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Attribution License (From government apologies to commemorative events, and from memorials to financial compensation, historically-harmed groups are increasingly demanding reparations (De Greiff, 2006; Torpey, 2003). In discussing reparations, we refer to either symbolic (e.g., apology) or material (e.g., financial compensation, land) reparations, though in many cases material reparations are symbolic in that they often pale in comparison to the loss or harm.
Even when significant harm and intent is clear, reparations are often hard won (Branch, 2002; Clairmont & Magill, 1999; Greenwood, 2015; Li, 2008). For example, consider the case of Indian Residential Schools in Canada. Run from the 1800s until the 1990s, the Government of Canada and partnering religious institutions aimed to assimilate over 150,000 Indigenous children. These groups removed Indigenous children from their homes and forced them to attend church-run schools where many experienced emotional, physical, and sexual abuse (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015). What did it take for survivors of these schools to receive official apologies and other reparations in 2008? Over two decades of advocating for reparations and significant pressure through legal routes. By 2004, survivors had made 14,000 individual claims (Miller, 2010) and supported 19 class action law suits against the government representing at least 79,000 survivors (e.g., Baxter & Baxter v. The Attorney General of Canada et al., 2006). Today, over ten years later, the fight for reparations continues. Those seeking reparations include those who attended “day schools” (Justice for Day Scholars, 2017) and several hundred Inuit Nunavik residents who were “foster students” (Residential Schools, 2017).
This reluctance to provide reparations is not unique to the context of Residential Schools or Canada. Rather, governments and citizens worldwide are often slow and resist redressing ugly pasts (Greenwood, 2015). Given that public support is often key in propelling government action for reparations, it is important to understand the determinants of their support. In the current research, we propose that one such factor is whether members of the public belong to an ethnic majority group or an ethnic minority group: Specifically, we contend that ethnic minority group members may, on average, be more supportive of reparations to an ethnic minority outgroup than are ethnic majority group members. We outline our logic below, following a review of factors known to impact support for reparations. Note that when we use the terms “majority” and “minority”, we refer to the White population majority and non-Indigenous ethnic minorities, respectively.
Social psychological research suggests many factors affect public support for reparations to harmed outgroups. Some refer to the state or experiences of the perpetrator group member. For example, perpetrator group members are more likely to endorse both symbolic and material reparations if they take a guilty physical posture (vs. a prideful or neutral one; Rotella & Richeson, 2013), adopt the perspective of the harmed group (vs. their own group’s perspective; Berndsen & McGarty, 2012; Imhoff, Bilewicz, & Erb, 2012), consider the lessons their group learned as a result of the atrocity (vs. considering the “cold” facts; Rotella, Richeson, & McAdams, 2015), or have a chance to affirm a positive self-image (but not group image; Čehajić-Clancy, Effron, Halperin, Liberman, & Ross, 2011). The characteristics of the harm or how the harm is framed is also important. For example, people are more likely to support reparations if they seem feasible (Berndsen & McGarty, 2010; see also Starzyk & Ross, 2008).
Other researchers have examined strategies aimed at increasing support for reparations among groups who are neither members of perpetrator nor victim groups. Starzyk and Ross (Studies 2 and 3; 2008), for example, asked participants to read about how, in the 1960s, the City of Halifax mistreated and then forcibly relocated residents of a long-standing Black community called “Africville.” Participants were not Black and lived in another part of the country; thus, they were neither perpetrators nor victims. Through minor changes to the passage, Starzyk and Ross (2008) randomly assigned participants to learn that former Africville residents and their descendants were or were not still suffering because of the past harms. They found that participants who thought the community was still suffering because of the past harms were more likely to support a variety of government reparations (Starzyk & Ross, 2008). Neufeld, Gaucher, Starzyk, and Boese (2019) also focused on non-perpetrator groups’ support for government action for a racial/ethnic outgroup. In Studies 1 and 2, Neufeld, Gaucher, et al. (2019) manipulated participants’ sense of community connection by asking participants to consider how they are connected to or disconnected from their own community. After, participants learned about issues in either an African or Native American outgroup community and rated their support for government action to redress harms. Participants led to feel more connected to (versus disconnected from) their own communities supported more government action because thinking about their own community connections heightened their perceived value of all communities.
Several individual differences also impact support for reparations. For example, support for outgroup reparations is associated with lower levels of both modern racism (Blatz & Ross, 2009) and political conservativism (Banfield, Ross, & Blatz, 2014).
In this research, we extend the literature on determinants of support for reparations by investigating the impact of another factor: Ethnic majority versus minority status (henceforth referred to as “status” or “ethnic status”). Interested in Canadians’ attitudes about the Government of Canada providing reparations to Indigenous peoples in Canada, we compared the opinions of White and non-Indigenous racial/ethnic minority Canadians. White Canadians constitute both the population majority and tend to have higher social status, whereas non-Indigenous minority Canadians tend to have lower social status (Conference Board of Canada, 2018; Statistics Canada, 2018). We expected to see signs of intraminority solidarity: Compared to White Canadians, we expected that non-Indigenous minority Canadians would support reparations more. Anecdotal support for this hypothesis stems from the seemingly high proportion of racialized minority interest groups in Canada who support reparations for Indigenous peoples in Canada, such as Palestine House, the Islamic Congress, the Black Action Defense Committee, and No One is Illegal (Amadahy & Lawrence, 2010).
Consistent with other scholars in social psychology, we use the term “intraminority” here, but others prefer the term “interminority” to describe the same phenomenon. While hoping that scholars will in time agree on one term, readers should be aware that two terms exist to refer to the same phenomenon. We chose intraminority because “minority” itself is a diverse group; there are many groups within this superordinate category.
We also sought to understand some reasons why intraminority solidarity could affect support for reparations. We focused on four variables: collective victimhood, inclusive victim consciousness, political solidarity, and perceived outgroup suffering. In what follows we describe the rationale for the role of each of these variables as well as our hypotheses.
Collective Victimhood
How groups experience harm will vary. It may be physical or structural, historical or ongoing, and experienced by either the individual (directly) or their ancestors (indirectly). Compared to majority group members, we propose that minority group members are more likely to report that their group has suffered harm; that is, to have a sense of collective victimhood. Importantly, though, we also acknowledge that even majority group members may have some sense of collective victimhood, as we explain briefly below.
Collective Victimhood Among Majority Ethnic Groups
There are at least three reasons why majority group members may experience some degree of collective victimhood. Certainly, one is that all people have multiple identities woven together in the self, such as ethnic status, religion, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, and gender, each of which may be attached to differing levels of social privilege. Due to these intersecting identities, then, a person who belongs to one majority or privileged group could simultaneously belong to other minority or underprivileged groups (Case, Iuzzini, & Hopkins, 2012). For example, one may be White and live in poverty, though in Canada the chances of living in poverty are greater if one is not White (Canadian Observatory on Homelessness, 2017). To the extent that a White Canadian living in poverty sees poverty as typical of their group, they may have a sense of collective victimhood. Similarly, just as people can have differing outcomes across indicators, groups can be privileged in some ways and underprivileged in other ways.
Relatedly, historically dominant groups may also have a sense of collective victimhood due to a loss of status and power over time. Some suggest a sense of loss of White privilege within the United States was partly responsible for the election of Donald Trump in 2016 (Mutz, 2018; see also Knowles & Tropp, 2018); Trump’s now copyrighted campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again” (MAGA), was widely interpreted as make America White again (Melton, 2017). But such concerns are present elsewhere, too. For example, within Canada, the traditionally White French-speaking Québécois have long lamented the loss of French language and culture in light of increasing numbers of immigrants who do not share some Québécois values and ways of living. Reflecting this sense of threat, in recent years the Québec government has passed several “religious neutrality” laws that restrict the freedoms of religious minorities (e.g., Assemblée Nationale du Québec, 2017). For example, a new law prohibits people from wearing religious symbols (e.g., face veils, head coverings) when working in the public service (Shingler & Montpetit, 2019). As one Montréal journalist wrote recently, “To some Québec nationalists, Québec and its majority are eternal victims—of English Canada, and even of its own minorities” (Macpherson, 2018).
