We employ qualitative in-depth and focus group data to examine how
racial stereotypes affect relations between Black and White
undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania. Specifically, we
employ the concept of metastereotypes—Blacks'
knowledge and perceptions of the racial attitudes that Whites have of
Blacks. Our interest is in the accuracy of Black students' beliefs
about Whites' racial attitudes to their group, and the
consequences of metastereotypical thinking for Black students'
academic performance. We find that the Black students in our sample
possess some clear and largely negative metastereotypes concerning how
Whites generally think about Blacks, and these metastereotypes are
quite accurate. Moreover, these negative group images are at the heart
of a key campus “problem”—Whites' hostility to
affirmative action and the assumption that Blacks are not qualified to
be at the university; and, ironically, most Blacks seem to have
internalized a piece of these negative stereotypes. These results are a
tangible manifestation of double-consciousness—Blacks'
perceptions of themselves both through their own eyes and through the
eyes of Whites, and evidence of Steele's theory of stereotype
threat, in as much as Black students expend considerable energy
attempting to debunk the myth of Black intellectual inferiority.