Interracial Contact and Social Change 9781588269485

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Interracial Contact and Social Change

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Interracial Contact and Social Change George Yancey

b o u l d e r l o n d o n

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Published in the United States of America in 2007 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301 www.rienner.com and in the United Kingdom by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 8LU © 2007 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Yancey, George A., 1962– Interracial contact and social change / by George Yancey. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-1-58826-508-1 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. United States—Race relations. 2. United States—Social conditions—1980– I. Title. E184.A1Y363 2007 305.800973'09045—dc22 2006035876 British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. Printed and bound in the United States of America The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992. 5

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Contents

Preface

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1 Contact: Part of the Problem, or the Solution?

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2 The Potential Effects of Interracial Contact

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3 Where Is Interracial Contact the Most Powerful?

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4 Does Interracial Contact Change Racial Attitudes?

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5 Pathways to Change

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6 Interracial Contact and People of Color

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7 Conclusion: Supporting Change

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Appendix References Index About the Book

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iving surrounded by people of a variety of races, I have a certain personal interest in how we interact with each other. Perhaps it is this interest that has influenced much of my previous research into interracial families and multiracial churches. Nevertheless, until I began to work on this book, I really had not thought about how my own life may have been affected by interracial contact. Some people may fear that interracial contact will rob a black man of his racial identity, but I have come to believe that such contact has enriched me. Rather than dampening my connection with my African American heritage, it has helped me to understand the meaning of that heritage. My own experiences cannot be automatically generalized to the rest of society. My experiences have, however, led me to the sociological theory known as the Contact Hypothesis, which stipulates that interracial contact can alter racial attitudes, and raised several questions that I found relevant from my own social position. Does interracial contact actually matter where racial attitudes are concerned? If so, then how does it matter? How does the process of interracial contact work? What can a better understanding of interracial contact add to our understanding of general race relations? Answering these questions is not merely important for me, but also for helping to deal with the racial problems that still hamper us as a society. In recent years, the Contact Hypothesis and its implications have largely been ignored by the general social science community and social activists. As I discuss in Chapter 1, part of this neglect stems from the microlevel and nonstructuralist nature of the theory, but my personal experience has shown that something important happens when people of different races come into contact with each other. My research has largely confirmed this assertion. I hope that, in time, this work and that of others will help us to recognize the relative importance of interracial contact.

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Two key institutions played a pivotal role in helping me to obtain the data for this book. A Lilly Endowment grant was critical for gaining the quantitative information upon which the book is built, and I deeply appreciate the money they so generously provided. I also thank the University of North Texas for supplying a Faculty Research Grant that funded the interviews that yielded the book’s qualitative data. This book would not have been possible without the help of many colleagues and friends. Michael Emerson and Karen Chai were crucial in working with me on the Lilly research. I especially thank Michael, as I have learned so much from him. Thanks also to the many congregational leaders who opened their church doors and allowed us to poke, probe, and learn about interracial contact in a religious context. I am grateful to Dale Yeatts, who knows far more about obtaining grants than I. I also thank Kevin Yoder, whose statistical expertise far outstrips my own, for his timely advice in handling some aspects of my research into racially mixed neighborhoods. Erma Lawson was very helpful in aiding my construction of the interview project; I drew on her wealth of experience many times. I thank Lynne Rienner and Leanne Anderson for working with me to improve the earlier drafts of the book. I also thank the anonymous reviewers who pointed out shortcomings and excesses that I needed to address. All these people added tremendous value to this work, and I am grateful for their help. Any weaknesses that remain are due to my own inadequacies. Finally, I thank my beautiful wife, Sherelyn, who has been pivotal in teaching me many of the lessons of the beauty of interracial contact. Her social and intellectual support have allowed me to put in the hours necessary to finish this project. I hope that my portrayal of her sensitivity to the needs and desires of people of color accurately reflects her hunger for racial justice.

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ight after I received my bachelor’s degree, I was in the wedding of my best friend from college. Until that point, we had always hung out together. If I went to a movie, usually he went with me. We played on the same intramural basketball team and knew each other’s moves so well that we were a well-oiled balling machine. We were also the co-coaches for the women’s intramural flag football team for the college ministry we attended. I went home to meet his mother one spring break, and he had dinner at my grandmother’s house. If I had no other social event to attend, I would usually go to his room, or he would come to mine, and we would shoot the breeze. We were college kids who were still forming our major philosophies of life. We talked about girls, God, politics, sports, and just life in general. But I can never remember talking to him about racial issues. You see, he is white and I am black. We hung around another guy quite a bit. I did almost as much with him as I did with my best friend. He sometimes played basketball with us, but he was not as athletically gifted as we were. He did meet my grandmother, but I never got the chance to meet his family. I guess you could say that we were close, but not as close as I was to my best friend. Regardless, the three of us did go to many social events together. He was renting a house in our town, and I spent many a day at his house. And, as I did with my best friend, I talked with him about girls, God, politics, sports, and life in general. But I also talked with him about racial issues and the racism that I had faced as a black man. You see, he is Hispanic, and he knew about racism himself. I was closer to my white best friend in many ways than I was to my Hispanic friend, yet I was not comfortable discussing racism with my best friend. I could explore racial issues with a man to whom I was not quite as close. Why was this true? The most obvious answer is that my white best friend could not relate to racism. My Hispanic friend had stories of his own 1

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to share. But is that a sufficient answer? I felt free to talk to my best friend about other subjects in which he had little experience. For example, he grew up in a small town, yet I freely discussed my upbringing in a large city. Why did I not also talk to him about racial issues? I do not think that his inexperience prevented me from doing so; somehow, it is very difficult to discuss racial issues in our society, even with close friends. It can be argued that we should rely upon honest interracial conversations in order to deal with racial divisions in the United States. Given my experience with my best friend in college, however, it may be too optimistic to think that we can have such honest and real conversations about race and racism.

The Contact Hypothesis Is my experience the exception or the rule? Is it possible that interracial relationships can provide solutions to racial alienation in the United States? The sociological theory known as the Contact Hypothesis (Allport, 1958) suggests that interracial contact can change racial attitudes. This theory is based upon the idea that one source of racial tension in our society is the ignorance that we have about other races, which can lead to the development of stereotypes and misconceptions. Misunderstanding about people of other races creates a lack of empathy for those of other racial groups and a concentration on one’s own racial group. According to the Contact Hypothesis, if we have regular interaction with members of different races, then we will reject falsehoods about those groups and come to possess more compassion for those groups. Over time, as we become more comfortable with members of other races, there will be a reduction of racial tension. Not just any old contact will do. Over the years, supporters of the Contact Hypothesis have theorized a set of conditions that are important if interracial contact is to create healthier race relations. Under these conditions, interracial contact can become an important tool in helping our society to overcome many of its dysfunctional racialized aspects. I discuss these conditions in depth in Chapter 3. If the contact theory is accurate, then interracial contact under the proper conditions and in the right settings will be part of a microlevel solution to racial problems. In this book, I discuss further tests of the Contact Hypothesis in the hopes of documenting its efficacy. Indeed, this theory did not seem to manifest itself in my relationship with my best friend, as I was unable to discuss racial issues with him. But that is only one case; perhaps other interracial relationships produce an attitudinal change. The Contact Hypothesis has generally fallen out of favor among social researchers. There has been no evidence that challenges the accuracy of the Contact Hypothesis; rather, certain political forces have questioned the

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desirability of this theory. The high degree of acceptance of multiculturalism (Glazer, 1997; Downey, 1999) may be theoretically linked to a lower tendency to develop primary relationships with individuals from different racial groups. Interracial contact can be seen as a problem if it leads to an assimilation that deprives minority groups of their ability to maintain their own culture. Academics have often taken their cues from such political and cultural developments, and as a result there has been less recent emphasis on work that tests the Contact Hypothesis. It is not my claim that interracial contact alone will eliminate the racial hostility that is present in the United States. Yet, I do assert that interracial contact and the Contact Hypothesis are part of the solution; we would do well not to underestimate the potential of interracial contact to reduce racial hostility, and we should continue to learn about this powerful theory.

Racial Alienation in the United States To fully understand the potential of interracial contact to alter our racial reality, we must better understand that reality. Racism is a dysfunction that has brought oppression to all races of color in the United States. There has been extensive study of the comprehensive effects of racism in our society (Sniderman and Piazza, 1993; Omi and Winant, 1994; Oliver and Shapiro, 1995; Kinder and Sanders, 1996; Carr, 1997; Feagin, 2000; Bonilla-Silva, 2003; Walker et al., 2003), so it is unnecessary to spend a great deal of space documenting the pervasiveness of racism in the United States. It is worth noting, however, that much of this work focuses on the acknowledgment of structural, or institutional, racism (Bonilla-Silva and Lewis, 1997; Cohen, 1999; Emerson and Smith, 2000; Feagin, 2000) and the misuse of the concept of color blindness (Carr, 1997; Derman-Sparks and Phillips, 1997; Bonilla-Silva, 2001). Many social theorists and activists have spent a great deal of time formulating potential solutions to structural racism. The solutions that sociologists have put forth tend to focus on how we can alter the racialized social structures in our society (Oliver and Shapiro, 1995; Carr, 1997; Feagin, 2000; Bonilla-Silva, 2001). Recent work by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (2001) exemplifies how sociologists generally approach the problem of racism. He contends that it is important to recognize that the racism from which we suffer has arisen from what he terms “racialized social systems.” Racial groups within these systems receive different social and material rewards. Majority group members gain the lion’s share of these rewards, whereas people of color are disproportionately disenfranchised. It is in the interest of majority group members to maintain the racial status quo and to continue to receive the benefits offered by this racialized society. Seen in this light, efforts to ignore race, or to

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become “color-blind,” can serve to maintain the racial advantages of majority group members. The solution is to recognize efforts such as color blindness as new and subtle forms of racism. These new forms must be understood and then confronted by sophisticated forms of social activism. This activism would bring attention to how our racialized structures hinder the efforts by people of color to enjoy the full rewards American society offers. Bonilla-Silva argues that his approach differs from previous academic approaches to racism such as Marxism and internal colonialism. Yet, in a key way, his approach is very similar; it seeks to address racism through the organization of social movements that will challenge the racialized structures in the United States. Clearly, this macrolevel perspective is necessary because, if we are unable to deal with the social structures of racism, then we will never eliminate the racial hierarchy that dominates the United States. Racism is not merely an individualistic phenomenon: there are important structural elements in society that must be addressed. However, it is worth asking whether there are useful microlevel processes that will help us deal with racial problems. An important microlevel approach comes from the Contact Hypothesis, which suggests that as we have more interracial contact, we gain racial understanding. If interracial contact produces sympathy for the social conditions of people of color, and ignorance about racism abates, then such contact may lead to more harmonious race relations. It is also possible, however, that such contact may produce assimilation of the minority group into the majority. It is vital to assess the power of assimilation in light of the current racial alienation in American society. Interracial Contact and Assimilation When two groups meet, we should expect cultural change to occur in one or both groups. When one of the groups becomes the majority group, then such changes generally occur in ways that favor the social position of the majority group and perhaps force the minority group to serve the majority group. It is possible that interracial contact can enable members of the majority group to become more sensitive to the plight of those in the minority, or the minority group may learn to adapt to the majority group and become part of it. Thus assimilation is one of the mechanisms that minority group members may use to avoid racial oppression. Assimilation can allow the majority group to maintain its cultural hegemony and do so in a way that supports majority group notions of fairness, even as the roots of the minority culture wither. To be sure, a “melting pot” type of assimilation may occur, whereby both the majority and minority groups make cultural and attitudinal adjustments, but even in that situation the minority group loses it cultural underpinnings. Well-known assimilation theorist Milton Gordon (1964) argues that

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assimilation must be taken one step at a time. First, in cultural assimilation, members of the minority group adopt the cultural traditions and practices of the majority group. Generally, the minority group members learn the language of the majority group, participate in the economic system and social organizations that are favored by the majority group, dress as the majority group wants them to dress, and participate in other cultural adaptations fostered upon them by the majority group. That lays the groundwork for structural assimilation, in which minority groups enter primary groups and cliques with majority group members. In structural assimilation, members of the minority groups join the same churches, live in the same neighborhoods, become members of the same social clubs, and attend the same schools as those in the majority. When structural assimilation occurs to a sufficient level, then marital assimilation becomes possible. In this step, minority group members intermarry with majority group members without social stigma. These marital relationships produce more intimate types of relations and opportunities for interpersonal communication between majority and minority group members. Marital assimilation must occur before members of racial minority groups can identify with majority group status. In this fourth stage, called identificational assimilation, minority group members identify more with the concerns of the majority group than with the concerns of the minority. What Gordon calls attitudinal and behavioral receptional assimilation can take place to remove any final prejudice and discrimination that occurs between the majority group and the former minority group. Finally, former minority group members become full-fledged participants in the majority, arriving at civic, or complete, assimilation. This “straight-line” process of assimilation has been criticized (Geertz, 1963; Isaacs, 1975; Cornell and Hartmann, 1997; Anderson, 2001), but it has occurred for most, if not all, European ethnic groups. Groups such as the Irish that were historically given minority status have assimilated into the dominant society and now enjoy majority group status (Ignatiev, 1995). In the case of the Irish, interracial relations led to an eventual elevation of the status of Irish Americans into the majority group. However, in moving up the racial social ladder, it can be fairly argued that the Irish lost much of their native culture.1 Furthermore, as the Irish adjusted to the social position of the majority group, they also lost the social perceptions that they developed as minority group members.2 When it comes to their political perspectives, there is no reason to believe that contemporary Irish Americans have a different perspective than other European Americans. Can such assimilation take place for non-European racial groups? If Gordon’s straight-line theory of assimilation is accurate, then Irish Americans experienced different levels of assimilation as they increased their interpersonal contact with members of the majority group, eventually

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assimilating into the dominant culture. Only if non-European racial groups can replicate this process of contact could such cultural and social changes occur for people of color. In my previous work (Yancey, 2003c), I contended that this type of assimilation is possible, and perhaps even likely, for nonblack people of color because Hispanic and Asian Americans have undergone a relatively higher level of residential and marital assimilation than have African Americans. 3 Academic evidence indicates that Hispanic and Asian Americans are more likely to have European Americans as neighbors than are African Americans (Massey and Fong, 1990; Alba and Logan, 1993; Massey and Denton, 1996). There is also abundant evidence that African Americans are less likely to outmarry than other racial minority groups (Spickard, 1989; Tucker and Mitchell-Kernan, 1990; Yancey et al., 2000; Frey, 2003) and that when African Americans do outmarry, they experience less social acceptance than other racial groups of color (Spickard, 1989; Lewis and Yancey, 1995; Herring and Amissah, 1997; Yancey, 2003c). As a result, it is unlikely that African Americans will experience any significant degree of assimilation in the foreseeable future, whereas other people of color may opt to assimilate, regardless of whether that choice is good or bad.4 Because of these barriers, African Americans face a degree of alienation not experienced by other racial groups. In this book I will not concentrate upon the black/nonblack divide, except to state that African Americans, as the group at the bottom of the black/nonblack divide, may feel the consequences of the lack of interracial contact more acutely than other groups of color. This possible difference between blacks and nonblack people of color is one reason why the lack of assessment of the effects of interracial contact on nonblack people of color in the United States is a significant hole in the research on interracial contact. However, for the purpose of this research, the theory of assimilation suggests that there are very real social outcomes connected with intergroup contact. Without that contact, assimilation becomes impossible. The theory of assimilation goes beyond social acceptance, providing a framework by which different racial groups may begin to take on the perceptions of those from other races. Will Interracial Contact Smother Minority Culture? The potential assimilation of people of color is not seen as a cause for celebration. In fact, this potential assimilation can be seen as a reason to be concerned about interracial contact. Proponents of multiculturalism have argued that processes of assimilation can lead to the generally smothering of the cultures of people of color (Hirschman, 1983; Lee, 1992; Vega and Greene, 1993; Goldberg, 1994) and that the racial perceptions of racial

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minorities will be co-opted by their assimilation into the dominant society. Thus fewer people of color will challenge the racial status quo, and there will be less pressure from communities of color to initiate structural changes in our racialized society. A couple of examples concerning Native Americans will suffice to illustrate the concerns some have about encroaching cultural conformity. Native Americans have suffered from both initial attempts at biological genocide and later attempts at cultural genocide. Attempts to incorporate Native Americans into the mainstream of society have generally led to a loss of their cultural norms and values (Jackson and Galli, 1977; Hoxie, 1984; Tinker, 1993; Noley, 1998). Indeed, entire tribes have completely lost their language and cultural norms.5 Descendants of these tribes still exist, but it is impossible for them to ever fully recapture their culture as it once was. It is reasonable to argue that members of such tribes also would be less likely to further resist the imposition of European American culture. A second illustration of the possibility of cultural loss is transracial adoption of Native American children. Many Native Americans perceive such adoption as further evidence of cultural genocide. Much of their fear comes from the historical practice of taking Indian children away from their families of origin and placing them in boarding schools that discouraged them from practicing their native culture. These tribes fear a similar procedure may occur by transracial adoption since Indian children raised by majority group members will be less likely to adopt their own culture and to acknowledge the racism that still informs American society.6 Thus transracial adoption, which may seem benign to non–Native Americans, is a process by which an Anglo-conformist type of assimilation may take place. In both examples, we cannot overlook the role interracial contact played in the assimilation and possible loss of culture or racial perspective of Native Americans. Much of the interaction that led to the cultural genocide of Native Americans happened on reservations and was done by the early missionaries and social workers. Transracial adoption leads to a multiracial family that produces the type of intimate contact that theoretically creates attitudinal change. Interracial contact is part of how the assimilative process occurs in a society. Thus, if assimilation is a problem for people of color, then interracial contact cannot be perceived as a benign phenomenon. Although few social activists openly decry interracial contact, calls for cultural preservation can be utilized to minimize interracial contact.

Is Interracial Contact Desirable? It is not always clear that the attitudinal changes produced by interracial contact are desirable. A possible outcome of contact is that majority group

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members can develop more sympathetic attitudes toward the plight of people of color. Yet it is also possible that interracial contact shapes the attitudes of racial minorities. Racial minorities may develop racial perspectives similar to those possessed by majority group members. If that is the case, then interracial contact can reduce, instead of increase, support for structural measures that deal with racism. For this reason it is important not only to assess the potential of interracial contact to shape attitudes of majority group members but also to examine how racial contact can affect the attitudes of people of color. Most research that examines the effects of interracial contact concentrates on majority group members. The research into how people of color are affected by interracial contact tends to focus on African Americans (Robinson and Preston, 1976; Sigelman and Welch, 1993; Ellison and Powers, 1994; Powers and Ellison, 1995; Shelton et al., 2005). I have failed to find any research that explores the potential of interracial contact to shape the attitudes of nonblack racial minorities in the United States. But a full accounting of the Contact Hypothesis requires an assessment of the potential of interracial contact to shape the attitudes of a variety of different racial groups.

Macro- and Microsolutions to Racial Alienation Although its detractors worry about the possibility of assimilation of minority group members, the Contact Hypothesis offers a microlevel interpersonal solution to issues of racism in our society. It is reasonable to think about a both/and macro- and micro-approach to racism, rather than merely accept an either/or proposition. If interracial contact is a viable microlevel answer, then it is reasonable to argue that it can augment macrolevel approaches. In fact, it is my contention that interracial contact can be a valuable tool for those who wish to use social activism to deal with racism. The Contact Hypothesis is a useful way of thinking about paths to social change, particularly as that change pertains to racial issues. Much advocacy for social change has emphasized overt efforts to alter the racialized social structures in American society (Massey and Denton, 1996; Carr, 1997; Feagin, 2000; Bonilla-Silva, 2001). These arguments have generally focused on ways of accumulating power for people of color and have deemphasized the importance of persuasion. Such attempts will be unsuccessful unless there is a coherent method by which a large number of individuals can be persuaded to take the steps necessary to support the structural alterations needed. The Contact Hypothesis theorizes that interracial contact can lead to attitudinal change if the contact is done under the right social conditions. If interracial contact is effective, then we can focus on creating

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the conditions that utilize contact to challenge the racial hierarchy in the United States. A micro-macro linkage may occur through the need to recruit allies for efforts to alter racialized social structures. If the Contact Hypothesis is accurate, then we may use interracial contact to recruit individuals into movements that challenge the current racial hierarchy and/or to convince individuals to support political figures who advocate for people of color. Recent developments regarding affirmative action have indicated that support for policy-based solutions to racial inequality is declining in the United States.7 There is no reason to believe that this trend will reverse itself in the coming years. Some may argue that, as European Americans become a smaller portion of the population in the United States, support for such programs may grow. However, I have previously demonstrated (Yancey, 2003c) that the racial attitudes of nonblacks more closely align with those of European Americans than with those of African Americans. There is no guarantee that increasing racial diversity in the United States will lead to more support of public policies that favor people of color. To this end, it is important to think about how support for progressive racial polices may grow. Eileen O’Brien (2001) provides valuable insight in her attempt to examine how whites become “antiracist.”8 Such majority group members have dedicated themselves to the promotion of the interests of minority group members and would be highly likely to support progressive public policy efforts such as affirmative action. But generating such support has not been adequately addressed by scholars and activists. Understanding the microlevel processes that can buttress support for macrolevel changes is an important, but academically neglected, part of any movement toward racialized social change. If the Contact Hypothesis is accurate, then we can look at interracial contact as a microlevel complementary solution to the larger macrolevel efforts that have been launched to shape important public policy changes. I have two major concerns about the potential of interracial contact to alter the racial dynamics in the United States. First, is it reasonable to think that the attitudes of majority group members will change as they come into contact with people of color? After all, as my opening story suggests, having an intimate friend of color does not ensure an effect on racial attitudes (Jackman and Crane, 1986). There is no guarantee that interpersonal contact alters deeply held racialized beliefs. Second, what if people of color alter their racial attitudes instead of whites? People of color who encounter majority group members may have to accept the dominant group’s racial ideology so that they can fit into the dominant culture. Diversifying the social networks of people of color can lead to a loss of allies for social change rather than a gain of supporters. The effects of interracial contact may be more powerful for racial minorities than for majority group mem-

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bers. In the course of this book I will address both concerns and present evidence that they are not as big a problem as some may fear. If interracial contact has no effect upon Americans, or if it makes our racial situation worse by encouraging assimilation, then those who look to intergroup contact as a solution are sadly mistaken. However, if interracial contact does help to produce more harmonious racial attitudes, without also encouraging avoidance of the reality of racism, then those pushing for increasing interracial contact have found an important piece of the solution to racial alienation. Thus the Contact Hypothesis is not just a sociological theory; it is an idea that has important applied implications for dealing with racism in our society. Understanding the full potential of interracial contact is vital if we are going to learn about the value of racial integration.

Research Data To conduct this research, I looked at the potential of interracial contact to shape the lives of Americans in multiracial churches, within interracial marriages, and across racially mixed social networks. I argue in Chapter 3 that these settings are appropriate ones for investigating the potential of interracial contact to have a fruitful outcome. I used quantitative measures to pick up generalizable patterns that apply to individuals who have experienced a good deal of interracial contact and qualitative measures to determine the relationship between interracial contact and attitudinal change, as well as to provide more insight into how interracial contact can shape racial attitudes. To perform this examination, I relied on two data sets. One is based on the first national study of multiracial churches, entitled the Lilly Survey of Attitudes and Friendships (LSAF, 1999–2000). This research project contains a national survey as well as several interviews of individuals who attend multiracial congregations. The national survey includes questions about the racial diversity of the social network of the respondents. I can conduct a quantitative analysis of the data in this survey that examines the potential of interracial contact for those who attend multiracial congregations and those who have racially mixed social networks. However, there is also an important qualitative portion of this data that allows me to evaluate the possible effects of interracial contact upon those who attend multiracial religious institutions. The second data set, the Interracial Families Interviews (IFI), I collected on my own. I originally conducted this research to see how interracial marriages provide an opportunity for individuals to reshape their racial and cultural attitudes. Much of what I learned in this study provides for a qualitative exploration into how interracial contact can shape the lives of individ-

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uals in interracial marriages. This research also allows me to examine if, and how, interracial contact can change racial attitudes. These studies provide both quantitative and qualitative analysis of the important topic of interracial contact; in this manner the general weaknesses of each type of research is compensated by the use of the other research methodology. Furthermore, both studies include oversamples of Hispanic and Asian Americans. Their inclusion allows me to go beyond the white/black dichotomy to see if nonblack groups may experience elements of interracial contact differently than either whites or blacks. Finally, these two data sets enable me to look at the potential effects of interracial contact in three distinct social settings, allowing me to argue that my findings are generalizable to other settings.

The Plan of the Book In Chapter 2 I help the reader better understand the potential of interracial contact for affecting the dynamics of race relations in American society. To this end I explore the development of white racial identity and how the racialized perspectives of people of color tend to differ from that identity. I then look at the potential of interracial contact to affect the racial perspectives of whites and nonwhites. I also pay attention to the argument of one sociological perspective, group threat theory, that argues that interracial contact may intensify, rather than ameliorate, racial conflict. This articulation of the possible effects of interracial contact provides a theoretical framework for the effects of the Contact Hypothesis. One of the strengths of this current research is the attempt to understand the Contact Hypothesis in different social settings that meet the theorized conditions for productive interracial contact. In Chapter 3 I explore the conditions theorized to be necessary for productive interracial contact. Proponents of the Contact Hypothesis have argued that, in order for interracial contact to be productive, it must be egalitarian, cooperative, supported by relevant authority figures, intimate, and voluntary. I argue that these conditions are highly likely to be met when interracial contact occurs within multiracial congregations, racially mixed social networks, and interracial marriages. In this chapter I make the case why these settings are valuable for helping us to understand the potential of interracial contact. In Chapter 4 I utilize national probability analysis to assess the generalizable effects that interracial contact has upon racial attitudes. Using the LSAF, I determine how interracial contact may affect the racial attitudes of individuals attending multiracial churches or who have racially mixed social networks. Whites attending multiracial churches have lower levels of social distance from people of color than other whites, and whites attending

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churches where they are in the numerical minority also have more progressive racial attitudes than other whites. The LSAF also indicates that whites with racially mixed social networks have more progressive racial attitudes than other whites, but that merely having a best friend who is a minority does not guarantee attitude change. However, there is little evidence in the LSAF data that interracial contact affects the racial attitudes of people of color. This research shows that interracial contact has the potential to alter the racial attitudes of majority group members, but only if that contact is with multiple people of color in their social network. In Chapter 5 I switch from quantitative research to a qualitative analysis of possible contact effects. I use an LSAF interview and the results of the IFI to explore how interracial contact can alter racial attitudes. The IFI shows that majority group members tend to alter their racial attitudes because of listening to their spouses, experiencing a new racial status, and personally witnessing racism. The IFI also buttresses the findings in Chapter 4 that indicate people of color are not as likely to undergo attitudinal change as European Americans. This qualitative analysis helps ameliorate concerns that the findings in Chapter 4 result from self-selection effects, rather than interracial contact. Thus Chapters 4 and 5 report that interracial contact is not likely to change the racial attitudes of people of color. But in Chapter 6 I show that people of color who have contact with majority group members are more likely to have a higher socioeconomic status (SES) and level of education than other people of color. The LSAF interview indicates that there is more than self-selection at work here, since a significant number of people of color gained their higher economic status after joining multiracial churches. The IFI indicates that people of color may also look to their white spouse for role models and information that would increase their social capital. Thus interracial contact does affect people of color, but not as cultural pluralists fear, in that this contact helps people of color prepare to compete in the American economy. In Chapter 7 I summarize the general findings of this research and then explore some of the implications of this work as it concerns race relations in the United States. Current types of social activism do not produce the sort of structural changes needed in American society. Social activism can be most effective if it is done within an atmosphere of extensive interracial contact. To this end, it is valuable to think about how we can increase productive interracial contact in the United States: it is necessary if we are going to maximize our potential to deal with racial alienation. Let me be crystal clear about one possible misconception. I am not arguing that we should abandon the current political and social channels many individuals use to address issues of racial justice in our society. The development and sustenance of social movements that help address these

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issues is vital to dealing with modern racism. However, it is important to find multiple tools to inform majority group members about the reality of racism and spur people of color to initiate social change. Even though I contend that the current techniques used by contemporary activists are insufficient, I am not arguing that such techniques are unnecessary. Rather than attempt to rely solely on macrolevel efforts at social change, I argue that it is important to augment them with a microlevel strategy of racially mixed social networks. The extension of such networks will provide power to the social movements by recruiting allies to those movements and by creating a forum by which majority group members will gain more insight into the contemporary manifestations of racism. A research caveat is in order. Within the context of the following chapters, I strive to utilize tables that are statistically uncomplicated and generally compare the means of the different groups to examine the extent of the differences between them. In this manner I hope to communicate the results of this research to a wide audience in a way that does not necessitate having a sophisticated understanding of statistics. Nevertheless, I did test the results reported in the book with the appropriate demographic and social controls. For readers with more technical expertise, I include in the book’s appendix some of the findings that have undergone more rigorous statistical testing. Finally, race is a biological myth, but it is very real in its social implications. In that context I freely discuss race as a reality and not a social construct. The attitudes displayed by people of distinct races embody the different social realities in our society. For the most part, in describing different racial groups, I employ a broad usage of racial terminology. I freely interchange the term “European American” with “white,” “African American” with “black,” and “Latino” with “Hispanic.”

Notes 1. In fact, Mary Waters (1990) argues that the ethnicity of the Irish and other European ethnic groups is symbolic in nature and has no real consequences in their lives. 2. In fact, Ignatiev (1995) observes that the early Irish were very sympathetic to the plight of black slaves. But as members of this ethnic group moved closer to majority group status, they lost their concern for the racial oppression of nonwhites. Thus, part of the cost that minority groups may pay to become part of the majority is a loss of sympathy for the victims of racial oppression. 3. Because part of this different tendency of racial groups to undergo residential and marital assimilation lies in the greater propensity of majority group members to accept those who most closely resemble them, it would be of interest to access potential differences between the various racial ethnic groups. Asian and Hispanic ethnic groups that most resemble European Americans should be more

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likely to experience residential and marital acceptance from majority group members than their counterparts. However there is little, if any, research that makes such ethnic distinctions and the lack of sufficiently high numbers of ethnic groups in the LSAF sample prevents me from conducting such research as well. 4. I am not alone in forwarding this argument. Perlmann and Waldinger (1997) contend that there are important parallels between Asians and Hispanics and earlier European ethnic groups. They stop short of arguing that these nonblack racial groups will be able to utilize the same “ethnic” card that European ethnic groups used to insert themselves into the majority group, but they do argue that these groups are likely to differentiate themselves from the lower racial strata occupied by African Americans. Furthermore, Alba and Nee (1997) point out that although Asians and light-skinned Hispanics may lose some of their racial distinctiveness by joining with the majority group, the racial boundary between whites and blacks remains the most intractable barrier between racial groups. Finally, although other scholarly works fall short of actually arguing for a concrete black/nonblack reality, the possibility of such a future is considered as likely as other types of potential racial formations (Sanjek, 1996; Alba, 1999). 5. For example, the Coree is an Indian tribe that was located in South Carolina and now appears to have been incorporated into other Indian tribes or the dominant culture. The combination of disease and war made it impossible for them, like many other East Coast tribes, to maintain their cultural integrity. Although this tribe is not biologically extinct, it is difficult to see how the Coree will ever regain their cultural traditions. 6. McRoy and Zurcher (1983) did not study Native American children, but they do provide evidence that black children with white parents have less of an adherence to African American culture than black children adopted into black families, although they do not appear to suffer confusion about their racial identity. 7. For example, a 1997 survey found that most Americans supported efforts to aid others based upon class but rejected efforts to aid based upon race and sex (Verhovek, 1997). 8. The word antiracist can have many different interpretations. O’Brien defines it as someone who is committed to confronting racism. This commitment is so strong that being an antiracist is part of that person’s identity. This, and other definitions of antiracism go beyond the mere desire to avoid instances of overt racism or to latch on to a philosophy of racial color blindness.

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hen the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) that US educational institutions must be integrated, there was great hope that we would be able to overcome the racial alienation that has long been part of society. More than fifty years later, we have seen some improvement in the educational and economic status of people of color, the end of blatantly racist laws, and a great reduction in the level of overt racial hostility directed at people of color. Yet there is still a great deal of racial hostility in the United States. Residential segregation has decreased only slightly over the past few decades (Jakubs, 1986; O’Hare and Usdansky, 1992; Farley and Frey, 1994; Massey and Denton, 1996). There are still significant gaps in academic and economic achievement related to racial differences. Important political divisions in society are still shaped by racial hostility (Sniderman and Tetlock, 1986; Kinder and Sanders, 1996; Sidanius et al., 1996). Racial animosity is still a part of everyday relations in the United States. Would this reality change with more interracial interpersonal communication between whites and nonwhites? If there were more communication, is it possible that whites would become more aware of the detrimental effects of racism? Would people of color become more accepting of the racial laissez-faire philosophy of European Americans? Perhaps both whites and nonwhites may find some middle ground. Would interracial contact lessen the degree of political and social hostility that whites and nonwhites have with each other? If so, would it create peace that encourages the racial status quo or help challenge the current racial hierarchy? Most of this chapter focuses upon the different ways in which interracial contact may affect the perspectives of whites and nonwhites. I spend the first section exploring the racial perceptions of whites. Then, I explore why interracial contact may influence the attitudes of whites and nonwhites. I will touch upon how group threat theory makes a prediction contrary to 15

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that of the Contact Hypothesis, but how other literature has indicated that interracial contact has greater power to explain racial attitudes. Examining the theoretical basis for how interracial contact may shape the perspectives of majority and minority group members will provide us with an understanding of why such contact may produce more harmonious race relations.

