity, White racial consciousness simply classifies commonly held racial attitudes that White people have toward persons of color.

Following the approach of Duckitt (1992), attitudes are considered the affective orientation regarding the favorableness of a thing. Consistent with a social-cognitive view, it is also believed that attitudes are most frequently acquired through observational learning, are rather impervious to verbal per- suasion, and, subject to situational influences, tend to result in intentions that guide observable behaviors (Bandura, 1986). Therefore, the attitudes of Whites toward people of color are assumed to be acquired in the same manner as

N. Kenneth LaFleur, Counselor Education Program, University of Virginia, Charlottesville; Wayne Rowe, Deparlment ofEducaliona1 Psychology, University of Oklahoma; Mark M. Leach, Department ofpsychol- ogy, University of Southern Mississippi. The authors acknowledge the assistance of Alvin Janssen for his insighlful analysis of racial attitudes. Correstondence concerning this article should be addressed to N. Kenneth LaFleur, 169 R u f i e r Hall, 4 0 5 Emmet Street-South, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904 (e-mail: LaFleur@virginia.edu).

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other attitudes and, in most cases, to change as a result of either direct or vicarious experience that is inconsistent or in conflict with previous attitudes.

Obviously, White people hold many attitudes about people of color. The atti- tudes that any one White person holds are thought to be some narrower, rather consistent, subset of the full array. The White racial consciousness model la- bels empirically identified constellations of attitudes and allows the determi- nation of which, if any, best characterize the racial attitudes held by White individuals. These groupings of attitudes are described and labeled, and the resulting types of attitudes constitute the components of the construct White racial consciousness. It is noteworthy that the term trpes refers to empirically derived clusters of intercorrelated racial attitudes and not to abstract personal- ity attributes. The White racial consciousness approach purposely avoids the use of larger personality abstractions, such as identity, or the claim that any particular developmental sequence is likely to occur; it merely proposes that there are certain clusters or types of racial attitudes held by White people.

As originally conceived, White racial consciousness consisted of four basic types of attitudes: (a) dominative, pro-White ethnocentric attitudes; (b) conjic- tive, attitudes based on individualistic values but not supportive of overt dis- crimination; (c) integrative, pragmatic, positive racial attitudes; and (d) reactive, strong pro-minority attitudes (Rowe et al., 1995). These were labeled achieved types of attitudes, borrowing from the terminology of the academic identity literature. Unachieved types of attitudes were said to lack either personal explo- ration (avoidant) or commitment (dissonant), or both (dependent). Although grouped in two categories, achieved and unachieved, each type of attitude was considered to be independent.

In developing a measure of White racial consciousness, the Oklahoma Racial Attitudes Scale-Preliminary Form (ORAS-P), Choney and Behrens (1996) ques- tioned the high positive correlation between the Dominative (D) and Integra- tive (I) and the Conflictive (C) and Reactive (R) scales. Although this raised the question as to whether these pairs were functionally separate dimensions, confirmatory factor analyses revealed a better fit when the scales were treated as separate variables than when they were combined as D/I and C/R. Corre- lations reported by others (Pope-Davis, Dings, Stone, & Vandiver, 1995; Summerson, 1996) investigating the properties of the ORAS-P remained high but did not seem to demand a different interpretation than the four-factor structure proposed originally.

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However, Pope-Davis, Vandiver, and Stone (1999) found otherwise. Analyz- ing the same data set used by Pope-Davis et al. (1995), they conducted an ex- amination of the psychometric properties of both the White Racial Identity Attitude Scale (WRIAS; Helms & Carter, 1990) and the OMS-P. Scores for both mea- sures were used in an exploratory factor analysis, and a confirmatory analysis was conducted to test whether the factor structure of the two instruments re- flected the theoretical constructs of White racial identity (WRIAS) and White racial consciousness (OMS-P). Regarding the OMS-P, the findings indicated that the D and I scales represented one factor, that the R and C scales repre- sented another factor, and that only half of the unachieved scale items were strongly representative of a third factor. This led Pope-Davis et al. (1999) to con- clude, “Further work is needed to delineate the latent structure of the ORAS-P subscales: Do two or four constructs of achieved racial identity exist? Do one or three unachieved identity constructs undergird the OMS-P?” (p. 77).

