An Analysis of Differential Responses to Racism

94 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2002.As expected, white Americans reported social discrimination more often than other ethnic groups and African Americans reported discrimination in service and police incidents more often than other ethnic groups. Also, African Americans responded to racism with confrontation more than other ethnic groups, and whites responded by doing nothing more than other groups. Contrary to my prediction, the amount of previous experiences did not influence the response chosen. Although members of different ethnic groups encountered different types of racist situations, there were no between group differences in the amount of similar previous experiences. Also, not all situations involving racism were perceived as stressful and the identity of the antagonist did not appear to relate to the level of perceived stressfulness. No thematic differences were noted in situations that were perceived as stressful as opposed to situations that were not. African Americans were more likely to confront racist situations that they perceived to be more stressful. No gender differences were found in response choice. Overall, the only significant predictors of response choice were gender (mixed gender groups versus single males or females) and protagonist race. One of the major implications is that racism most often goes unreported.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD