Confronting prejudiced acts, for example saying, “that was racist!” in response to a racist remark, is an empirically supported prejudice reduction strategy (Czopp, 2019). However, people often choose not to confront prejudiced behaviors because they fear social costs, such as ridicule (Ashburn-Nardo et al., 2008). People’s social contexts may, thus, play a role in whether they confront racist acts but are not well-examined (Hildebrand et al., 2024), particularly in real world settings and among people of color.

We examined the role of people’s social relationships in their responses to racist acts in a pre-registered, exploratory study. We recruited approximately equal numbers of Black, Latin*, and White participants—224 in total—from a crowdsourcing site called Prolific. We asked participants to describe the most recent time they witnessed a racist incident that was either confronted or not confronted, how they felt, and who was present. We analyzed these narratives using reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2022).

Our primary research question asked how narratives varied by race/ethnicity, social relationships with people involved in the incident, and whether the acts were confronted. Social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979), which suggests people’s identities are informed by their memberships in important social groups, guided our analysis.

Racist incidents occurred across many settings, including work, home, and customer service interactions. Participants often described racism intersectionally—commenting on bias related to two or more identities, such as race and class, or ethnicity and immigration status. Most participants described a White person directing racism at a Black or Latin* person. Although rare, participants in all three groups also described what they perceived to be anti-White biased incidents.

Nearly all Black and Latin* participants described events where they or a close social relation (e.g., family member) experienced racism. They also often expressed internalized negative beliefs about themselves (e.g., shame) and empathy towards targets of racist acts.

Conversely, few White people had close social connections to the people they described as the target of racism. About half of White people described racism perpetrated by close social connections. White people reported few affective responses towards themselves or targets of racism. Instead, they expressed ambivalence about social connections to people who engaged in racist acts (e.g., “I felt disappointed”) or distanced themselves from people who expressed racism, for example by saying, “I’m not like them,” or “I lost respect for them.”

Although descriptions of confronter-directed feelings were rare, they were also generally positive (e.g., pride), especially among Black and Latin* people. White people also felt proud of themselves when they confronted racist acts. Only one difference emerged across descriptions of confronted and non-confronted incidents: White people felt guilty if no one confronted a racist act, whereas Black and Latin* people felt guilty if they did not confront a racist act—even if someone else intervened.

Our research suggests that lay perceptions of racism are often intersectional and highlights the inter- and intrapersonal benefits of confronting. Most importantly, it suggests that peoples’ responses to racist incidents are shaped by their identities and social relationships, implicating social context in people’s willingness to confront racist acts in the future.

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