“Being Black is not just some costume”: how Black Americans narrate moral judgments regarding racial boundary-crossing

ABSTRACT

When is changing one’s racial self-identification perceived as a moral vs. an immoral act? We examine this question using free responses drawn from a nationally representative survey of Black Americans (n = 760). To do so, we provided respondents with vignettes about a fictitious individual who has changed their racial self-identification after taking a genetic ancestry test. Further, we experimentally varied the context of the vignette between self-identification on (1) a census and (2) a college scholarship application. We find that respondents who frame responses using moral opposition tend to do so when they infer that the vignette individual is not self-identifying consistently across settings. This rejection is especially salient in scarce resource contexts—where there may be opportunities for strategic self-identification—but are not exclusive to them. In contrast, when identifications are assumed to reflect a permanent shift in identity (particularly one with a genuine embrace of Black culture and heritage), respondents instead validated the moral character of the vignette individual. We highlight a pattern that we term racial consistency: the perception that a change in one’s racial identity can be morally justified if it is durable and persists regardless of any benefits or hardships experienced.