CHAPTER 4
Cultures of Race and Ethnicity
“I am so sick of this,” said the man, hastily clicking through the slides of a PowerPoint presentation. “I mean, we have a Black president, for Christ’s sake! Why do I have to waste my time on these?”
Hazel looked up to see what was irritating the passenger on her left. She recognized the bullet points of a diversity training course. She also noticed that the man’s face was reddening above his button-down collar. A vein at his temple had begun to throb.
“You know, I treat everyone at work exactly the same, no matter what color they are. I don’t even see color. Do you? Does anyone anymore?”
He turned to Hazel, but before she could answer, he plunged onward.
“I respect everyone equally, and I’ll bet you do, too. But people are still in such a twist over race. When are they going to realize that race just doesn’t matter?”
Just then, the passenger to Hazel’s right, a middle-aged Black1 male professional, returned to his seat. Her left seatmate fell silent and turned his attention back to his laptop.
The angry White passenger had a point. All over the world, racial and ethnic2 divides aren’t what they used to be. In the United States, for example, people of color are now leaders in government, media, and sports. Just in the past ten years, we have witnessed the election of President Barack Obama and the appointment of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor. We have also watched as Oprah Winfrey, Denzel Washington, Jennifer Lopez, and many other entertainers of color have become the richest people in America. The names of Blacks who dominate many major sports are too numerous to list, as is the case with Latinos in baseball.
Hazel’s aggrieved seatmate is not alone in his opinion that race no longer matters. Studies show a majority of Whites believe that discrimination against Blacks is not a major problem, and more than two-thirds believe that Blacks have equal opportunities in employment, education, and housing.3 Some Whites feel that the tables have turned so much that they are now the primary targets of discrimination.4 “When is White History Month, anyway?” complained a student in one of Hazel’s classes.
Yet not everyone thinks that race and ethnicity have dropped off the nation’s issue list. In particular, most people who are not White—Blacks, Latinos,5 Asian Americans, Native Americans, and other people of color—believe that race and ethnicity matter very much, for better and for worse.6 Some of their evidence is hard to dispute. Racial inequality persists. Blacks indeed have the worst education and health outcomes, the shortest life spans, and the highest violence and incarceration rates in America.7 Latinos, Asian Americans, and Native Americans also suffer poor outcomes in many areas, including housing and health.8
Other signs that race still shapes people’s lives are maddeningly ambiguous. Was it just the Black teenager’s imagination, or was that store manager really tailing him? Is it okay when a Latina’s coworker inquires, “So, what do you Latinos think about Barack Obama?” How should the third-generation Asian American feel when a White American asks him, “Where are you really from?”
In the clash between people who think that race is so twentieth century and those who think that it tops the national agenda, we see two different sorts of selves at work. On the one hand are the independence-minded Whites, who view themselves and other people as largely self-made and self-propelled. As we discussed in chapter 2, Americans of European heritage are heirs to a long tradition of separating from their groups, doing things differently, controlling their environments, freeing themselves from obligations, taking advantage of equal opportunities, and feeling great about themselves. As members of the mainstream majority, White Americans indeed have considerable power to create and perpetuate culture cycles that let them be independent of other people. Consequently, Whites are apt to think of themselves as without color—the default, natural, neutral humans. Remember the “flesh” crayon? It was a pinkish peach, as if this were the only color of human flesh. Likewise, until recently, nude pantyhose came in only this shade, as did adhesive bandages.9
On the other hand are the many interdependent non-White selves who view their races and ethnicities as central to who they are. These selves are heirs to the more collectivistic traditions of Asia, Africa, and South America—places where people are viewed as relational, similar, adjusting, rooted, and ranked. The culture cycles with which racial and ethnic minorities interact in the United States—cycles whose I’s hold stereotypes, whose interactions reveal prejudices, and whose institutions discriminate (sometimes unintentionally) against non-Whites—further foster an interdependent self. After all, it’s hard to pretend that race or ethnicity don’t matter if your culture cycles keep reminding you that they do.
Very soon, the tensions between independent selves who don’t see race and interdependent selves who do are likely to intensify. The nursery foretells the future. As of 2011, slightly more than half the children in the United States under one year of age were not White. By 2050, people of color will outnumber Whites in the United States.10
In California, this majority-minority crossover has already happened. Many people who grew up thinking they were just plain ol’ people are now finding that they are a particular kind of people: White people. Meanwhile, their non-White neighbors are pointing out that White selves, interactions, institutions, and ideas are not the only way a culture cycle can roll. As Whites recede into the minority, all groups will need to work together to construct culture cycles that accommodate their competing needs and aspirations.
To soften the impact of these collisions, we suggest that White independent selves learn from interdependent people of color. This means recognizing that the United States has not become a postracial society, as many proclaim, but is still a highly color-coded nation. Embracing our diversity can lessen racial and ethnic tensions, while pretending that race and ethnicity don’t matter may actually deepen culture divides. In one study, for example, psychologist Jacquie Vorauer and her colleagues studied conversations between White and non-White college students. The researchers told half the White participants, “at our core, we are really all the same,” and told the other half, “different cultural groups bring different perspectives to life.” In a subsequent conversation with non-White partners, White participants who received the “we’re all the same” message focused more on themselves, made fewer positive comments to their partners, and felt worse during the interaction than those who received the “difference is good” message.11
For their part, non-Whites must more skillfully deploy both their independent and interdependent sides. As we will discuss, many American minorities have already developed robustly independent selves that travel alongside their interdependent selves. So their challenge will be not to cultivate more of one self than the other, but to conjure more readily the self that best fits the situation. With their ability to switch seamlessly between independence and interdependence, they may hold the secret for how to be a successful self on our smaller planet.
