The Racial Shared Reality Scale: Capturing Black Americans’ Perceived Consensus With White Americans About Race and Racism

Black individuals often feel unheard and misunderstood by White people during conversations about race. These experiences could be due in part to a perceived disconnect between their own and White people’s views on race. In the current research (N = 1,470 Black Americans), we developed and tested a new scale to capture this potential mechanism—racial shared reality (RSR)—which we conceptualize as Black Americans’ perceived consensus with White Americans about race and racism. First, we demonstrated the RSR scale’s validity and reliability (Studies 1 and 2a), including its consistency across time (Study 2b). We also showed the scale’s predictive validity. Specifically, RSR uniquely predicted Black Americans’ general interaction experiences with White people (e.g., identity-safety; Study 2b) as well as their expectations for feeling understood when disclosing a personal experience of racial bias (Study 3). These patterns held even when controlling for established predictors of interaction quality, including perceptions of White individuals’ prejudice, similarity, and general shared reality. Finally, in the context of an anticipated live interaction with a White person about racial profiling, we found that a cue intended to promote identity-safety—a White person’s racially diverse (vs. all White) friendship network—was effective in part because it boosted Black individuals’ felt RSR with their White partner (Study 4). Together, this work demonstrates that RSR is critical for understanding Black individuals’ experiences discussing race with White people and provides a new tool for assessing RSR in future research.