Differences in Racial Perspectives in the United States There is strong evidence that racial attitudes are correlated to racial identity. Several studies have found divergent black-white perspectives on racial issues (Jaynes and Williams, 1989; Kluegel, 1990; Hacker, 1995; Schuman et al., 1997; Weakliem, 1997). Much of the research on the different attitudes of European Americans and African Americans concentrates on political or racial issues (Hacker, 1995; Schuman et al., 1997; Gilens et al., 1998) and the contrasting ways in which those groups explain racial inequality (Kluegel, 1990; Sniderman and Piazza, 1993; Emerson and Smith, 2000). Furthermore, I (2003c) have documented important differences in the racial attitudes of blacks, whites, and nonblack racial minorities. These results suggest that individuals of different races likely bring contrasting ideas about racial issues and racism into interracial relationships. Of course, people of color have different perspectives on racial issues than majority group because they are more likely to be the recipient of racism. Although it is possible for majority group members to experience an individualized form of racism, the United States is structured in ways whereby majority group members have institutional advantages over people of color.1 Thus, people of color understand the problems of racism on a more personal level, and this understanding shapes their racial attitudes in ways that escape majority group members. There is ample evidence that majority group members tend to be more ignorant about the existence of racism and other racial issues than people of color (Sniderman and Piazza, 1993; Blauner, 1994; Dalton, 2002). Several contemporary theories of racism such as color-blind (Carr, 1997; Lewis et al., 2000; Bonilla-Silva, 2003), symbolic (McConahay and Hough, 1976; Kinder and Sears, 1981; Sears, 1988; Sniderman and Piazza, 1993), aversive (Gaertner and Dovidio, 1986; Dovidio et al., 1989; Kleinpenning and Hagendoorn, 1993), and laissez-faire racism (Bobo et al., 1997; Bobo and Smith, 1998) have emerged. These theories, although distinct from each other, all share the notion that contemporary racism is subtler than the overt notions of white supremacy that have dominated the US racial past. The subtle nature of contemporary racism enables majority group members to ignore the social reality of racism.2 Furthermore, majority group members

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do not have an incentive to seek out and/or address issues of contemporary racism since the current racial status quo works to their advantage. This enables majority group members to develop a racial identity that allows an acceptance of subtle, but not overt, forms of racism. Understanding this “white racial identity” is important for helping us to understand white/nonwhite attitudinal differences in the United States.

White Racial Identity Recently a new subspecialty has risen within Race/Ethnic studies called “whiteness studies.” Academics in that field argue that just as people of color have a racial identity by which they make sense of society, so too do majority group members (Roediger, 1991; Giroux, 1997; Hartigan, 1999). People of color have developed racial identities that allow them to deal with their harsh racial reality and that support them in their efforts to seek out social equality. European Americans can also develop racial identities that support their own group interests. Thus, they can utilize their racial identity to help them justify the current racial hierarchy in the United States. Academics have argued that components of white racial identity include color blindness (Blauner, 1989; Dyer, 1997; Dalton, 2002; Wildman and Davis, 2002), individualism (Kluegel, 1990; Bonilla-Silva and Lewis, 1997; Virtanen and Huddy, 1998), and European cultural normalcy (Twine, 1997; Dyer, 2002). These qualities allow European Americans to justify the racial status quo in the United States. The philosophy of color blindness indicates that the best way to deal with the problems of racism in our society is to ignore racial differences. Under the philosophy of color blindness, majority group members can assert that the racially based economic inequalities that a person of color suffers from reflect that individual’s inability to succeed. In this way, European Americans can ignore the structural factors underpinning racial inequality. In fact, under the rubric of color blindness, race-based solutions are actually harmful to the eradication of racism since such solutions remind us of the importance of race, rather than help us to ignore racial differences.3 This philosophy not only prevents the implementation of useful measures that deal with racism but also encourages a feeling of moral superiority among the majority group members who deny such implementation. The potential of color blindness to hamper our ability to institute social reforms that deal with structural racism is so great that some scholars now are talking about a color-blind racism (Carr, 1997; Bonilla-Silva, 2003) that works to perpetuate racial inequality in the United States. Individualism also is a feature of white racial identity. Individualism is

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the philosophy that what happens to us, good or bad, results from our own individual actions. This ideology pushes the notion that it is the individual’s responsibility to overcome any personal and/or structural barriers so he or she can enjoy economic and social success. If this is accurate, it can be argued that those who succeed do so because of their own individual effort and those that fail do so because they were unable or unwilling to put forth the effort that leads to success. In a society where European Americans are more likely to enjoy educational and/or academic success than people of color, individualism implies that majority group members have worked harder at achieving success. This implication suggests that our society is basically fair and so the racial inequalities that are a part of our society are unfortunate, but are also justified. In this way individualism is used to maintain the current racial structure. Finally, it is important to note that European cultural normalcy can be used to maintain the racial status quo. In contemporary society, it is undesirable to enunciate ideas indicating that one’s racial group is superior to other racial groups. Overt white supremacy is no longer acceptable in polite company. However, it is still acceptable to identify elements of majority group culture that are perceived as being superior to similar elements of cultures of color. Thus, the habits and lifestyles of people of color are often proffered as a reason why these individuals have been unable to enjoy economic success. For example, in the 1960s and 1970s it was in vogue to attribute the lack of economic success of African Americans to the failing family structure in their communities (Moynihan, 1965; Glazer, 1975). In this way critics of people of color do not directly make statements about the innate inferiority of racial minorities, but rather explore how the cultural actions of the minorities differ from the majority group and how these differences account for the educational/economic shortcomings of people of color. Such criticism has been termed “blaming the victim” (Ryan, 1976).4 This propensity to look at majority group culture for examples of how we should organize society can be used to legitimate the majority group members. Instead of majority group members concentrating upon how their actions serve to perpetuate the difficulties of people of color, European cultural normalcy allows majority group members to place the entire blame on the shortcomings of racial minorities. These aspects of white racial identity work to help majority group members to perceive the current racial hierarchy as a fair social system. This perception meets important sociological, emotional, and social needs for majority group members and helps them to maintain their group dominance. It is also in the interest of majority group members to maintain a white racial identity so that they can support their social position in the United States.

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The Potential Effects of Majority and Minority Group Contact Can Interracial Contact Influence European Americans? There are reasons to believe that majority group members can experience cultural and attitudinal change because of interracial contact. For example, there is evidence that majority group members are more ignorant about racism than people of color (Sniderman and Piazza, 1993; Blauner, 1994; Dalton, 2002). Thus, interracial contact can influence racial attitudes by providing knowledge about racial groups to majority group individuals (Hewstone, 1986). It is not unusual for racial knowledge to provide insight for majority group members. For example, African Americans were abused for most of a century in the Jim Crow South. When owning a television became common among Americans, modern civil rights protests were able to visually illustrate that abuse to a national audience. With majority group members no longer able to deny the injustice of Jim Crow, public opinion soon began to support the protests, and civil rights legislation was eventually signed into law. At least part of the success of the civil rights movement can be attributed to the visual impact of southern racial brutality, as television cameras showed the abusive treatment of civil rights protesters. Why cannot this example of knowledge preceding action be replicated through interracial contact? Such contact may help majority group members to understand new forms of racism in contemporary society and may produce a more progressive racial attitude among majority group members. There has been very little work on how whites become concerned with issues that affect people of color. Most of such work has concentrated on the development of what has been termed “antiracists,” and the majority of that work focuses upon white women (Frankenberg, 1993; Feagin and Vera, 1995). The exception is research by O’Brien (2001) that examines the process in both men and women. She finds several routes that whites may take to develop an antiracist philosophy and lifestyle, including other leftist activism, understanding because of suffering other types of oppression (i.e., sexism), “epiphanic moments,” and witnessing the oppression of people of color. The latter two are important as they can theoretically be influenced by the interracial contact whites have with people of color. O’Brien’s work concentrates upon the attitudes of majority group members who are likely to be the most supportive of people of color, but it is also important to look at the role interracial contact can play for whites who develop some sympathy for people of color, but not to the extent of being antiracists. Even if such movements among those majority group members do not result in total

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support for people of color, they still will result in more support for people of color than they previously enjoyed. If members of the majority group become more aware of the reality of racism because of interracial contact, then it will be harder for them to maintain a white racial identity and to continue to believe in the principles of color blindness and individualism. Encountering the cultural values of nonwhites through interracial contact would also challenge the notion of European cultural normalcy. If new attitudes developed by majority group members as a result of interracial contact make complacency about racism more difficult, then interracial contact can encourage majority group members to help people of color to confront the current racial hierarchy in the United States. It can be argued that overt racist measures have been prevalent in American society because historically, whites and nonwhites have lived apart. Because of the degree of residential and occupational segregation in the United States, whites and people of color did not often interact as equals. Thus, it was easy for majority group members to pass and support laws that disenfranchise people of color since they did not have egalitarian friendships with nonwhites. However, if microlevel interactions improve the knowledge European Americans have about the reality of racism, then interracial contact should lead to more support for macrolevel measures that deal with racism. Interracial Contact and Its Potential Effects on Minority Group Members Not only may majority group members alter their racial attitudes because of interracial contact, but also minority group members may adopt the attitudes of the majority. Thus minority group members may take on the perspectives of white racial identity. It is easy to see how white racial identity helps majority group members maintain their societal advantage. However, it is less clear why such a racial identity should become accessible to people of color. The features of white racial identity are attractive to majority group members precisely because they can be used to help those individuals to maintain an advantage over people of color. If assimilation theory is accurate, then individuals who have previously been situated in society as racial minorities may begin to accept the perceptions connected to white racial identity as they begin to enjoy the status of being part of the majority. In such a situation, minority group members may have to make cultural and attitudinal adjustments that help them to become accepted by the majority group. A concept called “ethnocultural allodynia” (Comas-Diaz and Jacobsen, 2001), which refers to the impact of “past exposure of emotionally painful

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social and ethnoracial stimuli,” may produce hypersensitivity in perceiving racism in a given situation. If racial minorities do not have close relations with majority group members, then this sensitivity may never develop. But in a multiracial relationship, the majority group member, even one who perceives himself or herself as racially aware, can unintentionally trigger this sensitivity and produce intercultural conflict. Racial minorities in interracial relationships may perceive it to be important to become less sensitive to racially based issues so that they can minimize conflict. Theoretically, such a condition can influence minority group members to alter their racial attitudes to accommodate their majority group friend or spouse by accepting the racial perspectives of the majority group. Interracial Understanding or Perception of Group Threat? As overt racism diminishes in American society and more egalitarian interracial contact occurs, advocates of the Contact Hypothesis predict improved race relations. Recently, scholars have conducted sophisticated tests of interracial contact (Sigelman and Welch, 1993; Powers and Ellison, 1995; Yancey, 1999; Stein et al., 2000; Ihlanfeldt and Scafidi, 2002; Dixon and Rosenbaum, 2004; Lee et al., 2004) that indicate that interracial contact may change attitudes (Powers and Ellison, 1995; Dixon and Rosenbaum, 2004; Lee et al., 2004). Academic interest has resurfaced with research that explores avenues of contact beyond educational institutions or residential settings (Yancey, 1999; Kendrick T. Brown et al., 2003; Quillian and Campbell, 2003; Dixon and Rosenbaum, 2004) or that examines the specific ways in which interracial contact may alter racial perspectives (Powers and Ellison, 1995; Pettigrew, 1998; Lee et al., 2004). Yet it is possible that increasing racial diversity may not produce the predicted effects found within the Contact Hypothesis. Group threat theory (LeVine and Campbell, 1972; Pachen, 1982; Quillian, 1995) suggests that interracial contact may not produce harmonious attitude changes among majority group members. This theory contends that as more people of color become visible to European Americans, racial out-group members will be seen as a threat to the majority group. The visibility of the minority group reminds members of the majority that racial minorities are competitors for the relatively limited economic and social resources in a society. Under such conditions, interracial contact does not provide more racial understanding; rather it produces more interracial conflict as majority group members come into contact with those who threaten them. Previous research has assessed the viability of group threat theory. Empirical evidence has substantiated an adverse relationship between the number of people of color in a community or city and the progressive racial

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attitudes of majority group members (Giles and Evans, 1986; Burr et al., 1991; Quillian, 1996; Taylor, 1998). As it affects macrolevel race relations, interracial contact produces conflict instead of progressive racial attitudes among majority group members. Tests conducted according to the Contact Hypothesis and group threat theory predicted these potentially contradictory results but indicated that the Contact Hypothesis is more explanatory than group threat theory (Hood and Morris, 2000; Stein et al., 2000; Dixon and Rosenbaum, 2004; Lee et al., 2004; Dixon, 2006) as it concerns interracial interpersonal contact. This research suggests that interracial contact, under the proper conditions, has more power to produce tolerant racial attitudes among majority group members than group threat has to produce more hostile racial attitudes among the majority group. I am unable to test the potential effects of group threat theory with my current data, but given the results of this recent research, I have confidence that the power of group threat to generate hostile attitudes will not overcome the power of interracial contact to produce accepting racial attitudes. Possible Interactions of Majority and Minority Group Effects The potential for interracial contact to alter the perspectives of majority and minority group members is not mutually exclusive. It is possible for majority group members to become more aware of modern forms of racism, even as people of color learn to accept aspects of white racial identity. Interracial contact may produce some type of compromise between the racial awareness of people of color and the white racial identity of majority group members. From the point of view of those who wish to confront the racialized structures in the United States, it is unclear whether such an outcome would work to their benefit or not. If the movement of whites to more progressive racial attitudes is more powerful than the processes of assimilation experienced by people of color, then interracial contact may yet still produce an environment that helps social activists to challenge racism. However, if racial minorities experience greater attitudinal change, then interracial contact may make it harder for such activists to find support within communities of color. Understanding whether, and how, interracial contact affects majority and minority group members helps us to evaluate the potency of interracial contact. Without empirical evaluation of the effects of interracial contact, it becomes impossible to know if the fears of multiculturalists are accurate. It may be the case that cultural separation ultimately hampers the attempts of multiculturalists to deal with racial alienation, because such separation inhibits the interracial contact that enables majority group members to challenge important elements in their white racial identity. However, interracial

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contact may lead to a reduction in the oppositional culture needed to challenge the current racial status quo. If that is the case, then multiculturalists should be wary of interracial contact.

Conclusion Racial hostility is deeply imbedded in our society. As a result, contrasting racial attitudes have developed. Majority group members possess a “white racial identity” that supports the racial status quo they enjoy. People of color, however, are more critical of the current racial situation and tend to support efforts to alter the current racial hierarchy. It is possible that when majority group members and minority group members are in contact with each other, then majority group members may become more sensitive to the issues that plague racial minorities. Yet multiculturalists warn that interracial contact may also foster the acceptance among some minority group members of racialized attitudes that buttress the status quo. These contrasting possibilities underscore the importance of accurately assessing the possible effects of interracial contact. Those making that assessment should recognize the importance of the social conditions of that contact. Thus, different settings for interracial contact will allow us to more fully perceive the effects of interracial contact. In the following chapter, I explore the conditions necessary for productive interracial contact and then discuss how the settings I examine in this book meet those conditions.

Notes 1. Although it has been argued that only whites can be racist (Weisberg, 1991; Daniel, 1998), I contend that individualized racism is possible from anyone with some degree of power in our society. Thus, if I grade my white students more harshly than my students of color, then it is fair to assert that my white students will have experienced individualized racism. But what they will not have experienced is the type of institutional racism that continues to be part of our society. 2. It can be argued that majority group members do understand subtle forms of racism, but choose to ignore racism because maintenance of the racial status quo serves their racial interest. Even if this is true, tests of the Contact Hypothesis are still important since majority group members who have contact with racial minorities may be forced to acknowledge the existence of racism as it affects people of color. Testing possible contact effects is important, regardless of whether majority group members are legitimately ignorant of contemporary racism or are attempting to feign ignorance. 3. This has become especially clear to me over the past few years, as I have discussed racial issues with individuals with a color-blind mentality. They often assert that affirmative action is a racist program because it provides benefits based upon racial differences. When teaching my Race and Ethnicity course, I have had

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students suggest that affirmative action is a contemporary example of direct institutional discrimination. Since I usually offer the Jim Crow system of the South in the early twentieth century as an example of direct intuitional discrimination, I can assume that these students place affirmative action at the same level of acceptability as Jim Crow. 4. The propensity to blame people of color for their own economic and educational shortcomings has not disappeared in contemporary society. Note the lack of patience that many Americans have for the difficulty of Hispanic Americans to deal with language barriers in the United States. Such an Anglo-conformist perspective leads to blaming Hispanic Americans for their own educational failures, rather than taking into account the difficulties of dealing with a different language in a foreign society.

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nterracial contact is theorized to produce attitudinal changes when certain conditions are met, but not all interracial contact is equally useful in producing the desired changes. Contact that is egalitarian, intimate, voluntary, and cooperative and is supported by relevant authority figures is most likely to produce alterations in a person’s racial attitudes. Based on these assertions, I argue that the social conditions likely to produce the predicted results of interracial contact can be found in interracial families, multiracial congregations, and racially mixed social networks. Discussing the use of these settings for the research in this book is the purpose of this chapter.

Conditions for Productive Interracial Contact Historical research concerning the Contact Hypothesis has shown mixed results (St. John, 1975; Pachen, 1982; Wilder, 1984; Hewstone, 1986; Stephan, 1987; Pettigrew, 1998). For racial attitudes to change, interracial contact must happen under certain conditions. William Barnard and Mark Been (1988) have suggested four of these conditions: (1) individuals from different groups should have equal status with each other; (2) cooperation, rather than competition, should characterize the relationship between the groups; (3) the relationships should be intimate rather than superficial; and (4) the contact should be sanctioned by relevant authority figures. Furthermore, W. G. Stephan (1987) contends that if positive results are desired, then integration should be voluntary. Several studies have indicated that contact can alter racial attitudes if the contact is between those of equal status (Mackenzie, 1948; Robinson and Preston, 1976; Tsukashima and Montero, 1976; Stephan, 1987; Dixon and Rosenbaum, 2004). Contact between individuals of unequal status is likely to foster resentment for those in inferior roles and may reinforce 25

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stereotypes of group superiority (Farley, 1995: 39). So if the purpose of interracial contact is to support positive racial relations, then such contact should occur in an egalitarian setting. Contact must also be noncompetitive and nonthreatening for it to ameliorate racial hostility (Stephan, 1987). Contact resulting in fear and defensiveness may worsen race relations rather than improve them. M. Sherif and his colleagues (1961)divided a camp of boys into two groups and placed them in competition with each other, which fostered intergroup hostility. Then they established several situations in which the groups had to work together. When the two groups became interdependent, then hostilities lessened. There is also evidence that interracial contact on sports teams reduces racial tension (Miracle, 1981; Pachen, 1982; Kendrick T. Brown et al., 2003, Tony N. Brown 2003), and it is likely that cooperation exhibited by teammates contributes to this effect. Another important condition is that contact must be intimate rather than superficial (Allport, 1958; Amir, 1976; Sigelman and Welch, 1993; Fetto, 2000). If prejudice is influenced by ignorance, then intimacy is important for informing Americans about other races (Hewstone, 1986). J. E. Jordan (1973) summarizes several studies to find that the degree of object-subject intimacy is the most important factor in determining whether the subject has a positive attitude toward certain groups. Other research suggests that superficial contact is unlikely to produce attitudinal change (Cole et al., 1968; St. John, 1975; Jackman and Crane, 1986), because it may allow whites to maintain dysfunctional racial stereotypes or to reinforce these myths if majority group members are selective in the information they gather through their intergroup encounters.1 Contact can also improve race relations if it enjoys positive sanctions from relevant authority figures (Allport, 1958; Desforges et al., 1991; Powers and Ellison, 1995; Hood and Morris, 1998). Because they define new norms for integrated groups, these leaders have the power to change the social values that promote racial segregation to social values that support racial integration. These leaders may also serve as role models who demonstrate to others how to accommodate new situations of integration. If relevant authority figures do not support interracial contact, they can ensure that contact brings racial conflict instead of understanding. Finally, contact that produces positive racial attitudes should also be voluntary (Stephan, 1987). People who choose to enter into interracial situations, or who do not actively resist such situations, should be more likely to change their racial attitudes than those who avoid developing interracial relationships (Brophy, 1946; Pettigrew, 1998). Because of possible selfselection effects, this type of voluntary action makes the measurement of the potential effects of interracial contact difficult. It is likely that individuals who choose to engage in interracial contact already have more progres-

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sive racial attitudes. However, recent research controlling for much of the self-selection bias indicates that interracial contact still has potential effects (Ellison and Powers, 1994; Pettigrew and Tropp, 2000; Dixon and Rosenbaum, 2004). Although much of the historical research concerning the Contact Hypothesis demonstrated mixed results for this theory (Sigelman and Welch, 1993; Yancey, 1999), it should be noted that recent meta-analytic findings by Thomas F. Pettigrew and L. R. Tropp (2000) suggest that the general trend in empirical work on the potential effects of intergroup contact indicates significant support for the power of interracial contact over a variety of settings and out-groups. Their findings also suggest that intimate contact matters for producing attitudinal change and that this effect can be generalized to a wide variety of situations. However, a meta-analysis cannot be the final research word on this topic, especially with the different quality of studies that must be included in such an analysis.2 Given the paucity of research that includes a national sample inclusive of different racial groups and that draws from individuals across the social spectrum, there is a need for contemporary research that can overcome many of the limitations of earlier work. The work in this book may reaffirm the findings of Pettigrew and Tropp, or it may challenge whether their findings hold up after the inclusion of probability national data.

Residential and Educational Settings of Interracial Contact The Contact Hypothesis must be tested in a setting where the conditions stated above can be more fully achieved. For this reason, it is important to assess which institutional setting most likely fulfills the conditions necessary for productive interracial contact. Much of the previous research has focused upon interracial contact in educational settings or in residential neighborhoods. But these places may not be the best settings for testing the full effects of interracial contact, as they are not likely to fully meet the conditions theorized as necessary for productive interracial contact. Education is an institutional setting where the Contact Hypothesis has been thoroughly tested. However, Nancy H. St. John’s (1975) review of forty-one studies of educational integration and interracial contact shows conflicting results, with some studies indicating that contact increases prejudice and others indicating that it reduces prejudice. Furthermore, Samuel L. Gaertner and John F. Dovidio (1986) contend that the competitive nature of our educational system inhibits positive intergroup relations. Finally, E. G. Cohen (1984) observes that in an educational setting, minority group members are often seen as academically inferior and

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obtain equal status only in nonacademic areas of the social system. Despite some recent evidence that interracial contact in educational institutions may disconfirm some of the unfavorable stereotypes of racial minorities that whites possess (Bowen and Bok, 1998; Dixon and Rosenbaum, 2004), educational institutions may not offer the best conditions for productive interracial contact. Contact in integrated residential neighborhoods may lead to productive, harmonious relationships. Residential neighborhoods tend to group together those of similar economic backgrounds. It is not surprising that an early study found that white housewives in two integrated housing projects developed favorable attitudes toward blacks at a faster rate than white housewives living in two segregated housing projects (Deutsch and Collins, 1956). However, later empirical studies have not always found positive attitudinal change related to residential interracial contact (Pettigrew, 1998; Yancey, 1999). Where there has been racial conflict, integrated neighborhoods may lack the support of relevant authority figures and may promote competitive, instead of cooperative, goals between racial group members. Furthermore, evidence suggests that social equality does not always exist between white and black neighbors (Ihlanfeldt and Scafidi, 2002), even if they are economically equal to each other. There is no assurance that interracial contact within residential neighborhoods results in intimate, instead of superficial, relationships.3

Multiracial Congregations, Racially Mixed Social Networks, and Interracial Marriages Although there is some evidence that interracial contact may have an effect within institutions such as schools and neighborhoods, they are not the institutions whereby interracial contact is theorized to have the most powerful influence. It is debatable that the conditions theorized to be necessary for productive interracial contact can be found in such institutions. To fully understand the possible effects of interracial contact, it is vital to assess these effects in social institutions that are arguably better suited to meet the conditions necessary for productive contact. Not only will using such institutions increase the probability of finding significant effects—because the effects should be more powerful—but also we will have a better chance to understand how the process of interracial contact may operate and who is most likely to be influenced by such contact. I have selected the social settings of multiracial congregations, racially mixed social networks, and multiracial families as the settings to examine. In this section I discuss why I have chosen these social settings, as well as look at what we know about them as social phenomena.

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Multiracial Congregations Multiracial religious institutions meet the conditions necessary for productive contact better than either integrated residential neighborhoods or educational institutions. Membership in religious congregations is a more volitional choice than one’s school or residential choice, since individuals need not join a religious congregation but generally must attend school or live in a neighborhood. Because of their voluntary nature, religious congregations offer members a greater opportunity to find primary relationships with others in their congregation. Furthermore, religious congregations link individuals who have a similar ideology as it concerns important spiritual issues. Members of a religious congregation have an incentive to work together to promote or support their theological beliefs. This linkage undoubtedly helps members within a congregation to develop close friendships with each other. Thus egalitarian, cooperative, and intimate relationships are more likely within a multiracial church than within integrated schools or neighborhoods. Finally, research suggests that multiracial congregations will not form unless there is sufficient support from the clergy in such institutions (Yancey, 2003a; Emerson, 2006). Thus, such institutions have support from relevant authority figures. Historical research about interracial contact within religious institutions seems to confirm these assertions. Interracial group contact appears to have a positive attitudinal effect upon clergy (Leacock et al., 1959; Irvine, 1973), and a case study of a multiracial congregation showed that integration aids in the development of positive race relations (Parker, 1968). There has been little contemporary work on this subject, but research that I describe in Chapter 4 suggests that whites attending churches that include African Americans have more progressive racial attitudes than whites attending churches without African Americans. These results indicate that religious institutions better meet the conditions necessary for productive interracial contact than residential or educational institutional settings. Why Are There So Few Multiracial Churches? Currently it is estimated that about 7 to 8 percent of all religious congregations in the United States are multiracial. This percentage is based upon a criterion that the numerical racial majority of the church constitutes no more than 80 percent of the congregation (Emerson, 2006). Most church members attend churches where people of their race make up the vast majority of attendees. It is unclear whether multiracial churches are increasing in number in the United States. However, if interracial contact becomes more acceptable in our society, then the possibly of multiracial churches increasing remains quite plausible.4

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It is tempting to think of religion as a force that binds together all who believe the general tenets of a particular faith. Yet Michael Emerson and Christian Smith (2000) have shown that although white and black evangelicals may share similar theological beliefs, they have drastically contrasting perceptions of racial issues. White evangelicals tend to accept a framework of free-will individualism that emphasizes personal responsibility. Black evangelicals cling to notions of structuralism, which stipulates a need to deal with the racist social structures that are part of society, no doubt because the church has historically been an institution where blacks planned resistance to the overarching racism they faced (Frazier, 1964; Lincoln and Mamiya, 1990; DeYoung et al., 2003).5 This attitude among black evangelicals contrasts to the notion of separation of state and religion more common among white Christians. Among Hispanic and Asian American church members, other racial issues come to the fore. A relatively high percentage of these worshippers are first- or second-generation citizens. For those in the first generation, issues of immigration and cultural maintenance often come to the forefront. As such, the church is often a place where they can connect with their native culture (Elizondo, 1977; Stevens Arroyo and Cadena, 1994; Yang, 1999; Ebaugh and Chafetz, 2000; Chai, 2001; DeYoung et al., 2003). I do not mean to imply that attempts at assimilation and incorporation among these groups through their churches are nonexistent. Religious institutions are as likely to help minority immigrant groups adjust to a new culture as they are to become places of social resistance. These differences matter because racial groups utilize their religious congregations in a variety of ways. Even if these groups share similar theological beliefs, there is no guarantee they will look to their churches to perform similar tasks. It becomes easy to understand why Americans tend to seek out churches with members of their own racial group. Distinct racial groups look for dissimilar qualities in the churches they join. In performing distinct functions for contrasting racial groups, congregations will promote contrasting racial perspectives for their church members. There are tremendous social pressures that tend to preclude the existence of multiracial congregations. Because of the distinct racial attitudes that individuals in different racial groups tend to possess, religious institutions have arisen to meet the needs of those groups. It is too much to state that the primary purpose of a religious institution is to serve the social purpose of the racial group that inhabits that church, but that does appear to be an important secondary concern of religious institutions. As such, a multiracial church should theoretically be unable to completely serve the interest of a single racial or ethnic group. However, such an assertion depends upon the idea that individuals are able to maintain the perspective that has developed within their own racial group even after they enter a multiracial

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church. In other words, if European Americans maintain a strong belief in free-will individualism as they join a multiracial church and African Americans assert that social structures are the source of racial problems, then there is the potential for great conflict within a multiracial religious setting. To ameliorate that conflict, either European Americans will have to develop more of an appreciation of structuralism, African Americans will have to adhere less strongly to structuralism, or some middle position will have to be agreed upon by the two groups.6 Both racial groups must also find ways to use their churches to serve the needs of immigrant groups if they are to create an atmosphere where Hispanic and Asian Americans have a good level of comfort. Interracial Friendship Networks Theoretically, the conditions of the Contact Hypothesis can also be met through friends of different races. Close friendships certainly meet the condition of intimacy. Since it has been suggested that intimate contact is more likely to produce positive attitudinal changes, closer interracial friendships may lessen racial tension more effectively than the more casual racial contact in multiracial churches. Furthermore, close friendships are voluntary (Rawlins, 1992: 9) and are more likely to be cooperative than competitive (White, 1977; Sears and Kinder, 1985). Social exchange theory suggests that friendships generally occur with people we perceive as equals (Blau, 1964). So interracial contact that comes through friendships should be contact that leads to attitudinal change. Americans generally develop friendships with racially similar individuals (Fetto, 2000; Joyner and Kao, 2000; Korgen, 2002; Kao and Joyner, 2004). Gordon Allport (1958) suggests that because interracial friendships are less common than intraracial friendship, stereotypes and prejudices about different racial groups are easier to maintain. There have been significant amounts of research examining interracial friendships (Damico et al., 1981; Jackman and Crane, 1986; Hallinan and Teixeira, 1987; Hallinan and Williams, 1989, 1990; Sigelman et al., 1996; Morris, 1999; Hunter and Elias, 2000; Joyner and Kao, 2000; Moody, 2001; Korgen et al., 2003). Yet little national research has examined the possible effects of such relationships upon racial attitudes. Although local studies that examine the potential of interracial friendships to alter racial attitudes (Pachen et al., 1977; Sigelman et al., 1996) are useful, we are hindered by the reality that there is little national research inclusive of all members of our society to document the potential of interracial friendships to alter racial attitudes.7 Much research on the relationship between interracial friendships and racial attitudes is generally limited to friendships developed within educational institutions (Hunter and Elias, 2000; Korgen et al., 2003) or integrated residen-

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tial neighborhoods (Morris, 1999; Scafidi, 2002), but it is not accurate to generalize these findings to all Americans. Lee Sigelman and Susan Welch (1993) use national probability data to examine the potential of interracial contact to alter the racial perspectives of whites and blacks and found that these friendships correlate with potential attitudinal change. Yet their research focuses on attitudes toward integration and perceptions of racism among the respondent, instead of other important racial issues. Kathleen Odell Korgen (2002) interviewed forty pairs of friends in black-white interracial friendships to determine how those individuals dealt with racial issues. She found that half the friendship pairs choose to ignore racial issues, about 30 percent discussed race in a joking manner, and about 20 percent discussed racial issues seriously. Korgen’s research illustrates that for European Americans, having close friendships with racial minorities does not mean that racial issues are an important topic of discussion. Without such discussions, it is difficult to see how racial attitudes will be altered by interracial relationships. My friendship in the story I used to open this book fell into the category of not discussing racial issues. It is also hard to see how racial attitudes may change in the 30 percent of the friendship dyads in which race was only a subject to joke about. Thus at most, only one out of every five relationships that she found provided even a reasonable potential for attitudinal change. Korgen’s work does not offer much support for the Contact Hypothesis. Yet, the importance of friendship intimacy may be overstated. The quantity of interracial contacts, rather than the quality of relational intimacy, may shape racial attitudes (Wilder, 1984; Jackman and Crane, 1986). Mary Jackman and Marie Crane (1986) utilize a national probability sample to examine the possible effects of interracial friendships. Their research indicates that intimacy is less important in shaping the racial attitudes of whites than the variety of their interracial contacts. If this research is accurate, then close interracial friendships should not be as powerful in influencing racial attitudes as having several nonintimate interracial friendships. It is not enough to merely test whether a respondent has close friends of a different race. It is also important to take into consideration the entire social network of the respondent. However, Jackman and Crane’s research is limited. First, they examine only European Americans. To gain a better understanding of the possible effects of interracial friendships upon racial attitudes, it is necessary to assess the effect of such relationships upon racial minorities. Second, they focus narrowly on the effects of black friendships upon the racial attitudes of whites. It can be argued that since blacks face more social rejection than other racial minorities (Spickard, 1989; Massey and Fong, 1990; Herring and Amissah, 1997; Yancey et al., 2000; Emerson et al., 2001; Yancey, 2003c), friendships between whites and blacks represent the most powerful

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disproportionate status between racial groups. Thus, black friendships with whites might offer majority group members their greatest opportunity to alter their racial attitudes. By contrast, the smaller social distance between nonblack minorities and whites (Bogardus, 1968; Herring and Amissah, 1997; Yancey, 2003c) may allow majority group members to be influenced more by their friendships with Hispanics and/or Asians than by their friendships with blacks. Finally, Jackman and Crane’s data are over twenty-five years old. A current assessment may uncover findings that reflect the changing nature of race relations in the United States. Sigelman and Welch (1993) update some of Jackman and Crane’s findings in that they use ABC News–Washington Post surveys to assess the efficacy of interracial contact in altering racial attitudes. They find that interracial friendships decrease the African Americans’ perceptions that the United States is a racially hostile society. They also found that whites with interracial friendships are more committed to black-white social interaction and less likely to perceive antiblack attitudes as popular. This work challenges some of the findings of Jackman and Crane, but it does not assess how interracial contact affects these groups’ perception of specific racial issues. Instead it focuses on whether interracial contact changes whites’ and blacks’ perception of American society in general. These changes may be a byproduct of the amiable feelings whites and blacks have toward their friends of different races and not an alteration of white racial or black oppositional identity. It is unclear whether this article sheds light on the ability of interracial friendships to shape the perspectives of whites and blacks on specific racially based issues. In the coming decades it is reasonable to argue that there will be more interracial friendships developing in the United States. As overt bigotry becomes more disreputable in the larger social environment, individuals who develop friendships with those of different races will face lower levels of social stigma. There may even be encouragement of interracial friendships within some subcultures in an effort to foster racial unity. This increasing trend makes it even more important to assess whether these friendships are useful for shaping attitudinal change. Interracial Marriages Multiracial congregations and racially mixed social networks are not the only social settings where the conditions for interracial contact are met. There are reasons to believe that the interracial marriage that creates the interracial family offers a great deal of promise for helping us understand the potential of interracial contact.8 One’s choice of a romantic partner is at least as volitional as one’s choice of religious institutions. Likewise, there is no reason to believe that relations within families are any less cooperative

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than the interpersonal relations occurring in religious congregations or between one’s friends. Furthermore, the intimacy within a family is undoubtedly greater than the intimacy between members of a religious institution or between one’s friends. Finally, there is reason to believe that relevant authority support will be present in an interracial family setting. Partners in an interracial romantic couple are highly unlikely to want to remove people of a different race from their family, unless the romantic relationship is about to be terminated. Perhaps the condition least likely to be met in interracial marriages is having a partner of equal status. Even today we live in a patriarchal society in which husbands on average possess greater power in a marital relationship. However, the development of the modern feminist movement has made egalitarian family structures more common (Bane, 1976; Blaisure and Allen, 1995; Thornton and Young-DeMarco, 2001). So even though a hierarchical order is possible within multiracial families, there is a growing possibility that contemporary marriages are becoming less patriarchal. The advantages of increased intimacy, relevant authority figure support, and cooperative relations make interracial romance an especially useful setting for studying the possible effects of interracial contact. This setting has not been used a great deal to test the theory—with good reason. Traditionally, there were relatively few such relationships. Furthermore, past formal sanctions against these relationships made it more important to concentrate upon the survival of their relationships than to understand the internal dynamics of interracial contact. Previous research has focused much of its attention on the external hostility toward interracial unions, instead of dealing with how the relationship may alter the racial attitudes of the partners. Contemporary research still documents the relative social resistance that members of interracial families continue to face (Ferber, 1998; McNamara et al., 1999; Dalmage, 2000; Childs, 2005). However, there has been some research that has looked into the racial attitudes of individuals in interracial relationships. Paul C. Rosenblatt, Terri A. Karis, and Richard D. Powell (1995) found that whites married to blacks tend to incorporate a new racial awareness into their identity. These majority group members struggle with the perception of being the only white person in the family, and many possess a feeling of marginality. Other research has focused upon the propensity of white women to change their racial identities because of their interracial marriages (Luke, 1994; Karis, 2003). Such findings are important because individuals who alter their racial identities may also change their perspectives on racial issues. However, other research has indicated that those in interracial marriages tend to harbor the same prejudices as other individuals (Dalmage, 2000; Childs, 2005). All this research has been done with local samples; none of the previously cited research directly asked the respondents how their interracial

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marriage might have altered their racial attitudes. I do not have the data to conduct a national sample, but I have developed a qualitative sample that directly assesses whether and how entering into an interracial marriage may affect the racial perspectives of the spouses. Using those data in conjunction with the other research I have to present on multiracial congregations and racially mixed social networks will help provide insightful information about the effects of interracial contact. Although hostility toward interracial relationships still exists, their acceptability has increased since the 1970s (Gallup and Newport, 1991; Schuman et al., 1997). We are witnessing an unprecedented rise in interracial marriages. According to census data, between 1990 and 2000 biracial marital unions increased 65 percent (Frey, 2003). Interracial couples are now one of every fifteen marriages. If interracial marriages are sites where attitudinal change may occur, then this increase in interracial romance may have important implications about how race relations may change in the United States in the coming years.