The clash between people of color and people presumably without pigment also varies by gender and social class, as we explore in chapters 5 and 10. Moreover, the clash is not a uniquely American tension. People around the world struggle with racial and ethnic divides, with the people who have more power and resources usually claiming the “White” label, and those with less getting names such as Blacks, Darkies, or Brownies. As they say in Brazil, “money whitens.” So although we focus mostly on the Black-White divide in the United States, many of the ideas and suggestions we present in this chapter apply to racial and ethnic clashes all over the world.12
Of all cultural categories, race and ethnicity make Americans the most nervous. For several decades, social psychologists have captured this anxiety. A recent example comes from psychologists Nicole Shelton and Jennifer Richeson.13 In their experiment, White college students were randomly assigned to have a conversation with either a Black or a White stranger. They then had to complete a classic cognitive task called the Stroop test, which requires people to name the color of the ink a word is written in. Sounds easy, right? The trick is, the word red, for instance, is written in blue or green ink, while the word blue might be written in purple or orange ink. In other words, the color the letters spell out is never the same as the color of the word’s ink. When people are distracted, they have difficulty reading the words quickly and accurately.
Sure enough, Shelton and Richeson found that White participants who had chatted with a Black partner later made more errors on the Stroop task than did White participants who had chatted with a White partner. The researchers surmised that the cross-race interactions were so taxing that the White participants could not perform the Stroop task well.14 Other laboratory studies show that White participants fidget, blink, avert their eyes, and sit farther away when paired with a stranger of color than when paired with a White stranger.15
Blacks likewise fumble when dealing with White people. A recent statistical review (a meta-analysis) of hundreds of studies of interracial interactions reveals that most people perform poorly, are less friendly, and feel worse about themselves during cross-race interactions.16
Interracial encounters are also hard on a body, finds psychologist Jim Blascovich and his colleagues. When talking with another White person, White participants’ heart rates pick up and their peripheral blood vessels open; their bodies are turning “on” in response to the challenge of chatting with another human being. But when talking with a Black person, their hearts pound, but their peripheral blood vessels constrict—a less healthy response that is consistent with fending off a threat rather than rising to a challenge.17
Before you begin reading this section, jot down a few answers to this simple question, “Who am I?” Don’t think about it too much. Just write down the first ideas that come to your mind.
Now read these responses from two university students:
I am 21 years old, African American, a woman, a student, a teacher, a daughter, a sister, a granddaughter, a best friend, and a girlfriend. I am a poet, a dancer. I am creative, an optimist/realist who seeks to find love. I am a child of God.
I am unique, a student, a musician and a singer, a huge nut for pop culture, a protector of my friends, a giving individual, can be brilliant when motivated, a son and a brother, a person with “good toys,” somewhat lazy, overly emotional, worried about exams.
Both selves show telltale signs of their middle-class American backgrounds. Both are focused on their individual selves. Both are unique. Yet these two selves are also different in a remarkable way. The first person mentions her race, while the second person, a White person, does not. Multiple studies show that this is the usual pattern: people in the minority usually include their race or ethnicity in their self-descriptions, while those in the majority hardly ever do.18 A recent survey of a representative sample of Americans similarly finds that while 50 percent of Whites never think about their race, only 12 percent of Blacks report that their race never crosses their mind.19
One White American who never thinks about race is comedian Stephen Colbert. The only reason he knows that he is White, he quips, is that he has his own show, and other people call him “sir.”20
When most people don’t share your race or your identity, you stick out. And by sticking out, you become aware of what everyone else thinks of you. Descartes famously declared, “I think, therefore I am.” Yet when you are in the minority, you quickly realize that your existence is pegged to other people’s views. Over time, Blacks and other minorities incorporate the apprising minds of others into their views of themselves, which heightens their sense of interdependence. Rather than Descartes’s declaration of existence, many minorities live a declaration of interdependence: “You think, therefore I am.”
Psychologist Denise Sekaquaptewa and her colleagues captured this way of thinking in an alleged group problem-solving study. Upon arrival to the laboratory, Black and White students learned that they would join three other study participants online. Their goal was to work together on a novel task. By seeing photographs of their teammates and reading their bios, half the students learned that they were joining a racially balanced group made up of two Whites and two Blacks. The other half learned they were joining an unbalanced group, of which they were the sole Black or White member. In reality, all the students were participating alone, but the researchers had programmed the computer to give everyone the same feedback as if it came from other participants.
Following the task, participants answered questions about their thoughts and feelings. The researchers found that the racial composition of their group affected Black participants’ answers, but not White participants’ answers. When Blacks were in the minority, they were more anxious about their performance and other group members’ opinions of them. They also viewed race as more central to their selves and felt more like representatives of their race than when they were in the balanced group.21 A lifetime’s worth of minority status had sensitized Blacks to their place in any given social web, even a fictitious one. In contrast, Whites felt and thought the same regardless of the composition of their group. With few experiences as minorities, they were indeed independent of their contexts.
Independence isn’t the exclusive province of Whites. Perhaps more than any other culture we examine in this book, Blacks pair their interdependence with a healthy side of independence. In the pen experiment described in chapter 1, for instance, Blacks are even more likely than Whites to choose a unique pen over a common one as a reward for participating in a study.22 Blacks’ self-esteem is also routinely higher than that of Whites.23 And demonstrating the tendency to individuate and feel great, Blacks often score themselves as better than their peers across a wide range of competencies.24
Yet “the ineluctably oversized Black ego is not self-indulgence,” writes the journalist Touré. “It’s self-preservation—it’s armor against a world that seems to have a nefarious, well-funded multimedia campaign working against it round the clock.”25
Is there a well-funded multimedia campaign working against Blacks? This is a matter of considerable debate. What is clear is that representations of Blacks and other people of color on the screens, on the airwaves, and in the pages of mainstream American culture are decidedly more homogenous and negative than are representations of White Americans.
