Lumbee Federal Recognition:

Procedures are used today in all areas of lifeincluding business, education, politics and as inthis study to determine a groups ethnicity. AmericanIndians are the only ethnic group that must petitionto the United States government to validate legallytheir ethnicity.The purpose of the current study was to explore theeffects of social exclusion threat negative affect onthe evaluated fairness of a procedure that functionsto validate ethnic membership using the DimensionalVoice Model (Bane, 1994). It was hypothesized thata procedure designed to validate ethnic membershipwill result in social exclusion threat negativeaffect. A procedure designed to validate ethnicmembership was hypothesized as being evaluated asunfair(Thibaut, Walker, LaTour, & Houlden, 1974). Justifications before the procedure was tested as therationale for the procedure introduced as proceduraljustification. The results suggest that proceduresdesigned to validate ethnic membership were evaluatedas unfair. Additionally, the results indicated thatprocedural justifications might affect perceptions offairness of the procedure. Implications for LumbeeFederal Recognition are discussed.