On Why White College Students Confront Online Racism and Why They Do Not: Insights From a Multi‐site Intervention

ABSTRACT In the current study, we examined White students’ responses to open‐ended questions about why they chose to confront or not confront online racism after they were randomly assigned to receive the intervention condition (i.e., a video‐based interactive intervention about confronting online racism) or the control condition (i.e., an attention control condition designed to be similar to the format of the intervention condition but focused on raising awareness of and mitigating one's own implicit bias). We coded responses from 720 White students attending one of four predominantly White institutions and compared the distribution of codes between the intervention and control conditions. Among participants who confronted, those in the intervention group were more likely than those in the control group to report feeling confident in how to confront. Among participants who did not confront, participants in the control condition were more likely to report that they believed confrontations are ineffective. The findings underscore the importance of attitudes (believing that confrontations can be effective) and self‐efficacy (knowing what to say) in facilitating confrontations.