Finally, some subgroups within the “White” majority also have a clear history of or are presently struggling with collective victimization. Especially in cases where that victimization is widely acknowledged within and outside the subgroup, group members may also have a sense of collective victimhood. In Canada, though the first to settle were English and French colonialists, the “White” majority today includes White settlers from elsewhere (Statistics Canada, 2018). These newer White settlers often have histories of discrimination in Canada, such as southern and eastern Europeans who in the early 1900s were viewed as undesirable though necessary for economic growth (Driedger & Palmer, 2015). Some of these White subgroups also have significant histories of collective victimization outside Canada, such as Jewish people. Though not all Jewish people are of European descent (e.g., Mizrahi Jews; Encyclopedia Britannica, 2015), or present or self-categorize as White (e.g., Samuel, 2015), some also belong to the privileged White majority but carry along an undeniable history of collective victimization, which stretches out long on the horizon before and after the Holocaust, continuing today (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2016; Green, 2016).
Collective Victimhood Among Minority Ethnic Groups
Acknowledging the above, compared to majority group members, we nonetheless expect members of visible minority groups are more likely to have accessible feelings of collective victimhood, because so much of large scale and day-to-day victimization has centered around ethnic status. Though such acts are not consistent with Canada’s multicultural, inclusive identity (Environics Institute, 2016a, 2018), Canada has a long history of perpetrating violence against minority groups. Though Indigenous peoples have arguably experienced the most harm (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015), non-Indigenous minority groups have been forcibly interned (most notably Japanese Canadians during WWII; CBC Digital Archives, 2013) and barred from uniting with immediate family through highly discriminatory immigration laws (e.g., Canada levied a “head tax” on Chinese immigrants from 1885-1923 and then disallowed Chinese immigration altogether from 1923-1947, disconnecting families for decades; Dyzenhaus & Moran, 2005). In recent years, Muslims have been the focus of prejudice and discrimination. From December 2011 through February 2015 [Ishaq v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Canada), 2015], it was unlawful for Canadian citizenship candidates to recite the citizenship oath while wearing a face-covering veil. When the ruling was overturned, then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper promptly (and unsuccessfully) appealed the ruling, citing face-veiling as a practice “rooted in a culture that is anti-women” and against Canadian values (Bryden, 2015). Considering these and other examples, we expected that minority Canadians would report greater levels of collective victimhood than would majority Canadians.
Consequences of Collective Victimhood
Once a person sees themselves as a collective victim, there are various ways in which they can construe that victimhood (for a review, see Vollhardt, 2012a). They may subscribe to some degree of inclusive victim consciousness, which Vollhardt (2015, p. 93) defines as “perceived similarity between the suffering of one’s own group and other groups” (see also Shnabel, Halabi, & Noor, 2013). As people who do not view themselves as collective victims should not have reason to have a sense of inclusive victim consciousness, we therefore expected collective victimhood would positively predict inclusive victim consciousness.
We also expected collective victimhood would positively predict perceived outgroup suffering. Past research suggests reminders of collective victimhood may negatively affect intergroup relations with an adversarial group (cf. Noor, Shnabel, Halabi, & Nadler, 2012; Noor, Vollhardt, Mari, & Nadler, 2017; Schori-Eyal, Halperin, & Bar-Tal, 2014; Schori-Eyal, Klar, & Ben-Ami, 2017; Schori-Eyal, Klar, Roccas, & McNeill, 2017; Wohl & Branscombe, 2008) and promote victimization comparisons among such groups (e.g., De Guissmé & Licata, 2017). Yet, we propose such reminders may not always lead to such negative consequences. In support, victim group members may feel a moral obligation to help others (Warner, Wohl, & Branscombe, 2014). They are more likely to act in this way when the historical victim group and outgroup are not adversaries (Warner et al., 2014). Consistent with this, the intergroup conflicts in Canada have historically been between Indigenous and White peoples, particularly the first French and British settlers. Thus, non-Indigenous minority peoples in Canada may not perceive they are adversaries in the way that White peoples in Canada may.
Finally, we considered the possibility that collective victimhood would also directly affect support for reparations and, on balance, thought that the effect would be negative. Though we describe the effects of collective victimhood as positive above, it may also be that, in the absence of factors such as inclusive victim consciousness and the capacity to perceive privity, collective victimhood could manifest as exclusive victimhood construals (e.g., competitive victimhood, siege mentality), which are negatively associated with outgroup support (Noor et al., 2012; Vollhardt, 2012a; Vollhardt & Bilali, 2015; Vollhardt, Nair, & Tropp, 2016).
Inclusive Victim Consciousness
A growing body of literature suggests that one consequence of an inclusive victim consciousness is solidarity with other victimized groups in the same society. Glasford and Calcagno (Study 2; 2012) provide some evidence for this link. Their participants were self-identified Latino/Latina Americans who read one of three experimental articles describing race relations in the United States. One group read only a control paragraph that did not reference particular racial or ethnic groups. Two other groups read other passages that stressed either the common disadvantages of African Americans and Hispanics or their unique identities. Next, participants indicated their solidarity with African Americans. The participants who learned that their group (Hispanics) and African Americans had similar discrimination experiences, which arguably induced a sense of inclusive victimhood (Vollhardt, 2015), reported the highest levels of solidarity with African Americans. Others have noted similar patterns (e.g., Cortland et al., 2017; Craig & Richeson, 2012, 2016; Vollhardt, 2015). We therefore predicted that inclusive victim consciousness would positively predict political solidarity.
Political Solidarity
We expected political solidarity would positively predict support for reparations directly. We share Neufeld, Starzyk, and Gaucher’s (2019) definition of political solidarity: “the degree to which a person 'stands with' a minority outgroup and their cause and is committed to working alongside them to achieve the desired social change” (p. 7). If that outgroup is seeking reparations, one possible manifestation or consequence of strong political solidarity for that group is supporting their call for reparations. To be clear, we contend that political solidarity is related to yet distinct from support for reparations (see also Greenwood, 2015; Neufeld, Starzyk, & Gaucher, 2019). It is possible that a person may feel strong political solidarity towards a minority outgroup but not support reparations for that group. They may feel that reparations are an inappropriate solution, perhaps offering too little or too much compensation, and may instead view other forms of redress, such as systemic changes, as a more appropriate solution. In general, however, we expect that political solidarity will positively predict support for reparations.
Perceived Outgroup Suffering
Groups seeking reparations are more likely to be successful if they can make a case that the past continues to cause harm in the present, though privity can be difficult to establish. Legal scholars note that the ability to establish a causal connection between the past harm and present suffering in court often results in the denial of reparations claims (Brooks, 1999; Matsuda, 1987).
Others have demonstrated that perceptions of privity affect whether outgroups will support a group’s call for reparations. As mentioned earlier, Starzyk and Ross (2008) found experimental evidence of this claim among non-perpetrator majority and minority outgroup members.
Subsequently, Imhoff et al. (2012) found experimental evidence with a sample of symbolic perpetrator group members. In Imhoff et al.’s (2012) study, young German participants read about a genocide Germans perpetrated generations ago (i.e., the Herero Genocide, Study 1; the Holocaust, Study 2). Next, participants learned present day victims and their descendants were or were not still suffering the genocide’s effects. Those exposed to the privity information were more inclined to intend to take reparatory actions.
We propose that political solidarity may explain the relationship between perceived outgroup suffering and support for reparations. The more a person sees an outgroup’s present disadvantage as resulting from an historical harm, the more they might feel that social change must occur for that group, which may manifest as support for reparations.
Hypotheses
To summarize, in this project we focused on the effects of ethnic status on public support for reparations. We studied this in the context of racial/ethnic minority and majority Canadians’ support for their government providing reparations to Indigenous peoples in Canada, an important yet little-studied context in social psychology (for notable exceptions, see Banfield et al., 2014; Blatz & Ross, 2009; Gunn & Wilson, 2011). Our basic hypothesis was that compared to majority Canadians, minority Canadians would be more supportive of providing reparations to Indigenous peoples, a harmed minority outgroup. In Study 1, we tested this hypothesis using data from a large, national survey. In Study 2, with a sample of undergraduate students, we assessed the role of two proposed mechanisms: perceived outgroup suffering (privity) and solidarity. Finally, in Study 3, with another community sample, we tested the full hypothesized model in Figure 1. As this model illustrates, we hypothesized that a number of intervening variables would explain the relationship between ethnic status and support for reparations. Specifically, we expected that:
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ethnic status (i.e., minority, majority) would affect collective victimhood, a group’s sense of group-level victimization (Vollhardt, 2012a).
