Despite legal classification as White, Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) Americans experience high levels of discrimination, suggesting low social status precludes them from accessing the White racial category. After first demonstrating that the rated Whiteness of MENA Americans influences support for discriminatory policies (Study 1), the present research explores ratings and perceptions of Whiteness of MENA Americans by demonstrating how MENA ethnicities shift racial categorization of prototypically White and racially ambiguous targets (Studies 2–4), and how MENA Americans’ social status influences rated Whiteness (Study 5). As few studies have explored the relative Whiteness of different ethnicities in the United States despite the fluid history of the White racial category, the present studies have implications for the processes that inform White categorization and lay categorizations of MENA Americans.
AwadG. H. (2010). The impact of acculturation and religious identification on perceived discrimination for Arab/Middle Eastern Americans. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 16(1), 59–67.
ChenJ. M.PaukerK.GaitherS. E.HamiltonD. L.ShermanJ. W. (2018). Black + White = Not White: A minority bias in categorizations of Black–White multiracials. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 78, 43–54.
4.
CraigM. A.DeHartT.RichesonJ. A.FiedorowiczL. (2012). Do unto others as others have done unto you? Perceiving sexism influences women’s evaluations of stigmatized racial groups. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38(9), 1107–1119. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167212445210
5.
DerousE.RyanA. M.SerlieA. W. (2015). Double jeopardy upon resume screening: When Achmed is less employable than Aisha. Personnel Psychology, 68(3), 659–696.
6.
DevosT.BanajiM. R. (2005). American = White?Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88(3), 447–466.
7.
EberhardtJ. L.DasguptaN.BanaszynskiT. L. (2003). Believing is seeing: The effects of racial labels and implicit beliefs on face perception. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29(3), 360–370.
8.
Ex part Mohriez, 54 F. Supp. 941, 942 (D. Mass. 1944).
9.
FourlasG. N. (2015). Being a target: On the racialization of Middle Eastern Americans. Critical Philosophy of Race, 3(1), 101–123.
10.
FreemanJ. B.JohnsonK. L. (2016). More than meets the eye: Split-second social perception. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20(5), 362–374.
11.
FreemanJ. B.MaY.HanS.AmbadyN. (2013). Influences of culture and visual context on real-time social categorization. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49(2), 206–210.
12.
FreemanJ. B.PaukerK.SanchezD. T. (2016). A perceptual pathway to bias: Interracial exposure reduces abrupt shifts in real-time race perception that predict mixed-race bias. Psychological Science, 27(4), 502–517.
13.
FreemanJ. B.PennerA. M.SapersteinA.ScheutzM.AmbadyN. (2011). Looking the part: Social status cues shape race perception. PLoS One, 6(9), e25107.
14.
GalinskyA. D.HallE. V.CuddyA. J. (2013). Gendered races: Implications for interracial marriage, leadership selection, and athletic participation. Psychological Science, 24(4), 498–506.
15.
GhavamiN.PeplauL. A. (2013). An intersectional analysis of gender and ethnic stereotypes: Testing three hypotheses. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 37(1), 113–127.
16.
HewstoneM.HantziA.JohnstonL. (1991). Social categorization and person memory: The pervasiveness of race as an organizing principle. European Journal of Social Psychology, 21(6), 517–528.
17.
HillH.BruceV.AkamatsuS. (1995). Perceiving the sex and race of faces: The role of shape and colour. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 261(1362), 367–373.
18.
InmanM. L.BaronR. S. (1996). Influence of prototypes on perceptions of prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70(4), 727–739.
19.
ItoT. A.Willadsen-JensenE. C.KayeJ. T.ParkB. (2011). Contextual variation in automatic evaluative bias to racially-ambiguous faces. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47(4), 818–823.
20.
KroschA. R.BerntsenL.AmodioD. M.JostJ. T.Van BavelJ. J. (2013). On the ideology of hypodescent: Political conservatism predicts categorization of racially ambiguous faces as Black. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49(6), 1196–1203.
21.
KteilyN.BruneauE.WaytzA.CotterillS. (2015). The ascent of man: Theoretical and empirical evidence for blatant dehumanization. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 109(5), 901–931.
22.
KunstJ. R.DovidioJ. F.DotschR. (2018). White look-alikes: Mainstream culture adoption makes immigrants “look” phenotypically White. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 44(2), 265–282.
23.
MaD. S.CorrellJ.WittenbrinkB. (2015). The Chicago Face Database: A free stimulus set of faces and norming data. Behavior Research Methods, 47, 1122–1135.
24.
MacraeC. N.BodenhausenG. V. (2000). Social cognition: Thinking categorically about others. Annual Review of Psychology, 51(1), 93–120.
25.
MoradiB.HasanN. T. (2004). Arab American persons’ reported experiences of discrimination and mental health: The mediating role of personal control. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 51, 418–428.
26.
NavarreteC. D.McDonaldM. M.MolinaL. E.SidaniusJ. (2010). Prejudice at the nexus of race and gender: An outgroup male target hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(6), 933–945.
27.
NicolasG.SkinnerA. L.DickterC. L. (2018). Other than the sum: Hispanic and Middle Eastern categorizations of Black–White mixed-race faces. Social Psychological and Personality Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550618769591
28.
OstromT. M.UpshawH. S. (1968). Psychological perspective and attitude change. In GreenwaldA. G.BockT. C.OstromT. M. (Eds.), Psychological foundations of attitudes (pp. 217–242). Academic Press.
PeeryD.BodenhausenG. V. (2008). Black + White = Black: Hypodescent in reflexive categorization of racially ambiguous faces. Psychological Science, 19(10), 973–977.
31.
PennerA. M.SapersteinA. (2008). How social status shapes race. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(50), 19628–19630.
32.
SimmonsJ. P.NelsonL. D.SimonsohnU. (2011). False positive psychology: Undisclosed flexibility in data collection and analysis allows presenting anything as significant. Psychological Science, 22, 1359–1366
33.
SuleimanM. (Ed.). (2010). Arabs in America: Building a new future. Temple University Press.
34.
TskhayK. O.RuleN. O. (2015). Semantic information influences race categorization from faces. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 41(6), 769–778.
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commision. (2006). Compliance Manual No 915.003, Section 15: Race & Color Discrimination 15-3. www.eeoc.gov/policy/docs/race-color.pdf
37.
YoungD. M.SanchezD. T.WiltonL. S. (2015). Too rich for diversity: Socioeconomic status influences multifaceted person perception of Latino targets. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 16(1), 392–416.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
