Minorities’ Perceptions of Majority Members’ Participation in Minority Spaces: A Critical Examination of Ally Behavior

My dissertation investigates how minority observers perceive majority members’ participation in minority affinity groups. Motivating this work is a proposed solution to advancing organizational diversity & inclusion efforts: engaging majority members, such as White men. The inherent assumption is that majority members’ participation is helpful and received positively by minorities. However, I argue that majority members’ participation can backfire and ironically perpetuate inequality. Across four experiments, I show how different levels of Whites’ / men’s participation (conceptualized as numerical presence and/or passive-active involvement) in racial & gender affinity groups affect how racial minorities and women perceive these groups. Study 1 manipulates presence (low, high) and finds that when there is a high number of Whites / men in a racial or gender affinity group, racial minorities and women perceive more invasiveness, anticipate less inclusion & safe space, and are less attracted to the affinity group and organization. Study 2 builds upon this by manipulating the percentage of Whites / men in the affinity group (10-50%) and shows a significant linear trend, such that the higher the percentage of Whites men in the group, the more perceived invasiveness, the lower anticipated inclusion & safe space, and the lower affinity group and organizational attraction. In fact, having less than 30% Whites / men in the group is when the negative effects of majority member participation are attenuated. Study 3 recruits White women and manipulates the number of White men in a Women’s affinity group leadership team. I find another significant linear trend: the more White men on the leadership team, the more perceived invasiveness White women feel, along with less anticipated inclusion & safe space and less attraction to the group and organization. Finally, Study 4 contends with majority members’ involvement in affinity groups—specifically White people in a Black / African American affinity group—and demonstrates that passive involvement elicits the most negative effects in Black people’s perceptions (e.g., more perceived invasiveness, less attraction to the affinity group). Altogether, finding a balance in majority member participation in minority affinity groups is crucial to prevent diversity & inclusion efforts from backfiring