Other Settings for Testing the Effects of Interracial Contact None of the arguments provided above should be used to imply that these settings are the only ones in which interracial contact can be tested. In an ideal world and under prefect conditions, I would be able to test even more settings in which interracial contact is theorized to produce attitudinal changes. However, it is not possible for a single book to contain research for all possible contingencies and I will be satisfied to examine these current settings. But it is worth noting other potential settings that may produce productive interracial contact. The military provides another situation where cooperative contact between soldiers of different races may bring about declines in prejudice. Examinations of the change in soldiers’ racial attitudes as our military went from segregated to integrated troops illustrate the potential power of cooperative contact (Stouffer et al., 1949; Mkandelbaum, 1952). Charles C. Moskos and John S. Butler (1996) contend that the egalitarian nature of interracial contact in the army, as well as the fact that this contact was well supported by relevant authority, has led to more productive race relations in the services, as compared to the interracial contact that occurs on college campuses. I would also suggest that intimacy and cooperation occur in the military that may make interracial contact more productive as well.9 I have already cited work indicating that sports may also provide appropriate conditions for productive interracial contact (Miracle, 1981; Pachen, 1982; Kendrick T. Brown et al., 2003; Tony N. Brown et al., 2003). Team

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members certainly have an incentive to cooperate with each other, and coaches for those teams, the relevant authority figures, should also desire racial harmony among the team members. Furthermore, status on sporting teams depends on athletic ability to such an extent that a type of racial egalitarianism can characterize those who play sports. Even noting these two additional social settings does not create an exhaustive list of the possible places in which the effects of interracial contact can be thoroughly tested. However, it may not be possible to complete such a list to the satisfaction of all social observers. It is important to acknowledge the settings for which we do have data to make an assessment. With that notion in mind, I use the quantitative and qualitative information that I have helped to collect about multiracial churches, racially mixed social networks, and interracial marriages to further assess the ability of the Contact Hypothesis to shape the lives of racialized actors in our society. Naturally, my choice does not rule out other research that investigates sporting teams, the military, or any other setting that meets the conditions of productive contact. I do not have access to such data, however, and desire to get the most from what I do have.

Conclusion To have a legitimate test of interracial contact, it is vital that such tests be done in settings where interracial contact is theorized to have a significant effect upon racial perceptions or actions. To this end, I have looked at the theoretical conditions that should be linked to productive interracial contact and three social settings in which these conditions are highly likely to have been met. Using these three settings to observe the possible effects of interracial contact will tell us whether the effects of contact vary in different arenas. Examining interracial contact under multiple conditions also has an added advantage, in that those who question whether one of these settings meets the requisite conditions for productive interracial contact will find it difficult to question whether the conditions are met in all three settings. Thus, if I discover similar findings within multiracial churches, racially mixed friendship networks, and interracial marriages, then I can have more confidence that these findings are accurate assessments of the Contact Hypothesis. Even though there are other potential fruitful social settings to study (i.e. the military, sport teams), I will rely upon the data I have gathered concerning these three social settings. Thus for the remainder of the book the examination of multiracial churches, interracial marriages, and racially mixed social networks will be proxies for my examination of the potential of interracial contact to shape race relations in the United States. Current research fails to adequately assess the potential of interracial

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contact to alter racial attitudes with national probability data. Furthermore, most of the research on the effects of interracial contact in the United States focuses upon whites. Although some research exists on the effects on African Americans, it is difficult to find research that examines the effect of contact on nonblack minorities in the United States. To complete our knowledge of the effects of interracial contact, it is important to use national probability work that assesses the potential of contact among several racial groups. In Chapter 4, I begin with a quantitative exploration that allows me to make generalizable assertions. These results indicate general patterns found within both multiracial churches and racially mixed social networks.

Notes 1. It is worth noting, however, that some recent work has suggested that intimacy may not be as important for effecting attitudinal change as previously argued (Lee et al., 2004). 2. To be fair, Pettigrew and Tropp did distinguish the more rigorous research from the other work, and they argued that research that used control groups, experimental designs, and more reliable measures was more rigorous and that this research yielded more powerful effects. Since they looked at research of contact with a variety of out-groups (i.e., homosexuals, persons with disabilities, and persons with mental illness), it is unclear whether this more rigorous research applied to the studies on racial/ethnic minorities. Furthermore, studies that can be more easily generalized from are also those that contain more nationally representative samples, an improvement that I offer with this current research. 3. It can also be argued that an integrated workforce was also seen as a way of gaining the potential benefits of interracial contact. Such a workforce would help to dismiss myths of minority group laziness and incompetence. Although that effect is theoretically possible, there have been too few studies on the potential of interracial contact in the workplace for us to have confidence in the potential of occupational integration. Furthermore, the conditions of occupational integration (secondary relationships, competitive instead of cooperative relations) make such integration similar to educational and residential contact. There is little theoretical value in exploring workplace integration. 4. In fact, the cover story of a recent edition of the magazine Christianity Today (Gilbreath and Galli, 2005) asks whether all churches should be multiracial. It is clear that it will be a long time before we might see even a third of the religious congregations become multiracial, much less all congregations. However, the fact that the flagship periodical for evangelical Christians is discussing the importance of multiracial churches indicates that racial diversity is an issue currently being debated in religious communities. 5. It is especially noteworthy that Emerson and Smith observe that white evangelicals are even more likely to adhere to free-will individualism than other whites, whereas black evangelicals are even stronger believers in the power of social structures than other blacks. If true, then the distance between white and black evangelicals as it concerns racial attitudes is even greater than between whites and blacks in general.

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6. Theoretically, it is also possible that such potential conflict can be lessened by a reduction in the importance of political agreement and an increase in the value of spiritual agreement between the two racial groups. 7. It should be pointed out that there have been attempts to use national data to assess the effects of interracial friendships within certain populations, such as adolescents (Johnson and Elder, 2001; Quillian and Campbell, 2003). However, such research does not replace the need for using national data that includes individuals from almost every walk of life to study this question. 8. It is, of course, also possible that multiracial families can be created by transracial adoptions as well as through the sexual relationships between those of different races. Examining this possibility is beyond the scope of this current project, but it is a question worth exploring in future work. 9. It is also possible that service occupations that resemble the military in some way, such as police officers and firefighters, may be settings where interracial contact may have a positive effect. Although this is possible, such occupations may also create opportunities for marginalized racial groups to be seen as out-groups to the members of these occupations. For example, the “blue line” of police officers may create interracial unity within the police department at the expense of stigmatizing African Americans and Hispanic Americans as criminals. To date, I have not seen any literature that supports either a more hostile attitude toward people of color because of such stigmatization or more progressive racial attitudes because of interracial contact within police and fire departments.

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4

o understand the potential of interracial contact, it is important not to rely merely upon the sort of anecdotal evidence with which I opened this book. It is important to document the potential general trends indicating what happens when interracial contact takes place. Using the proper methodology, I can examine the ability of interracial contact to shape racial attitudes as well as gain a deeper understanding about how such alterations may occur. Quantitative research that includes a probability sample allows a researcher to find generalizable effects. However, to date little national quantitative research has examined the potential of interracial contact to alter racial attitudes among those who attend multiracial churches or among individuals with racially mixed social networks. I have conducted research on racial attitudes of whites attending congregations that have black worshippers, which I will report on later in this chapter. The Lilly data have produced the only national probability quantitative work I can locate that assesses whether a multiracial religious environment affects racial attitudes. Furthermore, I have been able to find only two national probability quantitative studies that examine the potential of interracial friendships to alter racial attitudes. Jackman and Crane (1986) found that whites with extensive black contacts in their social networks and those who had black friends with a higher SES did have different racial attitudes than other whites. However, merely having a black friend did not seem to make a difference in the racial attitudes of whites. Jackman and Crane did not test the potential effects of contact on people of color, and their research is now more than twenty-five years old. Sigelman and Welch (1993) do test the attitudes of African Americans with national probability data. They find that interracial contact can, under certain circumstances, be associated with more positive racial attitudes, but they do not test whether such contact leads to more progressive racial attitudes among 39

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whites or more conservative racial attitudes among blacks on specific racial issues. In this chapter, I report on quantitative tests of interracial contact in two settings (religious institutions and social networks) where this contact should have significantly influenced racial attitudes. The quantitative nature of these tests is important because they eliminate the possibly that these findings are the artifact of a particular region, a given economic setting, a specific religious institution, or some other unique set of social circumstances. If individuals in multiracial churches and those with racially mixed social networks have the same racial attitudes as other individuals, then it is difficult to conceptualize how interracial contact can be a path to attitudinal alteration. A minimum requirement for any hope we may have of using interracial contact to reduce racial tension is that those who undergo interracial contact develop a different racial perception than those who have not undergone such contact. However, interracial contact may have a powerful effect when it occurs within institutions that promote primary relationships between members of different racial groups. To this end, there is great value in assessing contact in multiracial churches and within social networks— two areas where the conditions of fruitful contact can be met.1 I must present an important caveat before I get into the results of the quantitative work. Some have challenged the use of quantitative studies for determining racial attitudes, especially those of whites (Crosby et al., 1980; Feagin and Eckberg, 1980; Bonilla-Silva, 2001). Because of the notions of color blindness (Carr, 1997; Lewis et al., 2000; Bonilla-Silva, 2003) that many majority group members hold on to, some scholars argue that whites are unlikely to answer racial questions honestly. I concur that survey questions may not always be the most accurate way to capture the racial attitudes of majority group members. What is important in this analysis, however, is not the precise level of racial animosity or indifference that majority group members have, but rather a comparison between whites who are in contact with people of color and those who are not. This comparison enables me to investigate the possible effects of interracial contact on racial perspectives in the United States. There is no reason to assume that the potential inaccuracy of survey questions is lessened or amplified depending on whether a person is influenced by interracial contact. So even if these quantitative measures do not measure racial attitudes with complete accuracy, they are still useful in helping me to contrast those who have interracial contact with those who have not. Finally, it should be acknowledged during this quantitative analysis that it is very easy to confuse a “contact” effect with a “content” effect. The measures that I use are adequate for measuring who is likely to have had contact with those of other races but do a lesser job in assessing whether the content of that contact is sufficiently racialized to make attitudinal alter-

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ation possible. By looking at social institutions that theoretically meet the conditions necessary for productive interracial contact, I hope to maximize the possibility that this racialized content is passed from one social actor to another. But there is no guarantee that going to a multiracial congregation or having friends of a different race will give people access to new racial understandings. Furthermore, quantitative measures are not the best way to assess this access. Therefore, in Chapter 5, I use qualitative measures to gain more of an understanding about how racial content can, and does, arise from interracial contact.

Empirical Evidence Concerning Multiracial Congregations Before the development of the LSAF, the General Social Survey (GSS) was the only real source that allowed a researcher to test the effect of attendance in a multiracial religious setting on racial attitudes. The 1990 GSS asked if any African Americans attended the respondent’s church, as well as a series of questions about racial attitudes. I have previously used GSS data to investigate the possibility that the presence of African Americans in a religious setting may influence the majority group members in that setting (Yancey, 1999). I found a correlation between progressive racial attitudes among majority group members and the presence of African Americans in a religious congregation. This correlation offers us the possibility that the interracial contact with blacks in these churches may alter the racial attitudes of whites. This potential is even more powerful when we realize that the GSS data does not account for the racial diversity of a congregation (the GSS question only asked if any African Americans were in the congregation): even the presence of a few blacks may help to produce an interracial contact effect. Yet there is still a need to assess the role racial diversity plays in the shaping of racial attitudes; in addition the GSS data do not assess the racial attitudes of people of color. Fortunately, the LSAF provides a national probability list of individuals who attend multiracial congregations. The sample from the LSAF allows me to correct the shortcomings of earlier data since it measured the racial diversity of the congregations and included enough people of color to be able to assess their racial attitudes. With the LSAF I can assess whether there truly is an interracial effect among majority group members and if the effect grows as the church’s population becomes more racially diverse. I can also see if racial minorities have to potentially make adjustments in their racial attitudes to remain in multiracial churches. For the quantitative analysis I will rely upon six questions used in the LSAF. These six questions can be seen in Table 4.1. The first three variables, support affirmative action, immigrants should be reduced, and too

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Page 42

Interracial Contact and Social Change Selected Questions from the Lilly Survey of Attitudes and Friendships

For each, please tell me whether you agree or disagree, and if you do so strongly, moderately, or slightly. (First five questions only.) I support affirmative action policies. (SUPPORT AFFIRMATIVE ACTION) The number of immigrants who can legally enter the US should be reduced. (IMMIGRANTS SHOULD BE REDUCED) There is too much talk today in the United States about racial issues. (TOO MUCH TALK ABOUT RACE) We should give businesses special tax breaks for locating in largely [rotate racial group] areas. (SPECIAL TAX BREAKS) I would be upset if I had a child who wanted to marry [a/an] [rotate racial group, other than respondent’s own racial group]. (UPSET IF CHILD OUTMARRY) Given a house that you very much like, would you prefer this house to be in a neighborhood that is: A. 25% [respondent’s race] and 75% [rotate Asian, black, Hispanic, white (not respondent’s own race)] or B. one that is 25% white, 25% black, 25% Hispanic, and 25% Asian. (25% EACH) Compared to other racial groups, [rotate racial group], on average, tend to prefer to live on welfare. (WELFARE) Compared to other racial groups, [rotate racial group], on average, tend to be patriotic to the United States. (PATRIOTIC) Compared to other racial groups, [rotate racial group], on average, tend to be arrogant. (ARROGANT) We are interested in what you consider to be prejudice and what you consider to be racism. I am going to read you 3 short scenarios. For each, please tell me if you think it is prejudice or not and if it is racism or not. [Rotate order, and give only 3 of 7 to any one respondent.] A white cab driver can pick up a black man in a suit and tie or a white man wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt. The driver has no ill feelings towards African-Americans, but does not want to risk being asked to go to an inner-city black neighborhood, since he fears this will put him at a risk of being assaulted. Therefore, the driver passes the black man and picks up the white man. Has the driver engaged in racism? (CAB DRIVER) A white homeowner decides to move out of the neighborhood, because she has noticed several racial minorities moving into the neighborhood. Even though she does get along with nonwhites, she is afraid that the value of her home will decrease. Is her decision to move racist? (HOMEOWNER) In a certain city, most white children go to schools that are predominantly white. Since they live in different neighborhoods, most black children go to schools that are predominately nonwhite. Standardized tests were taken 5 years in a row. While 80 percent of the white students passed, 80 percent of the black children failed. Is this an example of racism? (SCHOOL TESTS)

much talk about race, were respectively created by the statements “I support affirmative action policies,” “The number of immigrants who can legally enter the US should be reduced,” and “There is too much talk today in the United States about racial issues.” Each respondent was asked

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whether he or she agreed or disagreed with these statements. Then they were asked if they strongly, moderately, or slightly agreed or disagreed with these statements. Individuals who could not answer “agree” or “disagree” were coded as the middle category of four. That creates a seven-point ordinal scale with higher numbers indicating more disagreement with a given statement.2 The variables special tax breaks and upset if child outmarry were created with two more statements. The respondents were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with the statements “We should give businesses special tax breaks for locating in largely ___ areas” and “I would be upset if I had a child who wanted to marry [a/an] ___.” With the first statement, the terms “Hispanic” and “Black” were randomly rotated in the blank. With the second statement, the terms “White,” “Black,” “Hispanic,” and “Asian” were randomly rotated in the blank, although the race of the respondent was not placed in the blank (i.e., if the respondent was white, then only “Black,” “Hispanic,” or “Asian” was used). This rotation was captured through independent dummy variables that controlled the race given to the respondent.3 Finally, I assessed how willing the respondents were to live in a neighborhood where their racial group was not the majority. This was done with the variable 25% each, using the statement “Given a house that you very much like, would you prefer this house to be in a neighborhood that is: (A) 25% [respondent’s race] and 75% [other race], or (B) one that is 25% white, 25% black, 25% Hispanic, and 25% Asian. Once again, the terms “White,” “Black,” “Hispanic,” and “Asian” were randomly rotated in the blank on answer A, but the race of the respondent was not put in the blank. The numbers used in reporting this variable will be the percentage of each subgroup willing to be a residential minority in their neighborhood. Individuals who have lower levels of social distance between themselves and another racial group should be more willing to be a racial minority in a residential neighborhood of that other racial group. The first four variables assess general attitudes toward social and political racialized issues in the United States. Questions that assess overtly negative attitudes are not used since there is evidence that majority group members are likely to acknowledge principles of racial equality but are less likely to support governmental measures that can bring about that equality (Kluegel, 1990; Schuman et al., 1997). The last two questions assess the concept of social distance (Bogardus, 1933; Bogardus, 1968; Owens et al., 1981). Theoretically, a majority group member who does not support governmental efforts to reduce racial inequality may still feel comfortable in social situations with people of color. Upset if child outmarry and 25% each are more direct measures of social distance. For the purpose of the LSAF, a multiracial church was defined as a church where no one racial group made up more than 80 percent of the worshippers.4 A person attending a multiracial church may still be in the numer-

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Interracial Contact and Social Change

ical majority of the church. If I go to a church that is 70 percent black then I am attending a multiracial church, but a multiracial church where my racial group is the numerical majority. It is likely that the effects of going to such a multiracial church are different for the African Americans in that church than for the other racial groups who attend. Furthermore, it is possible that there are different effects from belonging to a multiracial church where there is no numerical majority group and one that has a group with a numerical majority.5 For this reason, I did not want to limit myself to a dichotomous multiracial/nonmultiracial measure. I chose to separate respondents who went to church into three groups, according to the percentage of people of their own race in the church: those who went to churches that were not multiracial (more than 80 percent), those who went to multiracial churches where they were the racial majority (between 80 percent and 50 percent), and those who went to churches where they were the numerical minority (less than 50 percent).6 Table 4.2 provides results for examining these six variables for individuals in these three categories.7 Generally, differences between sample populations are considered significant, and thus worth our attention, when we are 95 percent sure that these differences are not occurring naturally. This is usually measured as p < 0.05. Because of some of the small subcells among the racial minority groups I included measurements of p < 0.1 as well, which allows for a finding of significance if we are only 90 percent sure that the difference is not occurring naturally. This level of significance will help to account for some of the lower numbers in the racial minorities subcells, but general levels of significance should be used when examining the larger group of European American respondents. Whites who attend multiracial churches differ from those in predominantly white churches only with regard to the two social distance variables. They are more willing to have their child outmarry and to live in a neighborhood where they are the numerical minority than whites who attended predominantly white churches. Yet their perceptions of racialized political and social issues basically resemble those of whites in predominantly white churches. The story is quite different for whites who are a racial minority in their churches. Only with the question on affirmative action did these majority group members fail to differ from whites in predominantly white churches. They are more willing to support legal immigration, to talk about racial issues, to support special tax breaks, to have their child outmarry, and to live in a neighborhood where they were the numerical minority than whites from mostly white churches. Interracial contact may have a powerful effect upon majority group members if those individuals are numerical minorities in their churches. The potential for interracial contact within multiracial churches to shape the racial attitudes of people of color is dramatically less than it is for majority group members. African Americans who are racial minorities in

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Table 4.2

Page 45

Comparison of Racial Attitudes, by Attendance at a Multiracial Church or Church Where One Is a Racial Minority, and by Race

Whites Support affirmative action Immigrants should be reduced Too much talk about race Special tax breaks Upset if child outmarry 25% each Blacks Support affirmative action Immigrants should be reduced Too much talk about race Special tax breaks Upset if child outmarry 25% each Hispanics Support affirmative action Immigrants should be reduced Too much talk about race Special tax breaks Upset if child outmarry 25% each Asians Support affirmative action Immigrants should be reduced Too much talk about race Special tax breaks Upset if child outmarry 25% each

More than 80%

Between 80% and 50%

Less than 50%

3.37 (640) 3.263 (693) 3.07 (711) 4.538 (686) 5.113 (709) 35.1% (726)

3.34 (47) 3.667 (51) 3.296 (54) 4.4 (55) 5.929c (56) 62.5%d (56)

3.228 (145) 4.233d (159) 3.494b (160) 4.037c (160) 5.788d (165) 53.3%d (167)

2.083 (193) 3.545 (191) 3.856 (201) 3.02 (196) 6.364 (198) 72.3% (202)

2.0 (50) 3.776 (49) 4.923c (52) 4.02 (50) 6.558 (52) 77.4% (53)

2.192 (28) 4.556b (27) 3.867 (30) 3.655 (29) 6.452 (31) 61.3% (31)

2.642 (123) 4.549 (142) 2.648 (145) 3.493 (140) 6.063 (143) 49.3% (146)

2.321 (28) 3.759a (29) 3.167 (30) 4.2 (30) 6.2 (30) 73.3%b (30)

2.333 (18) 4.526 (19) 3.0 (19) 3.9 (20) 6.35 (20) 70.0%a (20)

3.119 (67) 4.571 (70) 2.743 (74) 4.027 (73) 5.69 (71) 60.5% (76)

2.429 (7) 4.571 (7) 3.0 (7) 4.286 (7) 5.714 (7) 85.7% (7)

1.429b (7) 3.5 (8) 2.25 (8) 3.143 (7) 6.571 (7) 37.5% (8)

Notes: Entries are means. Number of respondents are given in parentheses. a. Differs from “More than 80%” group of race at 0.1 level. b. Differs from “More than 80%” group of race at 0.05 level. c. Differs from “More than 80%” group of race at 0.01 level. d. Differs from “More than 80%” group of race at 0.001 level.

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Interracial Contact and Social Change

their churches support legal immigration more than other African Americans. Those in multiracial churches where they are the numerical majority are more willing to discuss racial issues than other blacks, but because this effect is not found with blacks in the numerical minority of their church, it is unclear whether this is a contact effect. Likewise, Hispanic Americans in multiracial churches are less supportive of legal immigration, except for those who are in the numerical minority of their church.8 Hispanic Americans in multiracial churches who are numerical minorities in their churches do have a willingness to be numerical minorities in their neighborhoods. Asian Americans who are numerical minorities are more likely to support affirmative action than other Asian Americans. Since these are the only attitudinal differences that I found among the three racial groups of color, clearly the potential power of interracial contact to affect the racial attitudes of people of color is not very profound.9 Contact may affect European Americans who are racial minorities within their congregations. But, with one notable exception, the mere presence of people of color in church, even if the church is multiracial, does not seem to have an effect upon European Americans. The exception is that interracial contact may lessen the social distance between majority group members and people of color. Whites who attend multiracial churches are more comfortable around people of color and seem more willing to have social relations with racial minorities. However, these social relations do not mean that they will alter their political ideas about racial issues. It appears that only when whites are not the numerical majority is there the possibility of attitudinal alteration among majority group members. Whites who are numerical minorities in their religious congregations are likely to repeatedly find themselves in contact with people of color, whereas those who are numerical majorities in a multiracial setting may only occasionally have interracial contact. Contact may need to be extensive to change attitudes among majority group members. Jackman and Crane (1986) suggest that whites can alter their racial attitudes if interracial contact is extensive—as would be the case when they are a numerical minority in a church. My work suggests that merely having a multiracial setting may be a factor on issues of social distance but not on political racial issues. Furthermore, I found little evidence that interracial contact alters the racial perceptions of people of color. However, this current research effort tells us nothing about the power of intimate contact. Even if whites are a numerical minority in a religious setting, it is possible that their closest friends are majority group members.10 In addition, it is possible that contact outside formal institutional settings may have a powerful influence upon the racial perspectives of individuals. For these reasons, and because of the usefulness of examining contact in a different setting, it is valuable to look at the potential of contact as it concerns interracial friendships.

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Empirical Evidence Concerning Interracial Friendships The variables that measured multiracial church attendance divided the respondents into relatively small subcells. For example, only seven Asian Americans went to churches where Asian Americans made up between 50 and 80 percent of the church population and only eight Asian Americans went to churches where Asian Americans made up less than 50 percent of the church population. The small numbers in these cells made it difficult to assess the effects of racially integrated religious institutions when I use variables that ask different questions of different respondents.11 The first six independent variables came from questions that were asked of all the respondents. I use those same six dependent variables to study the possible effects of racially diverse friendships. However, there were other variables created by questions on the LSAF that were not asked the same way of all respondents. Because of the small subcells, I did not use those variables to assess the potential of racial contact in an integrated religious institution. Now, because of the higher number of racial minority respondents included in the subcells of the racially mixed network dependent variables, I can use additional variables to gain a more comprehensive understanding of how racial attitudes are influenced by friendship with those of other races. Three of those variables assess the propensity of respondents to stereotype those of other races. These variables are welfare, patriotic, and arrogant. They were created to characterize three questions that asked whether the respondent believed that a certain racial group tends to live on welfare, is patriotic, or is arrogant. Five racial groups12 were rotated as the racial group being asked about.13 The same seven-point scale used earlier was used with these variables. Thus, a higher number indicates less of a tendency for the respondent to believe that the given racial group is either on welfare, patriotic, or arrogant. The other three variables come from story scenarios included in the LSAF. One story dealt with a cab driver who passed up an African American fare out of fear of driving into a black neighborhood. The second was about a homeowner who chose to move out of her neighborhood because blacks were moving into the neighborhood and she feared a loss of property values. The final scenario presented a city where blacks went to schools in which the students scored lower on standardized tests than the students from predominantly white schools. The respondents were asked whether they thought each scenario was an example of racism. These scenarios were used to create the variables of cab driver, homeowner, and school tests. There were seven scenarios used in the LSAF, but only three of them were used for each respondent. I chose these three scenarios because I am interested in the degree to which the respondents accept the white racial identity concept of individualism, and these scenarios most

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accurately measure institutional and modern forms of racism. The text of these three scenarios can be seen in Table 4.1. A question on the LSAF asked how many of the respondents’ two best friends are of a different race. Those who indicated that they had one friend of a different race were asked the race of that friend. Those who indicated that they had two friends of different races were asked about the race of the friend they had known the longest. Respondents who indicated that their only friend of another race is black or that the friend they had known the longest is black scored a 1 on the dummy variable black friends. The same technique created the variables white friends, Hispanic friends, and Asian friends.14 Thus I created a dichotomous variable indicating whether one of the respondent’s two best friends is from a different race than the respondent. To test the racial makeup of the respondent social network, two more variables were created. The first is called circle of friends and was created by a question that asked respondents to indicate how much of their circle of friendship was of their race. Respondents could answer that this circle of friendship was all, most, half, few, or none of their race. This created a fivepoint ordinal variable in which higher numbers indicated a more racially diverse social network. The second independent variable is social network, which comes from a question about all the people the respondent knows. Once again the respondent could answer that all, most, half, few, or none of all people known were of his or her race. Since a circle of friends implies only people that a respondent would interact with on a regular basis, while talking about all people known would mean anybody the respondent has the slightest contact with, theoretically, the social network variable captures a wider span of friendships. For both variables, I tried to keep the analysis simple by grouping those who indicated that half or less of their friends are of their own race into one group and those who stated that all or most of their friends are of the same race into another group.15 (In Table 4.4 I indicated this dichotomy by using the term “50% or less own” to indicate the first group and “more than 50% own” to indicate the second group.) In Table 4.3, I differentiate individuals with best friends of other races from individuals with best friends of the same race. Whites with a friend of a different race enjoyed lower levels of social distance from people of color than other whites, as evidenced by their scores on the upset if child outmarry and 25% each variables. The scores concerning affirmative action, tax breaks, and the cab driver scenario are interesting but fail to reach an academic level of significance, given the relatively high number of white respondents found in the LSAF. But a finding of interest is that whites with close friends of another race are more likely to support legal immigration than other whites. In analysis not shown here, I found this result to be an aspect of the fact that whites with close Hispanic friends support immigration more than other whites. I found that those whites with Hispanic friends

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Table 4.3

Page 49

Comparison of Racial Attitudes, by Race of Best Friend, and by Race

Whites Support affirmative action Immigrants should be reduced Too much talk about race Special tax breaks Upset if child outmarry 25% each Blacks Support affirmative action Immigrants should be reduced Too much talk about race Special tax breaks Upset if child outmarry 25% each Hispanics Support affirmative action Immigrants should be reduced Too much talk about race Special tax breaks Upset if child outmarry 25% each Asians Support affirmative action Immigrants should be reduced Too much talk about race Special tax breaks Upset if child outmarry 25% each

White Friend

Nonwhite Friend

3.337 (1,538) 3.056 (1,661) 2.792 (1,687) 4.811 (1,653) 5.24 (1,682) 39.7% (1,730)

2.9 (102) 3.689 (109) 3.1 (111) 4.406 (111) 5.998 (116) 61.7% (117)

Black Friend

Nonblack Friend

2.225 (224) 3.603 (224) 3.358 (235) 4.902 (231) 6.253 (237) 74.1% (238)

2.262 (44) 3.957 (49) 3.386 (49) 3.866 (45) 6.486 (50) 82.0% (50)

Hispanic Friend Non-Hispanic Friend 2.277 (160) 4.735 (183) 2.406 (184) 3.529 (179) 5.883 (188) 48.0% (190)

2.98 (183) 4.161 (66) 2.734 (69) 4.029 (66) 5.963 (69) 63.1% (69)

Asian Friend

Non-Asian Friend

2.889 (53) 4.271 (56) 2.912 (56) 4.6 (54) 5.196 (56) 56.2% (58)

2.914 (27) 4.29 (27) 2.344 (29) 5.196 (27) 5.823 (28) 61.3% (29)

Significance 0.1 0.01 ns 0.1 0.001 0.001 Significance ns ns ns 0.01 ns ns Significance 0.05 0.1 ns ns ns 0.001 Significance ns ns ns ns ns ns (continues)

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Table 4.3

Page 50

(continued)

Whites Welfare Patriotic Arrogant Cab driver Homeowner School tests Blacks Welfare Patriotic Arrogant Cab driver Homeowner School tests Hispanics Welfare Patriotic Arrogant Cab driver Homeowner School tests Asians Welfare Patriotic Arrogant Cab driver Homeowner School tests

White Friend

Nonwhite Friend

5.361 (1,139) 3.627 (1,064) 5.35 (1,209) 53.6% (693) 49.2% (752) 24.7% (760)

5.263 (89) 3.575 (85) 5.376 (78) 66.8% (47) 60% (52) 32.9% (51)

Black Friend

Nonblack Friend

5.033 (175) 3.778 (164) 4.555 (173) 66.1% (85) 62.4% (112) 52.6% (97)

5.184 (34) 3.205 (35) 4.773 (31) 62.2% (25) 38.5% (19) 28.8% (22)

Hispanic Friend Non-Hispanic Friend 4.206 (128) 3.368 (133) 3.906 (144) 60.2% (75) 58.8% (25) 44.3% (25)

5.2 (47) 3.505 (50) 4.728 (47) 70.6% (33) 36.7% (10) 40.9% (13)

Asian Friend

Non-Asian Friend

4.542 (42) 3.338 (41) 4.637 (38) 55.0% (28) 58.9% (25) 22.6% (25)

4.812 (22) 4.563 (21) 5.469 (22) 47.6% (9) 36.7% (10) 30.2% (13)

Significance ns ns ns 0.1 ns ns Significance ns ns ns ns 0.05 ns Significance 0.05 ns 0.05 ns ns ns Significance ns 0.05 ns ns ns ns

Notes: Entries are means. Number of respondents are given in parentheses. “ns” indicates no significance.

