The Association Between Color-Blind Racial Ideology and Perceptions of a Racialized University Symbol
Secondary data analysis was completed on 450 racially diverse third-year college students in the Illinois Longitudinal Diversity Project to examine the association between participants’ level of color-blind racial beliefs (i.e., the belief that race and racism are irrelevant for the contemporary moment; as measured by the Color-Blind Racial Attitudes Scale – Short Form; CoBRAS-SF; Neville, Low, Liao, Walters, & Landrum-Brown, 2007) and their level of agreement with the university’s decision to remove a controversial Native American racialized university symbol. White students on average were less likely to support the university’s decision to remove the symbol and Black students on average were more likely to support the decision. Additionally, men were more likely to disagree with the decision than women. As predicted, greater levels of racial color-blindness were significantly correlated with lower support with the decision to ban the university racialized symbol; the strength of this association differed across racial groups. Students also elaborated on their perceptions about the removal of the symbol in an open-ended question. Seven themes emerged about perceptions of the decision to remove the symbol, which included: (a) Dismissive, (b) Racial Sympathy/Empathy, (c) Racist/Offensive, (d) Pride/Tradition/Unity/Symbol, (e) Procedural, (f) Not Offensive/Not Racist, and (g) Freedom of Speech/Majority Rights/Politically Correct/Hypersensitivity. Implications of the findings, limitations, and future directions of the study are discussed.