revlsed cmce n

Ongoing efforts to refine the Oklahoma Racial Attitudes Scale (OMS) and pro- duce a standard form (Behrens, Leach, Franz, & LaFleur, 1999) have contrib- uted data confirming the need for a reformulation of White racial consciousness theory. In the revised conceptualization of White racial consciousness, domina- tive and integrative type attitudes should be viewed as existing at opposite ends of one construct that is best described as racial acceptance. In a review of the content of items that have been tested over the course of the project, it seems that acceptance is the fundamental theme of this construct. The highly negative image of raciallethnic minorities expressed in dominative attitudes and the in- tegrative expression of comfort with minorities seem to be opposite sides of the same coin and are conceptualized as a bipolar dimension.

The common theme binding conflictive and reactive type attitudes was not as readily apparent. However, the data of Pope-Davis et al. (1999) and Behrens et al. (1999) demanded a closer examination of the concepts underlying the items tested from 1994 to 1998. It is now recognized that conflictive and reac- tive attitudes share a concern with a construct that can be described as racial jtrstice. Although people characterized as holding conflictive attitudes do not condone obvious discrimination against non-Whites, they believe that efforts to assist racial minorities serve to discriminate against Whites. Conversely, reactive attitudes reflect the feeling that Whites benefit from advantages in- herent in the status quo. So the common issue is whether the so-called playing field is tilted in favor of Whites (reactive) or people of color (conflictive). How- ever, psychometric analysis suggests that each dimension is best treated as a separate concept. Together, racial acceptance and racial justice can be regarded as one’s racial attitude orientation.

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In addition, it now seems necessary to dispense with the categories of achieved and unachieved types of racial attitudes. The original purpose for including the unachieved categories was to identify persons whose racial attitudes were superficial or uncertain. In truth, the scores on the unachieved scales do not reflect racial attitude content. Rather, they measure the degree that one ad- mits to being unconcerned (Avoidant), being uncertain (Dissonant), or simply reflecting the views of others (Dependent). Therefore these scales should be regarded properly as indices of one’s expressed commitment to the four types of racial attitudes.

In the revised formulation of White racial consciousness, racial attitude orien- tation consists of two basic constructs, racial acceptance and racial justice. Racial acceptance is conceptualized as one bipolar construct involving the two atti- tude types of dominative and integrative and racial justice as the separate con- structs of conflictive and reactive attitude types. Whites whose racial attitudes indicate a pro-White view display little racial acceptance and are said to be characterized as holding dominative type attitudes. Whites whose attitudes illustrate comfort in interacting with racial minorities show high racial accep- tance and are characterized by integrative type attitudes. Whites who profess nondiscrimination but believe that persons of color are being given unfair advantages can be characterized as holding conflictive type attitudes. Whites who are reacting to the status quo and believe that members of visible racial and ethnic groups are still treated unfairly are characterized by reactive type attitudes. Indices of the level of commitment to one’s racial attitude orienta- tion consist of Avoidant, Dissonant, and Dependent scales.

The OMS, the revised measure of White racial consciousness, will contain items reflecting each of the four types of attitudes (dominative, integrative, conflictive, reactive) along with items designed to elicit the level of commit- ment (avoidant, dissonant, dependent) to one’s racial attitudes. The relevance of individual racial attitude scores can be determined by comparison with scores of others in the testing cohort or to appropriate norms. Scores indicating the level of commitment to the four types of attitudes can be used in at least two ways. They could be used as an actuarial cutoff for retention in research projects. Either singly or in concert they could be used to identify individuals who most blatantly admit to being unconcerned, uncertain, or dependent in their racial attitudes, thus allowing for clearer research results. Second, unusually high scores could provide useful information to be discussed when counseling with clients or working with professionals in training.

We believe the ORAS will prove to be a significant advancement over the ORAS-P, both conceptually and psychometrically, and to be a useful instru-

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ment for measuring White racial attitudes while avoiding the ambiguities of identity theory. The ORAS will be available in mid-2002, and the test manual should be available shortly thereafter.

Author Note. Information about or permission to use the ORAS should be sent to Mark M. Leach, Department of Psychology, Box 5025, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS 39406 (e-mail: m.leach@usm.edu).

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