On November 6, Ann-Christin Schröder (Chemnitz University of Technology) will be the guest speaker at a seminar organized by the SPARC Research Group on the topic Progress but Inequality? Colonial Beliefs of Development Mediate the Link between System Justification and Reduced Perception of Structural Racism. The session will take place at 2:30 p.m. in Room 1 of ICS-ULisboa and online.

Today’s racial inequality and how people deal with it continues to be shaped by historical colonial ideologies (Sibley, 2010). The role of the ideology of development and progress remains underexplored in this field of research. This study investigates whether colonial beliefs about development help explain why individuals high in system justification (SJ) perceive less structural racism. A total of 347 participants from Germany completed measures of SJ, social dominance orientation (SDO), colonial ideology (Symbolic Exclusion and Development), and the perception of racism. Correlational analysis showed that stronger SJ, SDO, and colonial development beliefs were associated with lower perception of racism. Mediation analysis confirmed that colonial development ideology partially mediated the relationship between SJ and perceived structural racism (indirect effect = –0.10, 95 % CI [–0.14, –0.06]), explaining 46 % of the variance in racism perception. These findings suggest that colonial narratives of progress continue to serve as a legitimizing ideology preventing individuals from acknowledging racial inequality. 

Ann-Christin is a PhD student in Social Psychology at Chemnitz University of Technology, investigating Whiteness, racism, and post-colonial ideologies in Germany. Her thesis explores how White people manage the dissonance between societal moral values and social realities of racial inequality, by using strategies that preserve the in-group’s prestige. Focusing on Germany, she investigates strategies of (1) constructing national identity as an essential ethnic and cultural category while simultaneously obscuring it, and (2) narrowly defining historical guilt and responsibility, thereby reinforcing undeserved advantage.