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people who have a stronger sense of collective victimhood would be more likely to both have a sense of inclusive victimhood (i.e., acknowledge other groups’ suffering as similar to their own; Vollhardt, 2012a, 2012b, 2013; Vollhardt & Bilali, 2015; path b) and perceive privity (i.e., ongoing suffering of the victim group, who were Indigenous peoples in Canada in this case; Starzyk & Ross, 2008; see also Bilali & Ross, 2012; Blatz & Philpot, 2010; Brooks, 1999; Matsuda, 1987; path c). We do not purport that this relationship will always arise. For example, it may not emerge in contexts marked by intense intergroup conflict or competition; however, neither of those situations characterize current relations among Indigenous peoples and non-Indigenous minorities in Canada.
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people who have a sense of inclusive victimhood and perceive continued outgroup suffering would be more likely to express political solidarity (paths d and e respectively).
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political solidarity (path f), inclusive victim consciousness (path g), and perceived outgroup suffering (path h) would positively predict support for reparations.
With all the above paths specified, we considered that the direct effect of collective victimhood could be negative. Our rationale for this is that a sense of collective victimhood may also predict other types of victim beliefs, such as exclusive victim consciousness or competitive victimhood (cf. Noor et al., 2017). We did not, however, assess variables such as this in our studies and so can only speculate about this last point.
Although the psychological processes we are studying are not new, no prior research has examined all processes simultaneously. Thus, a contribution of this research is that it helps clarify how these important variables work together.
Figure 1
Hypothesized path model representing the effects of ethnic status on support for reparations. All effects are positive except for i. Ethnic status coding: 0 = majority, 1 = minority.
Study 1
In Study 1, we evaluated how majority and minority participants living in Canada responded to two questions about reparations from a large, national survey. To our knowledge, this is the first study to compare minority versus majority group support for reparations using such a sample (see Banfield et al., 2014, for related work).
Method
Participants and Procedure
The Trudeau Foundation Human Rights in Canada Today national survey (Trudeau Foundation, 2010) sampled 2,117 Canadians (weighted Mage = 46.95 years, SE = .38) by phone between September and October 2010. With weighted participant responses to ensure representativeness, this survey was nationally representative, but our subsample (described below) only approximates a nationally representative sample as we excluded a small portion of participants.
Importantly, at the time of the survey the most widely accepted umbrella term describing the First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples in Canada was “Aboriginal.” Among many groups, the preferred term has since become “Indigenous;” some still use the terms interchangeably, but it is noteworthy that even the Government of Canada has recently changed “National Aboriginal Day” to “National Indigenous Peoples Day” (The Canadian Press, 2017). For this reason, we use the term “Indigenous” throughout this manuscript, except when we refer to items that used “Aboriginal.”
Of those participants who were called by phone and answered, 93% agreed to participate and less than 1% terminated the interview mid-way. The aim of the Trudeau Foundation survey was to evaluate the state of human rights in Canada, the impact of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982), a section added to the Canadian constitution that “sets out those rights and freedoms that Canadians believe are necessary in a free and democratic society,” responsibilities of governments to address past violations, and generational differences in human rights perspectives. Randomly selected participants were eligible to participate if they were 18 years or older and lived in a private dwelling in one of the 10 provinces. To address our research question, we excluded participants who reported “Aboriginal” as an ethnic status or those who did not self-report ethnic status; we then recoded ethnic status into a new binary variable with two categories: Majority (coded 0), minority (coded 1). Specifically, our subsample excluded 186 people (weighted prevalence = 8.3%) who indicated their ethnic status was “Aboriginal (Inuit, Métis or First Nations decent),” “other,” or “do not know/no answer” (which was 141 of the 186). Table 1 describes our resulting subsample of 1,941, which constituted 92% of the Trudeau Foundation sample.
Table 1
Study 1: Sample Characteristics (N = 1,941)
| Variable | n (weighted %) |
|---|---|
| Ethnic Status | |
| Majority (White) | 1,794 (90.5) |
| Non-Indigenous Minority | 137 (9.5) |
| Gender | |
| Male | 951 (47.7) |
| Female | 980 (52.3) |
| Education | |
| Less than secondary school | 233 (10.2) |
| Secondary school graduate/no post-secondary education | 292 (14.1) |
| Some post-secondary education | 337 (17.3) |
| Post-secondary diploma or degree | 1,019 (56.1) |
| Income | |
| Lower income | 370 (18.1) |
| Lower middle income | 378 (19.2) |
| Upper middle income | 381 (21.0) |
| High income | 334 (19.1) |
| Marital Status | |
| Single, never married | 360 (21.2) |
| Married/living common law | 1,183 (61.4) |
| Separated/divorced | 193 (9.3) |
| Widowed | 164 (6.4) |
Note. The subsample excludes those of Indigenous descent or those who indicated “don’t know/not applicable” or “other.”
Table 2 also describes the group memberships of those we categorized as belonging to the majority and minority groups.
Table 2
Study 1: Majority and Minority Group Memberships Based on Unweighted n.
| Environics Categories | Majority (nunweighted) | Minority (nunweighted) |
|---|---|---|
| Canadiana | 600 | 0 |
| English, Irish, Scottish, or Welsh | 571 | 0 |
| Other European (Russian, German, Scandinavian, Polish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Spanish, Hungarian) | 349 | 0 |
| French | 147 | 0 |
| Italian | 59 | 0 |
| Portuguese | 13 | 0 |
| Americana | 11 | 0 |
| Greek | 4 | 0 |
| Jewish | 4 | 0 |
| African (Black) | 0 | 30 |
| West Asian, Middle Eastern or Arab (Armenian, Egyptian, Afghan, Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian, Turkish, Saudi) | 0 | 29 |
| Chinese | 0 | 25 |
| West Indian (Caribbean, Jamaican) | 0 | 24 |
| East Indian (India) | 0 | 20 |
| Southeast Asian (Vietnamese, Cambodian, Malaysian, Filipino) | 0 | 20 |
| South or Latin American (and Guyanese) | 0 | 18 |
| Pakistani | 0 | 11 |
| Sri Lankan | 0 | 4 |
| Japanese | 0 | 2 |
| Korean | 0 | 1 |
Note. Environics Institute asked participants: “What is your ethnic or cultural background?” The categories above are ones that Environics Institute coded participant responses into.
aThe results were identical whether or not we included or excluded “Canadian” and “American” in “majority” group.
There were many ethnic and cultural groups that comprised the minority and majority groups. As coded by Environics, the largest groups within the majority group were “Canadian,” “English, Irish, Scottish, or Welsh in origin,” “Other European (Russian, German, Scandinavian, Polish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Spanish, Hungarian),” and “French.” Within the minority group, there were no dominant groups; the first few largest groups were “African (Black),” “Chinese,” and “West Asian, Middle Eastern or Arab (Armenian, Egyptian, Afghan, Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian, Turkish, Saudi).”
Measures
Of the larger set of questions, we chose to analyze responses to two questions on views on human rights. The first was a question on human rights violations in Canada: “Do you believe that a current Canadian government, should, or should not, be responsible for addressing human rights violations committed by previous Canadian governments from generations ago?” Although this question does not explicitly reference Indigenous peoples, answers to other questions in the same survey suggest respondents were primarily thinking about Indigenous peoples’ disadvantage and history of victimization. In particular, participants most frequently listed “Aboriginal Canadians” in two open-ended questions, which respectively asked who is most vulnerable in Canada and who should receive an apology or some form of restitution from the Government of Canada for past human rights violations.
The other question we analyzed explicitly asked participants about their support for reparations for Indigenous peoples in Canada:
As you may know, over the past few years the federal government has formally acknowledged the wrongs committed against Canada’s Aboriginal People. This acknowledgement has included a formal apology in Parliament in 2008, and the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to address the legacy of the Residential School system which separated many Aboriginal children from their families and communities. Do you feel the federal government has now done enough to address the wrongs committed against Aboriginal peoples in Canada, or do you feel that the government needs to do more?
Participants could respond to the questions by answering “the Federal government has done enough,” “the Federal government needs to do more,” “do not know,” or “depends.” In our analyses, we excluded those who endorsed “do not know” and “depends” (Furr, 2011).
