Racial Identity, Reactions to Inequality, and Fairness Concepts among Americans

Abstract How do Americans react to perceptions of racial inequality? We subtly introduce economic inequality in an experiment comparing Black and White groups, while varying whether the inequality occurs by chance or is the result of human agency. Subjects are given the ability to correct that inequality by taking actions that could be costly or not. All subjects are more likely to correct inequality if their racial ingroup is disadvantaged. Black subjects react more strongly when inequality is human-made, whereas the source of inequality does not matter to Whites. When they perceive their ingroup as being treated unfairly, Black subjects are more likely to bear personal costs to correct inequality than White subjects. Subjects’ concept of fairness switches depending on whether their ingroup or outgroup is disadvantaged: they become more likely to behave unfairly themselves to correct inequality against others if the outgroup benefits at the expense of the ingroup.