Transcending Racial Barriers: Toward a Mutual Obligations Approach

by Michael O. Emerson

What do we mean by a racialized society? We have spent the first few pages introducing some of its manifestations. But we can define it as a society wherein race matters profoundly for differences in life experiences, life opportunities, and social relationships. It is a society “that allocates differential economic, political, social, and even psychological rewards to groups along racial lines; lines that are socially constructed” (Bonilla-Silva 1997: 474). We can also look at it as a society that has institutionalized favoritism for some groups over others.

That missing piece, we will argue, is the failure of social reformers to take into consideration a comprehensive understanding of in-group preferences in the context of working toward common goals. Put most bluntly, until we can incorporate in-group selfishness, we cannot overcome racial division, inequality, and alienation. In the second half of the book (chapters 6 through 10), we shall attempt to outline how we might go about doing so.

Consider just a brief thought experiment to see why. If twenty years ago we gave you ten dollars and gave another person ten thousand dollars, today that gap in money would either remain or, even more likely, be larger. Time does not bring equality; the past affects the present.

One example of indirect discrimination is the use of social networks to find a prospective employee. Royster (2003) documents the role that families, school officials, and employers play in enabling whites, rather than blacks, to more smoothly transition to good-paying blue-collar employment. She found that the social networks of whites enable them to enjoy more economic success, even if they are not more academically prepared, than their black counterparts. In and of itself, there is nothing inherently racist about using social networks to find a new hire. Waters (1999) documents that one advantage to doing so is that there the person who provides a reference for a potential employee has some accountability. That accountably makes it less likely that they will recommend an inefficient, troublemaking, or crooked worker. However, our social networks tend to be composed of individuals within our own racial group (Fetto 2000, Joyner & Kao 2000, Korgen 2002). Therefore, the people referred to a potential employer are overwhelmingly likely to be of that recommender’s and that employer’s race.

For example, if whites are used to getting their children into selective colleges, they certainly will not eagerly give up such a privilege in the name of racial equality.

It is a simple, but often overlooked fact: a solution to addressing racial issues has to be accepted by both majority-and minority-group members. Solutions that fail to achieve a sufficient level of support from all groups simply cannot be successfully implemented or sustained.

Given a few conditions, the contact hypothesis theorizes that interracial contact produces more-harmonious race relations (Allport 1958, Amir 1976, T. F. Pettigrew 1998). As we might expect, it does not do as much positively for race relations if people’s contact is simply standing in line at a grocery store (though, surprisingly, even this type of contact can have a limited positive effect).

These conditions require (1) nonsuperficial contact (i.e., not the supermarket-type contact), (2) contact that is cooperative instead of competitive, (3) contact that is not coerced, (4) contact supported by relevant authority figures, and (5) contact between social equals.

For example, Yancey (1999) has demonstrated that interracial contact in residential neighborhoods is less likely to promote attitudinal changes than is interracial contact in religious institutions. He argues that this pattern results because interracial contact is more likely to meet the necessary conditions in religious institutions than in residential neighborhoods. Other researchers have provided evidence that interracial contact in religious institutions has a significant effect on racial attitudes (Emerson 2006, Irvine 1973, Parker 1968, Yancey 1999, 2001). Likewise, research has suggested that interracial contact within families (Rosenblatt, Karis, & Powell; Yancey 2007a), the military (Mkandelbaum 1952, Moskos & Butler 1996), and athletic teams (K. Brown et al. 2003, T. Brown et al. 2003, Miracle 1981) also generates powerful effects because these settings meet the necessary conditions for positive attitudinal changes.

Research documents that people of color who are part of interracial families (Heaton & Albrecht 1996, Hwang, Saenz, & Aguirre 1995, Morning 2000, Tucker & Mitchell-Kernan 1990) or who attend multiracial congregations (Emerson 2006, Yancey 2007b) enjoy higher social economic standing and are better educated than other people of color. Yancey (2007b) notes that there may be some self-selection, given that perhaps it is the better-educated and wealthier people of color who are more likely to interracially marry or join multiracial congregations. But he also produces qualitative evidence finding that not all of this effect can be attributed to self-selection, which indicates that at least some of the reason for this success is incorporated within the dimensions of interracial contact.2 It is plausible to argue that people of color may gain social capital from their interaction with majority-group members.

For example, many religious congregations may want to be more racially diverse, but such diversity will not occur and be sustained unless there is a substantial, planned effort by congregation members to create it (Emerson 2006, Yancey 2003a).

