Color-blind racial ideology and psychological false consciousness among African Americans

The relations between color-blind racial beliefs (i.e., denial and distortion of the existence of racism) and dimensions of PFC (i.e., false beliefs that serve to work against one's individual or group interest) among 211 African Americans was investigated. Findings indicated that greater endorsement of color-blind racial beliefs was related to the three dimensions of PFC investigated, including higher levels of (a) victim blame attributions of racial inequality, (b) internalized oppression, and (c) justification of social roles or social dominance orientation. K-means cluster analysis among all variables was used to identify racial ideology types. Results suggested that the three multivariate types uncovered-racialized egalitarian consciousness, structural psychological false consciousness, and psychological false consciousness-were differentially related to system blame attributions and out-group friendship preferences. Implications of the findings and future directions are discussed.