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51

scored 4.009 on the seven-point scale, compared to the 3.056 score for whites with no friends of a different race. This trend was not found when I looked at whites with black or Asian friends. Whites with close black or Asian friends generally differed from other whites only in the social distance measures. The same general effect occurs among African Americans and Asian Americans. Only on special tax breaks and homeowner variables do blacks with close friends of different races have contrasting attitudes. African Americans with friends of other races are less likely to believe that the homeowner scenario is an example of racism. However, African Americans with friends of other races tend to be more supportive of special tax breaks. 16 This latter finding is in opposition to the notion that African Americans who have intimate contact with nonblacks are less likely to develop progressive racial attitudes. Asian Americans with close friends of different races only significantly differ from other Asian Americans in that they were less likely to stereotype those of other races as patriotic. Hispanic Americans differ from the other racial minority groups in the possible contact effect. Although the effect is not as powerful as it is for European Americans, interracial contact is related to different racial attitudes among Hispanic Americans. Given the lower standard of p < 0.1, I found that Hispanics with close friends of different races had distinct racial attitudes half the time. They were less likely to support affirmative action, less supportive of legal immigration, more willing to be the numerical minority in their neighborhood, less likely to accept stereotypes of welfare/arrogance, and less willing to accept the homeowner scenario as racist. When I examined the effects of social networks, I observed a possible explanation of this anomalous finding that I will investigate later in the chapter. In Table 4.4 we begin to see the possible effect of the larger social network upon the racial attitudes of the respondents. Immediately we see that whites with racially mixed social networks have different racial attitudes than those with less racially diverse social networks on all variables except for too much talk about race, patriotic, and homeowner. Whites with more racially diverse social networks are more supportive of affirmative action, legal immigration, special tax breaks, racial outmarriage of their child, being a racial minority in a neighborhood, and the cab driver and school test scenarios as examples of racism and less supportive of the welfare and arrogant stereotypes than whites with less racially mixed social networks. The findings for circle of friends is less robust: whites with more diverse circle of friends are more supportive of legal immigration, racial outmarriage of their child, and being a racial minority in a neighborhood, more willing to accept the cab driver scenario as racist, and less willing to accept the arrogant stereotype than whites with less diverse circle of friends. Thus, the racial effects extend to fewer issues when we look at the circle of

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52 Table 4.4

Comparison of Racial Attitudes, by Race of Social Network or Circle of Friends, and by Race

Whites Social network Support affirmative action Immigrants should be reduced Too much talk about race Special tax breaks Upset if child outmarry 25% each Welfare Patriotic Arrogant Cab driver Homeowner School tests Circle of friends Support affirmative action Immigrants should be reduced Too much talk about race Special tax breaks Upset if child outmarry 25% each Welfare Patriotic Arrogant Cab driver Homeowner School tests

50% or Less Own Race

More than 50% Own Race

3.035 (451) 3.409 (485) 2.796 (489) 4.557 (474) 5.914 (484) 55.8% (496) 5.615 (344) 3.581 (313) 5.641 (355) 62.5% (200) 54.3% (213) 30.7% (216)

3.391 (1,188) 2.964 (1,282) 2.826 (1,306) 4.853 (1,287) 5.058 (1,307) 35.5% (1,346) 5.252 (876) 3.635 (832) 5.24 (927) 51.8% (539) 48.2% (595) 23.0% (592)

3.36 (327) 3.406 (354) 2.722 (361) 4.743 (354) 5.966 (361) 58.5% (367) 5.449 (253) 3.641 (232) 5.585 (261) 66.7% (147) 51.8% (151) 25.0% (169)

3.042 (1,318) 3.011 (1,416) 2.833 (1,438) 4.784 (1,412) 5.116 (1,436) 36.6% (1,482) 5.324 (976) 3.621 (914) 5.295 (1,030) 51.8% (597) 49.2% (656) 25.4% (642)

Significance

0.01 0.001 ns 0.05 0.001 0.001 0.01 ns 0.01 0.01 ns 0.05 ns 0.01 ns ns 0.001 0.001 ns ns 0.05 0.01 ns ns (continues)

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53 Table 4.4

(continued)

Blacks Social network Support affirmative action Immigrants should be reduced Too much talk about race Special tax breaks Upset if child outmarry 25% each Welfare Patriotic Arrogant Cab driver Homeowner School tests Circle of friends Support affirmative action Immigrants should be reduced Too much talk about race Special tax breaks Upset if child outmarry 25% each Welfare Patriotic Arrogant Cab driver Homeowner School tests

50% or Less Own Race

More than 50% Own Race

2.389 (157) 3.755 (159) 3.329 (168) 4.217 (161) 6.269 (169) 79.4% (170) 5.425 (119) 3.679 (112) 4.801 (115) 66.7% (45) 51.4% (66) 46.9% (75)

2.011 (112) 3.532 (115) 3.442 (112) 3.78 (115) 6.335 (119) 70.2% (119) 4.584 (91) 3.67 (88) 4.326 (90) 64.1% (65) 66.5% (67) 49.9% (46)

2.291 (114) 3.858 (120) 3.225 (123) 4.399 (117) 6.267 (122) 82.5% (124) 5.2 (93) 3.739 (84) 4.562 (86) 62.5% (47) 55.5% (53) 43.7% (51)

2.187 (155) 3.509 (153) 3.489 (162) 3.768 (160) 6.318 (165) 70.4% (165) 4.95 (117) 3.628 (115) 4.617 (119) 67.2% (63) 61.5% (79) 51.2% (70)

Significance

ns ns ns ns ns 0.1 0.01 ns ns ns 0.1 ns ns ns ns 0.05 ns 0.05 ns ns ns ns ns ns (continues)

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54 Table 4.4

(continued)

Hispanics Social network Support affirmative action Immigrants should be reduced Too much talk about race Special tax breaks Upset if child outmarry 25% each Welfare Patriotic Arrogant Cab driver Homeowner School tests Circle of friends Support affirmative action Immigrants should be reduced Too much talk about race Special tax breaks Upset if child outmarry 25% each Welfare Patriotic Arrogant Cab driver Homeowner School tests

50% or Less Own Race

More than 50% Own Race

2.468 (140) 4.304 (151) 2.661 (152) 4.016 (152) 6.124 (154) 57.3% (156) 4.751 (107) 3.642 (112) 4.508 (113) 60.9% (40) 49.8% (65) 42.4% (66)

2.432 (84) 4.988 (99) 2.173 (103) 3.049 (94) 5.503 (104) 43.4% (104) 4.187 (68) 3.054 (71) 3.509 (80) 67.1% (70) 63.1% (46) 44.2% (42)

2.559 (102) 4.009 (108) 2.8 (113) 3.883 (108) 6.048 (112) 60.8% (64) 4.883 (81) 3.579 (82) 4.742 (79) 64.1% (49) 46.5% (48) 45.9% (45)

2.372 (122) 5.067 (142) 2.213 (142) 3.48 (138) 5.745 (147) 43.5% (23) 4.244 (96) 3.311 (103) 3.634 (113) 60.8% (59) 59.3% (67) 41.2% (63)

Significance

ns 0.05 0.1 0.01 0.01 0.05 ns 0.1 0.01 ns ns ns ns 0.001 ns ns ns 0.01 ns ns 0.01 ns ns ns (continues)

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(continued)

Asians Social network Support affirmative action Immigrants should be reduced Too much talk about race Special tax breaks Upset if child outmarry 25% each Welfare Patriotic Arrogant Cab driver Homeowner School tests Circle of friends Support affirmative action Immigrants should be reduced Too much talk about race Special tax breaks Upset if child outmarry 25% each Welfare Patriotic Arrogant Cab driver Homeowner School tests

50% or Less Own Race

More than 50% Own Race

2.78 (60) 4.353 (60) 2.568 (63) 4.673 (61) 5.595 (62) 62.3% (64) 4.49 (48) 4.086 (45) 5.293 (45) 57.2% (25) 52.4% (23) 20.6% (26)

3.335 (19) 4.141 (22) 3.158 (21) 4.402 (20) 4.782 (21) 44.8% (23) 4.981 (16) 3.01 (16) 3.889 (15) 41.5% (11) 50.3% (11) 38.5% (10)

2.766 (52) 4.377 (53) 2.533 (55) 4.749 (53) 5.917 (55) 62.6% (56) 4.783 (43) 4.15 (39) 5.53 (41) 56.8% (23) 48.9% (20) 21.9% (22)

3.146 (28) 4.113 (30) 3.057 (30) 4.274 (29) 4.452 (29) 49.3% (31) 4.331 (21) 3.092 (23) 3.713 (20) 47.3% (14) 47.3% (15) 29.7% (16)

Significance

ns ns ns ns ns ns ns 0.1 0.05 ns ns ns ns ns ns ns 0.01 ns ns ns ns ns ns ns

Notes: Entries are means. Number of respondents are given in parentheses. “ns” indicates no significance.

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friends. However, if we look at all these cases, whites with more racially diverse friendships exhibit more progressive racial attitudes and lower social distance, were less likely to accept racial stereotypes, and were more likely to interpret scenarios as racism than other whites. Of the twenty-four possible relationships that can be found in this table for majority group members, I found significant differences in thirteen of those relationships. Since these differences lean toward more progressive attitudes, these results uphold the Contact Hypothesis. For European Americans, having more outgroup racial contacts is more powerful than having a good friend of another race. African Americans with racially mixed social networks were more willing to live as a numerical racial minority in their neighborhood, less willing to accept the welfare stereotype, and less likely to see the homeowner scenario as racist than other blacks. Those with more racially diverse circles of friends were more willing to be a numerical racial minority in their neighborhood and less supportive of special tax breaks than other blacks, but they did not differ in any other significant way from other blacks. Asian Americans with racially mixed social networks were less willing to accept the patriotic and arrogant stereotypes. Those with more racially diverse circle of friends were more accepting of having their children outmarry than other Asian Americans. For African Americans and Asian Americans, there is little evidence that having multiple friends of different races has a powerful effect upon their racial attitudes. This brings us back to an assessment of Hispanic Americans. If we acknowledge the lower threshold of p < 0.1, then Hispanic Americans with racially mixed social networks are less supportive of legal immigration, more willing to talk about race, less supportive of special tax breaks, more supportive of racial outmarriage, more willing to live in neighborhoods as a racial minority, and less willing to adhere to the patriotic/arrogant stereotypes than other Hispanic Americans. The results are less robust for Hispanic Americans with more racially diverse circles of friends, yet even here we find that such individuals are less supportive of immigration, more willing to live in a neighborhood as a numerical minority, and less willing to accept an arrogant stereotype. Of the twenty-four possible tests between friendship patterns and racial attitudes, significant findings are found with Hispanics on ten of them, not much different from the findings concerning majority group members. Because these results are anomalous to the findings of the other racial minority groups, they deserve some attention. To explain the results for Hispanic Americans, I looked to see if other social or demographic factors might explain the relationships observed above. I found that the educational level of Hispanics was related to their tendency to have friends of different races. Those with higher levels of education were more likely to have friends of different races.17 We can see the

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results of this in Table 4.5, which contains only those Hispanics who have at least a high school education. The racial diversity of the social network among Hispanics with at least a high school diploma correlates with attitudinal changes only in the measurement of the arrogant stereotype (those with fewer friends of other races were more likely to accept the stereotype). However, when we look at the ability of having a high school diploma to predict racial attitudes among Hispanics, then in Table 4.6 we see that education predicts Hispanic Americans’ attitudes toward tax breaks, outmarriage, living as a numerical minority in their neighborhoods, their tendency to believe the welfare/patriotic stereotypes, and their perception of racism in the cab driver/school tests scenarios. These results suggests that those without a high school education tend to have higher social distance, are more likely to engage in stereotyping, and are more likely to perceive scenarios as examples of racism. At the very least, we should be wary of the findings concerning these variables in Table 4.4, a suspicion that is fueled by the evidence in the Appendix showing that racial diversity only predicts

Table 4.5

Comparison of Racial Attitudes, by Race of Social Network, for Hispanics with at Least a High School Diploma 50% or Less Own Race

More Than 50% Own Race

2.726 (48) 4.222 (49) 2.704 (52) 4.219 (51) 6.479 (50) 70.9% (52) 5.464 (38) 3.53 (35) 5.439 (39) 44.7% (24) 38.9% (22) 20.5% (21)

2.763 (16) 4.607 (20) 2.622 (21) 3.783 (20) 6.248 (21) 56.4% (21) 4.848 (16) 3.227 (16) 4.377 (17) 51.2% (8) 64.1% (8) 39.7% (9)

Support affirmative action Immigrants should be reduced Too much talk about race Special tax breaks Upset if child outmarry 25% each Welfare Patriotic Arrogant Cab driver Homeowner School tests

Note: “ns” indicates no significance.

Significance ns ns ns ns ns ns ns ns 0.1 ns ns ns

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Table 4.6

Comparison of Racial Attitudes of Hispanics, by Whether the Respondent Has a High School (HS) Diploma HS Diploma or More

Less Than HS Diploma

2.751 (65) 4.345 (71) 2.669 (73) 4.088 (72) 6.422 (72) 65.7% (74) 5.292 (54) 3.428 (52) 5.092 (56) 46.4% (33) 44.3% (31) 27.0% (31)

2.352 (162) 4.705 (183) 2.391 (185) 3.465 (179) 5.66 (190) 45.7% (190) 4.172 (124) 3.419 (135) 3.668 (139) 70.6% (79) 58.1% (84) 49.7% (77)

Support affirmative action Immigrants should be reduced Too much talk about race Special tax breaks Upset if child outmarry 25% each Welfare Patriotic Arrogant Cab driver Homeowner School tests

Significance ns ns ns 0.1 0.01 0.01 0.01 ns 0.001 0.05 ns 0.05

Note: “ns” indicates no significance.

racial attitudes among Hispanic Americans as it concerns immigration and the welfare/patriotic stereotypes when several social and demographic variables are controlled in a regression model. It is unlikely that the results in Tables 4.3 and 4.4 concerning Hispanic Americans are purely due to interracial contact. A more plausible explanation is that Hispanic Americans who have racially mixed social networks differ from other Hispanic Americans in ways that have altered their racial attitudes.18 Most likely, the friendship and education patterns of Hispanics are related to their immigration status. Those with few friends of other races and with lower educational levels are likely to be first- or second-generation immigrants. Such individuals are highly unlikely to have become acculturated into the mainstream of the United States. Their marginalized position in American society influences their perspective on society and on race relations in the United States. If this speculation is correct, then interracial friendships will not create different racial attitudes among Hispanic Americans, and because of the results of the

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regression models in the Appendix, the general finding concerning the inability of interracial contact to shape the racial attitudes of people of color holds for Hispanic Americans as well. The evidence for possible alteration of a racial minority’s attitudes is sporadic and unimpressive, but there is consistent evidence that whites with interracial friends and friendship networks have different racial attitudes than other majority group members. These conclusions fit with earlier findings about people of color who attend multiracial churches or who are racial numerical minorities within their religious congregation. I have a fair amount of confidence that people of color are unlikely to change their racial opinions because of interracial contact. I speculate that a likely reason for the inability of interracial contact to alter the attitudinal perspectives is because the racial attitudes of people of color are generally well formed before interracial contact occurs. That may not be the case for majority group members since race is not as salient in their lives as it is for people of color. I will discuss this possible racial difference in depth later.19 The philosophy of cultural pluralism, or multiculturalism, emphasizes the importance of maintaining distinct racial cultures (Newman, 1973; Hirschman, 1983; Goldberg, 1994). Few, if any, multiculturalists worry about the deterioration of majority group culture, but they have expressed concern about the possible assimilation of racial minorities into the dominant society. My research cannot completely address the issue of cultural assimilation, but it can assess whether racial minorities in multiracial religious institutions, with extensive white friendships and/or social networks, might lose interest in issues of racial justice or other concerns of racial minorities. Because there is no difference in the racial attitudes of minorities, regardless of whether they have extensive interracial contact, it is unlikely that a powerful contact effect exists that deters racial minorities from protecting their own racial interests. It seems likely that people of color develop their racial attitudes before any potential contact effects can dissuade them from their perspectives. If so, then multiculturalists have little to worry about: individuals of color will be more likely to persuade majority group members to abandon their principles of white racial identity than they will be to take on those principles themselves. An important exception to this trend can be seen in the measurement of the attitudes of Hispanic Americans toward legal immigration. Hispanic Americans with close friends, more diverse circles of friends, and diversity in their social networks are less supportive of legal immigration than other Hispanics. The results concerning immigration hold up even after I look at the possible educational effect, and I have some confidence in this relationship. This finding should be investigated further. Hispanic Americans are generally supportive of legal immigration (Gutierrez, 1995; Binder et al., 1997), but at times their support is mixed (Newton, 2000). Perhaps

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Hispanics who develop friendships with non-Hispanics also begin to take on social attitudes toward immigration that are less influenced by the immigration struggles of other Hispanics. If true, then Hispanic support of immigration may shrink in the coming years as more later-generation Hispanics develop relationships with non-Hispanics. Among European Americans, this research supports Jackman and Crane’s (1986) contention that racially mixed social networks offer more potential to affect racial attitudes among majority group members than close interracial friendships. Such networks may act as proxies exposing European Americans to a variety of racial minority influences. Theoretically, a majority group member can have a close friend of a different race but fail to be exposed to multiracial social influences such as racially diverse educational/religious environments, multiracial artistic endeavors, and integrated social/political organizations. Racially mixed social networks may represent a multiracial/multicultural lifestyle that is correlated with progressive racial attitudes among majority group members. An important extension of this research will be to investigate whether the results of these findings are due to interracial friendships or to multiracial social influences from a multicultural lifestyle.20 The results about the relative noneffects of interracial contact on people of color support Korgen’s (2002) findings that none of the black partners claim to learn about white privilege or racial discrimination in these interracial relationships, but some of the white respondents develop an understanding about societal racism they previously lacked. Her work touches upon the possibility that racial minorities know more about majority group members than vice versa. There is literature indicating that African Americans are more bicultural than majority group members (Asante and Davis, 1985; DiMaggio and Ostrower, 1990; Spencer et al., 1991). This research suggests that African Americans comprehend majority culture better than European Americans understand minority racial culture. This higher level of racial understanding may arise from the fact that racial minorities must learn to survive within majority group culture, whereas those in the majority do not have a corresponding need. Since race is more salient for racial minorities, they are more likely than dominant group members to invest time and energy into thinking about racialized issues, regardless of whether they have friends of different races. Possible extensions of this quantitative work include the use of national data with more extensive racial variables to examine which racial dimensions are most vulnerable to an interracial contact effect. Data with more diversity in racial variables can allow a researcher to test for a variety of racial dimensions. Other future research might also attempt to discover what type of multiracial religious institutions (possible denominational, theological, or demographic effects) are most likely to enhance progressive

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racial attitudes among whites and what types of racially mixed social networks (i.e. educational, religious, residential) are the most powerful in shaping the racial attitudes of majority group members.21 Finally, the best way to examine the possible effects of interracial friendships is with longitudinal research that controls for self-selection effects. Future quantitative work should use longitudinal analysis to completely eliminate self-selection as a possible spurious effect.

Conclusion This research has important implications about the viability of relying upon interracial contact to alter racial attitudes. Majority group members who attend churches that are less than half white are more likely to have progressive racial attitudes and lower levels of social distance than other majority group members. Those who attend multiracial churches that have a majority of white worshippers have lower levels of social distance than other whites but are not necessarily more progressive in their racial attitudes than other whites. Attending a multiracial church seems to have little or no effect upon the racial attitudes of people of color. Concerning interracial friendships, I found that such friendships might alter the racial attitudes of majority group members with racially mixed social networks and that having a racially mixed social network provided a much more powerful effect for attitudinal change than having a close friend of another race. Once again, little difference exists between the racial attitudes of people of color who have friends of other races or racially mixed social networks and those who do not. I am now in a position to draw some important preliminary conclusions from this research. According to the empirical work conducted so far, interracial contact matters. But this contact seems to matter mostly to whites, and only if the contact is not sporadic and the contact comes from several different sources. European Americans who have a few close friends of color or who attend multiracial churches where they are still the numerical majority do not seem to have very different racial perspectives than other majority group members. It is true that these individuals did have lower levels of social distance than other majority group members, but that should be expected since these individuals likely have a lifestyle in which they are not totally isolated from people of color. But any notion that the mere presence of people of color will alter the fundamental tenets of white racial identity is challenged by the fact that European Americans with intimate friends or who went to churches where at least one out of every five members were of a different race, but whites are still the numerical majority, did not consistently have more progressive racial attitudes than other European Americans.

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But the story is quite different for majority group members who had extensive contacts with those of other races. Those who had multiple contacts with different races and who went to religious congregations where they were numerical minorities did have more progressive racial attitudes than other majority group members. In these cases, we can begin to see the potency of the Contact Hypothesis and the potential of such majority group members to become allies for people of color. I found that the condition of intimacy as it concerns interracial contact is overrated and that interracial contact may need to be frequent to produce meaningful changes. By contrast, people of color often move in social circles where they are the numerical minority, yet they seem immune to the effects of interracial contact. The findings of this chapter suggest that interracial contact is unlikely to alter the perspectives of people of color. The lone exception to this tendency is found within Hispanic Americans, yet as we saw, it is likely that the findings among this group have more to do with the spurious effects of education than to interracial contact. It is important to recognize that only limited conclusions can be drawn from static, quantitative analysis. Variations in the racial attitudes of individuals with friends from different races do not provide conclusive evidence that racial contact creates attitudinal change. Whites who join a multiracial church may already have progressive racial attitudes. It seems likely that whites who are less racially tolerant would avoid multiracial congregations, whereas whites who are more accepting of the racial perspectives of people of color would be more comfortable as part of a numerical minority at a church. It is also quite plausible that whites with progressive racial attitudes are likely to develop more racially mixed social networks or intimate friends of a different race. This possibility is clearly documented by research indicating that individuals tend to establish friendships with others who have similar social attitudes (Cappella and Palmer, 1990; Hatfield and Rapson, 1992). A self-selection bias likely accounts for part of the differential attitudes between those with and those without friends of different races.22 But even though a self-selection bias is possible, the likelihood of interracial contact altering the racial outlook of whites cannot be discounted. The results of this chapter dispute the concerns that interracial contact lacks the power to alter the racial attitudes of whites and the fears that people of color will lose their concerns about racial justice. However, the quantitative nature of this work is insufficient to give us complete confidence in these findings. It is vital that we evaluate the directionality of the potential relationship of progressive racial attitudes and majority group members’ membership in a racially diverse social community. In Chapter 5, I attempt to address these issues with qualitative research that can account for at least some of the self-selection bias. In addition to helping to account for a possi-

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ble self-selection bias, the interviews discussed in the next chapter will also inform us about how interracial contact can alter racial attitudes.

Notes 1. Of course, it would also be ideal if we could quantitatively assess the potential of interracial contact to alter racial attitudes among those who are involved in interracial romantic relationships as well. However, a probability sample of such individuals does not currently exist. 2. It can be fairly argued that the middle point does not fit in this ordinal scale, as those who neither agree nor disagree may not have a midpoint position on these topics but may not have thought about these topics. Although this criticism is fair, I found that taking out those who scored at the midpoint did not affect the finding of this research because so few people were scored as neither “agree” nor “disagree.” Thus I retained the original measures. 3. Although different racial groups were rotated for these two variables, the questions were only asked once of each respondent. This was done to help keep the survey at a reasonable length and to avoid part-part consistency effects (Schuman and Presser, 1996). 4. Pettigrew and Martin (1986) argue that when minority groups reach 20 percent of an organizational population, they have reached a “critical mass.” They argue that when minorities are in numbers smaller than 20 percent, they can be clustered into small low-status groups within the organization. But 20 percent is a large enough percentage to allow minorities to be spread throughout the entire organization. 5. For example, in a previous publication (DeYoung et al., 2003), I investigated a church named Mosaic that was basically 30 percent white, 30 percent Hispanic, 30 percent Asian and 10 percent of other racial groups. In such a church, no one racial group is the numerical majority, and there is the possibility that contact effects operate differently in a church where no one group is the numerical majority than in a multiracial church where there is a numerical majority. It is beyond the scope of this book to investigate such a possibility, but those who want to look at this possibility may want to explore the work of Brad Christerson et al. (2005). 6. Technically, people who do not go to multiracial churches may be included in the third group. If I went to a church that was 95 percent white, then I would be included in the latter group, even though I do not attend a multiracial church. Therefore, this measure may not be the best test of the power of multiracial churches to shape racial attitudes. But the purpose of this current analysis is to test contact effects. As an individual I would be in extensive contact with many people of a different race. In that sense, putting me in the third group is an accurate measure of the effects of contact, regardless of whether I am attending a predominantly white church or a multiracial church where my group is not part of the numerical majority. 7. The results of the findings discussed in this chapter are examined with regression models that test for the possible effects of SES, education, region, age, gender, church attendance, and political viewpoint. The results within these regression models can be seen in the tables in the Appendix. 8. My doubts about the possibility that this is a contact effect is increased by the fact that both of these findings washed out in the regression models featured in the Appendix. There are likely demographical and/or social differences between

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African Americans and Hispanic Americans in multiracial churches where they are the numerical majority and other African Americans and Hispanic Americans that can account for these anomalous effects. 9. In the original research article (2001), I also tested models that included nonattendees. I did so because individuals who attend church have different racial attitudes than nonattendees. Regardless, adding nonattendees to the model did not change the basic findings reported here. In the appendix the reader can compare both models. 10. Christerson et al. (2005) find that individuals in the numerical majority at multiracial religious institutions tend to develop their closest friends from that church and those friends tend to be of the same race. Given this finding, it is reasonable to think that whites in multiracial churches where whites are the majority group may develop friendships primarily with other whites. 11. The situation was not as drastic for African Americans and Hispanic Americans. Yet it was still the case that fifty-three and thirty-one African Americans, respectively, attended multiracial churches that are predominantly black and churches as a racial minority. For Hispanic Americans those numbers are thirty attending multiracial churches that are predominantly Hispanic and twenty attending churches as a racial minority. 12. The five groups were whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and American Indians. 13. In the LSAF all the racial groups were randomly rotated, no matter what the race of the respondent was. For the purpose of this study, I eliminated the respondents who were asked about their own racial group. Doing so allowed me to assess the propensity of the respondents to stereotype members of racial out-groups. 14. The construction of these variables will likely understate the number of individuals who have intimate friends of a certain race since it is possible that those with two friends of different races may have a friend that is not counted in the dummy variables. For example, a white may have Asian and Hispanic friends, with the Hispanic being the friend known the longest. According to these questions, the LSAF will record the person as scoring a 1 on Hispanic friends and a 0 on Asian friends. The number of those who have Asian intimate friends will be understated. Given the way this question was asked, there is no way to overcome this problem. However, it is reasonable to assert, even though I have no data to back up the assertion, that individuals with an intimate friend of a different race would be more likely to have their other close friend be of the same race as the longest known friend. Thus, a white with two friends of different races, whose friend of longest duration is Hispanic, is likely to have another Hispanic best friend as well. If this assertion is accurate, then the biases that will develop from this manner of measuring the race of the respondent’s intimate friends will be limited. 15. Of course it is possible, and even likely, that individuals with intimate outgroup friendships have a high number of friendships with out-group members. Data from this research support this assertion. Among white respondents, those with racially diverse social networks were significantly correlated to having close black friends (r = 0.286), Hispanic friends (r = 0.208), and Asian friends (r = 0.085). Similar scores are found when examining respondents of color. However, these correlations are not high enough to indicate that measures of social networks are nearly identical to measures of intimate relations, and so I disentangle possible intimacy and network effects. 16. Further testing showed that blacks with close white friends are actually less supportive of special tax breaks than other blacks. Thus, this finding covers blacks with Hispanic and Asian friends.

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17. For example, 71.5 percent of Hispanic Americans with a high school or higher education had diverse social networks, compared to 55.6 percent of Hispanic Americans who did not complete their high school education. 18. This does not explain the results for European Americans because the regression tables in the Appendix indicate that social networks are related to different racial attitudes even after social and demographic controls have been applied. 19. Because of the small size of the subcells, I am especially concerned about the comparison of those with different levels of racial diversity among the minority group members. I am not satisfied with just using the 0.1 level of people of color to compensate for their smaller numbers. I also conducted ordinary least squares (OLS) analysis, not shown here, in which I limited the number of white respondents to 297 randomly picked respondents and applied the same conditions (0.1 level for significance) as I did for the current models of racial minorities. Basically, I found that whites were more likely to have their racial attitudes vary by the diversity of their social networks, unlike the findings for racial minorities. Although some of these findings are undoubtedly driven by the different number of respondents in each racial group, controls for such an effect still reveal a greater tendency of whites with racially mixed social networks to have more progressive racial attitudes. One can question the power of this effect because of the different numbers of respondents for each racial group, but not the existence of that effect. 20. It has been demonstrated that individuals with racially diverse friendship patterns are likely to have developed those patterns from an early point in their lives (Emerson et al., 2002). If this is true, then such individuals may have developed a multicultural lifestyle that comports with their multiracial contacts. Disentangling the effects of interracial contact from the effects of a multicultural lifestyle is a challenge that must be met by future empirical endeavors. 21. For example, work that I have done (Yancey and Emerson, 2003) seems to suggest that churches that became multiracial because of the racially mixed social networks of the members of their congregation are more likely to promote primary interracial relationships than multiracial congregations formed because of new residential racial diversity. If this is true then how the multiracial nature of congregations develops can be related to the ability of those congregations to generate significant interracial contact effects. 22. Any time static data are used to assess the dynamic process of attitude construction, then self-selection is a possibility. However, contemporary empirical studies indicate that self-selection is not the only factor that accounts for the attitudinal distinctions correlated with interracial contact (Ellison and Powers, 1994; Oliver and Wong, 2003). Such research indicates that attitudinal differences between those without friends of other races and those with such friends are at least partially shaped by interracial contact.

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I

5

n the previous chapter I demonstrated that interracial contact is associated with different racial attitudes among whites, but I still have a question about the role of self-selection in these findings. It is quite plausible that whites with more progressive racial attitudes tend to have multiple friends of color and attend multiracial churches. The possibility that these interracial relations do not alter racial attitudes still exists. Quantitative research is necessary so that we know that contact is not the artifact of the particular group of respondents that we have gathered together. But it is generally not as effective in determining the directionality of racial attitudes and interracial contact as qualitative work. Qualitative research can inform us about the particular dynamics of a unique situation. It aids us in understanding what comes first, interracial contact or progressive racial attitudes/lower social distance. If majority group members come into interracial social settings with progressive racial attitudes, then such individuals should indicate this when asked. Furthermore, qualitative research allows us to learn about the dynamics of attitudinal changes. It can help us to see what racialized content can develop out of interracial contact. Quantitative research can show us if whites who are numerical minorities in their religious institutions or who have racially mixed social networks have more progressive racial attitudes than other whites. But even if interracial contact helped to create those attitudes, it is still important to learn more about this process. By interviewing those who have changed their racial attitudes because of interracial contact, we can find out why they have changed their attitudes. Thus, the interviews conducted in the IFI study will provide insight as to why such attitudinal changes take place. O’Brien (2001) uses qualitative research to document some of the pathways by which some whites become antiracists. At least some of these pathways, such as witnessing racial oppression, are likely to be influenced by 67

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the proximity of people of color in the lives of these majority group members. Her work is limited by the fact that she interviews only explicit white antiracists, instead of whites in general who may have been influenced by interracial contact. However, O’Brien does illustrate the need to understand how whites may develop more racial awareness. The focus of this chapter is to look at how interracial contact may further that development.