Television and film have come a long way from when racial slurs and blackfaced buffoons were common. Disney’s 1941 classic, Dumbo, for example, depicted teams of Black workers singing about how they never learned to read or write and “can’t wait to spend our pay away.”26 And who can forget The Jungle Book’s King Louie, a jazz-singing orangutan, pleading with Mowgli to help him be more human?27 Or Looney Tunes’ Speedy Gonzales, who called himself “the fastest mouse in Mexico” but who was consistently hobbled by a posse that was slow and often drunk.28 In these and other animations, artists used stereotypes of minorities as lazy, dumb, and primitive to entertain their audiences.
Movies and prime-time TV shows now feature far fewer negative racial caricatures and many more characters of color. Yet the quality of the representations has yet to catch up with the quantity; the most common roles for Blacks, for example, are as entertainers, athletes, delinquents, criminals, devoted sidekicks, and victims who are saved by a White person.29
Even when Black characters are doctors and lawyers, their portrayals do not invite much sympathy or admiration. In one chilling study, for example, psychologist Nalini Ambady and her colleagues selected eleven prime-time television shows that featured a diverse cast with Blacks in prominent roles. Their sample included favorites such as Grey’s Anatomy and House. From each show, the researchers chose several ten-second clips of interactions between White characters and either a Black or White costar. The researchers then muted the soundtrack and edited the clips so that only the White character’s silent reactions remained. For example, one clip from CSI: Miami featured a White character’s responses to the Black character Alexx (removed from the scene). Ambady’s team then asked undergraduates and adults unfamiliar with the shows to rate how friendly, sociable, or hostile the target White character was.
Across these shows, participants judged that White actors were less friendly, less sociable, and more hostile when they were interacting with Black characters than with White characters. This was true even though pretests showed that audiences found the Black and White characters equally attractive. Follow-up studies further uncovered that these television shows actually increased viewers’ racial biases; viewers seemed to be mimicking the White actors’ negative reactions to Black costars. Rather than helping audiences see Blacks as uniquely positive individuals, the shows stoked negative attitudes toward the group as a whole.30
Stereotypes claiming that Blacks and other minorities are different from, and worse than, Whites are alive and well, not only on celluloid but also throughout many culture cycles. In the classroom, these stereotypes undercut the performance of Black students. As we saw in chapter 3, when women are reminded of the stereotype that they are bad at math and science, they indeed perform poorly on tests of math and science. Likewise, invidious stereotypes of Blacks as slow and less able are among the everyday artifacts that hinder Blacks’ chances in school and on the job.
In a pioneering study, for example, psychologists Claude Steele and Josh Aronson recruited Black and White students with equally high SAT scores. To activate the stereotype that Blacks have less academic ability than Whites, the team told half the participants that an upcoming test (a difficult section of the GRE) was a measure of verbal ability. To the other half of participants (the control group) they did not mention ability, and instead framed the test as an exploration of how students solve problems.
When students thought the test could reveal their academic ability, the Black students scored worse than the White students. But when there was no stereotype in the air—no stereotype threat—and their identities weren’t on the line, Black students scored the same as White students. Hundreds of studies have since replicated the finding that subtly evoking the stereotype that Blacks are intellectually inferior harms the performance of even the most prepared, most talented, and most motivated Black students.31
What’s more, Blacks need not even believe the stereotype. Just the threat that negative beliefs might be at play raises their anxiety levels. Instead of concentrating on the test, Black students fear that they will be judged according to the stereotype of their group or, worse, that they will confirm the stereotype. Much of this happens outside their conscious awareness, so they don’t even see the phantoms they are fighting with. Eventually, many of the most gifted Black students simply choke, but not from the pressure of the test. They choke from the pressure of the stereotype threat.
Eleanor Roosevelt famously claimed that no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. So why can’t people of color just ignore the opinions of others, unleash their independent sides, and slay the test? As it turns out, tuning out the dull roar of stereotypes is incredibly difficult—even for White people. In one experiment, for example, psychologist Jeff Stone and his coauthors showed that White participants who were told that a laboratory golf course was a test of natural athletic ability (athleticism is allegedly not White people’s strong suit) putted worse than did White participants who learned that the course was merely a sports psychology task.32
No matter your skin color, when the air is thick with the idea that your group is inferior, it’s difficult to be only an independent self. Instead, you feel that you must either launch a defense on behalf of your entire race or attempt to disavow your association with your race altogether. In either case, you have race on your mind. Because they more often use their interdependent selves, many Blacks, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and other racial and ethnic groups also worry about how their performance will reflect on their families, their schools, and racial and ethnic groups in general. These layers of anxiety distract people and impair performance.
Images in the ether and threats in the air are not the only daily interactions that reinforce the interdependence of non-White Americans. More tangible products and processes of the culture cycle likewise drive home the message that racial and ethnic minorities are members of their group first, and individuals second or not at all. As we will show, these daily interactions help maintain the lower status of Blacks and other people of color and reinforce the interdependent sides of their complex selves.
