Skin Color Stressors
Graduate student takes a new look at racism
By Nicole St.Pierre
Graduate student Jennifer Best is turning the study of racial prejudice on its head.
Scholars have long studied the environmental and social factors that
lead to racially biased thinking and behaviors. “What hasn’t been as
widely researched is how victims of racial prejudice cope with
discrimination-related stress,” says Best, who studies clinical
psychology in USC College.
Figuring out the psychological and social wellness of people of color
is not an easy task. But that didn’t stop this Staten Island native
who, as an undergraduate, studied psychology and biology at Harvard.
As part of her masters’ project (which has since become the basis for
her dissertation), Best recruited 64 African American women to
participate in a research study. She used psychology professor and
research supervisor Gerald Davison’s Articulated Thoughts in Simulated
Situations method as the foundation for her research.
Through audio recordings, she simulated three imaginary
scenarios. The first features the participant imagining being
given poor service at a mall that has predominantly white customers.
The second depicts a hate crime in which the participant’s car is
vandalized with racial slurs. “This scenario provoked the most intense
emotions of fear and anger,” she says. “Most of the women coped with
the hate crime situation in a problem-focused way, meaning they would
ask for help rather than shouting back.”
But the most unique aspect of Best’s research is the third scenario
which asks: How does a woman react when people of her own race judge
her along racial lines? To find out, Best made a third audiotape.
“The participant imagines herself about to sign up for a predominantly
black student organization, while two other African American women look
on disapprovingly. Later the two girls pull the new club member aside
and ask, ‘Why don’t you sign up for the white club on campus, you’re
not black enough [for our club].’”
Best found this final scenario provoked an intense sense of sadness in several of the volunteers.
“The subject of intra-group prejudice has barely been examined
scientifically, but it is a very real issue—especially for ethnic
minority students trying to adjust to communing within a multi-cultural
college environment,” she says.
“Intra-group prejudice is something that is almost taboo to talk
about,” she says. “There are certain said or unsaid codes about what it
means to be an African American female.”
Best’s unusual approach to the study of prejudice was so well received
she is asking a related question in her dissertation: How do racial
identity and trait hostility influence the perception of and ways of
coping with racial discrimination?
To answer this, she’s analyzing how ethnic groups, including, African
Americans, Mexican Americans, Asians and Europeans deal with everyday
slights.
“Things like bad customer service, for example, may or may not be
attributed to prejudice. But how do people react psychologically when
they’re not sure.”
It’s another burgeoning field that fits well with Best’s “break the mold” attitude.
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