Lessons Learned by the White Pastor of a Multiracial Church For the bulk of this chapter I use the IFI to investigate the questions of whether and how interracial contact alters the racial attitudes of European Americans. But I did find an interesting interview in the LSAF worth noting. Although the LSAF incorporated qualitative interviews in an attempt to study multiracial churches, it did not explicitly ask the respondents whether attendance at a multiracial church altered their racial attitudes. Nevertheless, there is anecdotal evidence that interracial interaction may lead to attitudinal change in the interview of the white associate pastor of a large multiracial church. I asked him what he had learned by being a pastor of a large multiracial church. He started out by observing: Obviously you learn about some prejudices that you don’t think you have, which I think anytime that you increase an awareness you realize what you don’t know. So I think I’ve learned some things about me. Some were subtle, none were intentioned. I wasn’t raised prejudiced at all but there are certain things you pick up, certain ideas.

In this answer we can see that he is not willing to accept the taken-forgranted perspectives of white racial identity. He realizes that people of color have a perspective that is valid and must be respected. He then goes on to show greater respect for the perspective of those of color as he relates how his experiences with black members of his church altered how he understood “race riots”: “I’ll give an example of something I really learned. During the Rodney King riots which were fairly a big thing in L.A., the white people called it the Rodney King riots, the black people called it the civil unrest, and that’s all the difference in the world.” This understanding of different ways that African Americans understand civil unrest from majority group members is not an isolated issue. It relates to an entire dimension of issues concerning the trust African Americans have about societal authority. He goes on to further illustrate this perspective as he begins to compare his understanding of authority as a majority group member with the new understanding he picked up from black members of his church.

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Another thing I learned is as a little guy, I was brought up to respect police and if I ever had a problem I could go to a policeman and they would be my friend. I found out that the black people in this area who were raising their children have not had that kind of experience with policemen, they’ve had a different kind of experience. They teach their children and say don’t go to the policeman and if you go to the policeman, don’t say anything to them because you don’t know what they are going to do. A very different awareness.

We have a situation whereby a white individual alters a previous perception about justice and social order because of his interaction with black congregation members. It is even more telling because this man has institutional authority over the attendees of color and yet still he learned from them, instead of teaching them white racial identity concepts such as color blindness. This suggests that people of color in a multiracial religious organization need not hold the top positions of power to influence majority group members. It is unclear whether this new awareness will lead to activism from this white minister. But until majority group members have developed non-color-blind racial attitudes, the possibility of recruiting them into progressive racial social movements is nonexistent. This interview is not a definitive statement about the powers of interracial contact, but it does give us hope about the potential of this contact to effect attitude change. For a more complete analysis of how interracial contact may alter racial attitudes, I now turn to the IFI.

What Did the IFI Tell Us? To better explore the potential of interracial contact, I examine another setting where interracial contact is theorized to have influence. That setting is interracial families: like the multiracial congregations or racially mixed social networks explored in Chapter 4, they are also settings where the conditions for productive contact are present. For this reason, the IFI should provide valuable information about the nature of interracial contact. Data for the IFI were collected during the 2003–2004 school year. I conducted interviews with both partners in twenty-one interracial married couples. The inclusion criteria were that the respondent was part of a heterosexual interracial marriage where one of the partners was white and had been married for at least two years. In almost half of the marriages (n = 10), the other partner was black. The interviews averaged about an hour in length. The vast majority of interviews were conducted in the respondent’s home. However, in a few cases it was more convenient to meet in my office for the interview, and in one case I met at the office of the respondent. I perceived no qualitative difference between the interviews done in my office

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and the ones conducted at the respondent’s home. Except for one case, the spouses were interviewed separately.1 Each interview was taped and transcribed. From the transcriptions, I coded each interview according to whether the respondent indicated that he or she altered certain racial attitudes because of the marriage. The average age of the couples was thirty-six (mean of men was thirty-seven; the mean of women was thirty-five). Generally, the couples tended to be middle class; none appeared to be extremely poor or excessively wealthy. The highly educated were significantly over-represented in this sample: eleven of the forty-two respondents have a postgraduate degree. This tendency is linked to other empirical work indicating that educational attainment is positively correlated with the propensity of individuals to interracially marry (Tucker and MitchellKernan, 1990; Heaton and Albrecht, 1991; Qian, 1997). The initial intention of these interviews was to assess if interracial marriages potentially altered the cultural activities, cultural values, and/or racial attitudes of each spouse. The questions for the IFI are presented in Table 5.1. I originally wanted to assess if important cultural differences existed between the spouses in interracial couples, but I soon found very few cultural differences between whites and nonwhites.2 Since cultural differences are not part of my focus for this current project, I will not explore any possible nonracial cultural effects from the IFI data. I was especially interested in noting if the respondents talked about attitudinal changes around the time of their wedding or at some point after they got married. I was also interested in whether the relationship with the spouse had altered the racial attitudes of each respondent. I asked each spouse what he or she thought about his or her own racial group and the racial group of his or her spouse. I used those questions to see if the spouse had influenced how a respondent perceived different racial groups.3 If the quantitative work from the previous chapter confirms a generalized effect of interracial contact, then these interviews allow me to explore the directionality of this relationship and the dynamics of how attitudes may change. Although I will be looking at a different population than the one that was measured in the LSAF, I will be able to extend our knowledge about the effects of interracial social contacts. The characteristics and pseudonyms of the respondents used in this study can be seen in Table 5.2. The results from my interviews clearly indicate that whites handled the racial issues brought into the marriage differently from nonwhites. In keeping with the earlier findings about multiracial churches and racially mixed networks, interracially married people of color were generally unlikely to alter their racial philosophy because of their interracial marriage. Rethinking their ideas about racial issues was more common for European Americans. Table 5.3 shows how interracial marriage had different effects

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71 Table 5.1

Questions Used in the Interracial Family Interviews Study

Did you generally get along with your parents? Why or why not? What did you learn about racial issues from your parents? Did you agree with your parents’ ideas about racial issues? How old were you when you realized that there were people of different races? How did that happen? Growing up, what was the racial makeup of your neighborhoods? Your schools? Your friends? Your churches? [Probe to see how much interracial interaction they had as children.] What sort of music did you like as a child? Had this changed when you became a teenager? A college student? A young adult? When you were married to your current spouse? Today? [If musical tastes have changed, then probe for reasons why.] What did your family do for entertainment when you were a child? Entertainment can be going out to restaurants, movies, shows, sporting events. It can be outdoors activity such as camping, hiking, or skiing. It can be activities at home such as games, television, or reading. These suggestions are given to help you think about what your family has done for entertainment and are not an exhaustive list. What did your family do for entertainment when you were a teenager? Did this change when you became a college student? A young adult? When you were married to your current spouse? Today? Did your family have any holiday traditions that you remembered celebrating as a child? If so, then what are they? Did you have holiday traditions that you celebrated as a young adult? What holiday traditions do you tend to celebrate in your family today? [Probe if current holiday traditions are different from earlier traditions to see why they changed and when. Pay special attention to the possibility that these changes are connected to the marriage.] Did your parents encourage educational achievement for you and your siblings? How did they do so? Did your parents encourage athletic achievement for you and your siblings? How did they do so? Did your parents encourage religious activities for you and your siblings? How did they do so? Did your parents encourage musical achievement for you and your siblings? How did they do so? If you have children, in which area do you encourage their achievement the most: education, athletics, religion, or music? How do you encourage your children in that area? If you do not have children but plan on having children, which area do you most want to encourage them in: education, athletics, religion, or music? How do you think you might encourage your children in that area? When you were a teenager, did you think of yourself as a Republican or Democrat or did you support some other political party? If so, then why did you support the political party that you did? Did your political ideas change by the time you were a young adult? How did they change and why? [For those who had not developed a political ideology as a teenager, ask: When you were a young adult, did you think of yourself as a Republican or Democrat or did you support some other political party? If so, then why did you support the political party that you did?] Did your political ideas change by the time you were an adult? How did they change and why? [For those who had not developed a political ideology as a young adult, ask: When you were an adult, did you think of yourself as a Republican or Democrat or did you support some other political party? If so, then why did you support the political party that you did?] Did your political ideas change by the time you were a married? How did they change and why? [For those who had not developed a political ideology as an adult, ask: At the time you were married, did you think of yourself as a Republican or Democrat or did you support some other political party? If so, why did you support the political party that you did?] [If the respondent has children] Do you attempt to teach your children to have the same political ideas that you possess? If so, then what ideas do you want to teach them? (continues)

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Interracial Contact and Social Change (continued)

What was your religious tradition as a child? Would you say that you were extremely, very, moderately, fairly, or not committed to that tradition as a child? Had this tradition changed when you became a teenager? Had your level of commitment changed? [If so, probe for reasons why.] Had this tradition changed when you became a college student? Had your level of commitment changed? [If so, probe for why.] Had this tradition changed when you became a young adult? Had your level of commitment changed? [If so, probe for why.] Had this tradition changed when you became an adult? Had your level of commitment changed? [If so, probe for why.] Had this tradition changed when you married your current spouse? Had your level of commitment changed? [If so, probe for why.] Is this tradition the one you have today? Is your level of commitment the same today? [If so, probe for why.] [If respondent has children] Do you try to teach your children religious values? If so, which religious values do you attempt to teach them? [If respondent has no children] If you had children, do you think you would try to teach them religious values? If so, which religious values would you try to teach them? Do your religious beliefs influence how you generally perceive racial issues? If so, which racial issues are influenced by your current religious beliefs, and how are they influenced? What sort of food did you and your family tend to eat when you were growing up? What sort of food do you and your family tend to eat today? Is this your first marriage? [If this is not the respondent’s first marriage, determine if the previous marriage was interracial and apply these questions to the respondent’s first marriage as well.] How long have you been married? How has being married to someone of a different race changed the way you perceive people of that race? How has being interracially married changed the way you perceive people of your own race? How has being married to someone of a different race changed the way you perceive racial issues in American society? [If the respondent indicates that his or her racial perceptions have changed due to marriage, then follow up with: Have these changes in your attitudes toward racial issues also influenced your perceptions of American society in general?] Has your marriage altered how you think about music? If so, then how? Has your marriage altered how you think about entertainment? If so, then how? Has your marriage altered how you think about holidays? If so, then how? Has your marriage altered how you think about education? If so, then how? Has your marriage altered how you think about religion? If so, then how? Has your marriage altered how you think about politics? If so, then how? Has your marriage altered how you think about your own racial identity? If so, then how? How has your marriage altered how you think about affirmative action? Racial discrimination? Hate crimes legislation? Racial profiling? Reparations for racial minorities? Immigration laws? Are there ways that your marriage to someone of a different race altered the way you see things that you feel this interview did not adequately address?

on racial attitudes among whites and nonwhites. For example, nine of the majority group respondents indicated that their interracial marriage had changed their perception about affirmative action, as compared to only four of the minority group respondents. Eleven of the white respondents stated

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Pathways to Change Table 5.2

Selected Demographic Characteristics of Multiracial Couples

Pseudonym

Sex

Judy George Lucy Brian Sarah Jim Jill José Rita Henry Maria Christopher Yugi Fred Tiffany Michael Veronica Stanley Vicky Sammy Rebecca LeRoy Jennifer Juan Martha Sean LaWanda Andy Vanessa Jorge Whitney Gary Karen Charles Patricia John Sharon Robert Debbie Peter Dawn Bill

female male female male female male female male female male female male female male female male female male female male female male female male female male female male female male female male female male female male female male female male female male

Race white Hispanic Hispanic white white black white Hispanic Hispanic white Hispanic white Asian white black white white black white black white black white Hispanic Hispanic white black white white Hispanic black white Asian white black white black white white Asian white black

Age 36 38 33 32 31 38 27 27 35 35 33 32 50 51 40 42 27 30 23 28 28 25 46 43 49 49 27 32 29 37 35 35 48 50 43 44 57 57 24 23 32 44

Years Married

SESa

2

MC

10

MC

2

UMC

4

UMC

2

UMC

6

UMC

26

LMC

21

LMC

7

MC

2

MC

4

MC

23

UMC

25

MC

7

LMC

6

MC

11

MC

25

UC

14

UMC

17

LMC

3

LMC

2

MC

Educationb PHD AD PHD BD MD MD BD BD MD BD MD AD AD MD SC BD BD BD BD BD SC SC SC MD HS BD BD SC BD MD PHD BD BD MD SC BD SC noHS SC SC BD SC

Notes: a. Socioeconomic status categories: Lower-middle class = LMC; middle class = MC; upper-middle class = UMC; upper class = UC. b. Education level: no high school = noHS; high school diploma = HS; some college = SC; associate degree = AD; bachelor degree = BD; master degree = MD; doctoral = PHD.

that their ideas about racial profiling had changed because of their interracial marriage, as opposed to three of the racial minorities. Thirteen of the white respondents changed their ideas about racial fairness in society, compared to four people of color. Such disparities can be seen in almost every

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74 Table 5.3

Interracial Contact and Social Change Number of Individuals Who State That Their Interracial Marriage Altered Their Perception of Specific Issues, by Race of Respondent

Issue Spouse’s race Own race Fairness in society Racial identity Affirmative action Racial discrimination Hate crimes Racial profiling Reparations Immigration Total

Whites

Nonwhites

17 18 13 14 9 17 4 11 3 4 21

11 10 4 10 4 10 2 3 1 2 21

question assessing whether the respondent’s interracial marriage altered his or her racial attitude. The results in Chapter 4 provide quantitative evidence of the racial differences noted in the previous paragraph. The fact that IFI research confirms the quantitative results that whites are more likely than nonwhites to alter their racial attitudes gives us confidence in other findings in these data. This confidence is especially reassuring since I am comparing the potential of interracial contact to alter racial attitudes across different populations of respondents (interracially married individuals, multiracial church attendees, and individuals with racially mixed social networks). Were whites racially progressive before their marriage, or did this attitudinal change come after their marriage? Although some of the whites entering interracial marriages did have progressive racial attitudes before their marriages, these interviews provide abundant evidence that interracial marriages changed their racial perceptions. Whites frequently discussed how their marriage changed their attitudes on a variety of racial issues. Although there is some evidence of self-selection of more racially tolerant whites entering into interracial marriages, it quickly became evident that self-selection could not by itself explain the racial attitudes of the white spouses. Whites developed an understanding from their interracial marriage of how racial minorities deal with the racialized nature of our society.4 For example, John, a forty-four-year-old white man, married to a black woman, discusses how his racial perceptions changed because of his wife.5 He states that “she’s open[ed] my eyes and we’ve had many arguments about perception of, you know, certain race, [it] is a lot of stereotypical things that you get fed on TV, movies, newspaper[s]. . . .” When I asked him for a specific example of such a stereotype, John replied, “I think maybe black men in general thinking about how it’s disproportionate, maybe have

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records or been in jail or have been arrested had that type of thing, where she would explain to me that the opportunities that they have are less, and just the whole scenario of that.” It is easy to see how John, as a white man, might adopt racial and gender attitudes that dismiss the concerns of his black wife. Although I did not assess how his gender attitudes may be altered, John’s understanding of Eurocentric individualism has lessened because his black wife pointed out that African Americans do not have the same opportunities to develop their individual talents as majority group members. Ultimately, his interracial marriage helps him to gain more of an understanding of the structural effects of racism. Such lessons were also taught by nonblack people of color. Henry, a thirty-five-year-old white man married to a Venezuelan woman, indicates that he has learned about racism because “my wife has mentioned that growing up she has felt she has been subjected to racism.” Then he goes on to state that “she’s definitely shown me that there are things out there and I mean personally I think I mean I know they’re out there.” Henry does not merely accept the perspectives of people of color; as he contends: “personally when she tells me something that happened . . . of course I’m going to support her. But at the same time, again trying to see both sides, trying to be fair to both sides.” Henry still attempts to hold onto some of his white racial identity and to perceive issues from a dominant perspective. But ultimately Henry supports his wife. Thus, his racial perspectives change even if he does not always completely embrace his wife’s perspective. For example, he commented on the notion of white privilege in this way: “lets say if somebody were to allow a white person to do something, or oh well that’s a privilege. I kind of say it jokingly cause she says it, but I’m sure some of that is true.” When his wife teaches Henry about white privilege, he does not blindly accept it but has come to believe the notion that whites have privileges in our society. There is little doubt that Henry’s ideas concerning white privilege have changed because of his interracial marriage.6 But majority group members did not learn just abstract principles. Sometimes the lessons learned by whites concerned specific racial issues. Jill, a twenty-seven-year-old white woman, commented on a surprising fact that she learned about her Mexican American husband: When we first met, it was before we were dating or anything, he was failing Spanish, which I just found hysterical because I was like “how do you fail Spanish; you’re Mexican,” and he explained to me that his parents intentionally never taught him Spanish because when they were growing up, speaking Spanish was bad, and you were looked down upon, and you were punished in school if you spoke Spanish. And so they were trying to make it easier for him by never speaking Spanish around him, and never teaching it to him. Well by the time he was in college that’s a disadvantage to not speak Spanish . . . but sort of hearing those stories was a real eye-

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Interracial Contact and Social Change opener because it had never, having not experienced that myself, that I don’t know what that’s like. And so my perception of that has sort of changed. Well it [has] not really changed because I guess I didn’t have a preconceived notion . . . but at least my eyes have been opened up to some different realities that I hadn’t experienced.

Jill had assumed that all Hispanics were Spanish speakers, but her interracial marriage revealed to her that people of color were often penalized for trying to live out their cultural heritage. Many European Americans do not realize how powerful Eurocentrism is in the United States. Jill is forced to confront that reality through the life of her husband. As she noted, before her marriage she gave little thought to the realities faced by people of color. Her marriage forced her to develop a perspective about the reality of Angloconformity in the life of her Hispanic husband. A further effect of interracial marriage can be observed in the reactions of Andy, a thirty-two-year-old white man married to a black woman, who stated that “one of my best friends before marriage . . . was a black person. He had experienced racism—like he had always told me about it and I’d always felt bad about it, but I never had really experienced it for myself, so I guess being married just helped heighten my awareness to stuff.” Even though his wife was not personally relaying experiences of racial discrimination to him, being married to her made him more sensitive to the racism his black friend had undergone. Andy’s marriage likely brought more African Americans into his social networks, so that a contact effect was more likely to occur. A similar change in social networks enabled Jennifer, a forty-six-year-old white woman married to a Hispanic man, to better understand racial discrimination. She comments, “I use to be ignorant. Because our marriage has brought me out of the white world, it has influenced me in that it has broaden my horizons.” She had earlier discussed how she learned about discrimination through her discussion with a black-white interracial couple. Jennifer’s friendship with the black woman in this couple exposed her to stories about racial profiling and discrimination. In some ways her interaction with this interracial couple taught her more about racial discrimination than her own interracial marriage. Andy’s and Jennifer’s experiences illustrate that a white spouse may learn about discrimination from people other than their nonwhite spouses. Interracial marriage may produce attitudinal changes through the introduction of the white spouse to a racially mixed social network. Such a result is consistent with the findings in Chapter 4 that the racial diversity of the larger social network of whites is related to progressive racial attitudes. These examples show that whites can learn about racism by listening to the experiences of their spouses or other people of color that their interracial marriages bring into their lives. They understand the damage racism causes, hearing it from someone they care deeply about; because of this

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relationship, they are willing to learn about racism. Often, people of color who attempt to talk to majority group members about racism are frustrated by the seeming inability of majority group members to understand their plight. These results suggest that primary interracial relationships can make this conversation much more productive. LaWanda, a twenty-seven-yearold black woman married to a white man, may have summed up the potential of whites to gain information through conversations with their spouses when she stated, “I actually have somebody there that we can talk about the racial issues and get both sides of it, and then actually have someone who I can get more information from, versus just thinking what I would think if I was in that situation or reading what I’ve read or heard or whatever. So I’d say it gives me more information.” Notice how LaWanda previously perceived her understanding of racial issues as one-sided. She now attributes conversations with her husband as the means by which she overcomes her previously limited knowledge about racial issues. Verbal interaction with her husband eliminates the possibility that LaWanda’s knowledge about racial issues will be limited to the provisions found within her own racial identity. Marriage provides for a level of intimate conversation that usually surpasses other social relations. Because a certain level of honest communication is necessary in a healthy marital relationship, people of color may resolve to be frank with their spouse about racism. That behavior would call into question Korgen’s (2002) finding that half the time, racial subjects are not discussed within interracial friendship dyads. The deeper level of intimate conversations found within interracial marriages may account for the higher potential of such relationships, relative to interracial friendships, to result in racial attitudinal alteration. Interracial marriage is not a panacea for producing intergroup understanding. After all, men married to women do not necessary show more understanding about the patriarchal nature of our society than single heterosexual men. Yet men do not tend to be isolated from women for much of their lives. Most men develop some degree of intimacy with their mother, female relative, and other female friends as they are socialized. Thus, men can either accept or ignore the lessons of sexism that they may learn from females at an early age. Whites who marry people of color may not have had a great deal of intimate contact with racial minorities before their marriage. Lessons about racism they learn from encounters with their spouses or other individuals of color are likely to illuminate the relative ignorance of whites caused by their lack of interracial contact from an early age.7 However, it is not only through minority group members that a majority group member learns about race in the United States. Whites may also alter their racial attitudes because they experience a new social and racial position. Dawn, a thirty-two-year-old white woman married to a black man,

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indicates that her interracial marriage helped her to “become more aware of the people of my race who are racist. Where I might not have seen it before, I can pick up on little things here and there. It’s black by association kind of thing.” The last comment is especially telling since she is suggesting that because she is with a black man, she has to accept some of the stigma African Americans receive in our society. I wanted to push her a bit on that answer, so I asked her to give me an example of this stigma. She said, Just a few months ago, someone said to me, “Well, he probably wouldn’t want to go out with you anyway because he knows.” . . . This was one of those hypothetical conversations. He said, “I don’t think he would ever ask you out anyway, because he knows you’re married to a black guy.” I said, “What are you talking about? What would that have anything to do with it?” He said, “You know, he’s not going to want to date you after you’ve dated a black guy.” My chin hit the dust. I know that thought is out there, but for someone to just say it to me, it shocked me a little bit.

Dawn has begun to experience some of the social rejection that African Americans have felt for many years. Her experience of what African Americans endure does not end with just this rejection. She went on to state, Some people . . . they stop talking about things they would talk about. They feel uneasy talking about race around me. . . . Say, in the library, we were having a conversation about historically black colleges and universities. And somebody said something [like], “Well, I just get tired of these black people. First they want their own colleges and then they want this and then they want that.” And somebody said something about my son being mixed or my husband being black and this guy just shut up. He wasn’t going to go any further with it. And so it was really obvious to me that he was uncomfortable, and he’s been uncomfortable around me ever since.

Dawn has learned that some whites will hide their racism when they find out that she is interracially married. This reaction hinders her ability to trust majority group members. She shares this mistrust with other people of color, who have learned that whites are not always truthful about their real racial intentions. She is not likely to have the same degree of empathy of the mistrust that people of color have if she were married to a white man. Dawn’s response illustrates that majority group members in interracial marriages may become more sensitive to the plight of people of color because they are in a different racial position in society. Women in the United States are given a higher degree of responsibility for the success of romantic relationships than men (Cancian, 1987; Baber and Allen, 1992). For that reason, women are more likely than men to find their self-esteem from interpersonal relationships (Firestone, 1970;

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Hochschild, 1983; Rubin, 1983). Research indicating that women are more critical than men of interracial relationships suggests that fears of not finding the right spouse are more troubling for women (Johnson and Ogasawara, 1988; Sones and Holston, 1988; Mills et al., 1995a; Jacobson and Johnson, 2005). Given this reality, it is not surprising that Dawn develops a powerful empathy for people of color through her experiences with her friends and colleagues. She is reacting to the gendered expectations of finding the right man to make her happy as well as racialized judgments about her husband’s race. Such gendered expectations are confounded by the stereotypical images of black men that have historically been used to discourage white women from engaging in interracial relationships (Spickard, 1989; Moran, 2001; Romano, 2003). Little wonder that white women may become especially sensitive to attitudes of rejection that they may experience because of interracial unions. Even though developing a new racial position in our society for whites in interracial relationships is not exclusively the responsibility of women, gender expectations about romantic relationships may make white women more sensitive to racial rejection and more susceptible to racial stigma than white men. Rebecca, a twenty-eight-year-old white woman married to a black man, illustrates another way this new position can affect white spouses when she states that her support for affirmative action is based upon “the fact that I’m raising what society considers a black male. I want him to have the same equal access to schools that a white kid has and right now I think the only way that can be guaranteed is through affirmative action.” Once again, we have a situation whereby a white marital partner discover that he or she shares a similar place in society as racial minorities and seeks to ally with people of color. In this case, her perception of a new social place develops because of the child she has with her husband. Even if white parents can escape increased social stigma related to their marriages, it is not always possible for their children to escape this stigma. A white spouse must deal with the racism experienced by his or her child, and efforts to eradicate racism for his or her offspring can make that person more sensitive to the racialization of our society. Rebecca puts this better than I can: “anything that affects black people has to affect me as his mother and then also as my husband’s wife . . . before maybe [I was] just interested in it in passing, but now it affects my life.” Rebecca can no longer relegate racial issues to the periphery of her life but must now struggle with the reality of racism so that she can advocate for her son. Although undoubtedly white men are also likely to become protective of their children of color, the gender expectations made of mothers and their children likely enhance Rebecca’s concerns and make her even more vulnerable to perceiving alienation from her new social status. It is incorrect to state that European Americans married to racial

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minorities are relegated to the exact racial status of people of color. When they are away from their spouse, they are still seen as part of the majority group. Even when they are with their spouse, they may not be perceived in the same light as the minority spouse. However, an interracial marriage does bring an identity to the majority group partner that may place him or her in a better position to relate to people of color. As the quotes in the previous paragraph suggest, these couples often have children together, and the white spouse has to find ways to protect his or her minority children. The spouses may also have to worry about the safety of his or her spouse when he or she is not with the spouse to provide racial protection. For example, Sarah, a thirty-one-year-old white woman married to a black man, was asked about racial profiling, and she commented that “we bought a Lexus a couple of months ago, so sometimes I wonder about my husband driving around in a Lexus. Is he going to be safe or whatever, so I guess that thought would have never occurred to me.” She found that she could not think about racial issues in a color-blind manner but was forced to take into consideration the institutional racism in the United States. This example is especially noteworthy because obviously Sarah and her husband are not poor (they just bought a Lexus). Yet even class privilege cannot relieve her of the racial fears that develop from having a black husband. Although white spouses do not become people of color, neither can they completely enjoy all the privileges of higher SES or of their majority racial status. Given this alteration in racial status, majority group members can change their general perceptions about racism. They do not always need to experience racism personally to overhaul their previous racial understandings. Look at how Gary, a thirty-five-year-old white man married to a black woman, discusses his need to be aware of the reality of potential racial discrimination: “just because we’ve been fortunate enough not to have been overtly discriminated against, there’s always potential there and I think it behooves anybody who is involved in an interracial relationship to be sensitive to what society can heap on you and . . . you need to be prepared, so my sensitivity to that sort of thing has heightened.” Even though Gary has not directly experienced discrimination that he can recall, he picked up on the informal lessons about the undesirability of interracial couples in our society. As a white male he may be used to nearly always being in a situation of racial and gender privilege. But now his racial position has changed, and he has to adjust. Perhaps for the first time in his life, he has to approach social situations from a subordinate position and to anticipate possible discrimination. Making such adjustments can produce a new awareness of the societal racial issues in the United States. It is worth noting that all these whites experiencing a new racial status were married to blacks. My sample size is too small to make any sort of

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definitive conclusion, but it is possible that this mechanism of racial alteration is more plausible in interracial marriages that include African Americans, rather than those with other racial minorities. A possible explanation may be the pervasive effects of the one-drop rule. It has been documented that the one-drop rule has only been used to define multiracial people with African lineage (Davis, 1991; Daniel, 2002; Yancey, 2003c). In that case, interracial marriages including an African American may carry an additional level of stigma that other interracial marriages can avoid. Those who enter into interracial marriages with blacks may endure a one-dropism that paints all of those in the marriage as part of the racial minority. Marriages of whites with nonblacks may be significantly less likely to face such a stigma, and whites in those marriages may preserve most of their majority group racial status. Whites married to Hispanics and Asian Americans may not access a new racial status that changes their racial attitudes. Whites who marry an African American may be perceived as a white person who had to, at least partially, leave behind their majority racial status in order to be united with their African American spouse. In this sense they may be seen as a “less than white” person linked to a black spouse. If future research can substantiate this black/nonblack difference in interracial marriages, we may have more confidence in this possible effect of one-dropism on interracial marriages.8 There is a third mechanism that may account for attitudinal alteration. In addition to the teachings they may receive from people of color and a realization that they now share a similar place with people of color, whites also may change their attitudes because of the racism against their spouse that they personally witness. It is one thing to hear about the discrimination that one’s spouse faces. It is qualitatively different to have actually been there to see or hear it. Sarah recounts why her interracial marriage changed how she thought about racial discrimination by stating, “When we go places there’s been occasions where we’ve gotten bad service in a restaurant and . . . I’ve always wondered, is it because we’re interracial or because he’s black or whatever, so that’s definitely opened my eyes.” People of color often wonder whether bad service is the result of a server having a bad day or of subtle, or not so subtle, racism. It may be impossible to know what is actually happening, and the shadow of racism can hang over their hostile encounters in restaurants. Now Sarah has witnessed enough instances of bad service with her husband that she can begin to experience that same shadow. But witnessing racism includes more than just the experience of the majority group member. That person can also see the aftereffect of the racism. For example, Charles, a fifty-year-old white man married to an Asian woman, recounts overhearing a phone conversation his wife had, and the effect that the racism she experienced had on her:

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Interracial Contact and Social Change She was dealing with some cracker, if you will, from down here who kept calling her “little darling” and “little dear” and all of these kind of condescending phrases, and she was getting so mad she was going to spit electrons through the phone at him, I think, and he was just treating her like she was some bimbo or something ’cause he knew she was Oriental and didn’t think she could understand English and didn’t think she could be smart and didn’t think she knew what she was doing.

Charles went on to note how the customer almost lost business because of his mistreatment of his wife and how this encounter shaped his perceptions. He’d treated her very badly, and he’d almost killed the deal as a matter of fact because he was doing things slowly and trying to explain to her that these things take time, “darling honey.” She didn’t like that at all so it’s made me a little more sensitive to [racial discrimination].

Charles is a majority group member in both sex and race. When I went to his house to interview him, I clearly saw that he enjoyed a relatively high middle-class status as well. Under normal circumstances, it may be difficult to persuade a person of such privilege of the existence of racism. In fact, I noticed his adherence to a Eurocentric-based individualism several times during the interview. He was especially proud of the individualism-based work ethic of himself, his wife, and his sons. Charles is definitely not ready to become anything close to what some have called an antiracist, but it is fair to argue that he is closer to a recognition of racism than he likely would have been if he had not married a person of another race. Unlike many middle-class white men, Charles does not deny the presence of contemporary racism. Because Charles is present when racism occurs to his wife, there is no disputing its reality. His wife does not have to defend her reaction to racism. All this may allow such personal experiences to have a powerful instructional effect upon majority group members. Racial profiling may be a particularly visible issue for white women who are married to African American men. Although I only interviewed five white women who were married to African American men, four of them commented that their attitudes toward racial profiling had changed because of their marriage. What is especially noteworthy is that two of them directly relate this change because of their own personal experience. In the first case Vicky, a twenty-three-year-old white woman married to a black man, describes what happened when she first encountered the reality of racial profiling: We’ve had conversations, well, I guess . . . every time he sees a cop he gets frustrated. . . . Just being ignorant with the cop, even if he didn’t do anything. “Cops, they’re so stupid,” or something like that, and me being like, “Why are you angry at a cop? He didn’t do anything.” Or we got

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pulled over one time, and the guy didn’t give him a hard time or anything, it’s just more of, I think, he would have done it with anybody. But he asked him to see his license, and he wanted to know why his address didn’t match up with his insurance address. We had just moved, and how he perceived it as, “He’s picking on me because I’m black,” and me, I was like, “He’s just . . . I think he would have done that if it was anybody.” But then my husband . . . been yanked out of the car before and thrown on the ground because he looked like a black guy that had done something . . . and I was like, well, it makes a whole lot more sense why he would [be angry and frustrated].

In this case what seems like a routine traffic stop to Vicky becomes more suspicious because of the husband’s past experience. She then begins to reflect on why her husband is suspected of a crime, even though his registration is in order. Her experience at an actual traffic stop coupled with her knowledge of her husband’s past experience convinces her of the reality of racial profiling. Once again referencing her husband’s experience of being pulled from his car by the police, she says, “Knowing what a good guy my husband is . . . there’s no reason to sling him to the ground. I definitely agree that it’s a real thing.” Her knowledge of her husband’s character, her previous conversations with him, and her personal experience of a traffic stop convince her of the reality of racial profiling, whereas before she doubted its existence. The propensity of experience to shape the attitudes of majority group members toward racial profiling is even stronger in Dawn’s case: Interviewer: Has your marriage altered how you think about racial profiling? Dawn: Yes. Absolutely. It’s probably been two or three years ago . . . my husband and I were . . . at a blues bar. And we just left and it was probably 2:30 or 3:00 in the morning. And we were pulled over [while] pulling out of the driveway. And he’d used his turn signal. I couldn’t figure out why we’d been pulled over. And the cop came to the door aggressive right off the bat. He had his hand on his gun. And my father is in law enforcement so I knew that this protocol was overly aggressive. He had an attitude right off the bat. He told my husband not to say anything and he asked me to get out of the car. I came to the front of the vehicle and he said he pulled me over to find out if I was okay. I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “Well, we don’t usually see white women in a vehicle with black men. You don’t look like a prostitute.” I was irate. I said, “This is my husband. We are fine.” You know, I have never once been pulled over by a cop to check and see if I was okay. I’ve been stranded on the side of the road and cops haven’t stopped to check on how I was doing. It infuriated me. My husband saw it as, you know, didn’t surprise him at all. And it made me more aware of how . . . I mean it happened to me personally. It wasn’t a story he told me. And I saw that look in that cop’s eye like he really, honestly thought I might be in danger just because I was in a vehicle with a black man in 2002 or 2003.

