Racial Anxiety

• Author: Rachel D. Godsil & L. Song Richardson
• Position: Eleanor Bontecou Professor of Law, Seton Hall University School of Law. J.D., University of Michigan Law School/Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Law, University of California, Irvine School of Law. J.D., The Yale Law School; A.B., Harvard College
• Pages: 2235-2263

RICHARDSON_PP_FINAL (DO NOT DELETE) 7/26/2017 12:02 AM

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Racial Anxiety

Rachel D. Godsil & L. Song Richardson**

ABSTRACT: Many have embraced evidence from the mind sciences that our

behaviors are often influenced by our implicit biases rather than our conscious

beliefs. This is one reason why implicit bias has become a staple in trainings

for judges, lawyers, police officers, teachers, and health care providers. While

understanding that implicit bias is important, social science research

demonstrates that implicit bias alone does not fully account for the racial

dynamics that undermine student achievement and trigger disproportionately

harsh discipline, diminish the efficacy of health care and affect morbidity and

mortality rates, trigger harsher prison sentences, result in child removal, and

lead to unnecessary uses of force by police against civilians. Following the

“behavioral realist” approach to provide the most empirically accurate

understanding of human behavior, in this Essay, we introduce “racial

anxiety” as an additional lens for understanding racial disparities of all

types.

In the social psychological literature, racial anxiety refers to the concerns that

often arise both before and during interracial interactions. People of color

experience racial anxiety when they worry that they will be subject to

discriminatory treatment. White people, on the other hand, experience it when

they worry that they will be perceived as racist. Racial anxiety can influence

behaviors and judgments in ways that contribute to significant and

unwarranted racial disparities even in the absence of both conscious and

implicit racial bias. Additionally, in concert with implicit racial bias, racial

anxiety can aggravate interracial dynamics in ways that create significant

harm. This Essay explores how racial anxiety operates, discusses its probable

 Eleanor Bontecou Professor of Law, Seton Hall University School of Law. J.D., Univers ity

of Michigan Law School; B.A., University of Wisconsin, Madison.

** Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Law, University of

California, Irvine School of Law. J.D., The Yale Law School; A.B., Harvard College.

The authors wish to thank Phillip Atiba Goff, Alexis McGill Johnson, john a. powell, and Linda

R. Tropp for their input and Zackory Burns for excellent research assistance. Song Richardson

also wishes to express gratitude to her colleagues Mario Barnes, Alex Camach o, Erwin

Chemerinsky, Seth Davis, Joe DiMento, Michele Goodwin, Kaaryn Gustafson, Katie Porter, T ony

Reese, Benjamin van Rooij, and Chris Whytock as well as Tracey Meares and participants in the

Criminal Justice Roundtable at The Yale Law School for comments on an earlier version of this

Essay. Finally, we thank the editors of the Iowa Law Review, and specifically Alyssa Carlson,

Matthew Cubin, and Andrew Stanley for their work editing this Essay.

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effects on police–civilian and doctor–patient interactions, and highlights

interventions for mitigating its effects.

I. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................... 2236

II. EMPIRICAL UNDERPINNINGS OF RACIAL ANXIETY ....................... 2240

A. COGNITIVE AND PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF RACIAL

ANXIETY ............................................................................... 2242

B. BEHAVIORAL MANIFESTATIONS OF RACIAL ANXIETY ............... 2245

III. RACIAL ANXIETY IN POLICING AND HEALTH CARE ..................... 2247

A. POLICE–CIVILIAN INTERACTIONS ........................................... 2248

1. Effects on Officers ....................................................... 2248

2. Effects on Individuals .................................................. 2251

B. HEALTH CARE ...................................................................... 2253

1. Effects on Health Care Providers ............................... 2254

2. Effects on Patients ....................................................... 2255

IV. OVERCOMING RACIAL ANXIETY .................................................. 2256

A. PRIMING FOR POSITIVE INTERGROUP CONTACT ....................... 2256

B. STRATEGIES TO MINIMIZE RACIAL ANXIETY............................ 2258

1. Acknowledging Anxiety .............................................. 2259

2. Scripts ........................................................................... 2260

3. Malleability of Prejudice ............................................. 2260

4. Learning Goals ............................................................ 2261

C. AVOIDING RACIAL ANXIETY TRIGGERS ................................... 2262

V. CONCLUSION .............................................................................. 2262

I. INTRODUCTION

The question of whether “racial anxiety and anguish” determined the

outcome of the 2016 presidential election is now fodder for political scientists

and armchair commentators trying to make sense of the unanticipated.1

Whether a majority of White voters were responding to a sense that an

impending demographic shift was rendering them irrelevant, the fear

triggered by vitriolic campaign rhetoric, or unresolved ambivalence about

having elected a Black president, the term “racial anxiety” used by

commenters in the context of the 2016 election cycle is a popularized version

1. Jenée Desmond-Harris, Trump Seized Upon Obama-Inspired Racial Anxiety—and Won, VOX

(Nov. 11, 2016, 1:20 PM), http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/11/13587728/

trump-president-obama -racism-racial-anxi ety (quoting Eddie Glaude, chair of Princeton

University’s Center for African American Studies). See generally Robb Willer et al., Threats to Racial

Status Promote Tea Party Support Among White Americans (Stanford Graduate Sch. of Bus., Working

Paper No. 3422, 2016), http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abs tract_id=2770186.