The differences that make a difference start early, with many schools offering fewer opportunities to children of color than they do to White children. For example, Black and Latino students with high grades and test scores are less often tracked into honors or Advanced Placement classes than their White classmates with similar credentials. Moreover, schools with a higher percentage of students of color offer fewer college preparatory classes than schools with mainly White students. Minority students are thus less likely to gain admission to college.33
After completing their education, Blacks and Latinos face a steeper road to getting a job than do Whites. In one experiment, for example, researchers created two polished résumés, one for a man and one for a woman. They then manipulated the names at the tops of the résumés, with half the documents headed with White-sounding names like Emily Walsh or Greg Baker, and the other half fronting Black-sounding names like Lakeisha Washington or Jamal Jones. After mailing the résumés to dozens of potential employers, the researchers discovered that the ersatz applicants with the White-sounding names were 50 percent more likely to receive a callback than those with the Black-sounding names, even though their qualifications were identical.34
Racial bias also pervades blue-collar workplaces. In another experiment, researchers trained White, Black, and Latino workers with equivalent credentials to act the same way in an interview. Even with this preparation, the researchers found that White interviewees received more callbacks than Blacks or Latinos.35
Despite these obstacles, people of color are making their way into many professions. Yet the highest echelons of leadership and full-scale professional respect remain elusive. For example, although prestigious law firms are increasingly hiring Black lawyers, they rarely grant Blacks the rank of partner. The same is true in finance and advertising.36
The marketplace is also rife with discriminatory practices. When Blacks phone rental agencies to inquire about an advertised apartment, they are more frequently told that the unit is no longer available than are White callers who follow the same script.37 Car salesmen routinely charge Blacks more than Whites for the same cars.38 And to patients with the same ages and symptoms, physicians are more likely to recommend life-saving treatments such as blood-clot-busting drugs for Whites than for Blacks.39
Public servants are likewise less kind to their Black constituents. City councils more frequently locate dumps and toxic waste sites in Black neighborhoods than in other districts.40 Law enforcement officers stop, interrogate, arrest, and prosecute Blacks far more than Whites. And judges and juries mete out harsher penalties (including the death penalty) to Blacks than to Whites, for exactly the same crimes.41
Even on the basketball court, Blacks get a worse deal than Whites. A study of the National Basketball Association scrutinized six hundred thousand foul calls made in games across thirteen seasons. It uncovered that referees called fouls against Black players more frequently than against White players.42
Many consider these subtler forms of discrimination to be lesser evils than the blatant “Archie Bunker” racism of the past. But covert racism has an insidious side effect: because it is harder to see, more people understimate “the degree to which discrimination contributes to the poor social and economic outcomes of minority groups,” sociologists Devah Pager and Hana Shepherd write.43 Consequently, half-reformed culture cycles continue to roll along unchallenged.
To stay strong and sane in the face of these many injustices, Blacks have developed daily interactions and cultural institutions all their own. Many of these foster and flow from interdependence: church, family, and community are steadfast supports for many Blacks. Yet other institutions and interactions drive and derive from independence. As their high levels of self-esteem, self-reliance, and self-confidence attest, many Blacks resonate with the label that former presidential hopeful Herman Cain gave to himself: “The CEO of the Self.”44
One source of interdependence are the culture cycles that survived the African diaspora. Although the peoples of Africa are highly diverse, many share the view that all living things (and some nonliving ones) are interrelated.45 Indeed, before contact with Europeans, some African languages did not have a word for “alone.”46 When Blacks were enslaved and transported to the New World, “their interdependence helped them survive the harsh new reality,” recounts psychologist James Jackson.”47
Black churches have long helped maintain that interdependence, serving as trusted community centers. Blacks spend more time in places of worship than do Whites. Blacks also espouse stronger religious beliefs and more frequently turn to their fellow worshippers to cope with hardship, especially the hardships brought on by discrimination.48
Within families, Blacks draw on their interdependence to face racial hostilities. Compared to White parents, Black parents are three times as likely to discuss race with their children.49 Some of these conversations are pride-inducing explorations of Black history and culture. Rather than stoking defiance, these conversations inspire good behavior, psychologist Margaret Caughy and her colleagues find. In their studies, Black zpreschoolers whose parents discuss their heritage with them have fewer behavior problems.50 Other talks are more difficult dialogues about the hurdles that await a Black person in America. Although few people relish telling their children just how unfair the world can be, studies show that these conversations help Black children cope with prejudice and discrimination.51
Our colleague recently had to begin these difficult discussions with her three school-aged sons, ages eight, ten, and fourteen. The family joined another Black professor and her two sons to see a movie at the local Cineplex. Emerging from the theater, the five children chatted excitedly among themselves, arms around each other, as their mothers trailed a few feet behind. The boys were not shouting. They were not running. They were not roughhousing. They were not blocking the hallway.
Yet our colleague watched as a security guard called out and strode toward the children. She quickened her pace to put herself between the boys and the guard, and then caught his eye to halt his approach. She sadly realized that the time had come to teach her boys what to do when a guard or police officer stops them, even when they’re doing nothing wrong.
