Antiracism and Nonracism Scale

Abstract

The Antiracism and Nonracism Scale (ANS) is a 10-item psychological instrument developed by LaCosse, Krusemark, Foltz, and Plant in 2023. It was designed to accurately quantify distinct belief systems regarding race and active engagement with issues of racial discrimination, specifically among White Americans. The creation of this measure was motivated by the limitations of prior antiracism instruments, which often failed to accurately capture genuine proactive beliefs and frequently conflated multiple psychological constructs within a single measurement.

The scale development involved an initial set of 14 items, rigorously refined through both Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis. The final structure comprises two distinct, yet related, five-item subscales: Antiracism and Nonracism. Comprehensive psychometric evaluations, based on data primarily from White undergraduate students in the United States, confirmed the scale’s strong internal consistency (McDonald’s Omega), robust Convergent Validity, and significant predictive ability regarding self-reported engagement in social change initiatives.

Keywords

Antiracism Beliefs, Nonracism Beliefs, Racial Discrimination, Racial Inequality, Social Change, Attitudes, Racial and Ethnic Attitudes, Social Issues, Antiracism, Prejudice.

Authors

LaCosse, Jennifer, Krusemark, Danielle, Foltz, Jennifer, Plant, E. Ashby.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Antiracism and Nonracism Scale is to offer a precise and nuanced assessment of an individual’s beliefs regarding racial justice. The scale’s core innovation lies in its ability to differentiate empirically between two distinct constructs: passive nonracism (the internal belief that prejudice is wrong) and active antiracism (the commitment to proactively fight against systemic racism).

This measure addresses significant shortcomings in earlier instruments by providing researchers with a tool capable of distinguishing those who merely hold egalitarian values from those who are motivated toward meaningful intervention and social change. This distinction is vital for understanding the psychological drivers behind effective allyship and anti-prejudice behavior, particularly within White populations.

Construct

The Antiracism and Nonracism Scale measures two primary psychological orientations toward race and equality:

• Antiracism: This construct focuses on the belief that White individuals must actively participate in challenging and dismantling racial inequality. Items reflect an interventionist stance, measuring proactive behavior such as speaking out against discrimination and promoting equal treatment through concrete actions.

• Nonracism: This construct gauges the internal commitment to avoiding racial prejudice. It measures the belief that racial discrimination, stereotyping, and overtly racist behavior are inherently wrong. This represents a fundamental, often passive, commitment to equality and non-prejudice.

Validity

The Antiracism and Nonracism Scale demonstrated robust validity across multiple dimensions, establishing its measure as distinct and relevant to real-world racial attitudes.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity: The Antiracism subscale showed expected moderate positive correlations with the Nonracism subscale and with pro-Black attitudes. Importantly, it correlated positively with the Internal Motivation to Respond without Prejudice Scale (IMS), but was found to be unrelated to the External Motivation to Respond without Prejudice Scale (EMS) and fear of negative evaluation. This lack of correlation with external motivation strongly suggests that the scale measures intrinsic commitment rather than concerns related to social desirability. Both subscales correlated positively with measures of perceived racial discrimination in the United States.

Predictive Validity: High scores on the Antiracism subscale successfully predicted real-world outcomes. Individuals scoring highly were significantly more likely to identify racial discrimination as a serious societal problem and reported greater engagement in active social initiatives aimed at achieving racial justice.

Reliability

The internal consistency of the Antiracism and Nonracism Scale was assessed using McDonald’s Omega (ω), confirming that the items within each subscale consistently measure the same underlying construct.

• For the Antiracism subscale, the internal consistency was calculated at ω = .86.

• For the Nonracism subscale, the internal consistency was calculated at ω = .82.

Factor Analysis

The scale’s theoretical separation of Antiracism and Nonracism was empirically confirmed through sequential Factor Analysis during its development.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA): Initial EFA procedures revealed that refining the item pool was essential for maximizing variance explanation. For both the Antiracism and Nonracism subscales, removing two weaker items significantly improved the explained variance (Antiracism: 54.25% to 66.67%; Nonracism: 46.97% to 57.06%). An EFA conducted on the final 10-item structure (five per subscale) indicated that two distinct factors accounted for 62.06% of the total variance, supporting the initial two-factor model.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA): Due to practical constraints, a 9-item version of the scale was used in the final validation step. A CFA comparing a two-factor model (separate Antiracism and Nonracism constructs) against a one-factor model (treating all items as a single construct) demonstrated that the two-factor model provided a significantly better fit to the observed data. This result robustly confirms the distinct empirical nature of the antiracism and nonracism constructs.

Instrument

Test Type: Original

Format: The scale consists of 10 items (or 9 items in specific validation studies) rated on a 9-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (“strongly disagree”) to 9 (“strongly agree”). Administration was conducted electronically. Higher scores indicate a stronger endorsement of the respective construct.

Language Available: English

Population Group: Human; Male; Female

Age Group: Adulthood (18 years and older)

Population Details: The measure was specifically administered to White undergraduate students located in the United States during its development and validation phase.

Test Methodology: The development and validation employed a comprehensive set of psychometric methodologies, including Test Validity (Convergent Validity, Discriminant Validity, Predictive Validity), Test Reliability (Internal Consistency), and Factor Analysis (Confirmatory Factor Analysis, Exploratory Factor Analysis).

Keywords

Attitudes toward Race, Prejudice, Antiracism, Nonracism, White Racial Identity, Social Justice, Psychometric Scale.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: No data is Available for any author.

Affiliation Email addresses: Jennifer LaCosse ([email protected]); Email data is not available for Krusemark, Foltz, or Plant.

Correspondence Address: LaCosse, Jennifer: Bates College, Department of Psychology, Pettengill Hall, 2 Andrews Rd., Lewiston, Maine, United States, 04240.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

Permissions: The Antiracism and Nonracism Scale is available for use in research and teaching purposes.

Fee: No fee is associated with the use of this measure.

Test Year: 2023

References

LaCosse, J., Krusemark, D., Foltz, J., & Plant, E. A. (2023). Antiracism: Development and validation of a measure designed to identify White Americans who proactively fight to end discrimination toward Black Americans. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 26(1), 180–202. doi.org/10.1177/13684302211048886

Items of the Antiracism and Nonracism Scale

IMPORTANT: The following scale items must be preserved in their original language and must not be changed in any way. The full 10-item scale is divided into two distinct factors. The specific items can be found in Table 1 on Page 186 of the source reference (LaCosse et al., 2023).

Antiracism Items

1. It is important for White people to actively try to promote equal treatment of Blacks and Whites.

2. It is important for White people to share their nonprejudiced beliefs with other White people.

3. White people should do more than just acknowledge that racism toward Black people exists.

4. White people need to speak out against racial discrimination.

5. White people should proactively (i.e., with words and actions) show that they are antidiscrimination.

Nonracism Items

1. I would never say anything overtly racist about a Black person.

2. I would never discriminate against a Black person based on race.

3. It is never acceptable to stereotype Black people based on their race.

4. I think White people and Black people should be treated equally in academic and employment settings.

5. In some situations, it is okay to discriminate against Black people based on race.ʳ

Note: Items are rated on a 9-point scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 9 (strongly agree). “r” refers to items that are reverse-coded.