Analytic Strategy
We used unweighted ns and weighted frequencies to derive estimates of the prevalence of our subsample’s demographic characteristics as well as endorsement of the questions on human rights violations and reparations for Indigenous peoples in Canada. We undertook adjusted logistic regressions to understand whether minority (vs. majority) participants had increased odds of endorsing the two questions, adjusting for participant age, education, gender, income, and marital status. In these analyses, we used appropriate statistical weights, which accounted for gender, age, and region based on the Statistics Canada 2006 census division, to ensure that the sample was proportional to the actual Canadian population. Most variables in the survey had very few missing responses (< 2.25%), except for income, which had 22.6% data missing. For this reason, and in line with prior research (cf. Kim et al., 2007), in the analyses we included “missing” as a level for income.
Results
Overall, the majority of participants (n = 1,182, weighted % = 58.2) agreed that the government should be responsible for addressing human rights violations committed by previous governments, though a large minority disagreed as well (n = 758, weighted % = 33.9); 7.9% indicated “do not know” or “it depends.” In contrast, participants were split as to whether the federal government has done enough for Aboriginal peoples. Approximately half said the government has done enough for Aboriginal peoples (n = 1,047, weighted % = 47.2) and slightly fewer said the government needs to do more (n = 887, weighted % = 44.1); 8.7% indicated “do not know” or “it depends.”
As expected, however, majority/minority status moderated support for reparations. After adjusting for sociodemographic variables, logistic regressions indicated that minority (vs. majority) status was significantly associated with increased odds of agreeing the government should be responsible for addressing human rights violations and do more to address wrongs committed against Aboriginal peoples. Specifically, for the human rights question, 81.0% (n = 108) of minority participants, but only 59.9% (n = 954) of majority participants indicated the federal government should be responsible for human rights violations committed by previous governments. This difference resulted in an adjusted odds ratio of 2.12, 95% CI [1.40, 3.21], p < .001. As well, 68.0% of minority participants (n = 83), but only 45.2% (n = 707) of majority participants, agreed that the federal government needs to do more for Indigenous peoples in Canada, resulting in an adjusted odds ratio of 2.63, 95% CI [1.82, 3.80], p < .001.
Discussion
Using data from a national survey, in this study we examined the relationship between majority and minority ethnic status and support for reparations for Indigenous peoples in Canada. As hypothesized, compared to majority Canadians, minority Canadians were more likely to agree that the Government of Canada should address harms committed by past governments and do more for Indigenous peoples. Also as hypothesized, minority (vs. majority) Canadians were more likely to agree that the Government of Canada should address harms committed by past governments and do more for Indigenous peoples. These data provide important preliminary evidence that minority (vs. majority) groups may be more willing to support reparations for other minorities. This effect is likely to replicate given the large, national sample—a significant strength of this study is its external validity. At a time when there is widespread concern about the reliability of social psychological (and other) research (Motyl et al., 2017; Open Science Collaboration, 2015), studies such as this should bolster confidence as the large and national nature of the sample increases the chances that the results will replicate.
One limitation of this study, however, is that we were bound to the questions in the survey. Consequently, we were unable to test for possible mechanisms of these findings. It was also unclear whether participants were indeed thinking about Indigenous peoples when answering the question about the current government’s responsibility to address human rights violations of previous governments; participants could have been thinking about other groups. We conducted Study 2 to address these issues.
Study 2
In Study 2, we again evaluated support for reparations for Indigenous peoples among majority and non-Indigenous minority participants living in Canada, but this time with a university student sample. Aside from replicating our findings, we also had two other reasons for conducting this study. First, we wanted to demonstrate that people in Canada typically think about Indigenous peoples as the prototypical victim group in the case of Government-perpetrated harms, to augment the internal validity of Study 1. Second, and more importantly, we wanted to understand why majority and non-Indigenous minority Canadians differentially support reparations for intergroup harms. As Figure 2 illustrates, we hypothesized that minority (vs. majority) participants would report more support for reparations for Indigenous peoples because they feel a greater sense of intraminority solidarity and perceive greater suffering due to past harms.
Figure 2
Study 2: Hypothesized mediation model. Ethnic status is conceptualized as 0 = majority, 1 = minority.
Method
Participants and Procedure
Participants were 144 undergraduate students (35 men, 109 women) with an average age of 19.71 years (SD = 1.52, range 18-31), who received partial course credit in an introductory psychology course. We only recruited participants who were born in Canada and non-Indigenous. When asked to select from a checklist of possible ethnicities, 74 (approximately 51%) self-identified as White (e.g., English, French, Scottish, and Irish) and 70 (approximately 49%) self-identified as a non-Indigenous minority (6 Black, 8 Chinese, 24 Filipino, 2 Korean, 23 South Asian [e.g., East Indian, Pakistani, Punjabi, Sri Lankan], and 7 South East Asian [e.g., Cambodian, Indonesian, Laotian, and Vietnamese]). Compared to minority participants, majority participants were more likely to be female, χ2(1) = 9.64, p < .01, Cramer’s V = .26, and older (MMinority = 19.44, SD = 0.81; MMajority = 19.96, SD = 1.94), t(136) = 2.00, p < .05. Using gender and age as a covariate did result in a slightly smaller sample size, as data was missing for one or both of these variables in some cases, but it did not result in a different pattern of effects. For this reason, we did not include gender and age as covariates.
Participants attended an in-person, small group experimental session to participate in a study on “attitudes toward specific social issues.” After providing informed consent, participants started a survey on a computer that lasted up to 25 minutes.
Participants completed the measures in the order below. All rating scales used a 7-point scale. Except where specified, the scale labels were 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = somewhat disagree, 4 = neutral, 5 = somewhat agree, 6 = agree, and 7 = strongly agree. In the case of multiple-item measures, we took the average of ratings so that composite scores would reflect the scale of measurement.
Measures
Most harmed group
In Study 1 we assumed participants were thinking about Indigenous peoples when answering the question about the current government’s responsibility to address human rights violations of previous governments; however, it was unclear whether this was the case. To address this limitation and understand who Canadians think of most frequently as a harmed group, we asked participants, “Of the following groups, which do you believe has suffered the most human rights violations committed by the Canadian government?” Excerpted from the Trudeau Foundation survey (described in Study 1) and presented in random order, participants were required to select one of the following: (1) women, (2) visible minorities/people of color, (3) specific racial/ethnic group other than Aboriginal, (4) immigrants, (5) refugees, (6) Aboriginal peoples (First Nations, Métis, Inuit), (7) persons with disabilities, (8) senior citizens, (9) youth, (10) minority language speakers, (11) prison inmates/felons/convicted of crimes, (12) members of religious groups, (13) gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgendered individuals, (14) other (specify), (14) none, and (15) don’t know.
Support for reparations
Participants self-reported their attitudes toward reparations for harms committed by the Canadian government by rating their agreement with two statements that paralleled the questions in Study 1. Participants first responded to the single item, “The Canadian government should be responsible for addressing human rights violations committed against Aboriginal peoples by previous governments from generations ago” (we later refer to this as the “government responsible” item). Participants then read the following passage:
As you may know, over the past few years the federal government has formally acknowledged the wrongs committed against Canada’s Aboriginal peoples. This acknowledgement has included a formal apology in Parliament in 2008 and the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to address the legacy of the Residential School system that separated many Aboriginal children from their families and communities.
Immediately after reading the passage, participants rated their agreement or disagreement with the following statement: “I feel the federal government has now done enough to address the wrongs committed against Aboriginal peoples in Canada” (reverse scored; we subsequently call this the “government done enough” item). After verifying that responses to these two items correlated significantly, Spearman’s r(142) = .36, p < .01, we averaged responses to create a composite measure, so that higher scores indicated greater support for reparations.
Solidarity
Participants rated their agreement or disagreement with a one-item measure of solidarity: “I feel a sense of solidarity with Aboriginal peoples.”
Perceived outgroup suffering (privity)
Instructed to imagine how Aboriginal peoples are doing today, participants rated their agreement or disagreement that “as a result of human rights violations committed by the Canadian government, Aboriginal peoples are still suffering: (1) physical harm, (2) psychological harm, (3) cultural harm, and (4) financial harm.” We computed a perceived outgroup suffering composite by averaging ratings to these four statements (Cronbach’s α = .79).