For all their emphasis on solidarity, similarity, and coping, culture cycles also push Blacks to be unique, separate, equal, and in control. Black churches stress the idea that each person is a child of God, with unique God-given gifts. Sermons and songs emphasize that each congregant is worthy of love and respect, regardless of his material success or social status. Sunday school classes teach children that Blacks and Whites are equal in God’s eyes.52 These teachings seem to work; when explaining why they have such high self-esteem, many Blacks cite God’s love. (Whites seldom mention God when unpacking the sources of their self-esteem.)53
Another independence-inducing cultural product in Black culture cycles is music. For instance, hip-hop encourages Blacks to step up, fight back, and speak out—especially when others do not. Indeed, this is a major function of the art form, argues linguists Marcyliena Morgan and Dawn-Elissa Fischer.54 In his rap “Rain,” for example, the artist Akrobatik reminds his listeners that even “when the rain comes down,” even when events beyond their control dog them at every turn, they still have a choice: “You can fold your hand and let your world crumble, or fight back and keep it on the humble.”55
In many Black culture cycles, historically Black colleges and universities (HBCU) are institutions that further reinforce and reflect independent selves. About 25 percent of college-educated Blacks in the United States earned their degrees at one of these 107 colleges, which include Howard, Spelman, and Morehouse. HBCUs have also conferred more than 75 percent of the doctorates that Blacks currently hold. Compared to Blacks who attend predominantly White institutions, HBCU students report better nutrition and healthier lifestyles.56
While many Blacks are constructing culture cycles around race and how to deal with it, most Whites are avoiding the r-word altogether. A study of seventeen thousand families with kindergarteners revealed that 75 percent of White parents never or almost never talk about race. Instead, they argue that we should ignore race, and that people should just be “color-blind.”57 By their own lights, they succeed. A recent Gallup poll finds that 77 percent of Whites say they rarely or never experience unpleasant thoughts or emotions when they encounter people from different races.58
Yet their unconscious minds tell a different story, psychologist Mahzarin Banaji and her colleagues find. In response to survey after survey showing that Whites harbor no explicit animus toward Blacks, Banaji adapted a test to probe their implicit, automatic, and unconscious attitudes. That test, called the Implicit Association Test (IAT), revealed that at a primal, basic level, “white” means “good” and “black” means “bad” for Americans of all races, but especially for Whites.59
The IAT is a simple task. Participants must only respond to pictures or words on a screen by hitting a button on a keyboard as fast as they can. But in their reaction times lies a world of information. When asked to use one hand to respond to words that have to do with “black” or “bad” and the other hand to respond to words that have do with “white” or “good,” participants have quick reflexes. After millions of exposures and years of practice, people automatically connect “black” to “bad” and “white” to “good.” Participants’ reactions are fast because they don’t have to think about them. Other studies find that people also readily connect “black” with “crime,” “animal,” and “ape.”60
But when “black” and “good” are assigned to one hand, while “white” and “bad” are assigned to the other, reaction times hit the skids. Our cultural worlds less frequently tell us that black is beautiful and white is evil, and our unconscious minds reflect this reality. Thus the mental links between “black” and “good” are rather weak, as are the ones between “white” and “bad.”
Asymmetries in reaction times aren’t just laboratory oddities; they drive behavior in the real world. Some people show more racial bias on the IAT than others, with faster reflexes for black/bad and white/good pairs and slower responses for black/good and white/bad pairs. These small delays may mean the difference between life and death in the emergency room, where the more biased a doctor is on the IAT, the more likely she is to misdiagnose and mistreat heart disease in Black patients. Implicit attitudes likewise drive explicit decisions in the voting booth, where more bias meant a vote for McCain over Obama in the 2008 presidential election. On college campuses, the more implicit racism an undergraduate reveals on the IAT, the farther away she will sit from a Black stranger and the more readily she will cut funding for Black student groups at her university.61
Although subtle instruments such as the IAT may be required to detect racial bias with adults, straightforward surveys work well with children. That’s because children have not yet learned the party line that race and ethnicity do not matter. For all their parents’ politically correct rhetoric, children are not blind. They soak in the products and practices around them, and blithely report that Black people are not nice, pretty, curious, or honest (but White people are).62
Uncovering results such as these, psychologist Birgitte Vittrup and her colleagues designed an intervention. They asked families first to watch videos with multicultural storylines, like a Sesame Street sequence where the characters visit a Black family, or an episode of Little Bill where all the people in a racially diverse neighborhood pitch in to clean up their park. They then randomly assigned half the families to discuss race and interracial friendships after viewing the videos.
But her intervention ground to a standstill because many parents refused to follow the study’s instructions.63 Echoing the frustrated plane passenger, they objected to talking about race, mounting defenses such as “We are all equal” and “God made all of us.” They also worried that if they did talk about race with their children, they might say the wrong thing.
Why would a full-grown White adult refuse to acknowledge what is plain as day for her five-year-old son—not to mention for a swiftly growing portion of her fellow Americans? To answer this question, we must jump up a level in the culture cycle to institutions. From this vista, we see that many institutions, including science, religion, economics, and government, have helped drive not only the White independent self, but also many Whites’ insistence that race and ethnicity do not shape people’s psyches.
During the fifteenth century, Europeans began to explore other continents and encounter other civilizations with different-looking beings. Were they animals or people? And if the latter, were they free or slaves? To these questions, the Europeans applied both religion and science. Religion told them that their God-given duty was to Christianize the newly discovered heathens. Later, science told them that what made these dark people different was a biological quality called race. True to their notion of the person as an independent entity, they came to view race as a stable, internal property that determined not only appearance, but also behavior. Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeus “discovered,” for example, that the “red” Native Americans were obstinate, negligent, and governed by caprice; the “yellow” Asians were avaricious, haughty, and governed by opinions; but the “white” Europeans were acute, inventive, and governed by laws.64 Many other scientists of European hertiage likewise found that their own race, Whites, possessed the best characteristics.
