Assumptions of individual diversity ideology and controversial effects on acknowledging racism

Abstract

Widespread ideas about diversity are being attacked today by authoritarian neoconservative political movements on a wide geopolitical scale. This paper focuses on those ideas celebrating individuals’ diversity (ID) and extends a previous study in a Greek sample (Iatridis, 2017) which showed that ID ideas paradoxically correlated positively with both
acknowledging racism as a major problem worldwide and denying the importance of racism altogether. The present paper proposes that such controversial findings may be due to an inherent ambivalence of ID ideology on the issues of difference and hierarchy. In this vein, lay accounts of social differences and representations of targets of racism were tested as mediators in the controversial relation between ID ideology and acknowledging or denying the importance of racism. In line with expectations, it was found that (a) allegedly nonhierarchical accounts of social difference (pointing to differences in individuals’ style, psychological attributes, etc.) related to ID ideology, as well as to both acknowledging and denying the importance of racism; (b) ID ideas and
acknowledging the importance of racism related to considering those social groups typically addressed in antiracist rhetoric in Greece (e.g. gays and immigrants), but not other minority groups, to be targets of racist discrimination. Interestingly, ID ideology was particularly sensitive to considering powerful groups (e.g. the rich and Germans) as targets of racism, and this pattern was implicated in both acknowledging and denying the importance of racism. These findings are discussed in the context of charges currently being levelled against the societal relevance of diversity ideas today.