Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-2025
Publication Title
Health Promotion Practice
Keywords
racial health disparity, White privilege, defensiveness, privileged identity exploration (PIE) model, policy change advocacy, policy change audiences, health communication, audience analysis, messaging, COVID-19
Abstract
Efforts to effect racial health disparity (RHD) policy change are urgent, necessary, and subject to a key barrier: defensiveness among White privileged audiences. Within the literature to date, such defensiveness is under-investigated, and when examined, is typically conceived of as an individual cognitive outcome—a message effect—rather than a communication interaction. Yet policy change advocacy efforts, ranging from community organizing to change campaigns, necessitate communication interactions between advocates and privileged policy change audiences, such as neighborhood groups or policymakers themselves. This defensiveness conceptualization, focused on individual cognitions, therefore limits our understanding of interactive communication barriers in RHD policy advocacy processes. To address this limitation, our research conceives of defensiveness using the privileged identity exploration (PIE) model, developed by Watt in 2007, which posits that defensiveness strategies are used as part of an interactive communication process when people are asked to reflect on their own privilege. Defensiveness strategies, as described by Watt and colleagues in 2021 and 2023, are normal communicative reactions to protect one’s self-identity from threatening information; the PIE models eight such strategies. RHD information invokes racial privilege, therefore eliciting defensiveness. Using a thematic analysis of semi-structured qualitative interviews with White young adults from the Chicago (U.S.) area (N = 27), we identify defensiveness strategies relative to COVID-19 RHDs. Using the PIE as a lens to understand the data, we find some strategies lacking, some similar but differently nuanced, and identify a novel strategy among our participants, suggesting message tailoring opportunities. We describe implications for future research and practice.
Funding Source
This article was published Open Access thanks to a transformative agreement between Milner Library and Sage.
DOI
10.1177/15248399241311587
Recommended Citation
Deline MB, Katreeb M, Mason E ‘MJ’, Rickard LN, Godinez E, Dalrymple KE. Addressing Barriers to Racial Health Disparity Policy Change Advocacy: Exploring White Defensiveness Strategies. Health Promotion Practice. 2025;0(0). doi:10.1177/15248399241311587
Comments
First published in Health Promotion Practice: https://doi.org/10.1177/15248399241311587
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.