As White Europeans traveled farther afield, these racial measuring sticks came in handy. They justified seizing territory, plundering resources, and enslaving people who were scientifically proven to be inferior. With so many social and material benefits tied to the belief that nature, not people, created the racial hierarchy, few Whites felt the need to question the science behind it.65
Even Thomas Jefferson, the American founding father who prided himself on being a man of science, seemed unperturbed to begin the Declaration of Independence with “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” and then later to pen the Three-Fifths Compromise, which counted Black slaves as only three-fifths of a person.66 “Their inferiority is not the effect merely of their condition of life,” he explained in another document. It is also the effect of “nature, which has produced the distinction.”67
Two centuries plus later, people of European heritage are undertaking fewer colonial adventures, slavery is officially outlawed, and most scientists agree that biology does not drive the behavioral differences that people perceive between racial and ethnic groups. People did not make up the notion of race out of whole cloth. Genes do drive the physical traits (e.g., skin color and hair texture) that vary across human groups. Yet these genetic differences do not explain differences in behaviors, capacities, or achievements. For example, academic achievement has far more to do with socioeconomic status, parental support, and effort than with what is called race. When race does predict academic success, it is because it stands in for other social, cultural, and economic factors.68
In other words, the scientific community now largely agrees that race and ethnicity are so-called social constructions—that is, things that people make. But just because something is a social construction does not mean it isn’t real. To the contrary: as our examinations of culture cycles show, social constructions strongly shape and reflect people’s thoughts, feelings, and actions. Our ability to make and re-create these constructions, moreover, is an adaptive, naturally selected, biologically based ability. As we said in the introduction, it is our smart human trick.
Now many Whites are eager to bury their racist and ethnocentric past. Although their impulse is laudable, their strategy is not. Pretending that race and ethnicity do not exist, or that we now live in a postracial society, does a disservice to the many people of color whose culture cycles are built around race and ethnicity. For these more interdependent selves, race and ethnicity help answer the big questions “Who am I?” and “Who are we?”
People of color are not alone in looking to their groups to help define their selves. All humans need to feel connected with others. We yearn to belong. Our groups, in turn, tell us how to think, feel, act, and make sense of the world.
White people are no exception. But rather than creating selves around the groups they are given (such as race, ethnicity, and gender), Whites more frequently construct their selves around the groups they choose: the places they move, the professions they join, the hobbies they pick up, and the sports teams they follow. Indeed, the idea that people may have no choice in which groups make them up—the reality for many people of color—can be threatening to independent selves. When people of color point out that race and ethnicity may have something to do with their harder lives, many Whites protest, “Stop playing the race card!”
Yet there is nothing wrong with recognizing other people’s races and ethnicities (or claiming your own) because there is nothing inherently negative about racial or ethnic groupings. In fact, race and ethnicity are often forces for excellence. In one study, for instance, Tiffany Brannon and Hazel showed Black and White students either positive Black icons (e.g., a banner for Howard University, the cover of Alice Walker’s book The Color Purple, the logo for Black Entertainment Television) or positive mainstream American icons (e.g., a banner for Harvard university, the cover of Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, the logo for MTV). Among the Black students, those who viewed the positive Black icons performed better on tests of math and creativity than those who viewed the positive mainstream American icons. (Whites performed equally well regardless of which icons they saw.)69
What is wrong is using race and ethnicity to assign unequal levels of value, power, and privilege to different groups. Once discrimination gets into a culture cycle’s institutions, getting it out is difficult, especially when the dominant culture is an independent one (which is often the case, as we will explain in the next chapter). Independent selves can have a tough time grasping the idea that institutions can be racist or ethnocentric. Their culture cycles focus them on individual causes for behavior (such as talent, motivation, or evil) and not on situational factors (such as opportunity, discrimination, or history). A Pew Research Center study finds that two-thirds of Americans believe that personal factors, rather than institutional, historical, or economic ones, explain why some people have difficulty getting ahead in life.70
“I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group,” confesses activist Peggy McIntosh in her article “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” She then lists fifty white-skin “privileges” her Black coworkers, friends, and acquaintances do not share. Among her privileges: “My chief worries about my children do not concern others’ attitudes toward my children’s race” and “If I declare there is a racial issue at hand, or isn’t a racial issue at hand, my race will lend me more credibility for either position than a person of color.”71
Feeding and flowing from racist institutions are interactions and individuals that perpetuate the idea that people of color are less competent and deserving than Whites.72 When a predominantly Black or Latino high school has no AP classes, many people conclude that the students must not need or want them. When Blacks receive the death penalty more than Whites, the media portray Blacks’ crimes as more heinous. And when advertising firms have few Black partners, industry groups assume it must be because Black people can’t hack—or don’t like—the work.
Softening the collisions between the independent selves who think that race and ethnicity are relics, and the interdependent selves who think that race and ethnicity have never been more important, requires changes at every level of the culture cycle. Because Whites are still the more powerful group in most multicultural societies, they should take the first step and instill more interdependence in their institutions, interactions, and I’s. People of color, in turn, can draw on both their independence and their interdependence to create culture cycles that better meet their needs and draw on their strengths.
