Perceiving Race

Race is a way we classify people based on common ancestry or descent and is almost entirely judged by physical features (Lustig & Koester, 2006). Once we perceive race, other perceptual judgments follow, most notably the assignment of people to ingrouper versus outgrouper status (Brewer, 1999). People we perceive as being the “same race” we see as being ingroupers. Their communication is perceived more positively than the communication of people of “other races,” and we’re more likely to make positive attributions about their behavior.

Not surprisingly, the perception of racial categories is more salient for people who suffer racial discrimination than for those who don’t. Consider the experience of Canadian professor Tara Goldstein (2001). She asked students in her teacher education class to sort themselves into “same race” groups for a discussion exercise. Four black women immediately grouped together; several East Asian students did the same. But the white students were perplexed. One shouted, “All Italians—over here!” while another inquired, “Any other students of Celtic ancestry?” One white female approached Dr. Goldstein and said, “I’m not white, I’m Jewish.” Following the exercise, the white students commented that they had never been sorted by their whiteness and didn’t perceive themselves or one another as white.

The concept of whiteness has been investigated only recently. Whiteness can often seem “natural” or “normal” to individuals who are white, but for scholars interested in whiteness and for people of color, it means privilege. In her book White Privilege, Peggy McIntosh (1999) lists 26 privileges that she largely takes for granted and that result from her skin color. For example, as a white person, McIntosh is able to swear, dress in secondhand clothes, or not answer e-mail without having members of her race or other races attribute these behaviors to bad morals, poverty, or computer illiteracy. This perception of verbal and nonverbal communication may seem mundane, but as McIntosh says, it is part of white privilege, “an invisible package of unearned assets which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was meant to remain oblivious” (p. 79).

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