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Strategic race blindness: not so black and white?

Strategic race blindness: not so black and white? Purpose – Strategic race‐blindness (purposely avoiding mention of a target's ethnicity to appear unprejudiced) potentially hinders eyewitness testimony. Design/methodology/approach – The current study examined whether participant and interviewer race affected the recollection of black, white or Western Asian individuals, where it was indicated the targets were criminal or not. Data were gathered using a cognitive interview‐type methodology whereby stimulus questioning was open, rather than prompted. After a short interval participants spontaneously described the targets and the point at which race was used as a descriptor was noted. Findings – There was a clear effect of differential race mentioning in free recall by participants. However, multi‐level ordinal logistic regression found neither race of the interviewer nor race of the participant (or their interaction) influenced the mentioning of the race of the face in the photograph. This remained irrespective of the guilt of the person in the stimulus picture. Originality /value – Extending the paradigm to persons of Western Asian heritage enabled strategic race bias to be considered in the context of persons sometimes regarded as being sympathetic to terrorism. Gathering information using the cognitive interview makes out study closer to the process by which the police in the UK are trained to gather information. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of Criminal Psychology Emerald Publishing

Strategic race blindness: not so black and white?

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Publisher
Emerald Publishing
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 Emerald Group Publishing Limited. All rights reserved.
ISSN
2009-3829
DOI
10.1108/JCP-09-2012-0006
Publisher site
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Abstract

Purpose – Strategic race‐blindness (purposely avoiding mention of a target's ethnicity to appear unprejudiced) potentially hinders eyewitness testimony. Design/methodology/approach – The current study examined whether participant and interviewer race affected the recollection of black, white or Western Asian individuals, where it was indicated the targets were criminal or not. Data were gathered using a cognitive interview‐type methodology whereby stimulus questioning was open, rather than prompted. After a short interval participants spontaneously described the targets and the point at which race was used as a descriptor was noted. Findings – There was a clear effect of differential race mentioning in free recall by participants. However, multi‐level ordinal logistic regression found neither race of the interviewer nor race of the participant (or their interaction) influenced the mentioning of the race of the face in the photograph. This remained irrespective of the guilt of the person in the stimulus picture. Originality /value – Extending the paradigm to persons of Western Asian heritage enabled strategic race bias to be considered in the context of persons sometimes regarded as being sympathetic to terrorism. Gathering information using the cognitive interview makes out study closer to the process by which the police in the UK are trained to gather information.

Journal

Journal of Criminal Psychology – Emerald Publishing

Published: Sep 20, 2013

Keywords: Eyewitness testimony; Prejudice; Racial identification; Strategic colour blindness

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