First on the to-do list for mainstream institutions is to diversify their ranks. Although the term has become a dirty word among many Americans, affirmative action is one proven-effective way to get more people of color into institutions. Affirmative action merely means explicitly considering race and ethnicity in hiring, admissions, and promotions. Studies show that affirmative action not only gives Blacks and other minorities the opportunities they need to succeed, but also helps Whites develop the skills they will need to compete in a multicultural world. For example, in one of the largest studies of affirmative action in higher education, educators William Bowen and Derek Bok checked up on some four thousand Black students who attended twenty-eight elite colleges from the late 1970s through the early 1990s. Students who were admitted to these selective schools under affirmative action were more likely to go on to graduate and professional schools than Black students who graduated from less demanding institutions. Also, Black college graduates of elite universities were more likely than their White counterparts to lead or participate in professional, arts, and environmental organizations.73
White students likewise benefit from a more diverse educational experience. In a major study spanning ten universities, for instance, racially diverse groups of students took a semester-long weekly seminar in which they explored their commonalities and differences. The goal of the course was for students “to build an in-depth understanding of each other’s situation,” says psychologist Patricia Gurin, the study’s lead. The intervention succeeded, and then some. Compared with students who were on a waiting list to take the course, seminar attendees (including Whites) became more empathic with people who differed from them and showed greater understanding of how their own social groups shaped their thoughts, feelings, and actions. They also developed a more sophisticated understanding of how culture cycles can propel people forward or hold people back.74
The justice system could also benefit from recruiting more diverse juries, psychologist Sam Sommers and his colleagues find. The research team created either all-White or racially mixed (four Whites and two Blacks) mock juries, which then deliberated on an actual case with a Black defendant. Compared to the all-White juries, the racially mixed groups exchanged more information, cited more case facts, made fewer errors, and were more lenient toward the Black defendant. It wasn’t just the Black participants who drove these differences, either; White participants in the racially mixed juries showed the same superior performance.75
The corporate world is conducting its own experiments with diversity, inspired by research showing that employees in multicultural workplaces have higher morale.76 Just getting people of color in the door and showing them to their desks is not enough to harness the power of diversity, however. Institutions must alter their interactions to make everyone feel welcome and comfortable. This means putting an end to legends of color-blindness and acknowledging that race and ethnicity matter. For example, in one study, psychologist Valerie Purdie-Vaughns and her team asked Black professionals to read a brochure about a (fictitious) workplace and to imagine working there. One brochure featured racially balanced photographs and quotes such as “We believe that embracing our diversity enriches our culture.” The other brochure featured photographs of White people and quotes such as “Focusing on similarities creates a more unified, exciting, and collaborative work environment.” The researchers found that Black professionals preferred and trusted the firms with the multicultural brochures more than the firms with color-blind swag.77
Adopting a multicultural ethos may build not only trust, but also profits. In a study of nearly four thousand employees from seventeen different companies, psychologist Victoria Plaut and her team compared work groups that hewed to a policy of color-blindness with work groups that recognized and celebrated racial and ethnic differences. They discovered that minority employees were more enthusiastic about and committed to their jobs when their White coworkers embraced racial and ethnic differences and when organizational policies supported multiculturalism. Because committed employees produce more and create less employee turnover, a multicultural mind-set might mean bigger profits.78
Because White people have feelings, too, crafters of multicultural messages should make sure to appeal to their White audiences. In another set of studies, Plaut showed that many Whites who react negatively to diversity initiatives do so because they feel excluded.79 They ask, “What about me?” By including Whites in their images and language, and by reminding people that Whites also have cultures, workplaces may avoid alienating their mainstream employees.
Some schools are working overtime to create what educator Dorothy Steele and her colleagues call identity-safe spaces. These are classrooms where students trust one another and do not fear that they will be viewed through the lenses of stereotypes. In identity-safe classrooms, teachers set high expectations for all students, develop good relationships with each child, and talk openly about race and ethnicity. Rather than shying away from racially charged topics when they arise, teachers encourage students to share and understand their different perspectives. These discussions help both hearts and minds flourish. In a study of eighteen racially diverse elementary schools, for instance, Steele and her colleagues found that students in identity-safe classrooms liked school better and scored higher on year-end standardized tests than did students in standard classrooms.80
Improving interactions outside school and work can ease the tensions between Whites and people of color. Television, film, and other mass media need to realize that just putting Black or Latino or Asian characters in front of the camera is no longer enough. Directors could also carefully attend to how those characters are represented and how their White counterparts react to them. Cameras can catch and perpetuate even the subtlest hints of racism.
And when they do, White families should be standing by to help their younger members make sense of the color-coded world beaming into their living rooms. If parents do not initiate conversations about race, their children often assume that the topic is too taboo to air. Kids then rely on media, friends, and other less-than-ideal sources for their information. Rather than ducking the discussion, parents can use media representations as entrees to conversations about race and ethnicity, and racism and ethnocentrism.
While talking about race, both Whites and Blacks may find themselves struggling for the right words. What the heck is race, anyway? Where did it come from? And why won’t it just go away? Playwright Lorraine Hansberry has some answers. In her play Les Blancs, a Black and a White American discuss race as “a device,” “an invention to justify the rule of some men over others,” which “once invented, takes on a life, a reality of its own.” This single metaphor counters the two dueling, yet wrong ideas that race is either essential and biological or superficial.81
Finding the right words for race may inspire better behaviors about race. To demonstrate this idea, psychologists Melissa Williams and Jennifer Eberhardt crafted two very similar newspaper articles. The first portrayed race as a biological category, and the second portrayed it as a social process. Undergraduates of all races who were randomly assigned to read the social-process article later reported that they were more likely to befriend someone of another race than were undergraduates who read the race-as-biology article.82
Making a friend of another race, in turn, is a great way for individuals to break down racial and ethnic barriers. “If you looked and looked at all the solutions proposed by scientists over the years to combat prejudice and racism,” writes psychologist Rudy Mendoza-Denton, “you’d be hard pressed to find a more effective antidote than intergroup friendship.”83
In one study, for example, psychologist Elizabeth Page-Gould and her colleagues randomly assigned White and Latino college students (some highly prejudiced, some less so) to pair up with a person of either the same ethnicity or a different ethnicity. The pairs of participants then met several times to complete a series of friendship-building tasks, such as in-depth discussions of their backgrounds and a game of Jenga (which requires players to build a tower out of wooden blocks together). After this friendship-building phase, participants then filled in an online diary every day for ten days. In these diaries, the researchers found a surprising trend: Prejudiced participants who had made a new cross-race friend subsequently initiated more daily interactions with people of other races. Once they got over the hump of making a cross-race friend, it seems, these participants were inspired to seek out more.84
For many people, however, that first conversation across a racial divide is nerve-wracking. How do you not come off as a racist? For starters, you should worry less about coming off like a racist and more about paying attention to your potential new friend. Not only will you enjoy your first conversation more, but you will make your partner feel more comfortable.85 You should also keep in mind that what you want out of the conversation is not necessarily what your partner wants. Observing social interactions in the laboratory, psychologist Hilary Bergsieker and her coauthors find that while Whites want to be liked, Blacks and Latinos want to be respected.86
Educating ourselves about race, ethnicity, and discrimination is another way to keep the conversation flowing. Studies show that people who have taken a course on prejudice or intergroup conflict later post lower scores on measures of both explicit and implicit prejudice.87
“Racism is really not my problem to solve,” says performance artist damali ayo. “It’s really up to White people.” She jokes that Whites should be able to deliver on this mission because, “White people are—I hear—pretty smart.”88
Nevertheless, ayo and many other people of color are drawing on both their independent and interdependent selves to push mainstream culture cycles in more just and peaceful directions. Working at the level of interactions, for instance, ayo has created a free pamphlet titled, “I Can Fix It! Vol. 1: Racism.” Noting that Americans have a third-grade understanding of race, ayo includes plenty of pictures and diagrams in the pamphlet. Her playful project stems from a more serious endeavor: a survey of two thousand people asked to list five things that individuals can do to end racism. She separates their answers into instructions for White folks and those for people of color, mixing both independent and interdependent practices.