In our earlier work on multiracial congregations (DeYoung et al. 2003), we noted that many majority-group Christians adhered to the idea of homogeneous church growth. Homogeneous church growth is a perspective which says that churches should focus on attracting just one racial or ethnic group, because doing so will lead to faster growth than trying to attract a broader variety of people. Pragmatically, advocates of this perspective argue that because the church leadership is able to concentrate on meeting the needs of only that particular racial or ethnic group, people will feel more valued and cared for. This provides a nonracist religious argument that it is best for people of different races to stay with their own group rather than make an extraordinary effort to bring those of various groups together.4

Yancy empirically shows that multi ethnic churches grow more

We do acknowledge that interracial contact is likely to alter the cultural norms of individuals of all races. Religious congregations that are multiracial tend to adopt cultural aspects from multiple racial groups (Yancey 2003a).

Simply put, productive interracial interaction will foster great socioeconomic mobility and help us more fully address racialization than would our merely concentrating either on the obligations of majority-or those of minority-group members.

We learn an important lesson here: the goal of racial integration is generally not enough to foster positive interracial contact; it must additionally help such contact become productive—that is, give it a purpose.

If we are going to find solutions acceptable to a significant number of people (of all races), multiracial primary social institutions provide important lessons, including: 1. Creating a common core—such as a shared goal—that unites those of different races. 2. Promoting multicultural freedom outside of this common core. 3. Fostering the development of true respect for all racial groups. (It doesn’t work when one tells people what they must do, or enroll them in sensitivity training. It works when people see that, to reach a common goal, they benefit from respecting each other and working together.)

Consequently, multiracial religious organizations have a vested interest in looking after the concerns of multiple racial groups, rather than just one.2

Multiracial groups of individuals who value racial diversity more than they value their own group’s interests seem able to develop solutions to the racial issues that they confront or that exist in the larger community. Sustainable multiracial communities have something in common—they value racial diversity, but they also share a larger goal, a common set of beliefs or motivations for existing, a larger purpose for which they strive.

And developing value consensus is a must if racial unity is to become a viable reality in the United States.

Since we do not want anyone to assume that we are attempting to claim that our own particular values are common among Americans, we must find research in which respondents themselves articulate “American” values. Yet, we could not find work that indicated there are common cultural beliefs among Americans across racial and ethnic groups. Without such substantiating research, any contention that a certain value is part of a common cultural core is at best speculation and at worst a projection of one’s own cultural values.

Our main point is that in the United States freedom is the value that undergirds much of what is seen as desirable and that this valuation of freedom is not a cultural universal.

For example, challenges to patriotism should be based upon the willingness of a person or a group to accept the value of freedom in the United States.

“The bosom of America,” the first U.S. president, George Washington, said, “is open … to the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations and Religions.” But he encouraged immigrants to shed the “language, habits and principles (good or bad) which they bring with them.” Let them come not in clannish groups but as individuals, prepared for “intermixture with our people.” Then they would be “assimilated to our customs, measures and laws: in a word, soon become one people.”

In 1915 President Woodrow Wilson spoke to a group of recently naturalized citizens, saying “You cannot become thorough Americans if you think of yourselves in groups. America does not consist of groups. A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in America has not yet become an American.”2 And two years later, President Teddy Roosevelt said in a speech in New York, “We can have no ‘fifty-fifty’ allegiance in this country. Either a man is an American and nothing else, or he is not an American at all.”

In our contemporary research on interracial families, schools, neighborhoods, houses of worship, and groups, we have found a tendency, when these organizations or groups first form, for the people in charge, whether blatantly or subtly, to encourage and practice some form of assimilation, no matter the rhetoric (see e.g., Christerson, Emerson, & Edwards 2005, Emerson 2006: ch. 6). But we have also found that such groups do not last or work effectively if that tendency continues. So to survive and thrive, at least in the interracial settings we have studied, these groups must implement some model of mutuality.

Our point in this chapter is that we must create a society that has both a common cultural core and acknowledges our mutual obligations, and we must have cultural and individual distinctiveness.

Solutions that appear to benefit one group at the expense of other groups will not produce the consensus needed to address our racial problems. Such solutions may do very good things, temporarily easing racial tensions, revealing racial inequities, promoting opportunities for racial minorities to succeed, and so on. But if these solutions are not widely accepted as legitimate by multiple racial groups, and do not unite us, they will not sustain a racially harmonious society.