Results
The Most Harmed Group: Aboriginal Peoples
Approximately 51% of participants listed “Aboriginal peoples (Métis, First Nations, Inuit)” as the group that has suffered the most human rights violations committed by the Canadian government. Next in frequency was “gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered individuals” with approximately 12% endorsement and “immigrants” with approximately 9% endorsement. To understand whether majority and minority Canadians were equally likely to list Aboriginal peoples as the most harmed group, we conducted a chi-square test. The endorsement of Aboriginal peoples was equivalent across the two groups (majority = 47%, minority = 56%), χ2(1) = 1.02, p = .31, Cramer’s V = .08.
Group Attitudes Toward Reparations
Next, we tested for differences between majority and minority Canadians’ reactions to reparations for Aboriginal peoples and reports of solidarity and perceived outgroup suffering. We conducted t-tests with 10,000 bias corrected bootstrapped samples with a 95% confidence interval; for this analysis, n = 67 (instead of 70) for the minority group. As Table 3 describes, minority (vs. majority) Canadians were more likely to have positive attitudes toward reparations—as well as to express solidarity and perceive suffering; the effect sizes of these differences ranged from small to medium (Cohen’s ds = 0.36 to 0.62; Cohen, 1988).
Table 3
Study 2: Group Comparisons by Ethnic Status for Continuous Variables
| Measure | Ethnic Status
|
t(142) | Cohen’s d | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Majority (n = 74)
|
Minority (n = 67)
|
|||||||
| M | SD | 95% CI | M | SD | 95% CI | |||
| Support for Reparations | 3.66 | 1.22 | [3.38, 3.93] | 4.45 | 1.34 | [4.13, 4.77] | 3.72* | 0.62 |
| Government responsible | 4.28 | 1.61 | [3.92, 4.64] | 5.04 | 1.52 | [4.67, 5.40] | 2.88* | 0.48 |
| Government has done enough | 4.97 | 1.42 | [4.65, 5.29] | 4.13 | 1.66 | [3.74, 4.54] | -3.23* | 0.55 |
| Solidarity | 3.86 | 0.98 | [3.64, 4.08] | 4.22 | 1.11 | [3.95, 4.49] | 2.03* | 0.36 |
| Perceived Outgroup Suffering | 4.22 | 1.44 | [3.89, 4.55] | 4.83 | 1.25 | [4.52, 5.13] | 2.68* | 0.46 |
Note. CI = Confidence intervals. We reverse coded the item “Government has done enough” in the support for reparations composite.
*p < .05.
The Role of Solidarity and Perceived Outgroup Suffering
To test possible reasons for the different reactions of majority and minority Canadians, we used Hayes’ (2018) Process macro (version 2.13) to simultaneously assess the possible mediating effects of solidarity and perceived outgroup suffering. Table 4 presents the unstandardized regression coefficients, estimated with 10,000 bootstrapped samples and a 95% confidence interval.
Table 4
Study 2: Unstandardized Regression Coefficients, Standard Errors, and Model Summary Information for Multiple Mediation Analysis
| Antecedent | Consequent
|
|||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| M1 (Solidarity)
|
M2 (Perceived Outgroup Suffering)
|
Y (Support for Reparations)
|
||||||||||
| C | SE | p | C | SE | p | C | SE | p | ||||
| X (Ethnic Status) | a1 | 0.36 | 0.18 | .04 | a2 | 0.61 | 0.23 | < .01 | c´ | 0.50 | 0.20 | .02 |
| M1 (Solidarity) | b1 | 0.23 | 0.09 | .02 | ||||||||
| M2 (Perceived Outgroup Suffering) | b2 | 0.35 | 0.08 | < .01 | ||||||||
| Constant | iM1 | 3.86 | 0.12 | < .01 | iM2 | 4.22 | 0.16 | < .01 | iY | 1.29 | 0.49 | .01 |
| R2 = .03 | R2 = .05 | R2 = .25 | ||||||||||
| F(1,139) = 4.14 | F(1,139) = 7.17 | F(3,137) = 15.42 | ||||||||||
| p = .04 | p < .01 | p < .01 | ||||||||||
Note. N = 141. C = unstandardized coefficient; SE = standard error; Ethnic status coding: 0 = majority, 1 = minority.
Both solidarity, b = 0.08, SE = 0.06, 95% CI [0.003, 0.24] and perceived outgroup suffering, b = 0.21, SE = 0.09, 95% CI [0.06, 0.44], mediated the relationship between ethnic status and support for reparations. The effect of perceived outgroup suffering on support for reparations was slightly, but not significantly, stronger than that of solidarity, b = -0.13, SE = 0.11, 95% CI [-0.37, 0.07].
Discussion
Conceptually replicating the findings of Study 1, minority Canadians were more supportive of reparations for Indigenous peoples than were majority Canadians, even though both groups were equally likely to think of Indigenous peoples as the group the Government of Canada has harmed most. Specifically, minority Canadians were more likely to agree that the Canadian government should be responsible for harms against Aboriginal peoples perpetrated by past governments; they were also more likely to agree that the Canadian government has not done enough for Aboriginal peoples. A multiple mediation analysis revealed that this difference arose in part because minority Canadians expressed greater solidarity with Aboriginal peoples and perceived greater suffering among Aboriginal peoples. Note that while the effect sizes for the mediation models were small (R2 = .03 and .05), small effects in such variance-explained metrics can still be meaningful (Abelson, 1985; Fairchild, MacKinnon, Taborga, & Taylor, 2009).
Given that correlational findings tend to stabilize and be more accurate with larger sample sizes (Schönbrodt & Perugini, 2013), we sought to replicate our findings with a larger sample in Study 3 so as to increase the confidence of our claims. Additionally, we recruited a community sample in Study 3, to understand whether the effects would generalize.
Study 3
Together, the results of Studies 1 and 2 suggest an effect of minority (vs. majority) ethnic status on support for reparations, and that solidarity and perceived outgroup suffering may explain this effect. In this study, we sought to provide evidence for the full Figure 1 model with another community sample, split nearly evenly between majority and minority participants.
Method
Participants
Participants were 478 community respondents living in Canada, recruited through Qualtrics Panels for a larger study entitled “Perceptions on Reconciliation.” Of the total 478 respondents, 124 (26%) were White majority, 109 (23%) were non-Indigenous minorities, and 245 (51%) were Indigenous. Using Statistics Canada’s reporting classifications (e.g., Statistics Canada, 2011) for racial/ethnic origin, non-Indigenous minority participants self-identified as Chinese (n = 39), South Asian (e.g., Bangladeshi, Punjabi, Sri Lankan; n = 16), Black (n = 14), Filipino (n = 8), Latin American (e.g., Chilean, Costa Rican, Mexican; n = 8), Japanese (n = 5), Arab (n = 4), Southeast Asian (e.g., Vietnamese, Cambodian, Malaysian, Laotian; n = 3), visible minority (e.g., Pacific Islander, Guyanese; n = 3), Korean (n = 1), and “multiple visible minority” (n = 8). Most Indigenous participants self-identified as First Nations (n = 143) or Métis (n = 31); a smaller proportion identified as Inuit (n = 6), non-status (n = 16), or did not specify (n = 9).
We primarily focus on the subsample of majority and non-Indigenous minority participants, which included 110 men and 123 women with an average age of 43.77 years (SD = 16.17; range 18-81). Both the majority and minority groups included an equivalent number of men and women, χ2(1) = .83, p = .36, Cramers’s V = .06, but there were three subsample demographic differences. As Table 5 describes, compared to the majority group, minority participants were younger, t(231) = 5.76, p < .001, d = .76, more educated, χ2(6) = 13.63, p = .03, Cramers’s V = .24, and less likely to have been born in Canada, χ2(1) = 13.48, p < .001, Cramers’s V = .24.