One of ayo’s independent recommendations for people of color, for example, is to speak out about race and racism, especially when a racist comment or joke comes their way. “Your silence indicates you find their racism appropriate.” On a more interdependent note, she advises people of color to “build ties” across racial divides. “Join together as people of color,” she writes. “Do you know which Asian American woman held the hand of Malcolm X when he was dying?”89
(Among her recommendations to White people, ayo urges, “Be White….Admit that white is a color and a race. Acknowledge that a very real present-day racism arose from social and institutionalized racist practices…. Notice where those practices continue and where you participate in them.”90)
In California, an Oakland-based company is putting some of ayo’s directives into practice. Named dangerousNEGRO—the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations once called Martin Luther King Jr. “the most dangerous Negro in America”91—the company fashions T-shirts, hats, and other apparel “to promote African culture and the Black Empowerment Movement through positive propaganda,” according to its website. To counter the stereotype of Black women as gold diggers or models, for instance, a female shopper can sport a T-shirt that labels her a “Goal Digger” or “America’s Top Role Model.” Men can front their brains instead of their brawn in T-shirts proclaiming “Smart Is the New Gangsta,” for example, or protest the shooting death of Florida high-schooler Trayvon Martin in a hoodie with “Don’t Shoot” written across the back.92
Schools can leverage both independence and interdependence to help Black students succeed. In one simple yet highly effective intervention, psychologist Geoff Cohen and his colleagues asked Black and White middle school students to spend twenty minutes at the beginning of the school year writing about something they personally valued. Some students described their unique strengths and talents; others wrote about their families, friends, or other relationships. The researchers discovered that, compared with Black students who did not write about their values, Black students who did do so had earned better grades at the end of the term. A follow-up study showed that these academic gains were still in place two years later.93 By offering this simple writing exercise, schools communicated that they valued their students’ selves, independent or interdependent, which in turn helped the students trust their schools and feel they belonged there.94 (The intervention neither harmed nor helped White students’ grades, presumably because most White students already felt welcome in school.)
Linking Black students’ independent and interdependent selves is another way to boost their performance in school. In one set of studies, psychologist Daphna Oyserman and her colleagues gave Black junior high school students lessons communicating that an important part of being Black is excelling academically. Compared with students who received a different set of lessons, students whose lessons connected the dots between personal achievement and Black identity had higher grades and fewer absences.95
A final recommendation for how individual people of color can help construct culture cycles that don’t clash as much is a wholly interdependent one: make a White friend. This will require patience on your part, advises Baratunde Thurston in his book How to Be Black. “You are going to get a lot of questions,” he writes.
Many of them will be dumb. Maintain your cool, and focus on listening to your friends. When they ask, “Why don’t more Black people work hard like immigrants?” don’t assume bad intentions on their part. Stop. Breathe. Think. This is not automatically racist. They’re asking you because they trust you, because they need you to help them understand. If you scare them away, you encourage a troubling alternative. They will continue to live with ignorance, which will eventually find its way into the news segments they produce at their television network jobs or into legislation they pass. A healthy amount of patience as The Black Friend can go a long way toward helping all Black people in unseen ways.96
Making a White friend can also help people of color in more visible ways. In a three-year longitudinal study, Mendoza-Denton and colleagues found that the more White friends Black university students had, the more satisfied they were with their university experience.97
On that long flight from San Francisco to New York, Hazel watched out of the corner of her eye as the angry White professional finished reading his diversity training PowerPoint slides and turned his attention to a legal document. She noticed that the Black professional to her right was also engrossed in a legal document. She wondered what the two men might say to each other about race and racism. She even toyed with the idea of brokering a conversation herself.
Meanwhile, thirty-five thousand feet below, discussions about race and ethnicity were growing quieter. In April of 2010 the Arizona state legislature banned the teaching of ethnic studies. Explaining the decision, state superintendent Tom Horne said, “Traditionally, the American public school system has brought together students from different backgrounds and taught them to be Americans and to treat each other as individuals, and not on the basis of their ethnic backgrounds.”98 Supreme Court justice John Roberts was likewise quoted as saying, “The way to end discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”99
We disagree, and instead side with another Supreme Court justice. In 1978, Harry Blackmun wrote, “In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race.”100 To his insight, we add that we must take account of race at all levels of the culture cycle, and how it matters to our selves and to the interactions, institutions, and ideas that make and mirror our selves. We must also adapt to the selves of others by applying our independent and interdependent sides more wisely.