Color-blind: The treatment of race and ethnicity in social psychology

We explore the extent to which race and ethnicity have been incorporated in social psychological scholarship and argue that social psychologists shoul d, and can, do better in this regard. First, we discuss why social psycholo gists should consider race more seriously. We question whether scholars can reasonably continue to assume that basic social psychological processes an d theories apply equally well to different racial and ethnic groups. Second , we document the extent to which social psychology has engaged issues of r ace and ethnicity through a content analysis of the last three decades of S ocial Psychology Quarterly and the two most comprehensive sourcebooks for s ocial psychology. Comparisons with other specialty journals in sociology an d psychology and with the increasing research on gender over the same perio d highlight the extent to which race has been neglected in social psycholog y. Finally, in looking to the future, we discuss how race can be given more attention in light of recent methodological advances and emerging research programs.