Table 5
Study 3: Sample Demographic Characteristics
| Demographic Characteristic | Ethnic Status
|
|||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Majority (n = 124) |
Minority (n = 109) |
Indigenous (n = 245) |
All (N = 478) |
|
| Age | 49.12 (16.24) | 37.68 (13.79) | 36.71 (14.31) | 40.15 (15.63) |
| Gender | ||||
| Male | 62 (50.0%) | 48 (44.0%) | 80 (32.7%) | 190 (39.7%) |
| Female | 62 (50.0%) | 61 (56.0%) | 164 (66.9%) | 287 (60.0%) |
| Other | 0 | 0 | 1 (0.4%) | 1 (0.2%) |
| Education | ||||
| Some elementary (Grades 1-6) | 0 | 0 | 1 (0.4%) | 1 (0.2%) |
| Completed elementary (Grades 7-8) | 0 | 1 (0.9%) | 2 (0.8%) | 3 (0.6%) |
| Some high school (Grade 9-11) | 2 (1.6%) | 1 (0.9%) | 32 (13.1%) | 35 (7.3%) |
| Completed high school | 28 (22.6%) | 16 (14.7%) | 66 (26.9%) | 110 (23.0%) |
| Community college, vocational, trade school, commercial, CEGEPa | 37 (29.8%) | 19 (17.4%) | 80 (32.7%) | 136 (28.5%) |
| Some university | 13 (10.5%) | 18 (16.5%) | 31 (12.7%) | 62 (13.0%) |
| Completed university | 29 (23.4%) | 43 (39.4%) | 30 (12.2%) | 102 (21.3%) |
| Post-graduate university/professional school | 15 (12.1%) | 11 (10.1%) | 3 (1.2%) | 29 (6.1%) |
| Income | ||||
| Under $30,000 | 29 (23.4%) | 19 (17.4%) | 107 (43.7%) | 155 (32.4%) |
| $30,000-$60,000 | 32 (25.8%) | 31 (28.4%) | 65 (26.5%) | 128 (26.8%) |
| $60,000-$80,000 | 25 (20.2%) | 21 (19.3%) | 34 (13.9%) | 80 (16.7%) |
| $80,000-$100,000 | 14 (11.3%) | 19 (17.4%) | 20 (8.2%) | 53 (11.1%) |
| $100,000 and over | 24 (19.4%) | 19 (17.4%) | 19 (7.8%) | 62 (13.0%) |
| Born in Canada | ||||
| No | 23 | 44 | 5 | 72 (15.1%) |
| Yes | 101 | 65 | 239 | 405 (84.9%) |
Note. For age, the values outside the parentheses represent means and the values represent standard deviations. For all other variables, the values outside the parentheses represent counts and the values in parentheses represent proportions within categories.
aCEGEP = General and vocational college.
Procedure
After providing informed consent, participants completed the survey online. Participants completed the same measures, with two exceptions. In this study, Indigenous participants did not complete measures of inclusive victimhood or political solidarity, as these items referred to Indigenous peoples themselves.
Unless specified otherwise, rating scales were the same across measures (i.e., 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = slightly disagree, 4 = neutral, 5 = slightly agree, 6 = agree, and 7 = strongly agree) and we created composite scores by computing the mean of each set of statement ratings so they would reflect the scale of measurement. As Table 7 describes, internal consistency was high for all item sets.
Materials
Collective victimhood
Participants first read, “Thinking about your racial/ethnic identity, using the scale below, please rate your agreement or disagreement with the following statements.” They then responded to four statements we created: (1) “I have had difficult personal experiences because of my racial/ethnic group membership,” (2) “Life is hard for members of my racial/ethnic group,” (3) “I belong to a racial/ethnic group that has been or continues to be discriminated against,” and (4) “I feel a sense of victimization when I think of my racial/ethnic identity.” The results of a maximum likelihood factor analysis (delta = 0) indicated one factor represented these items, as the often-significant chi-square goodness of fit test was not significant in this case, χ2(2) = 2.56, p = .28, the scree plot indicated one factor, and all factor loadings were high (i.e., .94, .90, .87, and .75).
Inclusive victim consciousness
The preamble read, “People belong to a variety of social groups based on characteristics such as race/ethnicity. Thinking about your racial/ethnic identity, using the scale below, please rate your agreement or disagreement with the following statements.” Participants then indicated their agreement with two statements: (1) “Indigenous peoples in Canada have experienced similar kinds of suffering as my group has,” and (2) “The oppression my group has experienced is similar to that endured by Indigenous peoples in Canada.” These two items, which we adapted from Vollhardt et al. (2016), correlated significantly with each other, r(233) = .85, p < .001.
Political solidarity
Participants self-reported feelings of political solidarity by rating their agreement or disagreement with nine statements (e.g., “I stand united with Indigenous peoples”) from the Political Solidarity Measure (Neufeld, Starzyk, & Gaucher, 2019). This measure includes three subscales, which may be combined to create a total score because the subscales correlate highly and are represented by one higher order factor. For a complete discussion of this measure’s psychometric properties, see Neufeld, Starzyk, and Gaucher (2019).
Perceived outgroup suffering
Participants first read, “Please imagine how Indigenous peoples are doing today. Once you have an idea of how the typical or average Indigenous person is doing today, using the scale below, please rate your agreement or disagreement with the following statements.” Participants then responded to four statements we created: (1) “As a result of human rights violations committed by the Canadian government, Indigenous peoples are still suffering physical harm,” (2) “As a result of human rights violations committed by the Canadian government, Indigenous peoples are still suffering psychological harm,” (3) “As a result of human rights violations committed by the Canadian government, Indigenous peoples are still suffering cultural harm,” and (4) “As a result of human rights violations committed by the Canadian government, Indigenous peoples are still suffering financial harm.” The results of a maximum likelihood factor analysis (delta = 0) indicated one factor represented these items. The chi-square goodness of fit test was significant, χ2(2) = 6.34, p = .04, yet this is unsurprising given that it is overly sensitive to model misspecification and likely to be significant with this sample size (Jackson, Gillaspy, & Purc-Stephenson, 2009; Kenny, 2015). Moreover, only one eigenvalue was greater than one, the scree plot indicated one factor, and all factor loadings were high (i.e., .76, .90, .88, and .84).
Support for reparations
To assess support for reparations, we asked participants questions from a more recent Environics Institute poll entitled “Canadian public opinion on Aboriginal Peoples” (Environics Institute, 2016b). Participants first read, “Please tell us whether you would strongly oppose, somewhat oppose, somewhat support or strongly support each of the following steps to address reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people?” Participants then responded to four items developed by Environics Institute (2016b) assessing support for reconciliation actions, representing some of the issues Indigenous peoples in Canada are presently advocating for as reparations for past and ongoing colonial harms: (1) “Settling all outstanding land claims with First Nations, Métis and Inuit people, regardless of what this might cost,” (2) “Providing Indigenous communities with full control over the natural resources on their traditional territories,” (3) “Introducing mandatory curriculum in all schools to teach about Indigenous history and culture,” and (4) “Providing government funding to ensure the preservation of Indigenous languages.” The results of a maximum likelihood factor analysis (delta = 0) indicated one factor represented these items. Though the chi-square goodness of fit test was significant, χ2(2) = 30.39, p < .001, only one eigenvalue was greater than one, the scree plot indicated one factor, and all factor loadings were high (i.e., .81, .80, .80, and .68).
Results
Group Differences
As Table 6 describes, minority (vs. majority) participants scored significantly higher on ingroup victimhood, inclusive victim consciousness, perceived outgroup suffering, political solidarity, and support for reparations. Moreover, minority participants’ perceptions of suffering, political solidarity, and support for reparations fell between majority and Indigenous participants’ scores; all pairwise comparisons were significant. Thus, the way in which minority participants responded, relative to majority participants, was more consistent with the attitudes of Indigenous peoples, thereby suggesting solidarity.
Table 6
Study 3: Group Comparisons by Ethnic Status
| Measure | Ethnic Status
|
F | p | η2p | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Majority (n = 124)
|
Minority (n = 109)
|
Indigenous (n = 245)
|
||||||||||
| M | SE | 95% CI | M | SE | 95% CI | M | SE | 95% CI | ||||
| Ingroup Victimhood | 2.85a | 0.13 | [2.60, 3.10] | 4.43b | 0.14 | [4.16, 4.69] | 4.98c | 0.09 | [4.80, 5.16] | 94.18 | < .001 | .28 |
| Inclusive Victim Consciousness | 3.52a | 0.15 | [3.23, 3.81] | 4.56b | 0.16 | [4.25, 4.86] | - | - | - | 62.61 | < .001 | .09 |
| Perceived Outgroup Suffering | 4.75a | 0.12 | [4.51, 4.99] | 5.22b | 0.13 | [4.97, 5.47] | 5.57c | 0.09 | [5.40, 5.74] | 14.86 | < .001 | .06 |
| Political Solidarity | 4.71a | 0.10 | [4.52, 4.92] | 5.05b | 0.11 | [4.84, 5.27] | - | - | - | 5.15 | .020 | .02 |
| Support for Reparations | 2.88a | 0.06 | [2.76, 3.00] | 3.12b | 0.07 | [2.99, 3.25] | 3.46c | 0.04 | [3.38, 3.55] | 32.21 | < .001 | .12 |
Note. Within rows, groups that do not share the same subscript significantly differ from each other, but for simplicity: All pairwise comparisons were significant. ANOVA error degrees of freedom for comparisons were 475 for analyses involving all three groups and 231 for analyses excluding Indigenous participants.
