Evidence of existing disparities can reinforce rather than challenge the stereotypes behind them.

Evidence

Ironically, when these disparities and the inequality that characterizes various systems are brought to the public’s attention, people can seize upon the disparities, potentially as “evidence” of the underlying stereotypes, and use them to double down on and rationalize the inequality (Hetey & Eberhardt, 2014; Peffley & Hurwitz, 2007). People take evidence of what is and use it to justify how the world should be (Kay et al., 2009). — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 415

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the ‘system justification’ literature and the general pattern seen in Backfire / moral panic reading where confronting people with evidence can entrench their beliefs.
• SEED: Article angle: the perverse feedback loop where reformers’ evidence-gathering feeds the very stereotypes they seek to dismantle — and why institutional framing (not raw disparity statistics) is the better rhetorical strategy.