Evidence of past discrimination often surfaces during contemporary discussions about social inequalities. The many prominent allegations of sexual misconduct that fueled the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements drew attention to the long history of sexism, abuse, and discrimination against women. Conversations about racism in the United States cannot be untangled from the country’s legacy of slavery and systemic discrimination.
Research: Bringing Up Past Injustices Make Majority Groups Defensive
Many organizations and institutions reference past injustices with the intention of making people more sensitive to how historic systems of oppression contribute to present-day inequalities. But can all this attention being paid to shameful historical inequities also have unintended negative consequences? Researchers investigating how to build support for programs that seek to remedy gender discrimination in the labor force discovered that it actually can. After conducting three experiments, they found that invoking past discrimination can threaten men’s social identity and undermine their perceptions of current levels of discrimination, consequently lowering their support for policies meant to ameliorate this situation. However, the researchers also found that focusing on how women’s status has improved over time deflects the threat to men’s social identity and makes them more likely to support present-day employment equity policies.