The souls of Black folk (and the weight of Black ancestry) in U.S. Black Americans' racial categorization

Abstract

We theorized that from the perspective of U.S. Black Americans, a connection to Black ancestry-and the historical hardship associated with that ancestry-plays an important role in racial categorization. We found support for this across six studies. In Studies 1-3, participants categorized targets with Black ancestry and White experiences or targets with White ancestry and Black experiences. U.S. Black Americans' (more than non-Black Americans') racial categorizations were influenced by Black ancestry (more than by White ancestry). In Study 4, we replicated this effect under extreme conditions (e.g., even when targets had Black ancestry and were phenotypically, socially, culturally, self-identified, and advantaged as White for eighty years, U.S. Black Americans categorized them as Black). In Study 5, U.S. Black Americans were more likely than U.S. White Americans to associate their racial ancestry with hardship, and individual differences in those associations predicted the extent to which U.S. Black Americans categorized the target with Black ancestry and White experiences as Black. In Study 6, participants categorized a target with Black ancestry and ancestral hardship (i.e., their ancestors were kidnapped from Africa and experienced slavery) or a target with Black ancestry and ancestral success (i.e., their ancestors immigrated from Africa and experienced upward mobility). U.S. Black Americans (unlike U.S. White Americans) were more identified with the target with ancestral hardship. Collectively, our research suggests that from the perspective of U.S. Black Americans, the collective Black experiences of the past continue to shape the Black collective of the present. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).