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Article
What's Race Got To Do With It? Responses To Consumer Discrimination
Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy (2013)
  • Sophia R. Evett, Salem State University
  • Anne-Marie G. Hakstian, Salem State University
  • Jerome D. Williams, Rutgers University
  • Geraldine R. Henderson, Rutgers University
Abstract
Consumer discrimination occurs when sales clerks and other store employees, including security personnel, treat customers differently because of their race or ethnicity. The goal of the present research was to examine how participants perceived a case of consumer discrimination and what actions they felt the victim should take. Based on Robinson’s theory of perceptual segregation, we examined whether the perceptions and responses of white participants differed from those of people of color. We also drew on the liberation psychology tenets of conscientization and de-ideologization with particular emphasis on taking the perspective of the oppressed, by measuring participants’ level of perceived societal discrimination. These two individual difference variables (participant race and perceived societal discrimination) significantly predicted participants’ perceptions of the situation and their emotional responses, which, in turn, mediated how they thought the customer should respond.
Disciplines
Publication Date
December, 2013
DOI
10.1111/j.1530-2415.2012.01297.x
Citation Information
Sophia R. Evett, Anne-Marie G. Hakstian, Jerome D. Williams and Geraldine R. Henderson. "What's Race Got To Do With It? Responses To Consumer Discrimination" Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy Vol. 13 Iss. 1 (2013) p. 165 - 185
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/geraldine-henderson/34/