Mediation and Path Analyses
We included six variables in our mediation and path analyses: majority or minority ethnic status, collective victimhood, inclusive victim consciousness, perceived outgroup suffering, political solidarity, and support for reparations. Table 7 provides bivariate correlations among these variables.
Table 7
Study 3: Correlations Among Variables (n = 233)
| Variable | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Ethnic Status | - | .47** | .29** | .18** | .14* | .13* |
| 2. Collective Victimhood | .92 | .71** | .20** | .19** | .15* | |
| 3. Inclusive Victim Consciousness | .85 | .14* | .30** | .25** | ||
| 4. Perceived Outgroup Suffering | .93 | .63** | .63** | |||
| 5. Political Solidarity | .93 | .66** | ||||
| 6. Support for Reparations | .85 |
Note. We included only White and non-Indigenous minority participants in this analysis. Values on the diagonal represent internal consistency. For inclusive victim consciousness, we assessed internal consistency using Spearman’s rho; for all other measures, we assessed internal consistency with Cronbach’s alpha. For ethnic status: 0 = majority, 1 = minority.
*p < .05. **p < .001.
To assess the plausibility of our mediational model, we used Hayes’ (2018) Process Version 3.0 to create a custom model (pp. 613-632). Process 3.0 now allows for more complex mediation analyses such as ours and may in some cases replace aspects of path analysis in other programs.
As Figure 3 illustrates, minority (vs. majority) ethnic status significantly and positively predicted a sense of collective victimhood, which in turn predicted greater inclusive victim consciousness and perceived outgroup suffering (privity). As well, these two variables positively predicted political solidarity and support for reparations. As expected, political solidarity also positively predicted support for reparations. The direct effect of collective victimhood on support for reparations was, however, negative. Together, this pattern suggests that, in the absence of a sense of inclusive victim consciousness and appreciation of how an outgroup’s suffering may be ongoing, a sense of collective victimhood decreased support for reparations.
Figure 3
Study 3: Model representing effects of ethnic status on support for reparations.
Note. The above were the significant paths in our mediation analysis using the Process 3.0 custom models command option. n = 233. Ethnic status was coded 0 = majority, 1 = minority. According to a separate path analysis using AMOS, this model fit well, CFI = .995, RMSEA = .043 (90% CI: < .001, .102), and pclose fit = .51. Rectangles represent measured variables and the circles represent measurement error. Numbers represent unstandardized estimates.
*p < .05.
Table 8 describes the total indirect effect of ethnic status on support for reparations as well as all other possible specific indirect effects.
Though we did not hypothesize all the indirect effects listed in Table 8, we have included them to provide a comprehensive report of all possible effects. As this table describes, the total effect (i.e., effect 1) was not significant, but effects 2, 6, 7, 13, and 14 were. Thus, ethnic status had a significant negative effect on support for reparations through collective victimhood. Most importantly, however, as effects 6, 7, 13, and 14 demonstrate, minority versus majority ethnic status positively predicted support for reparations through four mediation chains including collective victimhood, inclusive victim consciousness, perceived outgroup suffering, and political solidarity.
Table 8
Study 3: Statistics for Total and all Specific Indirect Effects (n = 233)
| Effect | Predictor | Mediator(s) | Outcome | b | Bootstrapped SE | Bootstrapped 95% CI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ethnic Status | Collective Victimhood; Inclusive Victim Consciousness; Perceived Outgroup Suffering; Political Solidarity | Support for Reparations | 0.14 | 0.07 | [-0.01, 0.28] |
| 2 | Ethnic Status | Collective Victimhood | Support for Reparations | -0.13 | 0.06 | [-0.25, -0.02] |
| 3 | Ethnic Status | Inclusive Victim Consciousness | Support for Reparations | -0.01 | 0.02 | [-0.05, 0.01] |
| 4 | Ethnic Status | Perceived Outgroup Suffering | Support for Reparations | 0.05 | 0.05 | [-0.03, 0.15] |
| 5 | Ethnic Status | Political Solidarity | Support for Reparations | 0.02 | 0.04 | [-0.05, 0.09] |
| 6 | Ethnic Status | Collective Victimhood; Inclusive Victim Consciousness | Support for Reparations | 0.09 | 0.04 | [0.02, 0.19] |
| 7 | Ethnic Status | Collective Victimhood; Perceived Outgroup Suffering | Support for Reparations | 0.06 | 0.03 | [< 0.00, 0.13] |
| 8 | Ethnic Status | Collective Victimhood; Political Solidarity | Support for Reparations | -0.04 | 0.02 | [-0.09, < 0.01] |
| 9 | Ethnic Status | Inclusive Victim Consciousness; Perceived Outgroup Suffering | Support for Reparations | < 0.01 | 0.01 | [-0.005, 0.02] |
| 10 | Ethnic Status | Inclusive Victim Consciousness; Political Solidarity | Support for Reparations | -0.01 | 0.01 | [-0.03, 0.01] |
| 11 | Ethnic Status | Perceived Outgroup Suffering; Political Solidarity | Support for Reparations | 0.03 | 0.03 | [-0.02, 0.09] |
| 12 | Ethnic Status | Collective Victimhood; Inclusive Victim Consciousness; Perceived Outgroup Suffering | Support for Reparations | -0.02 | 0.02 | [-0.07, 0.02] |
| 13 | Ethnic Status | Collective Victimhood; Inclusive Victim Consciousness; Political Solidarity | Support for Reparations | 0.06 | 0.02 | [0.02, 0.11] |
| 14 | Ethnic Status | Collective Victimhood; Perceived Outgroup Suffering; Political Solidarity | Support for Reparations | 0.04 | 0.02 | [< 0.01, 0.08] |
| 15 | Ethnic Status | Inclusive Victim Consciousness; Perceived Outgroup Suffering; Political Solidarity | Support for Reparations | < 0.01 | < 0.01 | [-0.003, 0.01] |
| 16 | Ethnic Status | Collective Victimhood; Inclusive Victim Consciousness; Perceived Outgroup Suffering; Political Solidarity | Support for Reparations | -0.01 | 0.01 | [-0.04, 0.01] |
Note. The first row of results represents the total indirect effect; all others are specific indirect effects. Ethnic status coding: 0 = majority, 1 = minority.
*p < .05. **p < .001.
As we also illustrate in Table 9, the four pathways were:
-
ethnic status → collective victimhood → inclusive victim consciousness → support for reparations;
-
ethnic status → collective victimhood → perceived outgroup suffering → support for reparations;
-
ethnic status → collective victimhood → inclusive victim consciousness → political solidarity → support for reparations;
-
ethnic status → collective victimhood → perceived outgroup suffering → political solidarity → support for reparations.
Table 9
Study 3: Four Indirect Paths from Ethnic Status to Support for Reparations
| Model | Variable and Role
|
|||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ethnic Status | Collective Victimhood | Inclusive Victim Consciousness | Perceived Outgroup Suffering | Political Solidarity | Support for Reparations | |
| 1 | X→ | M→ | M→ | Y | ||
| 2 | X→ | M→ | M→ | Y | ||
| 3 | X→ | M→ | M→ | M→ | Y | |
| 4 | X→ | M→ | M→ | M→ | Y | |
Note. X = antecedent; M = mediator; Y = consequent.
As Process 3.0 does not report measures of model fit, but such indices are customarily reported for models such as ours, we also evaluated the fit of an identical path model in AMOS (version 22.0.0) using maximum likelihood and 10,000 bootstrapped samples. To assess model fit, we focused on the Comparative Fit Index (CFI), Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA), and test of close fit. For CFI, values greater than .95 are desirable. For RMSEA, values between .08 and .10 indicate marginal model fit, values between .05 and .08 indicate acceptable model fit, and values below .05 indicate excellent model fit. A non-significant p-value for the test of close fit is desirable because the null hypothesis is that the model fits well. This model fit well, CFI = .995, RMSEA = .043 (90% CI: < .001, .102), and pclose fit = .51.