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Interracial Contact and Social Change Interviewer: Before that incident, do you think that your marriage had changed your perspective on racial profiling, or was that the incident that really sort of . . . Dawn: I was aware of it and becoming more aware of it by the stories I heard in his family. But that nailed it for me. I mean, I’m sort of one of these people that tries to play the devil’s advocate. For example, if we drive through a bad neighborhood and somebody locks their car door, my husband assumes it’s because of race. I think it could be because we’re in a bad neighborhood. So there’s a lot of things where I’m always going, “Well, it could be this and it could be that.” And that incident made it so that there was absolutely nothing I could do. There is no other explanation for that. It was just racial profiling.

Dawn is clearly not the type of person who automatically takes the opinion of others as accurate. She even interrogates her husband and his family’s claims of racism. But given the evidence that she saw with her eyes and heard with her ears, Dawn can no longer have any doubt about the reality of racial profiling. The personal witnessing of racial discrimination has a powerful way of removing any arguments about its existence among white marital partners.9 Majority group individuals in general may be unlikely to accept the contention of people of color about incidents of racial profiling. Because these women were married to African American men, the group that may be most likely to experience racial profiling in traffic stops, they were likely to see this phenomenon in a way that escapes most majority group members. However, white women may be less likely to experience criminal suspicion than almost any other racial or gender group in our society. As a result, witnessing racial profiling may especially surprise white wives. The sample size of my project does not allow me to assess whether personal experience is more likely to affect perceptions of racial profiling than other racial issues. However, these last two quotes illustrate that the racial profiling experienced by African American men married to majority group women produced attitudinal change among white wives. The small sample I am using does not allow me to fully test for possible gender effects that may be at play here. However, this last finding does suggest that gender inevitably plays an important role in how interracial contact influences majority group members. This seems to be especially true for black and white couples: research has indicated that black-white marriages that involve white women experience more racial hostility than those with white men (Spickard, 1989; Lewis and Yancey, 1994–1995). Thus, it is reasonable to assert that white women may be more likely to experience racism than white men. But such a conclusion may not be limited to just interracial marriages that include blacks, for the outmarriage of white women is seen as particularly threatening to notions of white racial purity (Ferber, 1998).

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There are other reasons to believe that interracial contact operates differently on white wives than it does on white husbands. The higher level of responsibility women have for child care inclines them to see the effects of racism against their children, thus providing another opportunity for these majority group members to witness racism (e.g., the early example of Rebecca changing her attitude toward affirmative action). It is not that white men care less about their biracial children than white women; however, men tend to be more disconnected from the day-to-day responsibilities of raising children and are less likely to perceive how racism poisons their children’s lives. Future work that looks at how the racism that biracial children experience is perceived differently by white women and white men will shed much more light on this possibility. Finally, white men may be able to use their male advantage to escape the experience of racism in a way that eludes white women. A white husband can use male privilege to offset at least some potential disadvantages of being interracially married. Racism may become his wife’s “thing,” something he decries, but he does not truly live out the consequences of being a person without privilege. That may be particularly true when he is apart from his wife. But a white wife has experienced sexism, and she may be more sensitive to the racism that her husband has faced. I do not mean that there is no stigma for a white husband who is interracially married. Yet white women are more likely to face opposition in entering interracial relationships than white men (Lewis and Yancey, 1995; Ferber, 1998; Dalmage, 2000). Even though an adequate comparison between white husbands and wives is not possible with the data I have, it is of interest to note that, generally, white husbands struggled more to learn about racism than white wives, perhaps because white husbands seem less likely to experience the effects of racism than white wives. Remember that John learned about racism, but only after many arguments with his black wife. It was not his experiences with racism that changed his mind: he had to be convinced by his wife that it was real and had to take her word for it. The lessons Charles has learned still seem incomplete, as illustrated by his use of the word “Oriental.” He observed racism as it played out with his wife but did not relate to instances of how he may have experienced it himself. White women also had to learn about racism, but they usually did not have to be convinced because they experienced it directly, along with the sexism they already knew. So eventually the experiences they had altered their previous understandings about racial issues. At least some of the white men, however, found it harder to take on the lessons of racism; some of them still do not fully understand the type of racism that their spouse faces in our society. Clearly, gender effects must be taken into consideration as we attempt

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to understand the full effects of interracial contact. These gender effects may be most oblivious when we look at interracial marriages because of the gender roles within marriages in the United States. However, it is also possible that the sexism that women experience in general can make them more likely to change their racial perspectives than men. This experience of sexism may help to explain research that indicates women may have less racial prejudice than men (Mills et al., 1995b; Konrad and Spitz, 2003). Interracial contact may intensify such a gender difference if such contact produces more racialized experiences that white women can use to develop even more progressive racial attitudes than white men. There was very little evidence that interracial marriage altered the racial attitudes of people of color. Most of the people of color interviewed did not comment upon changes in their racial attitudes because of their marriage, with one exception. I noticed minor evidence that Hispanic Americans sometimes altered their racial identity. Six of the eight Hispanic Americans indicated that their interracial marriage altered their racial identity.10 An example of this alteration is seen in Maria, a thirty-three-year-old Hispanic, who states that her interracial marriage “has made me more wanting to learn more about my race, my background, my heritage, so it has, it’s encouraged me as an example to look more into that and in turn has made me appreciate things a lot more, and find out answers to some questions that I had.” I probed to see how her husband has helped her to develop more of an awareness of her racial heritage. Because he knows so much about his background, and when we have children I’d like to be able to pass that information to my children, and he’s able to do that, and up until recently I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t answer some of the questions, so I want to be able to do that as well, and especially with the loss of his dad recently it’s just kind of like, wow, our parents, by the time we’re ready to have kids, may not be here so I’m really trying to take advantage of asking. My dad’s parents passed when I was in high school so I haven’t had, like, that side of grandparents for years, so I’ve really recently tried to just kind of have more of those conversations with my dad, and actually write things down, and learn more.

The fact that her white husband has knowledge of and pride in his culture motivates Maria to learn more about her background. Her husband can likely take for granted having pride in his European American culture because he lives in a Eurocentric society. But he can also serve as a role model so that Maria can develop cultural pride in a society that does not necessarily value her culture. In another example, Juan, a forty-three-year-old Puerto Rican man, illustrates that support from one’s spouse may also encourage a new pride in racial heritage.

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In some ways growing up as a kid I always felt ashamed to be Puerto Rican because the neighborhood that I grew up in, you know, growing up at times with these people [and working] for them, Irish Catholic or Greek or Jewish, there was only one other employer that I had that was Hispanic, and he was Mexican, and so sometimes I kind of felt a little awkward, particularly when I heard stories about my sister, that people had kind of rejected her because she was Puerto Rican. And so when I would hear those kind of stories, even though they weren’t told to me directly, but you would hear them and so you would pick them up and so you would kind of think, well, is there something wrong with being Puerto Rican? . . . So that would have an influence on me, so I think that today, though I’m not puffed up with pride, but I’m not afraid to say I’m Puerto Rican, that’s a simple fact and there’s nothing wrong with it, that’s a good thing. And as a result I have looked into my Puerto Rican heritage, and I have done things like made a book. It’s basically just a plain ordinary book that I’ve given to my mom . . . because I really am interested in what our family history is, and a lot of that sprung out of the influence of my marriage ’cause my wife has made me feel very comfortable about who I am, and it wasn’t anything that she directly did, but just because of her support.

Like Maria, Juan receives indirect support from his spouse, which encouraged him to take more pride in his culture. With Juan, we see even more clear evidence that the larger society discourages celebration of his native culture. His white wife supports his newfound pride, which allows him to explore more of what it means to be a Puerto Rican in the United States. In fact, there was no evidence in any of my interviews of majority group members attempting to discourage their spouses from expressing their culture. Perhaps because multiculturalism has become a more honored value in the United States (Glazer, 1997; Downey, 1999), majority group members have an incentive to encourage their minority spouses to explore their racial culture. However, Hispanic Americans were especially likely to state that their interracial marriage helped them to gain more of an appreciation of their minority culture. Anglo-conformity is not a useful way to describe these marriages, for their majority group partners valued the minority cultures of their Hispanic spouses. This type of attitudinal alteration is counter to what we should expect from interracial contact. The Contact Hypothesis suggests that the racial attitudes of people of color should become more attuned to white racial identity. Yet interracial marriages seem to have little effect upon the racial attitudes of African Americans and only a minor effect upon Hispanic Americans. When interracial marriages did alter the attitudes of Hispanic Americans, it did not make those spouses more accepting of a philosophy born in white racial identity; rather, it reinforced the desires of these racial minorities to remain connected to their own culture. This research suggests that interracial marriage does not lead people of color to gear their racial

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attitudes toward the perceptions of the dominant group. Instead, such marriages convince Hispanic Americans to develop less allegiance to the dominant culture and more of an appreciation of their own culture. Why does an interracial marital relationship provide the hypothesized effects of the Contact Hypothesis, when a close friendship seems to be relatively ineffective? As I suggested earlier, the most natural explanation is that marital relationships are more intimate than nonsexual friendships. The increased intimacy of these relationships may provide more of an opportunity for majority group members to rethink previous racial ideas. However, I question the importance of intimacy alone to alter the attitudes of majority group members. Another plausible idea is that an interracial marriage can alter the racial position of the white marital partner in a way that does not happen through interracial friendships. For example, in an interracial marriage the white spouse may have to consider what it means to be the parent of a child of color. That spouse also has to become concerned about the potential racism his or her children may face. There are no such considerations for those who are merely friends with those of a different race. Finally, being romantically linked to a racial minority is quite different from having a friend of a different race. Interracial friendships are not stigmatized as interracial romances are. Thus, it is plausible to believe that there are higher levels of prejudice leveled at those in interracial marital unions than those in interracial friendships. The higher level of racism faced by whites who interracially marry likely forces them to reconsider previous racial perspectives in a quite powerful way. To summarize, the responses of majority group members reveal at least three ways in which their racial attitudes may change because of interracial marriage. Whites may alter their attitudes because of listening to what their marital partner says about racial issues, coming to understand their new racial place in society, or personally witnessing the reality of racism. All these possibilities fit into the idea that majority group members obtain information through their new racial reality that alters previous perceptions about racial issues in the United States. Since these interviews reinforce the findings of Chapter 4, it is useful to ask why majority group members may be likely to develop progressive racial attitudes through interracial contact, but there is no evidence that people of color are likely to take on the perspectives found within white racial identity. Interracial contact has a greater potential for teaching majority group members than it does for instructing people of color. This greater propensity reflects the fact that people of color have already formulated much of their understanding about racial issues before marriage. Racial minorities have to learn about racism from an early age, whereas majority group members generally can ignore issues of race—until they marry a person of color. The first time a multiracial couple experiences hostile stares or

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bad service at a restaurant, it is likely not the first time that the spouses of color have been treated differently because of their race. However, there is a fair chance that this may be the first time that the majority group partner has experienced such racism. Interracial marriages bring new experiences to majority group members that enable interracial contact in these relationships to become powerful potential catalysts for attitudinal change. Thus it becomes easier to understand why whites with racially mixed social networks and/or who are numerical minorities in their religious institutions are significantly likely to have distinct racial attitudes from other whites, but the same is not true for people of color. This qualitative research focused upon those in interracial marriages, a population that I was unable to quantitatively analyze in Chapter 4. Some of the change mechanisms identified in this chapter may not apply to whites who have racially mixed social networks or who are numerical minorities within their religious congregations. Future research that attempts to substantiate these findings within multiracial churches, racially mixed social networks, or other settings where the conditions of productive interracial contact are met will be valuable. However, the evidence in this chapter indicates that self-selection cannot exclusively explain the possible attitudinal differences of majority group members with extensive interracial contact and considers some theoretical mechanisms by which such attitudes may be altered.

Conclusion The qualitative data from this study illustrate that self-selection cannot completely explain the progressive racial attitudes of whites having extensive contact with racial minorities. Whites in interracial marriages indicated that their marriages have helped them develop progressive racial attitudes. People of color who outmarry do not show alteration of their racial attitudes, except for Hispanic Americans, who indicated that their marriage helped them to become more appreciative of their own culture. This research reveals that whites alter their attitudes because of what they hear about racism from their spouses, their changing racial position in society, and their witness of racism. Having children may also affect the perspectives of majority group members as it concerns racial issues. I hope that future research on childrearing issues within interracial families will more fully flesh out this potential effect. In Chapter 4, I found that having an intimate friend was not very powerful in effecting attitudinal change. Yet, in this chapter I produced evidence that having a spouse of color influenced the racial attitudes of majority group members. There were a few examples where the new multiracial

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social network of the white spouses contributed to their changed racial attitudes, but it does appear that the marital relationship itself is sufficient to initiate these changes. Because of the results in this chapter, I now have more confidence that interracial contact can alter racial attitudes. Self-selection may account for some of the attitudinal changes among the respondents, but many of the white respondents explicitly talked about how their interracial marriages helped to shape their new racial attitudes. I have also identified some of the mechanisms that contribute to this alteration. Interracial contact, under the proper conditions, has the potential to alter the racial attitudes of European Americans. This does not mean that contact will always alter the racial attitudes of majority group members, but the potential exists. Yet that same potential is missing as it concerns people of color. Even when they marry majority group members, racial minorities are unlikely to speak about how their interracial marriage shapes their racial attitudes. If we accept the premise that interracial contact can lead to attitude change among majority group members, then it is important to consider the implications of this reality. In the final chapter I make such considerations. However, before I get to that conversation, I take a short detour. To this point I have been insisting that interracial contact generally does not change the racial attitudes of people of color. However, interracial contact does have an effect upon people of color in another critical way. In Chapter 6 I look at how interracial contact influences people of color.

Notes 1. That case concerned Fred and Yugi. Yugi is a first-generation Vietnamese woman who was unsure of her English. Thus, Fred stayed in the room while I interviewed her so that she would feel more comfortable. However, Fred did not prompt any of her answers. 2. For example, I found that eight whites and eight nonwhites indicated that their marriage changed how they perceived music, thirteen whites and thirteen nonwhites indicated that their marriage changed how they perceived holidays, and nine whites and ten nonwhites indicated that their marriage changed how they perceived entertainment. Thus, interracial marriages do not seem to affect whites any more than nonwhites when it comes to nonracial cultural changes. 3. While interviewing the participants, I took care to make sure that I did not lead toward a response that their interracial marriage did change their attitudes. I did my best to provide the respondents an opportunity to state that interracial marriages had no effect on their attitudes. Indeed, the respondents did feel free to state that their interracial marriage had no effect on their attitudes, and the vast majority of them said so to at least some of the questions posted. Their freedom to provide such a response gives me confidence that the questions did not lead the respondents to provide “false positives” about the effect of their interracial marriage on their racial attitudes.

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4. It has been argued (Feagin and Vera, 1995; Dalmage, 2000; Bonilla-Silva, 2003; Childs, 2005) that majority group members sometimes use “coded” language that hides much of their own racial insensitivity and/or hostility. It is often difficult to get beyond these codes to find out if whites have gained a more accurate perception of the racialized nature of our society than they would have if they only relied upon their white racial identity. Thus, I do not present the following examples as evidence that these white spouses have gained a full understanding of racism in the United States. I only present these data as evidence that, in a variety of ways, their interracial marriage seems to have moved these white spouses further away from a total reliance on white racial identity and toward a higher level of acceptance of more critical notions of race than they would have obtained if they had married another white person. Even if these interracially married whites do not obtain the degree of progressive and radical perceptions about race that many scholars and activists would desire them to have, the fact that their interracial marriage has moved them closer to such an interpretation of race is important in helping us appreciate the potential of interracial contact in producing attitudinal change and in helping us understand how that attitudinal change may come about. 5. All names of respondents used in this book are pseudonyms. 6. It would have been of interest to see if Henry also altered his perspectives of male privilege as well. Both spouses in this marriage were well-educated, and I observed evidence that Henry had fairly progressive gender attitudes. However, the questions of the IFI did not include assessment of gender attitudes, and thus I am unable to determine how his interracial marriage may also shape his attitudes toward nonracial forms of stratification (sex, class). 7. It can also be argued that even today, most marriages are not egalitarian along the lines of gender. However, I saw no evidence that European American–based superiority dominates interracial marriages. Thus, intergroup contact between husbands and wives tends to be egalitarian as it concerns race, which meets the equality condition within the Contact Hypothesis. 8. In 2005 I presented a paper using the IFI data that compares the perspectives of whites married to blacks to whites married to nonblack racial minorities. This work does indicate that whites married to blacks are more likely to have altered their ideas to support some of the political policy positions that favor people of color than whites married to nonblack racial minorities. I am confident that it is a different racial experience for a white to be married to a black than to be married to a nonblack person of color. 9. This is not unlike O’Brien’s (2001) observation that one of the paths that whites may take to antiracism is by witnessing racial oppression, but it may be even more powerful in this circumstance since the racism whites are witnessing is happening to one that they deeply love. 10. Like Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans are also an immigrant group. Thus it is worth asking whether Asian spouses are likely to alter their racial identity in response to their interracial marriage. However, because of the low number of married couples I interviewed that included an Asian American spouse, it is difficult to make any assertions about the possibility of an interracial marriage to alter the racial identity of the Asian American spouse. I am unable to determine whether the identity effect is a general black/nonblack effect or unique to Hispanic American spouses.

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vidence from Chapters 4 and 5 illustrates that people of color seldom alter their racial attitudes because of interracial contact. Multiculturalists fear an assimilation whereby people of color with extensive contact with majority group members develop racial attitudes that are not in keeping with the interest of their racial communities. However, the results of my data indicate that such fears are not well founded. It is more likely that people of color are able to use interracial contact to recruit majority group members into a more structuralist understanding of racism. Yet I would be irresponsible if I did not report an important way in which interracial contact may change the lives of racial minorities. Although their racial attitudes were not altered, African Americans and Hispanic Americans who went to multiracial churches were generally better educated and had a higher SES than other people of color. There is also evidence that interracial friendships are related to higher educational/SES levels for African Americans and Hispanic Americans, although the evidence for interracial friendships is weaker for African Americans than evidence found in multiracial churches. The relationship of interracial contact and higher educational/economic position of African Americans and Hispanic Americans is an issue worth examining. It is possible that multiracial churches tend to attract people of color who have higher levels of education and income. Furthermore, it is possible that people of color with racially diverse friendship networks obtain those networks because of their educational and economic position. This, of course, is our old friend the self-selection factor. It is also plausible, however, that racial minorities who start attending multiracial churches gain access to social and cultural resources that aid them in their quest to obtain higher levels of education and income. Likewise, we cannot dismiss the possibility that interracial contact creates racially mixed social networks that help people of color to make educational and economic gains. The sec93

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ond possibility is intriguing because it suggests that interracial relationships may provide an opportunity for people of color to gain valuable economic and educational resources for their communities. This second possibility is called the social capital, or cultural capital, thesis. Social capital has been defined as the “social relationships from which an individual is potentially able to derive various types of institutional resources and support” (Stanton-Salazar and Dornbusch, 1995). Research has demonstrated that our social networks and social position account for the accumulation of this social capital (Lin, 1999, 2000; Mouw, 2003). Thus modern racial economic inequality results in part from the reality that people of color have less access to this social capital: majority group members are in a better position to have previously obtained it, and the relatively low levels of interracial contact in our society prevent people of color from gaining social capital from majority group members (Blau, 1991; Lin, 2000; Stanton-Salazar, 2002; Orr, 2003). A related concept is cultural capital, defined as “the degree to which parents socialize their children into highstatus culture” (Kalmijn and Kraaykamp, 1996). The ability of majority group members to do so also factors importantly into racial stratification since people of color are less likely to have enjoyed success in this culture and to have information to pass on to their children. Contact with majority group members may provide people of color with the needed information and allow for a lessening of racial economic and educational inequality. In this chapter I investigate the possibility that the social/cultural capital thesis has merit. First I quantitatively document the reality that interracial contact correlates with higher SES and educational attainment for people of color. Having established that fact, I then go on to explore qualitative data in an attempt to examine the importance of self-selection and the social/cultural resource thesis in explaining the relationships between interracial contact and higher economic/educational status for people of color. I conclude this chapter with a discussion of the implications of these findings.

Interracial Contact and Economic/Educational Success Why would there be a relationship between interracial contact and SES/education levels? One possibility is that those in the upper classes may be more likely to interact with each other. For example, there is evidence of relatively low residential segregation among Hispanic and Asian Americans who move into the middle and upper classes (Massey and Fong, 1990; Massey and Denton, 1996). This residential integration allows for more interracial contact between these racial minority groups and majority group members. It is also possible that individuals with higher levels of education are also

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more likely to experience interracial contact because they attend colleges and universities that are more racially diverse than their secondary schools. I have previously documented the fact that having attended an integrated school is correlated with having dated a person of another race (Yancey 2002b). If those with higher educational levels are more likely to have attended a multiracial school, then they are more likely to experience less social distance between themselves and those of other races.1 Finally, there is evidence that those with higher levels of SES and education have more extensive social networks than other individuals (Stephens et al., 1978; Fischer, 1982; Walker, 1995). Members of that group would also be more likely to have racially mixed social networks as well. These explanations suggest that individuals with higher SES and educational attainment levels within all types of racial groups are more likely to have racially mixed social networks than individuals with lower levels of SES and educational attainment. If so, then we will find correlations of SES/educational attainment and interracial contact for whites as well as nonwhites. Interracial contact is not the cause of the higher educational/ economic status of individuals in our society; rather, it is the result of this status. However, there is another possibility that must be taken into account. It is also plausible that interracial contact may help create higher levels of SES/educational status among individuals in the United States. European Americans generally have more social capital than people of color. They are able to capitalize upon their social and cultural capital to obtain higher levels of educational/economic success. 2 Social and cultural capital may include, but is not limited to, knowledge about how to succeed in colleges and universities, friendship contacts that lead to better-paying jobs, awareness of which colleges and universities are more advantageous to attend, direction about how to train their children for academic/economic success, and friendship alliances that can lead to occupational promotion. The fairly segregated networks in American society reinforce the accumulation of capital for whites and its relative dearth among people of color (StantonSalazar and Dornbusch, 1995; Lin, 1999; Lin, 2000; Stanton-Salazar, 2002; Mouw, 2003). If this social/cultural capital can be transferred from one individual to another, then interracial contact provides a way that people of color can gain valuable social capital for educational and economic attainment. If an increased opportunity to gain social/cultural capital explains the relationship between interracial contact and educational/economic gain, then it is difficult to perceive how interracial contact would enable majority group members to increase their educational attainment/SES. Whites already possess higher levels of social capital than nonwhites and theoretically should not gain from interracial contact. No basic educational/

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economic differences should exist between majority group members with extensive interracial contacts and those without them. After looking at the evidence that interracial contact affects the educational/economic position of Americans, I explore which explanation is better suited for examining this relationship. If the former set of explanations is accurate, then interracial contact emerges after educational/economic attainment, and this contact should not be seen as an educational/economic resource for people of color. If the latter explanation is accurate, then such contact can be rightly seen as a mechanism by which educational/economic equality can be fostered. The LSAF includes basic questions concerning the SES and educational status of the respondents. Those questions can be seen in Table 6.1. The LSAF included those questions to allow researchers to construct economic and educational controls for the respondents. However, these variables also indicated important differences between individuals who attended multiracial churches and those who did not. Because of these findings, I also investigated whether interracial contact through the formation of friendships would have a powerful effect. Comparisons of educational/economic status of those in multiracial churches and of those with racially mixed social networks can be found in Tables 6.2 and 6.3.3 In Table 6.2 we see how interracial contact may affect the educational status of LSAF respondents. In Table 6.3 we see how interracial contact may affect the SES level of the LSAF respondents. Results concerning the economic and educational fate of whites are mixed. Whites who attend a multiracial church have higher SES and educational attainment levels than other white church attendees. However, whites with diverse circles of

Table 6.1

Educational and Income Measures Utilized by the Lilly Survey of Attitudes and Friendships

What is the highest grade of school, year in college, or graduate degree you have completed? (Variable is constructed as number of years of school.) I am going to read you a list of income categories. Please tell me to stop when a category I read best describes your total household income before taxes. < 10,000 Between 10,000 and 20,000 Between 20,000 and 30,000 Between 30,000 and 40,000 Between 40,000 and 50,000 Between 50,000 and 60,000 Between 60,000 and 70,000 Between 70,000 and 80,000 Between 80,000 and 90,000 Between 90,000 and 100,000 More than 100,000

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Comparison of Educational Attainment of Different Racial Groups, by a Variety of Racial Diversity Variables Whites

Multiracial churches Yes No Circle of friends Diverse Nondiverse Social networks Diverse Nondiverse

Blacks

Hispanics

Asians

14.839 (223) 13.877d (1,658)

14.655 (84) 13.614c (321)

13.4 (50) 11.75c (308)

15.267 (15) 15.728 (213)

13.58 (312) 13.963b (1,341)

13.819 (127) 13.25a (168)

12.738 (145) 10.551d (158)

15.574 (129) 15.877 (81)

13.931 (447) 13.889 (1,201)

13.583 (175) 13.367 (120)

12.217 (189) 10.366d (112)

15.717 (152) 15.607 (56)

Notes: a. “Diverse” or “Yes” group differs from “Nondiverse” or “No” group at the 0.1 level. b. “Diverse” or “Yes” group differs from “Nondiverse” or “No” group at 0.05 level. c. “Diverse” or “Yes” group differs from “Nondiverse” or “No” group at 0.01 level. d. “Diverse” or “Yes” group differs from “Nondiverse” or “No” group at 0.001 level.

Table 6.3

Comparison of Socioeconomic Status of Different Racial Groups, by a Variety of Racial Diversity Variables Whites

Multiracial churches Yes No Circle of friends Diverse Nondiverse Social networks Diverse Nondiverse

Blacks

Hispanics

Asians

5.871 (209) 5.247c (1,509)

5.737 (76) 4.233d (301)

5.174 (46) 3.833c (287)

6.143 (14) 5.802 (197)

4.744 (297) 5.402d (1,206)

4.521 (121) 3.911a (158)

4.642 (134) 3.082d (146)

5.869 (122) 5.824 (74)

5.233 (420) 5.298 (1,080)

4.298 (171) 3.981 (108)

4.264 (174) 3.019d (104)

6.035 (141) 5.442 (52)

Notes: a. “Diverse” or “Yes” group differs from “Nondiverse” or “No” group at 0.1 level. b. “Diverse” or “Yes” group differs from “Nondiverse” or “No” group at 0.05 level. c. “Diverse” or “Yes” group differs from “Nondiverse” or “No” group at 0.01 level. d. “Diverse” or “Yes” group differs from “Nondiverse” or “No” group at 0.001 level.

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friends have lower levels of SES and educational attainment than other whites. Measurements using the more extensive social networks variable do not reveal any significant racial diversity effects. These data do not reveal a clear trend among majority group members who have more interracial contact with people of color. Thus it is difficult to make a strong assertion for either self-selection or social/cultural capital arguments based on our findings with European Americans. The more interesting analysis comes when we look at people of color. African Americans attending multiracial churches have higher SES and educational attainment levels than other black attendees. Those with more diverse circles of friends also have higher levels of income and education, although this difference is at the 0.1 level. There are no significant effects for blacks with racially mixed social networks. In none of these comparisons do African Americans exposed to those of other races have lower levels of educational attainment or SES. Hispanic Americans who attend multiracial churches and have racially diverse circles of friends and social networks have higher levels of income and education than other Hispanic attendees and Hispanics in general. There are no significant effects for Asian Americans.4 The data from these tables indicate that there is a potential interracial contact effect for African and Hispanic Americans. The effects are most powerful for Hispanic Americans, but African Americans with more interracial contact are likely to be in a better economic and educational position in our society than other African Americans. The question is whether these effects are created by African and Hispanic Americans moving into higher educational/economic classes, once again a self-selection effect, or whether interracial contact is a factor in the relative success of African and Hispanic Americans. In the next section I use qualitative data to explore why this relationship between interracial contact and educational/economic success exists.

Social/Cultural Capital, Self-Selection, or Both? In Chapter 5, I used qualitative data to investigate whether the attitudinal differences documented in Chapter 4 resulted from self-selection or interracial contact. To do so, I looked at how individuals in the IFI study responded to questions about how their interracial marriage altered their racial attitudes. Self-selection cannot explain all the attitudinal changes documented in Chapter 4. Unfortunately, the LSAF included no direct questions to individuals as to how their racially diverse networks affected their educational and economic attainment. However, we do have LSAF data that may indicate whether the improved economic situation occurred before affiliation with a multiracial church and data from the IFI that may help us to see evi-

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dence of how interracial contact may have provided economic aid to spouses of color.5 The LSAF study asked members of multiracial churches whether their income had ever significantly increased. This question is a crude measure to assess whether the higher SES enjoyed by people of color in the study was attributable to a situation prior to their joining the church or whether the church may have contributed to their success.6 Obviously, this measure is imperfect: people who gain SES after they join a multiracial church may do so for a number of reasons unconnected to membership in their churches. However, if a number of individuals obtain their educational status and SES after they join a multiracial church, then clearly they have not gained their success prior to church membership. Such a chain of events works against the notion that racial minorities gain higher economic status before they gain more racially diverse social contacts. If interracial contact for such people of color came before they made economic gains, then self-selection does not by itself explain why wealthier and better-educated people of color have higher levels of interracial contact than their counterparts. I went through the LSAF interviews and coded the question about whether the respondent had an increase in his or her income at some point in his or her life. I coded only the responses of African Americans and Hispanic Americans.7 At times it was clear that the income of respondents dramatically increased before they joined a multiracial church, but there were other times when this increase clearly occurred after they started attending a multiracial church. Finally, there were times when there was no dramatic increase in income, or it was unclear whether this increase occurred before or after joining a multiracial church (see Table 6.4). When I tallied the responses that clearly indicated whether the raise occurred before or after joining the church, I found that almost 20 percent of the time (19.5 percent, or eight out of forty-one), African Americans and Hispanic Americans enjoyed economic success after they joined their mul-

Table 6.4

Measurements of Whether Black and Hispanic Attendees of Multiracial Churches Received a Substantial Salary Increase Before or After Joining Their Church Blacks

Before joining multiracial church

Hispanics

Total

15

1

16

4

4

8

Cannot tell

12

5

17

Total

31

10

41

After joining multiracial church

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tiracial church. They were twice as likely to enjoy success before joining their multiracial church (39 percent, or sixteen out of forty-one). Self-selection remains a possible explanation for why people of color who attend multiracial churches enjoy economic success.8 But if I eliminate the respondents who were unsure if they had had economic success or were unsure whether their economic success occurred before or after joining their church,9 then self-selection does not explain the economic success of African Americans and Hispanic Americans about a third of the time that they enjoyed economic success (33 percent, or eight out of twenty-four). It is too simplistic to argue that the results of Tables 6.2 and 6.3 are merely the results of selfselection. The social/cultural capital thesis clearly has merit and should be taken seriously as we attempt to understand why people of color with multiracial contacts are more likely to enjoy economic success. What is especially of interest is that Hispanic Americans were more likely to enjoy economic success after they joined their multiracial church than African Americans were. African Americans who enjoyed a period of economic success in their lives were likely to enjoy that success before they joined their multiracial church almost 80 percent of the time (78.9 percent, or fifteen out of nineteen). But 80 percent of Hispanic American attendees who enjoyed educational success in their lives had that success after joining a multiracial church (80 percent, or four out of five). If these findings are reflective of the larger racial population in our society, then we should note that in Table 6.3, Hispanic Americans appear to be more likely to enjoy economic success from interracial contact than African Americans, particularly as it concerns their possessing a diverse circle of friends. There may be ways in which interracial contact is more economically productive for Hispanic Americans than it is for African Americans.10 Clearly one of the empirical extensions of this research is to document whether this racial difference exists and, if so, to investigate why it exists. Hispanic Americans may gain more from cultural capital than African Americans because they are more likely to be newer to the culture in the United States than blacks. Because a relatively high percentage of Hispanic Americans in the United States are immigrants with lower levels of educational and occupational skills, many of them have a low level of social capital in our society.11 Such individuals are likely to make more economic gains from their interaction with majority group members than other people of color. However, further speculation about this potential racial difference is beyond the scope of this current empirical effort. The LSAF study indicates that self-selection remains a possible explanation for the relationship between interracial contact and higher income status for African Americans and Hispanic Americans. Therefore, at least part of the reason why African Americans and Hispanic Americans in multiracial churches are more successful than other members of their ethnic groups is that they obtain that success as part of their entry into these reli-

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gious organizations. It is plausible to argue that whites in multiracial churches are more comfortable with higher-SES people of color than with lower-SES people of color.12 Therefore, interracial contact may be a feature of racial diversity within higher economic classes; thus people of color who gain higher levels of SES can more easily enjoy interracial contact. However, there is evidence that self-selection is not the sole explanation for the quantitative results noted earlier in this chapter. At least onethird of the time that an African American or Hispanic American enjoyed significant economic success in his or her life, it occurred after that person had joined a multiracial church. Thus self-selection cannot explain these successes at least one-third of the time.13 Although it can be fairly argued that these data indicate that self-selection may be a stronger factor than the social/cultural capital thesis, clearly it is not the only factor. I looked through the LSAF data to find specific ways in which multiracial churches may have helped to increase the income of African Americans and Hispanic Americans. I was hoping to see a lot of responses like this one from Rosa, a Hispanic woman age forty-five to forty-nine, who attended a multiracial Catholic parish from the day she was born.14 It [her income] increased in 1993 to 1996. I was offered a job. In fact, Father even asked me . . . he referred me to this, they were hiring for a program called Hope in Youth and so I applied and I passed the test, the interviews, and everything, and they hired me and I wasn’t used to making that kind of money. And it lasted for a couple of years. It was a good experience.

