Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 42 (3):260-282 (2012)
|Abstract||In this article, I demonstrate fundamental weaknesses
in the ability of critical understandings of race to produce
reliable knowledge of how social actors use social comparisons
as a way to align self with ingroup. I trace these weaknesses to
two sources: The first is relying on social status as an
explanation for race-based assessments, ingroup motivations, and
social constructions of otherness. This is opposed to leaning on
assessments grounded in social psychological research that links
properties of human cognition to the development and maintenance
of social identities. The second weakness is an open support for
activist research that is often situated in radical
multiculturalism. Because critical race scholars openly side
with racial minorities’ interests, they tend to establish
incomplete assessments of social behaviors and social constructs
linked to racial identities in order to maintain their stated
political allegiances. To