Discussion
In this study we again found that non-Indigenous minority Canadians, who we call the ethnic status minority, supported reparations more than did White Canadians, and we found further explanations for this pattern. As we hypothesized, a sense of collective victimhood helps to explains this difference. Though we do not have experimental evidence to know whether this effect is a causal one, we propose that a sense of collective victimhood, to the extent that it engenders an inclusive victim consciousness and the ability to perceive ongoing suffering for another group, increases political solidarity and support for reparations. Importantly, however, our findings also demonstrate that a sense of collective victimhood may not necessarily be associated with greater support for reparations. That collective victimhood had a negative direct, but several positive indirect effects, on support for reparations corroborates prior work that demonstrates how people perceive their victimization is important (e.g., Vollhardt et al., 2016). In our study, participants who viewed their group’s experiences more inclusively and perceived a link between the past and present were more likely to espouse political solidarity and support reparations. Both of these findings represent possible points of intervention: We may increase support for reparations by emphasizing, in a non-threatening way, similarities among histories (Cortland et al., 2017), or connections across time in a group’s experiences, perhaps by connecting people to the privity in their own group’s victimization.
Importantly, we also tested several other models to assess possible alternatives. For example, in one alternate we included an additional direct effect of ethnic status; the path was not significant and the model fit more poorly. We also tested an alternate model that represented moderated mediation and this also fit more poorly. Thus, the model we present represents the data most validly and fits best.
General Discussion
In three studies, we found that compared to majority participants, minority participants were more supportive of reparations for Indigenous peoples in Canada; we also developed a model of intervening psychological variables to explain this relationship. Given that we demonstrated the findings across both university student samples and community samples—including one that was large and national (and nearly nationally representative)—and used items representing different conceptualizations of reparations, we are confident that these effects are reliable.
Implications
First, and most importantly, our findings suggest that victim groups seeking reparations are likely to find support for their cause among members of other minority groups. Campaigns for reparations may therefore do well to target such groups first and, through their networks, change subjective norms and attitudes about the issue (Tankard & Paluck, 2016). Second, our findings suggest that intraminority support for reparations may, perhaps surprisingly, emerge when minority outgroups connect to their own experiences of collective victimhood. Rather than resulting in possible intergroup competition for reparations, reminders of such suffering predicted outgroup support for reparations, because the negative experiences of one’s own group was associated with greater inclusive victim consciousness and perceptions of more ongoing suffering in other victimized groups. Together, these feelings sparked political solidarity. Further, the results of our last study suggest that solidarity in support of reparations emerges out of the same process for both majority and minority group members.
Conceptual and Methodological Limitations
Like any research, the findings and implications of this paper should be considered in light of its limitations. One set of limitations relates to our conceptualization and measurement of the “minority” category. We distinguished between minority and majority Canadians consistent with Statistics Canada (2011) ethnicity reporting guidelines. White Canadians constitute both the population majority and tend to have more social status, whereas non-Indigenous minority Canadians tend to be visible minorities and have less social status. Yet, as we have said already, there are other ways to conceptualize the minority category (Sachdev & Bourhis, 1991). Unfortunately, it was not possible for us to do so in the current research: Studies 2 and 3 did not have ample statistical power and Study 1 did not include questions that would allow us to do this.
Relatedly, although conceptualizing “minority” as “non-Indigenous minority Canadians” yielded a more statistically powerful approach than would have a more nuanced conceptualization, each study nonetheless has unequal sample sizes of majority and minority groups. The difference was most pronounced in Study 1, which had 1,794 majority participants and 137 minority participants. For many analyses, such unequal sample sizes might invalidate results; however, equal sample size is not an assumption of our main analysis in Study 1, which was binary logistic regression (Stoltzfus, 2011). Further, recall that we applied bootstrapped weights in our Study 1 analyses so that responses of majority and minority samples, though unequal, approximated those of the Canadian population. The sample sizes of majority and minority participants were much closer to equal in Studies 2 and 3, which respectively sampled 74 majority and 70 minority participants, and 124 majority and 109 minority participants. Given that the sample size discrepancies within these studies are slight, they should not significantly impact the results.
Study 2 has another potential limitation related to its sample. This sample consisted of undergraduate university students, whose demographics were not representative of the Canadian population; consequently, the sample’s opinions may not be nationally representative, either. Recall, however, that the results from Study 2 map on to those of Studies 1 and 3, which had larger, non-student adult samples—and in the case of Study 1, the sample was approximately nationally representative. That we find similar patterns in the student and non-student samples should increase confidence in the conclusions presented in this paper.
Suggested Future Directions
Other suggestions for future research are to pursue questions that emerge from our findings. The first set of questions relates to prior research that finds people are more inclined to support reparations framed as feasible (Berndsen & McGarty, 2010; Starzyk & Ross, 2008). If people have a sense of collective victimhood, and because of this are more likely to experience solidarity and perceive suffering, is it still necessary to demonstrate that reparations are feasible? In cases when the harm is clear, and there is a visceral understanding of that harm and its consequences, sometimes across generations, does the practical matter still? It may be that among the minority groups studied here, who so often have experienced harm in a variety of ways and for a prolonged time, reparations for significant past harms must happen even if they are expensive or difficult to provide. Alternately, as we did not find support was at the “ceiling,” it may be that a feasibility frame would increase intraminority support even further.
Second, is a common disadvantaged racial/ethnic minority identity necessary for inclusive victim consciousness and perceptions of suffering? Our findings contribute to the understanding of inclusive victimhood specifically (e.g., Vollhardt, 2012a, 2015; Vollhardt & Bilali, 2008, 2015; Vollhardt et al., 2016), but are likely also relevant for the emerging literature of intraminority solidarity broadly (e.g., Cortland et al., 2017; Craig & Richeson, 2012, 2016). Clearly, one need not perceive a common identity to have a sense of inclusive victim consciousness, but the effects of these two variables may be additive. Unfortunately, we did not explicitly ask participants the extent to which they endorse such a common disadvantaged racial/ethnic minority identity (Cortland et al., 2017; Craig & Richeson, 2012, 2016), so we could not assess the relationship among these variables.
Third, and relatedly, is similarity in harm necessary for the experience of inclusive victim consciousness? Given the diversity of our minority groups, we suspect that similarity in harm is not necessary for the experience of inclusive victim consciousness. Conceivably, a person could understand that their group has experienced harms that differ from harms inflicted against another group, across a number of characteristics, such as duration (e.g., one day or decades), perpetrator group (e.g., local government or another ethnic/racial minority group), or violence type (e.g., structural violence or armed conflict), but still acknowledge that these distinct harms resulted in similar suffering. With that caveat, we nonetheless expect inclusive victim consciousness to be higher when the ingroup and outgroup harms or consequences of the harms are similar, and strongly suggest that advocacy groups find ways to frame harms to promote a sense of inclusive rather than exclusive victimhood. An exclusive victimhood construal is said to occur when a victim views their group’s suffering as unique, either in quantity (“We have suffered the most”), quality (“No one has suffered like we do”), or both. Unlike inclusive victimhood construals, which predict positive or prosocial intergroup outcomes, exclusive construals can give rise to intraminority competition (e.g., Shnabel et al., 2013), legitimization of another group’s suffering (Wohl & Branscombe, 2008), and negative intergroup attitudes (Vollhardt & Bilali, 2015), among other negative outcomes (see Vollhardt, 2015, for an extended discussion).
A fourth direction for future research is to take a more nuanced approach to the “minority” category. Though we believe that ethnic status is one of the primary ways in which people construe “minority,” there are certainly other ways to conceptualize this category, including gender, religion, sexual orientation, or lower levels of status and power (Sachdev & Bourhis, 1991). It is important to study these other forms of minority identity as they often have additive or even interactive effects (e.g., Wilson, Remedios, & Rule, 2017). To gain further insight into the processes of intraminority solidarity, future research should adopt an intersectional approach to studying minorities.
Conclusion
Whether a person belongs to a minority or a majority ethnic group can affect their support for outgroup reparations. Compared to the White majority, the minority groups in Canada were more likely to support reparations for an outgroup (Indigenous peoples), because of their collective experiences of victimization, which were associated with feelings of inclusive victim consciousness and perceptions of continued group suffering—factors that affected their political solidarity. As population demographics change in Canada, Indigenous peoples may find more support for reparations as a result of this intraminority solidarity. Though our research is set in a Canadian context, intraminority solidarity in reparations may occur anywhere multiple groups possess a sense of collective victimhood.