We have a clear-cut case of how the multiracial church played an important role in the income of Rosa. She attended a parish that was made up of mostly Hispanics and Asians but was led by a white priest. It was that white priest, not the Hispanic or Asian laity, who knew about the job that this woman benefited from. The Catholics of color who came from the surrounding neighborhood were working class and were unlikely to have the social capital available to the white priest. However, this sort of response was the exception rather than the rule. What was more common was this response from Mary, a black woman age forty-five to forty-nine, who had been attending a multiracial church for nineteen years: I’m a pediatric nurse and my husband is a physicist, and so over the years, when you said dramatically. . . . The last ten years or whatever has been wonderful in the sense that we all became aware of the stock market and invested, and so a lot of what has become a dramatic increase has been something that we don’t even look at as being a part of the budget or we can’t spend on a daily basis, but you know it’s there and it’s for future expenses. . . . So the dramatic increase has been from investing wisely, which until the 90s, we didn’t really know about.

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This quote does not provide enough details to clarify the role that multiracial contact may have played in Mary’s economic success. Mary may have learned about the stock market from other African Americans, from European Americans within her church, or from European Americans outside her church. I am unsure of the role of interracial contact in her new awareness of the stock market as a source of income. The LSAF was not equipped to address such issues.15 The LSAF allowed me to assess that selfselection could not by itself explain the higher educational and economic status of Hispanic Americans and African Americans, but it was of limited use in assessing how educational and economic success was related to the multiracial nature of the congregations. If interracial contact helps provide social and cultural capital for people of color, then it is valuable to discover how this transfer may occur. Since the LSAF is unable to help us untangle this process, I now turn to the IFI for answers. Because the IFI, like the LSAF, was not constructed with the explicit task of examining social and cultural capital, our ability to assess the social processes behind social/cultural capital and interracial contact will be limited. However, some of the questions in the IFI do offer a better opportunity to understand how interracial contact may provide social/cultural capital to some people of color.

Social and Cultural Capital in Interracial Marriages The IFI allows me to examine the potential of people of color to gain social capital through their interracial encounters. Table 5.1 presents the questionnaire used in this study. One of the questions asked of the respondents was whether their interracial marriage helped change how they thought about education. This question will be used to assess how interracial marriage can affect people of color’s perceptions about education. In doing so, we can gain insight into how people of color can increase their social capital through interracial contact. Naturally, this research is limited in scope. First, I have no way to assess social capital as it relates to SES. I can only assess the resources the respondent used to gain educational social capital. Of course, educational status and SES are heavily correlated, and mechanisms that help us to understand how social/cultural capital is used to create educational opportunities can also be insightful in helping us to understand how social capital can enhance economic success. Regardless of that linkage, the evidence in my data is only directly applicable to how social and cultural capital may be transferred from spouse to spouse in a manner that shapes educational attainment—not SES. Second, understanding the transfer of social and cultural capital is not the main purpose of the IFI. It is my intention to use the

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IFI to provide some preliminary information about how social/cultural capital may be transferred, but the original purpose of the IFI was to look for the cultural and attitudinal effects of racial outmarriage. Finally, the results in the previous section indicated that changes in interracial attitudes did not occur every time there was interracial contact. It would take a large number of respondents to analyze enough of those who changed their racial attitudes to fully understand the process. Given the low number of respondents, I am not likely to gain enough data to conclusively examine all the ways in which interracial contact influences the social and cultural capital of racial minorities. One of the clear ways that interracial marriages affected the attitudes of spouses of color was the role modeling that some of these spouses saw from their partner. Notice what LeRoy, a twenty-five-year-old black man, says about his wife’s influences upon his educational goals. I told you my dad and my parents always stressed education, but my wife has helped me see a new focus on it ’cause she didn’t finish high school and [she] went back and finished her education and she’s become a successful person, so it’s possible even if it doesn’t work out the first go around. You have to keep at it, so she’s taught me that.

LeRoy had learned the value of education from his parents. Yet he was inspired by his wife’s dedication to education and her persistence in obtaining her education even during difficult times. Something in his wife’s actions is distinct from the encouragement provided by his parents and teaches LeRoy the role of persistence in obtaining his educational goals. This sort of role modeling is a powerful way in which majority group members can encourage people of color to value educational success. Another example of the power of role modeling can be seen from the example of Patricia, a forty-three-year-old black woman married to John, a forty-four-year-old white man. I asked her if her marriage had affected her ideas about education. I would say maybe, because John is like [the] all-American kind of guy, college degree and everything. And, in my mind, when I first married him, I’m thinking, okay here’s a guy that’s . . . got a great education, he’ll want to roam the world, and that’s so not him. He’s just happy doing whatever. . . . So I look at him and I think, he has got this college education, he’s extremely smart, he could be . . . working in, you know, one of these Fortune 500 companies, but he’s working doing something he loves. And here I am, I don’t have a college degree, and I’m working for this big company making more money than my husband. And I guess my whole thing is, it’s like college and education is important, but it’s not everything . . . but then I think having that education allows some choices that I probably don’t have, ’cause . . . I worked my way to where I am now, but if I were to lose my job today I probably couldn’t walk into another company with-

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Interracial Contact and Social Change out that education and be successful, maybe not, but if I had that education along with the experience I have, and everything, that gives me that much more of an edge . . . so I know education is important and I’ve seen that through being married to John. I think if I had married someone without a college education it wouldn’t have been that big of a deal. I think there was a point in my life, too, where I was trying to measure up, I guess, because all of John’s brothers have college degrees . . . everyone in his family, his mom, his dad, his dad has a couple of degrees . . . so I think at some point I did keep going doing my education thing to get to where thinking, okay, I’m going to . . . stick to this and I’m going to get that degree. . . . So, yeah, I think being married to him, with a degree, did affect how I felt about education.

Even though Patricia at first downplays the importance of education, she also realized the totality of being brought into John’s family. John’s family is middle class, and John himself also enjoys male privilege. He is able to take for granted the benefits of education in our society. Having been brought into John’s family, Patricia also begins to perceive the value of those educational benefits as well. She recognizes that a college education can provide an important hedge for her against potential financial disaster. Thus, Patricia enunciates a desire to eventually go back to school to earn the degree she left behind at a younger age. Here we have a solid case of a black female increasing her social capital because of the influence she receives from her white husband.16 When I asked him whether his marriage influenced his idea about education, John had this to say: If anything, I altered her values, the way she would think, but [the marriage] hadn’t altered [my ideas about education], you know, one way or the other. My values have always been, you’re going to get the best education you can, at whatever cost it is, you make those sacrifices to do it, and for your kid, ’cause you want them to have the best opportunities.

Not only does John realize that he has influenced Patricia, but he clearly enunciates the value of education that he has been transmitting to her. Of course, Patricia might have obtained the same influences had she married a well-educated black man. However, the fact that some black families have been able to obtain social capital does not eliminate the fact that majority group families are more likely to obtain social capital than families of color and are going to have a higher ability to transfer that capital to their marital partner than spouses of color. Furthermore, research has suggested that African Americans are more likely to suffer from lower levels of self-efficacy than majority group members (Hunt and Hunt, 1977; Hughes and Demo, 1989). This lower level of self-efficacy acts to discourage African Americans from having confidence in their efforts to obtain educational

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capital. However, black spouses may be able to use the confidence of their white spouses to obtain educational success. Another case is Bill, the forty-four-year-old black husband of Dawn. He is a musician, and Dawn attends graduate school. At the time of the interview, he had no intention of going back to school himself. When I asked him whether his relationship with Dawn had shaped his ideas of education, he stated: Yes. . . . Because of how education is her deal. Where my deal might be music, her deal is school. And so, by watching her, it’s changed the way I feel about it. Seeing . . . how things can happen just because of school.

Bill deeply respects the educational training Dawn is undergoing. It is a respect that he did not indicate he had going into the marriage. Bill’s cultural capital may not directly improve, although one could make the case that Dawn’s educational training may put her in a position to give Bill sound advice on how to make money in the music industry. Bill and Dawn’s children, however, are highly likely to benefit from Dawn’s training. Even Bill recognizes that. When I asked Bill whether he wants his children to succeed academically, religiously, athletically, or musically he replies: Bill: Definitely education. Interviewer: Why? And how would you do it? Bill: Like we do. We work with them when they come out, and we stress the fact that it’s very important because . . . I want them to be able to do things that . . . I don’t [want] them to have to go through the world that I went though. And I think that education and knowledge is power. And when they have that kind of knowledge, they’ll be able to achieve whatever it [is] that they choose to be or not to be.

Bill did not choose music as the area in which he wants his kids to excel, even though it is the area in which he has chosen to excel.17 He saw education as the mechanism that can be used to help his kids overcome the hardships of society. It is possible that he may have picked up on the importance of education without his marriage to Dawn, but it is obvious that he is picking his wife’s “thing” over his “thing,” so Dawn’s influence should not be underestimated. An interesting follow-up to my interview with Bill is that I ran into him on campus about a year later. He had made the decision to go ahead and get his education. He was even considering graduate school. Dawn’s influence had more lasting effects than I could detect from my original interview. Finally, beyond mere role modeling, it may be the case that majority group members are able to pass cultural capital to their spouses of color by giving them more information about education. Unfortunately, I did not ask

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any questions about what each spouse learned about education from the other spouse because of their interracial marriage. However José, a twentyseven-year-old Hispanic married to Jill, illustrated that knowledge learned from one’s spouse can also be a source of social capital. When I asked José in which area (education, athletics, religion, or music) he would rather have his kids succeed, he stated that education would be the most important dimension. When I asked him how he would encourage his kids, he said: Well, that’s difficult, because that wasn’t necessarily my experience. I didn’t receive just encouragement and support in one area, and so I tend to believe I’m going to do as much as I can, in conjunction with my wife, to balance as much as we can the education, the academic portion of education, because I don’t [see] education being limited to just the classroom. And so there’s a value of a level of education in music, athletic[s], and religion. I mean education crosses over into the classroom, in and out of the classroom, so that’s why, picking education, it’s with the understanding that I believe, and I really think that my wife does, too, is that we don’t stop learning, and education isn’t just listening in the classroom and whatever, it’s a process.

Where did José gain this holistic approach to education? I received some insight when I asked him whether his marriage has changed how he thinks about education. It has altered, yeah. . . . I knew growing up, my mom was a teacher, my dad taught, and so I just grew up in education—it’s not necessarily the place to make money, but at the same time it’s not that I never saw the main focus for my parents so that kind of carries over to me. I think there’s a certain level of service involved in education and teaching, and I don’t [think] that I’d necessarily make a good teacher . . . Before I was married, I didn’t know there was such a thing as school public relations. [My wife] got involved, and then she took me to a couple of conferences and I met some people. I liked the people. I thought it was interesting what they were doing, and I wanted to get in. I said I can help because I understand education. I understand about certain level[s] of teaching, and what a teacher goes through, because I saw my mom go through it year after year, and it’s not easy, it’s hard, it’s hard work. I mean the work is underpaid. So, yeah, it has definitely increased my awareness of things and helped where I am.

José grew up seeing education as an abstract value but not as a place to make a good deal of money. But his interaction with Jill brought him knowledge about school public relations. Thus we can see that Jill allowed José to develop a more holistic approach to education. Her influence also expanded his ideas of education from merely being a teacher to a new field that was more compatible to him. It is unclear whether an increased salary is part of this occupational transition, but clearly knowledge he gained from

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his majority group spouse has made an important influence in his professional occupational opportunities. It is likely that other individuals of color who marry majority group members also gain knowledge that will help them find a better fit in the professional world or that will help them to succeed in previously fashioned professional goals. It can be suggested that the contention that people of color gain cultural capital from their interaction with whites is akin to a culture of poverty thesis (Moynihan, 1965; Lewis, 1966; Banfield, 1970). Such a thesis is often connected to arguments of “blaming the victim.” In other words, it may be argued that I am implying that people of color are more economically and educationally impoverished than whites because of their own cultural failings. This is the wrong way to interpret my arguments. As overt bigotry has lost respectability in our society, we have seen the development of more subtle racial filters that enable majority group members to maintain their racial hierarchy. Although it is a mistake to ignore the effects of class and sex, it must also be recognized that whites in general control access to educational and economic resources more than people of color do. This research suggests that interracial contact is an important way that people of color can also gain some control of those resources. Any adjustments that people of color make to obtain these resources are not evidence of their cultural inferiority, but rather illustrates how people of color can adapt to the current US economic and social environment to obtain SES and educational success.18 Interracial contact can provide racial minorities with the tools necessary to adjust to the dominant society they dwell in today. This research does not account for all the ways in which European Americans may empower their spouse of color to gain economic and educational success. However, it is clear that role modeling and the enunciation of the value of education are two possible ways in which majority group members may help their spouses of color to experience success. Social/cultural capital is a commodity that can be transferred from one person to another. This small sample offers us insight into the ways in which this transfer may take place.19 Because of this insight, I can make important predictions about the power of interracial contact to alter the lives of majority and minority group members. For example, the reasons that people of color experience improvements in their educational/economic status while majority group members do not experience such improvements are similar to the reasons that the racial attitudes of majority group members change. In both cases, we have cause to believe that one group is ignorant of a given situation; interracial contact may help the members of that group to overcome that ignorance. In the previous chapters I argued that European Americans likely do not have to think about racial issues a great deal of the time until they find themselves in social situations with a high percentage of people of color. People of color,

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by contrast, may be less aware of the mechanisms that provide educational/economic success. This ignorance can be eliminated by the role modeling of majority group members and by the knowledge they give their racial minority spouses. Thus, in both cases, interracial contact causes change by the reduction or eradication of ignorance. No doubt there are other ways in which interracial contact is effective in producing attitudinal change, but I suggest that the removal of ignorance may be the best theoretical route for us to take to understand the full power of interracial contact.

Conclusion My research suggests that self-selection is an insufficient answer to the question of why people of color with interracial social networks are more likely to enjoy educational success. I found evidence that majority group members may provide social capital to people of color by modeling possible paths to educational success and by imparting knowledge to people of color about opportunities that racial minorities may have previously missed. There is little reason to believe that these same mechanisms are not also effective for helping majority group members to impart the type of social/cultural capital that will help people of color to enjoy economic success as well. Once again, we find that interracial contact has the potential to alter the lives of Americans. But this time it is people of color, and not majority group members, who may have their lives changed because of interracial contact. In Chapters 4 and 5 I illustrate that people of color are not likely to alter their racial attitudes because of interracial contact, but in this chapter I provide evidence that they may alter their educational/economic position in society because of that contact. Majority group members, however, are less likely to alter their educational/economic position because of interracial contact. The Contact Hypothesis is upheld; interracial contact does matter. Chapters 4 through 6 have provided overwhelming evidence that interracial contact shapes the attitudes and lives of majority group members and people of color. The Contact Hypothesis should be updated in that interracial contact can alter the racial attitudes of majority group members and the educational/economic status of people of color. Thus, interracial contact is not just about the alterations of racial attitudes but also deals with changing the economic/educational position of people of color. Now that we know that interracial contact matters, we must begin to think about the implications of the Contact Hypothesis and how we should apply our knowledge of interracial contact to deal with the racial alienation in our American society. In the

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final chapter of this book, I address these and other relevant issues surrounding interracial contact in the United States.

Notes 1. In fact, the LSAF indicated that there is a significant correlation between education level and having attended an integrated school (r = 0.098; p < 0.01). 2. It is of interest that black children who are adopted by whites actually do better on IQ tests than black children adopted by blacks (Scarr and Weinberg, 1976; Moore, 1986; Weinberg et al., 1992). This suggests that whites are able to impart their social resources to their black children in ways that escape black parents. As a result of this ability to increase the performance of their black children, white parents may be exhibiting a higher ability to provide social resources for their children. 3. The findings of those with multiracial churches excluded individuals who did not attend any church services. Including those individuals would likely distort any findings since non-attendees have different levels of education and income than church attendees. I also used a sample that included oversampling for individuals who attended multiracial congregations. The results, concerning blacks and Latinos without the oversample, did not provide significant results, in large part due to the small number of these people of color attending multiracial churches in the probability sample. However, the direction of the findings of the probability sample was the same as the oversample and so I used the oversample to obtain significant results. 4. The LSAF did include information about the race of the respondent’s spouse. However, the number of people of color who were interracially married was too small to make meaningful comparisons. Furthermore, there is already evidence from better data that individuals who interracially marry are more likely to enjoy higher levels of educational (Tucker and Mitchell-Kernan, 1990; Heaton and Albrecht, 1991; Qian, 1997; Morning, 2000) and economic (Hwang et al., 1995; Heaton and Albrecht, 1996; Morning, 2000) success and so there is little need to demonstrate this potential difference with the LSAF. 5. It is also important to assess whether educational effects may be linked to this contact. Unfortunately, none of the data available for this study qualitatively explores the potential of contact to influence the educational outcomes of people of color. 6. Unfortunately, the respondents were not asked about educational status. Since most individuals obtain their education early in life, it is likely that those who join multiracial churches relatively late in their lives have their educational status before they join their church, whereas those who join their multiracial church before going to college will attain their educational status after joining the church. For this reason, asking about when such people of color gained their educational status may not produce fruitful results. However, it is possible, and perhaps even likely, that attendance at a multiracial church may help people of color to use their education more productively and/or to help people of color to prepare their children for educational success. A future carefully designed research tool may be able to get at such issues. 7. Since there is no quantitative evidence that interracial contact is correlated to economic success for Asian Americans, I excluded them from this analysis. 8. However, it should be noted that self-selection is not the only possible explanation that can be put forward in these cases. It is quite plausible that such peo-

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ple of color possess racially diverse social networks that both led them to a multiracial religious institution and provided them access to the social capital that majority group members possessed. My concession that self-selection remains a possibility for these sixteen respondents should not be taken to mean that self-selection is the only, or even the best, explanation. 9. There is some justification in eliminating these respondents since some of the interviewers did not ask the question about the increase in income. Furthermore, when I went back to read the responses, many of them noted that their income increased steadily but not all at once. This type of response leaves open the possibility that the social/cultural capital received from the church may have played a role in obtaining their original job or keeping that job. 10. The black/nonblack society (Yancey, 2003c) in which a powerful barrier keeps most blacks out of the mainstream, may account for this effect. Such a barrier does not exist for Hispanic Americans. It is possible that as we head toward a black/nonblack society, Hispanic Americans may be able to cash in on the social resources they gain from interracial contact more than African Americans because there is greater openness to their inclusion. 11. Asian Americans are another racial group that has a high percentage of first- and second-generation immigrants, but unlike Hispanic immigrants, Asian immigrants are likely to have high levels of education, and thus social capital. 12. However, there is evidence that multiracial churches are more likely to enjoy SES diversity than churches made up of predominantly one racial group. There was a seven-point scale on the LSAF questionnaire sent to congregations that asked the respondent to assess the SES diversity of the congregation. Higher numbers indicated a higher level of self-assessed SES diversity. Unweighted measures indicated that multiracial churches had significantly higher levels of SES diversity than nonmultiracial churches (4.675 versus 3.473: p < 0.001). 13. It is very possible that more than one-third of the respondents had their economic success influenced by interracial contact. Interracial friendships with majority group members of an interracial church before the respondent joined that church may have influenced the income capacity of the respondent. Furthermore, since the LSAF data indicated that members of multiracial churches are more likely to have racially diverse friendship networks than other respondents, it is plausible that interracial contact with nonattendees who are majority group members may have influenced the respondents’ income capacity as well. 14. In the LSAF we did not ask for exact ages of the respondents but instead just asked them to fill out a questionnaire with an age range. 15. In retrospect, it may have been more advantageous to ask the respondents directly how their congregation helped them to improve their educational/economic status. Sometimes a better way to get more precise information about social processes is to ask individuals to directly explain those processes. As we endeavored to generally presenting nonleading questions, however, we focused on avoiding such direct questions. 16. Kalmijn and Kraaykamp (1996) show that the integration of blacks into European American culture leads to a merging of the educational trends of blacks and whites. Thus, interracial marriages like John and Patricia’s may allow African Americans to learn more of European American culture and gain educational success. 17. It may be argued that no parent would pick music over education, yet I interviewed a parent who did just that. In fact, almost half the parents picked religion as the most important dimension, and exactly half picked education. There is

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no guarantee that a parent would value education over music, and Bill’s choice of education should not be taken for granted. 18. Of course, there are those who believe that the very problems people of color suffer from result from the capitalist nature of American society and that our economic social structure cannot be redeemed but must be replaced by a socialist economy (Cox, 1964; Bonacich, 1980; Hall, 1980; Marable, 1983; Carr, 1997). Their solution is to totally overhaul our social and economic systems. I respect such beliefs. However, given the fact that a United States style of capitalism is going to be the dominant social structure in our society for some time to come, I would personally place more emphasis on assessing how people of color can succeed in this current system rather than attempting to overthrow it. 19. In footnote 55, I noted that there is research that indicates that black children who have been adopted by whites do better on IQ exams than those adopted by blacks. Thus transracial adoptive families are an important location to look for how social resources can be crossracially transferred in our society.

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7

n Chapter 1, I related a story about my best friend in college. The story suggested that interracial contact does not provide a forum by which majority group members may rethink their previous ideas about racial issues. Yet now we can see why my story may not be a good example of the potential of interracial contact. I was the best friend of a white student, but he did not have a lot of other friends of color. We now know that having a single close friend of color is not heavily related to progressive racial attitudes. We both attended the same church, which was predominantly white. He did not interracially date and eventually married a white woman. We now know that if my friend had married interracially or attended a multiracial congregation that his chances of developing progressive racial attitudes would have increased. My story does not prove that interracial contact cannot alter racial attitudes, but that for contact to alter racial attitudes, the contact has to occur under the proper social conditions. A clear example of how interracial contact manifests in our society can be seen in my own interracial marriage. Unlike my relationship with my friend in college, my wife Sherelyn and I talk about racial issues on a consistent basis. We had to start discussing these issues before we married because we realized that we would live in a society where there is a different reality facing our interracial union than a same-race marriage. We have had to face racial slights together and anticipate potential racial discrimination that may arise against our marriage. I do not want to overstate these problems. We have never had any serious racist threats. But there have been some minor inconveniences created by the interracial nature of our relationship. With my best friend in college, issues of racism came up infrequently. When they did come up, they were generally safe topics such as white supremacists—something that almost everyone in our society can condemn. Clearly, the level of racial discourse that I had with my best friend in college pales compared to the level of discourse I have today with Sherelyn. I 113

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do not bring this up to criticize my friend, because part of this difference is undoubtedly attributable to my own stage of development as a person of color in college. But the comparison does show that interracial contact with a best friend is often insufficient to create attitudinal change, but such contact in a marital setting can produce different results. What is the difference between Sherelyn and my best friend’s perceptions of racism? To the best of my knowledge (remember we did not talk very much about racial issues), my best friend generally exhibited a belief in color blindness—a feature of white racial identity. Sherelyn, however, is aware of structural racism. She supports affirmative action and even some mild forms of reparations. She is proud of her French heritage but does not perceive it to be superior to the racial and cultural heritage of other groups. In fact, she is very critical of many of the ways in which majority group members have abused people of color in the past and the way in which they take advantage of their white privilege today (yes, she believes that whites have privilege in contemporary society, a belief that runs counter to the tenets of white racial identity). Although she grew up in the overwhelmingly white state of Idaho, if she goes out with a woman today, that person is about as likely to be a person of color as to be white. Sherelyn is also very comfortable interacting with people from different cultures and often seeks out relationships with those of different cultures. I cannot say the same thing about my best friend in college. Are her attitudes directly attributable to our marriage, or did they develop before we were married? To be fair, some of her racial progressiveness had developed before we married. There may have been some self-selection in that if she was not racially progressive enough to consider marriage to an African American (having grown up in Idaho in the 1960s and 1970s, such progressiveness should not be taken for granted), then our marriage would not have taken place. However, since being married she has made an effort to learn more about the struggles of people of color and has developed an interest in the racial history of the United States. Racism is very real to her because she has a black husband who can be the target of racism.1 She reads some of the books I purchase on the topic of contemporary racism, which helped shape her understanding of the contemporary racial structure in the United States. Her friendships with people of other races have exposed her to the racism that those friends have experienced. It is true that self-selection has played some role in her current understanding about racial issues in the United States, but it has also become clear to me that the interracial contacts she has in her life has given her new perspectives about racism that she did not have before we married. By contrast, I have no recollection that the racial attitudes of my college best friend changed at all during the time I was close to him. This comparison of Sherelyn and my best friend in college illustrates that interracial contact matters, but only if that contact occurs in the proper social context.

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My purpose in writing this book was to quantitatively show the potential of interracial contact to influence the racial attitudes of Americans in different social settings and then to qualitatively look at how that process of attitude alteration takes place. I believe that I have met those goals with the limited amount of data available to me at this current time. I am under no illusion that this test of the Contact Hypothesis answers every theoretical and methodological concern that detractors of this theory may have. I question whether any single research project can provide such a definitive answer to a major sociological question. But this work does reinforce the likelihood that interracial contact helps to shape the racial attitudes of majority group members and the SES/educational status of people of color. I welcome future work that builds on these current findings and allows us to gain even more of an understanding of how interracial contact can shape our society. If interracial contact can influence racial attitudes, then what does that mean for race relations in the United States? Can we hope for interracial friendships to somehow create more racial understanding among majority group members? What is the relationship between interracial contact and social activism in our society? These are very important questions that must be dealt with in light of this book’s findings. In the next section, I consider the role that interracial contact may play as it concerns societal change.

Interracial Contact and Social Change As sociologists, we are trained to examine the consequences of social structure. Our analysis is often used in attempts to alter detrimental social structures in our societies. Concerning the enduring effects of racism, many social scientists and social thinkers have investigated how racialized social structures perpetuate inequitable racial outcomes (Omi and Winant, 1994; Free, 1996; Hacker, 1995; Oliver and Shapiro, 1995; Massey and Denton, 1996; Carr, 1997; Feagin, 2000; Bonilla-Silva, 2001; Walker et al., 2003). They argue that if these structures are not altered, there is little chance that we will be able to effectively deal with racism. I agree with them. The focus of social thinkers on social structures and the social movements that have arisen to challenge racialized social institutions is not misplaced; it is necessary for producing a brighter future for people of color. However, the important question that comes out of this work is, how can we alter the social structures of our society? In a democracy such as the United States, efforts to alter the social structure are doomed without sufficient social support. For example, it is reasonable to postulate that affirmative action is an attempt to change the racialized structures of our society. This program tries to alter the basic racial hierarchy of society by allowing people of color to gain access to many of the social resources they have

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been denied. Right after the passage of civil rights legislation in the 1960s, support for these programs was sufficient for President Lyndon B. Johnson to begin to institute them. Yet today, the same cannot be said. In recent years California and Washington, which are by no means politically conservative bastions, have passed public referendums that have watered down the potency of affirmative action, and the court system, as seen in Hopwood v. Texas (1996) and Gratz and Hamacher/Grutter v. the Regents of the University of Michigan (2003), is showing less support for affirmative action programs. Without a strong showing of public support, it is unlikely that affirmative action will be able to reform the racialized structures in our society. It can be argued that the current program of affirmative action is relatively weak. But with the very survival of this program at stake, the key question is not whether affirmative action, as it is presently constructed, will be sufficiently strong to deal with institutional racism, but rather whether it is possible to generate enough social support for a program of this type at all. Those who want to change the social structures that undergird racism must begin to think about how to generate needed social support. The research in this book suggests that efforts at altering the social structure of our society must be augmented by deliberate attempts to racially diversify our social networks. I suggest that interracial contact can produce in majority group members an appreciation for the need for racial social justice. The possibility exists that people of color can recruit more support through their interracial relations. It is just as important that racial minorities do not accept a color-blind philosophy because of interracial contact. My research finds no evidence that people of color will “sell out” because of their majority group friends and spouses. Furthermore, people of color likely gain social and cultural capital they can use to augment their economic and educational successes. Theoretically, this capital helps place them in better economic situations so that they can protect their communities from the debilitating effects of racism. Quite simply, there is no downside to increased interaction between people of color and majority group members, provided that this interaction happens under the right social conditions.

Interracial Contact as a Microlevel Solution If there is no downside to interracial contact, then it is worth our time to think about the role of interracial contact as it concerns social change in the United States. Social scientists and thinkers have tended to focus on the structural or macrolevel ways in which our society is racialized. Naturally, solutions offered by such individuals focused upon how to overcome these structures. These individuals are correct in their determination to deal with

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institutional racism, but it is likely that this focus has missed another very important line of attack upon racist social structures. There are also very important microlevel considerations we should use in our attempts to create a more egalitarian racial society. Interracial contact is one of the most important microlevel methods we have for dealing with racism. Support for measures to deal with the results of racism is decreasing among majority group members in the United States (Schuman et al., 1997). Without such support, there is little hope that public officials will push for such measures. It is vital that majority group members be more effectively recruited into efforts that help to overcome racism. The research in this book suggests that interracial contact can help alter racial attitudes. If the recruitment of majority group members into social movements that deal with racism is important, then it is vital to think about the use of interracial contact to aid that recruitment. There is a growing body of literature on what has been termed “antiracism” (Bowser, 1995; Derman-Sparks and Phillips, 1997; Lentin, 2000; O’Brien, 2001; Aveling, 2002; Katz, 2003). This concept, which I touched on in Chapter 1, involves actions that lead to the dismantling of racism, not merely a “change of heart.” To further this end, we may well ask whether the changes documented in this book lead to some form of antiracist action or merely create a degree of attitudinal change. Changing a person’s racial attitudes is a necessary, but not sufficient, step toward recruiting them into activities that will reform racialized social structures in the United States. It is highly improbable that a majority group member with a color-blind perspective on racial issues will be willing to engage in actions that help to eliminate institutional racism. However, a change in attitudes does not necessarily lead to actions that confront racism. My research does not contain measures to adequately answer the question of the attitude-action link. Future research is vital for us to gain a complete assessment of the potential of interracial contact to recruit majority group members into communities and movements that deal with racism. However, there is at least indirect evidence that interracial contact can be an important step in galvanizing majority group members to take actions that deal with racism. As part of the LSAF project, we mailed a survey to a variety of multiracial and nonmultiracial churches. We asked these churches about their community programs and to assess on a seven-point scale how “activist” they were on social issues, with higher numbers indicating more social activism. The unweighted data indicated that multiracial churches scored significantly higher on a social activism scale than nonmultiracial churches (3.676 versus 3.172; p = 0.003). They also were more likely to have programs for migrants or immigrants (15.8 percent versus 9 percent; p = 0.039) and to have programs that organized social advocacy (19.3 percent versus 13.3 percent; p = 0.116). These differences were greater when I elim-

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inated churches of color from the nonmultiracial sample. Obviously, these measures do not adequately operationalize how active a church is when dealing with racial issues from a structural perspective. It may be political issues such as abortion or same-sex marriage that trigger this activism. But the results of LSAF research do suggest that multiracial churches may have a propensity to become more socially active and that this social activism can theoretically develop from the presence of people of color in the congregation. The results concerning the higher number of programs for migrants and immigrants bolster support for this explanation. To fully answer the question of multiracial spirituality and social activism, there is a need for research into how a multiracial religious environment can encourage social activism. But the indirect evidence I present does indicate that interracial contact may change more than just racial attitudes. Such contact may alter how individuals act and the willingness of majority group members to take social stands for people of color. The fact that interracial contact does have the potential to alter racial attitudes means that this contact, under the proper conditions, may enhance recruitment of majority group members into alliances with people of color. This potential does not give those who want to change racialized social structures everything they hope for, but it is an important beginning. Future research into the social activism of individuals who attend multiracial churches, interracial marriages, or individuals with racially mixed social networks is needed to fully answer the question of an attitude-action link.

