White Americans deflect minority discrimination claims by recasting free speech as the harmed party.

Evidence

In Study 2, we aimed to address this limitation by examining a new context in which the dimensions of harm invoked in our two victimhood claims are more distinct. Doing this, and attempting to replicate our main findings, we examined White Americans responding to victimhood claims from racial minorities. We predicted again that a digressive victimhood response (i.e., free speech is the victim) would be endorsed more strongly, and regarded as more effective, than a more clearly distinct competitive victimhood response (i.e., White Americans are the victim). — Felix Danbold, Ivuoma N. Onyeador, and Miguel M. Unzueta, Dominant groups support digressive…, 73

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes digressive from competitive victimhood empirically: free speech stands in for the group’s harm in the digressive form, while the competitive form directly names the ingroup as victim.
• ADDENDUM: Directly supports the vicarious-victimhood mechanism of interest — the ‘free speech is the victim’ deflection recasts harm away from the ingroup itself onto an abstract principle.
• XREF: connects to: Americans habitually mask racial views behind expressed commitment to equality — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black: How Race Still…, 160; The White Racial Frame makes anti-non-White discrimination seem consistent with American values — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes…, 378; Color-blind rhetoric reframes discrimination claims as fabricated race-card plays. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The…, 1204

Broader Connections

• Color-blind rhetoric reframes discrimination claims as fabricated race-card plays. #expands (0.90) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 1204
• The White Racial Frame makes anti-non-White discrimination seem consistent with American values #expands (0.78) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 378
• Americans habitually mask racial views behind expressed commitment to equality #expands (0.75) — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 160