We hypothesize that claiming hardships allows Whites to deny racial privilege extends to thempersonally while accepting its existence for the group as a whole. If people believe that racial privilege entails a lack of hardship, then the presence of hardshipwould signal an absence of personal privilege. By claiming life hardships, Whites can protect their sense of self from threat associated with racial privilege. How can outcomes be undeserved, how can privilege have offered personal benefits, when life has been so hard?

Participants completed two ostensibly unrelated surveys, the first regarding beliefs about inequality in America and the second about childhood memories

In the White Privilege condition, participants read instructions asking them to think about inequality in America as they took the survey, followed by a paragraph about Whites' advantages in American society (adapted from Lowery, Chow, Knowles, & Unzueta, 2012): In the last half of this century, Americans have given considerable attention to matters of racial inequality. Despite increased attention to the issue, most social scientists agree that, even today, White Americans enjoy many privileges that Black Americans do not. White Americans are advantaged in the domains of academics, housing, healthcare, jobs, and more compared to Black Americans.

Life hardshipswasmeasuredwith five items (“My life has been full of hardships”; “There have been many struggles I have suffered”; “My life has had many obstacles”; “My life has been easy” (reverse scored); and “I have had many difficulties in life that I could not overcome”; α1a = .86; α1b = .90). Participants rated their agreement with each item on a 7-point scale (1= Strongly Disagree; 7 = Strongly Agree).

As hypothesized, participants in the White Privilege condition claimedmore life hardships than participants in the No Privilege condition, Experiment 1a, t(92) = 2.40, p = .02, d = .49, 95% CI [.10, 1.10]. We replicated this effect in Experiment 1b. Participants in theWhite Privilege condition claimed more life hardships than those in the No Privilege condition, t(89)=1.93, p = .057, d=.41, 95% CI [−.02, 1.16].

We found that claiming hardships helps individuals discount the role of systemic privilege in their personal lives, despite accepting that group-level privilege exists. Importantly, this discounting of personal privilege is ultimately associated with diminished support for affirmative action policies — policies that could help reduce privilege and increase racial equity.

The current work demonstrates that individuals exhibit a previously unknown response to evidence that they benefit from group inequity: people may accept that in-group privilege exists, but change their perceptions of their own lives in order to deny the role of systemic advantages in their success. In particular, when provided evidence that their group has benefitted from privilege, Whites suggest that they have instead suffered the hard-knock life by claiming increased personal life hardships. This may serve to bolster their sense of legitimacy and reduce the negative attributional implications of privilege (e.g., Feather, 1992; Knowles& Lowery, 2012). Such a response has the potential to erode acknowledgement of racial inequity, and support for policies designed to reduce such inequity. To successfully address inequity, understanding the privileged is likely as important as understanding the underprivileged.