How Can We Encourage Interracial Interaction? It does no good to learn that interracial contact can alter racial attitudes if we cannot foster that contact. No governmental programs can induce interracial contact among individuals who do not want to interact with those of other races. Indeed, it may be the challenge of creating useful types of interracial contact, and not the argument of whether such contact will produce meaningful changes among majority group members, that proves to be the most difficult dilemma in the use of interracial contact to deal with racism. This book is not a call for more multiracial churches and interracial romantic relationships. There is nothing wrong with encouraging the development of multiracial churches or supporting those who choose to interracially marry, but not all individuals possess strong religious beliefs, and many do not desire to outmarry. Yet as I pointed out in Chapter 3, there are other areas in which interracial interaction may prove to be fruitful, such as athletic teams and the military. Both can theoretically meet the conditions necessary for productive interracial contact. It is also possible that social

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clubs where people tend to develop close relations with each other may also be effective in creating the types of contacts necessary to achieve goals of racial communication. Interracial contact holds promises that must be fully realized, and these promises cannot be limited to the religious and marital dimensions I explored in this book. We have to be realistic about our current ability to use interracial contact to combat racism in the United States. There are two very real issues that must be confronted, even as we begin to look toward interracial contact as a tool for racial understanding. The first issue deals with the relative openness of majority group members to overtures of interracial contact. At least as it concerns African Americans, there is more hostility among whites toward interracial social relations with people of color than vice versa (Farley et al., 1979; Lake, 1981; Massey and Denton, 1996; Herring and Amissah, 1997). So even if people of color want to initiate interracial contact, it may not be possible for them to do so. Only if majority group members are willing to respond to the invitation of people of color will extensive interracial contact become possible. It is relatively easy for majority group members to find a friend of color or two and develop a relationship with those individuals. However, we have seen that merely having an intimate friend is not very predictive of progressive racial attitudes. Somehow majority group members must either join multiracial organizations that promote primary relationships or must develop a diverse racial network beyond a few friends of color. The challenge for those who want to use interracial relationships to deal with racial reconciliation is to think about how to make it easier and more likely for majority group members to join such organizations or to develop racially mixed social networks. It is vital to think about how we can create an atmosphere in which we celebrate interracial interactions rather than merely tolerate them. The goals of diversity programs aimed at majority group members may need to change if we are going to alter our propensity to develop extensive, productive, cross-racial contact; these goals need to encourage productive interracial contact. When majority group members claim that they are free of racism merely because they have a good friend of color, we must ask them how well they understand cultures of color. Are they willing to attend cultural events that celebrate the accomplishments of people of color? How often they are in environments where they are the numerical minority? How often are they in truly multiracial environments at all? Knowledge and tolerance are not sufficient for real societal change. It is also important to encourage majority group members to develop more extensive interracial contacts that can solidify the potential commitment of those majority group members to progressive racial change in our society. Changing the goals of our programs will lead us to create different challenges for the majority group members who attend multicultural and diversity courses/programs.

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Let me also suggest, that in the vein of expanding interracial relationships, the time may also have come to think about the limits of cultural pluralism as a primary mechanism of activism. A multiracial world where minority racial groups have an interest in combining to protect themselves from the majority group can legitimate a philosophy of cultural pluralism that is relatively exclusive. It is vital that people of color utilize ideas of cultural pluralism to protect the essence of their minority culture, but it is also important that cultural pluralism is represented in a way that includes majority group members who want to participate. In this light, cultural pluralism is useful when it is truly about celebrating the accomplishments of people of color, but it is not useful when it is used to bar majority group members from participating. For example, a few years ago T-shirts became popular that stated, “It’s a Black thing. You wouldn’t understand.” These shirts reflected the need of African Americans to reaffirm their culture in a society that tends to dismiss it. But although I may understand the sentiment of such shirts, clearly these shirts tend to exclude nonblacks from participation with African Americans. Such manifestations of “cultural pride” can be detrimental to the production of healthy interracial contact and do little, if anything, to create real racial understanding. We need a healthy balance between affirming cultural pride and welcoming those of other races who may wish to participate in that culture. The imbalance of emphasizing cultural pride to the point of excluding interested others of different races can be as unhealthy as de-emphasizing cultural pride to the point of denigrating the value of one’s own culture. People of color will not always be able to convince majority group members of the importance of interracial contact, but they can deal with members of their own racial group who push ideas of cultural separatism rather than real cultural celebration. The second issue that needs to be addressed when we consider interracial contact as a tool for racial understanding is the fact that there is a natural limit to the possible positive effects of using interracial relationships to augment social movements that seek racial justice. Because people of color are a numerical, as well as a racial, minority, there is a limit to how influential interracial relationships can be. Social activists should use these interracial relationships as much as they possibly can, but even if all whites are open to developing extensive interracial contact, there are simply not enough people of color to fill all the social relationships that will be needed. This is one reason I envision interracial relationships as a supplement, a necessary supplement, but not a replacement for social activism. Because whites are still more reluctant to develop interracial social relations than other groups, it is unlikely that we will run into a numerical barrier in the near future. However, it is wise to be aware of this potential barrier. If we are able to alter our social environment so that interracial rela-

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tionships are celebrated, not merely tolerated, then we will have to think of ways to creatively overcome this barrier of numbers.2 Despite these potential problems, I contend that an extension of current interracial social relations in the United States is difficult but possible. We do not have to influence all majority group members with interracial contact. We just have to influence enough of them to gain substantial support for meaningful social change. An increased use of interracial contact can produce sufficient majority group allies who will work with people of color to fight the racism that continues to plague the United States. To do so, people of color must be willing to reexamine some of their own internal values. In many communities, racial minorities who develop relationships with majority group members are viewed with suspicion. It is not uncommon for such individuals to be seen as “sellouts.” This is a misguided and ultimately self-defeating perspective. As my research suggests, it is much more likely that people of color who develop white friends are helping to recruit those friends into an acceptance of progressive racial attitudes than being sucked into accepting the tenets of white racial identity. Part of the responsibility of people of color is to help change their own social atmosphere so that interracial personal relations can be celebrated. This type of change will never happen if people of color are discouraged from entering into interracial relationships by members of their own race.

What Will Healthy Interracial Contact Produce? What would a truly multiracial society look like? We can get some vision of it from a variety of analyses of racially integrated organizations. The work I am most familiar with concerns multiracial churches. 3 My own work (Yancey 2003a) on multiracial churches indicates that, first of all, these congregations exhibit important cultural differences from nonmultiracial churches. For example, because of the racial diversity of these congregations, they are unlikely to accept a worship style that can easily be linked to a single cultural tradition. Thus, I have yet to find a multiracial church that utilizes the traditional “call and response” preaching method and only sings black gospel songs. These traditions have historically been popular within predominantly black churches, but these practices would not be useful in promoting a multiracial community.4 A multiracial community has to be one where no one racial group dominates the cultural underpinnings of that community. An important implication of this observation is that even though the racial attitudes of people of color do not change due to interracial contact, the cultural patterns by which they live their lives may undergo some alteration. A second important observation I made from my studies of multiracial

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churches was the prevalence of racially diverse leadership within these churches. It was particularly interesting that African Americans were significantly less likely to join a multiracial religious community unless there was racially diverse leadership (Yancey, 2003a). Many leaders of these congregations realized that for a multiracial community to sustain itself, they must recruit leaders from different racial groups. Likewise, it is possible that interracial contact will produce an atmosphere in which it becomes easier to include people of color in leadership positions in society. Majority group members may learn to value leadership of color, and people of color may gain the social and cultural tools that help them to acquire these higher positions. The findings concerning the increased economic and educational status of people of color who come into contact with majority group members may substantiate such trends. These observations about multiracial religious communities help us to understand how our society might change because of an increase in productive interracial contact. Yet some may contend that the religious nature of these communities unduly influences these observations. It would also be advantageous to examine an authentic multiracial setting that goes beyond the interests of those with high religiosity. Furthermore, my study of multiracial churches is limited to individuals who are in an organization that can separate itself from the racial norms of the United States. It is of interest to investigate what happens to a multiracial community that is not limited to a given organization and must interact with the larger racial hierarchy in our society. Ideally, future researchers will somehow identify these communities and produce the research necessary for us to gain an even more complete understanding of the potential of interracial contact to shape society.5 Multiracial contact and collaboration provide the atmosphere that can best energize new social movements for racial healing and justice. We have seen evidence that such contact can have a powerful effect on the propensity of religious organizations to alter the racial attitudes of majority group members and on the economic/educational status of people of color. If interracial contact is the catalyst to the development of a healthier racial future, then we would do well to think about how we can promote healthy interracial contact in a variety of subcultures. The development of such subcultures may allow for the creation of the social activism and movements that many social activists and scientists have called for. The microlevel dynamics of interracial contact cannot be overlooked as we make macrolevel assessments on how to overcome racism. In a previous book (Yancey 2003c), I argued that certain nonblack groups are likely to assimilate into the dominant society over the next few decades and that one of the reasons they are assimilating is that they are experiencing more acceptance from dominant group members. In light of my finding that interracial contact does not appear to influence the attitudes

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of people of color, it is worth speculating why minority groups can become assimilated into the majority group culture. The acceptance of certain former minority groups can lead to contact that facilitates their inclusion into the racial mainstream. How can I reconcile these seemingly contradictory arguments? The key is the context of the contact. The type of contact that leads to assimilation is the inclusion of people of color into predominantly white neighborhoods or institutions.6 In that context, people of color may be influenced into accepting the perspectives of the dominant culture because they are not in an egalitarian relationship with whites. However, the interracial contact I examined in this book is based upon egalitarian, cooperative relationships that work against this type of assimilation. As long as we allow interracial contact to happen haphazardly in our society, then the type of assimilation I noted in my previous book remains a viable possibility. However, if we can somehow encourage interracial contact under productive conditions, then we may experience the positive effects seen in this book.

Where Do We Go from Here? Now comes perhaps the hardest part for me to write about—what we should do with this research and how we can practically apply these findings. What is the job of social activists and social policymakers as it concerns interracial contact? It is always risky for social scientists to proscribe solutions since we are quite good at locating what is wrong with our society. Sometimes we identify possible solutions to those problems, but we do not always construct practical solutions. Because of my awareness of this shortcoming, it is with some fear and trepidation that I speculate about using the Contact Hypothesis to solve racial problems in our society. However, I believe that basic research should be applied to real world problems, so I am obligated to take a stab at it. Some of my solutions are remedies that I have hinted at earlier in this chapter, but I take the time to explicitly state them here. Challenge the Notion of “Sellout” in Communities of Color It is a mistake to think that only European Americans erect racial barriers in our society. People of color often look down upon their racial peers who develop friendships and/or romantic relationships with majority group members or who are members of predominantly white organizations. As long as people of color stigmatize racial minorities who associate with European Americans, then all efforts to create multiracial coalitions will be

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severely handicapped. Individuals who have suffered the degree of racial oppression that people of color have suffered will be very protective of those in their own group and be quick to enforce group loyalty. Nevertheless, the overemphasis on such loyalty can have undesired consequences: such actions can isolate people of color from the centers of power and increase the racial alienation that helps to maintain the status quo. Thus, notions that people of color who have many white friends or who have joined predominantly white institutions have “sold out” to the majority group must be resisted. The idea that people of color are selling out is particularly relevant as it concerns interracial families. It has been suggested that people of color who seek white spouses are ashamed of their racial heritage.7 It has also been argued that these individuals are turning their backs upon their racial group.8 In fact, there is no empirical evidence that people of color who outmarry do so for reasons that are any different from those of people of color who marry within their own race.9 There are some racial minorities who prefer to date whites, but my anecdotal encounters with them indicate that they generally have a preference for European physical features or were raised with many white friends and thus look for a white mate.10 Rather than cast aspersions upon those who choose to out-date, we should take them at their word when they claim that they do not hate members of their own race. The results of my study indicate that people of color who outmarry do not tend to change their racial attitudes, but majority group members are likely to make attitudinal alterations because of their interracial marriages. This reality must filter through communities of color so that the process of stigmatizing those who outmarry can be lessened. Rather than perceiving individuals who outmarry as sellouts attempting to leave communities of color, we should perceive such individuals as able recruiters who will bring in new families as allies into the struggle for racial justice. Then we will be in a position to encourage, instead of discourage, interracial interaction throughout our society. Likewise, we should work to make sure that people of color with many majority group friends or who join organizations that have many white members are also free from sanction from their minority group communities. Add an Interracial Friendship Component to Diversity Training and Multicultural Programs Current attempts to enhance racial diversity through diversity training or multicultural programs are incomplete. Many of our diversity/multicultural programs attempt to enhance racial diversity by educating majority group members about racism and cultural differences. These programs then go on

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to generally instruct majority group members in how to tolerate, or even to accept, people of color. The heavy reliance on education in these programs is related to the ideological bias of those who design such programs toward the power of educational training. The powerful propensity of using education as the answer to social ills is well grounded among social scientists. If education is all we need to solve racial problems, then this bias is well founded. However, this propensity has led us to ignore other possible solutions to racial estrangement. Furthermore, I am wary of the power of educational programs to cure the racial sickness that has affected our society.11 It is my contention that diversity/multicultural programs should push European Americans to become part of racially diverse communities and to develop racially mixed social networks. Perhaps the programs could provide applied assignments, or “challenges,” that force them to explore membership in primary multiracial organizations such as social clubs and religious institutions. The programs could also challenge them to seek out multiple friends of color. What a challenge it would be if a white family had a person of color over for dinner twice a month for a year. Encouraging them to attend the cultural events of communities of color on a consistent basis may also lead to interracial contacts. Such challenges would go far toward changing the lifestyle of majority group members. I am under no illusion that such challenges will, by themselves, transform all majority group members in diversity/multicultural programs. Some majority group members do not want to alter their perspectives, and others will not find the time to investigate such “challenges.” But augmenting our current efforts at education with real applied challenges is vital if we are going to have effective programs. Be Proactive in Using Interracial Contact to Recruit Supporters Because of my work concerning multiracial churches, I have been asked several times about what churches can do to become more racially diverse. I have discovered that many individuals are perplexed that people of different races do not attend their church since they believe that such individuals will be welcomed. These individuals believe that if they open their church doors and are friendly to those of other races who attend their church, then they should be able to attract a multiracial audience. However, racial barriers that have developed in our country are so powerful that it is actually unlikely that a congregation will be able to attract those of different races unless that church takes steps to intentionally attract such people.12 I also wonder if some social activists make the same mistake as these church leaders. I believe that most social activists are eager to attract more support from majority group members. I even believe that there are majority

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group members, unbeknown to these activists, who may be willing to support them. However, these majority group members may be unlikely to seek out social organizations that deal with societal racism; those organizations must take steps to reach out to them. One such important step is the use of primary interracial relationships to provide an entrance path for some majority group members into social activist organizations. Without such friendships, some whites sympathetic to issues of racial justice will not feel comfortable being part of organizations fighting institutional racism. Thus, social activists of color should think about the majority group members who are in their social networks and develop the social skills that will help them befriend such individuals. As they befriend them, it will become easier for their new majority group member friends to become involved in social movements that aid people of color. Just as churches must make deliberate attempts to incorporate those of different races into the congregation, so also must activists of color make deliberate attempts to seek out European Americans. Some may argue that there may not be many whites sympathetic to the plight of people of color who are not already working with social activists. Indeed, we have to be honest in our assessment of the willingness of majority group members to deal with institutional racism. Most whites are blind to structural racism and will do little to combat it. These whites are highly unlikely to join groups that prioritize supporting programs that address structural racism. It is questionable whether diversity, political, or multicultural programs, as currently constructed, will ever change the opinions of such individuals. Without the introduction of interracial relationships or multiracial organizations into their lives, some majority group members will fail to understand the modern forms of racism that continue to plague our society. It is precisely to reach these individuals that social activists must think about how to use interracial contact. Even whites who are initially very unsympathetic to issues of race and racism can become more supportive if they develop a racially mixed social network or join a primary multiracial organization. For this reason, there is great benefit in activists of color joining a nonpolitical organization (i.e., book club, religious congregation, athletic team) that a European American can be invited to join or where he or she can meet majority group members. Doing so will allow him or her to diversify his or her friendship networks and to possibly influence more majority group members. Encourage Interracial Primary Relationships, Even in Secondary Organizations This research has demonstrated the potential positive benefits of interracial contact within primary organizations, defined as those organizations that

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encourage primary relationships. The conditions necessary for positive interracial contact are generally found within primary organizations. Interracial contact is significantly less effective in institutions (i.e., educational, occupational, and residential) where secondary relationships are commonplace. For this reason, it is unwise to expect the positive benefits of interracial contact to be very powerful within secondary organizations since these institutions are unlikely to provide the proper conditions that make interracial contact a positive good for our society. Does this mean that we are forced to live with the inefficiency of secondary organizations to produce positive attitudinal alterations? I do not think so. Secondary organizations may never be as effective as primary organizations in the production of positive interracial contact, but they can improve. It is our task to begin to conceptualize ways to make secondary organizations into settings where interracial contact can produce attitudinal changes for majority group members and create social capital for people of color. Conceptualizing how we can make secondary organizations more advantageous for racial healing is a task that I will not be able to accomplish in a few short sentences. Indeed, there is a need to write entire books on this subject, or even on how we can create useful interracial contact within certain types (educational, occupational) of secondary organizations. However, I would like to illustrate at least one example of how I have attempted to reform the secondary educational organization in which I work so that interracial contact can have more powerful positive effects. When I teach classes on race and ethnicity, I have made it a practice to have students form several interracial discussion groups of five to seven people. They also are given a task that they must accomplish within the group. This practice is intended to replicate some of the conditions necessary for positive interracial contact. The group project forces students of different races to cooperate as they work together. Because I keep them in the same group the entire semester, I hope that some primary egalitarian relationships will develop in the group. Perhaps the white students will develop the racially mixed social networks that will continue to teach them about racial issues long after they have left my class. Finally, because I have them discuss some of the controversial topics found within the study of race and ethnicity, the students are put into situations where they learn about perspectives that differ from their own. I admit that this practice is an experiment. I have no evidence that my technique has been efficient in producing attitudinal change among my majority group students. However, I am confident that this method is more efficient that merely having me lecture them for an hour on the ills of racism. If this current effort at small groups is not as effective as I want it to be, at least it is an attempt to introduce elements of positive interracial con-

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tact into a secondary organization.13 It is only by such experiments that we can begin to find ways to introduce the positive elements of interracial contact into secondary organizations. Encourage Research into Why Certain Primary Organizations Become Multiracial If interracial contact benefits our society, then we should encourage it. To this end, we should support primary multiracial organizations. Those of us in academia can encourage such organizations by studying them to find out how they develop and why some of them succeed. In a society where segregated organizations are the norm, it is provocative for researchers to ask why some organizations can overcome the general social values of racial segregation. As I noted above, my research on multiracial churches has helped me to identify some of the reasons that churches become multiracial. In 2003 I published a book (Yancey, 2003a) identifying these reasons for nonacademics. Since then, I have been able to help some churches become multiracial, and some of my own personal social activism has found a place in this work. By aiding religious institutions in their quest to become more multiracial, I am helping to create more of the productive interracial relationships that are necessary to overcome the pervasive racism in the United States. Of course, religious institutions are not the only places where the conditions for positive interracial contact can occur. Some scholars have investigated why the military has also become racially diverse (Lawrence and Kane, 1995; Moskos and Butler, 1996), but more is necessary. An investigation into how some individuals create a racially mixed social network, while others do not, is also a noteworthy research question. Why are some social clubs multiracial, while others are not? There are many coaches who would like to know the dynamics that help or hinder interracial communication on their athletic teams. The support for interracial contact that I found in this book lends weight to these and other important questions about multiracial organizations. One of the ways scholars can support positive interracial contact is to attempt to answer these types of questions.

Conclusion: Implications of the Power of Interracial Contact I began this book with the hope of exploring the Contact Hypothesis. I have shown evidence that interracial contact is a powerful mechanism for social change, if that contact is conducted under the proper social conditions. Future studies that build on this theory are warranted and allow me to spec-

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ulate about where I see the need for future research before closing this work with a few final comments. As I suggested above, I look forward to future studies of athletic teams, the military, and other venues that hold the promise of productive interracial contact. I see no reason to limit the effects of interracial contact to marriages, social networks, or religious organizations. If interracial contact is creating some of the effects noted in this book, then we should find these effects in other organizations where fruitful conditions of interracial contact can be met. It is my hope that future research into such organizations will validate the interracial contact effects documented in this book. Furthermore, I have only scratched the surface of the potential use of racially mixed social networks to combat racial alienation. I look forward to more qualitative work on the dynamics of interracial contact so that we can better understand the social mechanism by which interracial contact works. Qualitative research in a variety of primary social settings and with a higher number of respondents may produce more pathways by which interracial contact can be seen as leading to attitudinal change. Understanding these pathways is important, particularly if we want to find mechanisms for reproducing positive contact effects within secondary organizations. Future research on majority group members who have developed progressive racial attitudes can help us discover the role interracial contact may have played in that development. Interracial contact is not a panacea: it must be used in conjunction with other types of social activism. However, it is a tool that to date has been underutilized. To use this tool we have to be aware of its existence and potential power. If I have alerted individuals who care deeply about racial issues to the potential of interracial contact, and those individuals begin to look for ways to use this contact in their efforts to overcome racism, then I am satisfied with the results of this book. Indeed, it is my hope that because of this book, we will begin to see more effective social movements that deal with structural racism in our society. I am confident that interracial contact has the power to affect the attitudes of majority group members when the contact occurs under the proper conditions. However, I am less confident that these changed social attitudes guarantee a higher level of social activity designed to rid society of racism. As I stated above, there is a need for empirical work to investigate if this contact can recruit majority group members into social movements for racial justice. I have found indirect evidence of a social activist effect among some multiracial churches, but this current study fails to document whether the attitudinal changes within majority group members lead to activist impulses. Work that investigates the possibility of an increased tendency to activism as a result of interracial contact would be greatly welcomed. I am intrigued by the apparent social and cultural capital effect found

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for African and Hispanic Americans. This effect holds with it the promise that interracial contact will do more than bring insight to majority group members. This contact may also help to bring financial and educational success to people of color. Clearly there is a need for more research to further substantiate this effect. The different degrees to which there may be a social and cultural capital effect for African Americans versus Hispanic Americans should be investigated, as well as the possible mechanism by which interracial contact can lead to higher levels of social resources for these minority groups. Once we establish a relationship between contact and higher economic/educational status for people of color, then we must explore how and why this social/cultural capital effect takes place. Sociologists have sometimes been critical of individuals who limit their understanding of society to psychological forces. Much of this criticism is well deserved. Using only a psychological microlevel understanding of our social world leaves us blind to important structural forces. But we should not ignore these microlevel forces altogether. We must use both microlevel and macrolevel understandings of society to gain a holistic comprehension of the social problems that we would like to end in the United States. The Contact Hypothesis has been taken lightly as a theory, perhaps because of its microlevel nature. Yet it offers important insights into how racial attitudes can be shaped and changed. Acknowledging the dynamics created within interracial contact is vital to gain a complete understanding of how race relations work in the United States. This theory is not a replacement for other structural theories, but rather it is a vital supplement to ideas of institutional racism. As long as interracial contact is seen in this vein, then sociologists should not be concerned that research into interracial contact will detract from the attention given to the social structures that perpetuate racism. Finally, I acknowledge that there is a personal dimension to the ideas discussed in this book. I hope that this work supports those of us who live in interracial families, socialize in multiracial institutions, and/or have racially mixed social networks. I fit into all of those dimensions, so it is unsurprising that I also hope that this work encourages those without such families, institutions, or networks to value them as well. It is in those families, institutions, and networks that many of us learn important lessons of racial acceptance and interracial communication. Learning to accept and communicate with people of different races are important tasks for all of us in the United States. I hope that this book challenges us to develop acceptance and communication tools that will improve the racial atmosphere in American society.

Notes 1. I remember that, for some time following the news of the dragging death in Jasper, Texas, my wife, Sherelyn, was very concerned about my travels. That inci-

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dent occurred before we relocated to Texas, but the horrific event evoked a fear in her that would not have developed if she had been married to a white man. 2. As I have previously argued (2003c), certain groups of color (Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans) are also likely to become members of the majority group in the foreseeable future. This process will make the barrier of lower numbers of numerical minorities even harder to overcome. 3. For example, there are several studies (Becker, 1998; Yancey, 2001; Dougherty, 2003; Jenkins, 2003; Yancey, 2003a; Marti, 2005; Emerson, 2006) that give us more insight into what life is like in a multiracial congregation. 4. However, it must be noted that I did find some multiracial churches that possessed a Eurocentric musical worship style and showed little evidence of a nonwhite element in the preaching style. It is possible that people of color may be more likely to make cultural concessions to become a part of a multiracial atmosphere than majority group members. However, there are two caveats that must be taken into consideration. First, these churches did make other organizational alterations that nonmultiracial churches did not make (i.e., multiracial leadership; establishment of a goal to be racially inclusive). Second, these churches generally were not as racially diverse as the churches that included the cultural elements of people of color. Although people of color may be more willing to make cultural alterations than majority group members to enjoy a multiracial environment, there clearly is a limit to how many people of color will join a church that does not also demand cultural alterations from majority group members. 5. One such possible subculture may be what has been called “hip-hop” culture. It has become clear that this community has become more racially diverse over the past few years, and it offers us a chance to gain more insight into the potential of interracial contact. It would be of particular interest to see if the content of music by white hip-hop artists is different from that of hip-hop artists of color. If this content is basically the same, that is, if the white artists are able to “keep it real,” then assertions can be made about the power of interracial contact to produce more racial awareness among whites. 6. However, it should be noted that one of the areas of contact that I reported on in my previous work was marital assimilation. I argued that the fact that nonblack minority groups were more widely accepted as potential marital partners than blacks was an indicator that further types of assimilation were possible for nonblack minorities. I stand by that assertion. To understand why marital assimilation can lead to other types of assimilation, we should look at what the acceptance of interracial marriage signals to a racial group that had previously been looked upon as inferior to the majority group. Interracial marriage on that sort of scale may signal that this group has already assimilated to such a degree as to have gained majority group acceptance. Thus, this minority group has to come into the majority group culture on the terms of the majority group. Even if members of color in interracial marriages do not change their racial attitudes, the presence and the forces of assimilation that produce the acceptance of these interracial marriages can indicate that other people of color have become more accepting of the concepts within white racial identity. The research in this book indicates that interracial marriage itself does not alter the racial attitudes of people of color, but my earlier work suggests that larger macrolevel forces of assimilation may make interracial marriages more likely. 7. In fact, at Brown University there used to be a “Wall of Shame” that was started by black females who believed that black men who dated outside their race were disregarding their racial heritage. On the wall was a list of all the interracial couples on campus. 8. This criticism has been particularly sharp when aimed by African

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American women at African American men who date whites. There is evidence that African American women are more hostile to interracial relationships than African American men (Spickard, 1989; Paset and Taylor, 1991; Rosenblatt et al., 1995; St. Jean and Parker, 1995). This difference may result from the sex ratio within the black community, which makes it harder for black women to find a black mate. Given this reality, the resentment that many black women feel toward black men who date whites is understandable. However, such resentment does not provide evidence that such black men are “selling out”; rather, it is an artifact of the demographic dynamics in the African American community. 9. Earlier research that I have conducted indicates that people enter into interracial relationships for the same reasons others enter into same-race relationships (Lewis et al., 1997; Yancey, 2003b). The focus of the research was to investigate the stereotypes often attached to majority group members who outmarry, so we could fully test the thesis that racial minorities outmarry to escape their racial culture. However, there is little reason to suspect that they do so from this, or any other, empirical work. 10. I have seen research that suggests that some people of color do date outside their race because of the perceived negative characteristics of their own race (Taylor, n.d.). However, this same study also showed that whites who out-date often give the same reasons for outdating, and the author herself questions the power of the effect since there may be social pressure on the respondents to justify their dating decision with negative comments directed toward members of their own group. 11. Michael Emerson and David Sikkink (1998) have done research that further problematizes the effectiveness of education in solving racial problems. They found that well-educated whites were more likely to state that they would live in integrated neighborhoods and send their kids to integrated schools, but that after controlling for demographic factors, they were less likely to live in integrated neighborhoods and send their kids to integrated schools. Education may feed into a social desirability effect that makes it harder for us to assess whether the more tolerant answers we hear from the well educated accurately reflect their actual racial views. As such, education may not lead to more actions that challenge structural racism. 12. I have outlined such steps in another book of mine (Yancey 2003a). 13. For more information on this practice and my thinking behind it, see Yancey (2002a).

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M

y task in this book is to assess how interracial contact is associated with the racial attitudes of European Americans, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans. The General Social Survey (GSS) is probably the survey most commonly used by social scientists to examine social attitudes. Yet the race question used in the GSS only allows respondents to identify themselves as “white,” “black,” or “other.” Unless a researcher is willing to make the highly problematic assumption that the experiences of all nonblack racial minorities are identical, this design makes analyzing the attitudes of nonblack racial minorities impossible. 1 The GSS is not alone in this measurement problem. Gallup polls (1997), which are useful for monitoring social attitudinal trends, measure the race of respondents as “white,” “nonwhite/black,” or “black,” creating the same measurement difficulties found in the GSS. It is impossible to use these two popular research instruments to assess the social attitudes of nonblack racial minorities.2 There are lesser-known survey instruments—the Southern Focus Poll, Louis Harris and Associates Polls, and the National Election Survey (NES)—that report more detail about respondents’ race. But these survey instruments incorporate samples of Hispanic Americans and Asian Americans too small to be useful. None of these three polls typically survey more than 1,300 respondents.3 For example, the 1998 NES had a sample of 1,281, containing 152 African Americans, 138 Hispanic Americans, and 16 Asian Americans. Numbers this low make it difficult to conduct the analysis necessary to examine differences in cross-racial social attitudes. Even if I am able to gather enough data about the four racial groups, another serious problem is measuring interracial contact that is theoretically productive. I pointed out theoretical reasons to believe that contact in interracial marriages, racially mixed friendship networks, and multiracial churches offers a better opportunity to test the Contact Hypothesis than 133

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most other social institutions. The problem is finding data that assesses individuals in those situations. There is no quantitative study with enough respondents in interracial marriages that allows for a fair comparison. Even the LSAF was unable to provide enough people who are interracially married (N = 123) to allow for a reasonable attempt to examine their attitudes.4 I was forced to drop consideration of interracial marriage as a potentially productive form of interracial contact in the quantitative portion of this research. However, the LSAF was useful for examining racially mixed social networks and did provide enough respondents who attend multiracial congregations (N = 388). Therefore, racially mixed social networks and multiracial congregations were two social settings that could be quantitatively investigated.

The Lilly Survey of Attitudes and Friendships The 1999–2000 LSAF was designed to assess individual attitudes, social networks, and involvement in religious life of congregations and consists of over 2,500 American respondents. Funded by a grant from the Lilly Endowment to study multiracial congregations, the telephone survey was conducted by the University of North Texas Survey Research Center. Although the primary purpose of this survey was other than conducting research into the social and racial attitudes of European, African, Hispanic, and Asian Americans, its design makes it a very valuable tool for addressing questions I wanted to explore. The survey was performed from October 1999 through March 2000, with the exception of the last three weeks in December. The survey had ambitious aims in terms of content, experimental designs, and oversampling of African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans. Using a random list of prefixes from Survey Sampling, and random-digit dialing for the last four digits, telephone numbers were called with the goal of speaking to the person eighteen years or older who had the next birthday. The survey, which was programmed into the computer-assisted telephone interviews (CATI) system, was also translated into Spanish. In the case of no answer, up to eight callbacks were performed. In the case of refusals, two conversions were attempted. For the completed sample, slightly fewer than 6 percent of respondents (134) were refusal conversions. Approximately onethird of the interviews completed with Hispanic respondents were conducted in Spanish. Due to the variety of Asian languages, the survey represents only English- and Spanish-speaking Asian Americans. When the European American quota (1,660) was filled, the survey introduction was changed to request to speak to nonwhite respondents only. The African and Hispanic American quotas were filled quickly, but at the

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time of their completion, less than 100 Asian American interviews had been finished. One more week was spent attempting to identify and interview a random sample of Asian Americans. At the conclusion of the week, 73 interviews had been completed. Due to money and time constraints, the remaining 147 interviews were conducted using a surname phone number list compiled by GENESYS. This method suffers from the obvious bias of missing any Asian Americans with nonidentifiable Asian surnames. It is estimated that approximately 40 percent of Asian Americans are excluded by this method. Because there were a sufficient number of randomly selected English-speaking Asian Americans, the impact of this sampling choice was estimated, and corrections can be made for any resulting bias. The LSAF aims to represent the English- and Spanish-speaking adult population with phones who, due to the study’s aims in measuring residential issues and attitudes, have lived at their current residence for at least three months. No claims to representation beyond these parameters are made. The response rate for the LSAF was 53 percent. According to Thomas W. Mangione (1995: 61), response rates between 50 percent and 60 percent “need some additional information that contributes to confidence about the quality” of the data. Error from nonresponse is a function of how large the nonresponse is and how different the nonresponders are from the responders. According to the survey research literature, the additional information that can aid in the assessment and, if needed, improvement of sample representativeness includes the following: 1. Comparing the sample to a census or sample with a much higher response rate; 2. Comparing refusal conversions to initial respondents, under the assumption that refusal conversions are similar to other refusers, or at least more similar to them than to initial respondents (those who responded on the first call); and 3. Comparing information about nonrespondents with that about respondents, though it is rare (almost by definition) to have such data. Because the research team wished the LSAF to be representative of the population it desired to cover, a careful analysis of the sample and its representativeness was undertaken. This was done by obtaining another survey for comparison. The US census typically is an excellent choice, but not in this case. The most recent data available were ten years old, and the demographics of the United States had changed since 1990. (The 2000 census was conducted the month after completion of the LSAF, but full results were not released until 2002.) Ideally, it is important to compare the LSAF to a reliable data source representing the midpoint of the LSAF survey peri-

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od. Fortunately, the US Department of Labor conducts a large monthly survey called the Current Population Survey (CPS). The January 2000 CPS was selected, which, with its 124,000 cases, 93 percent response rate, and elaborate weighting procedures, was an excellent contemporary source for comparison. Based on comparisons of sociodemographic variables, the LSAF, like most telephone surveys, underrepresents the less educated and males. To correct for this and for the oversamples of nonwhites, weights for each respondent were constructed. A table was generated from the CPS that created cells for each racial group by gender and five categories of education (less than high school, high school, some college or vocational technology, bachelor’s degree, and post–bachelor’s degree). The same cells were generated for the LSAF. For each cell, a weight is calculated by taking the CPS cell percentage and dividing it by the corresponding LSAF cell percentage. Before analysis on the LSAF was conducted, this weight was applied to the sample. Doing so produces percentages on race, sex, and education that are nearly identical to those of the CPS. Applying this weight within these categories produces percentages on marital status, income, and age that also closely resemble those of the CPS. Demographically (and only demographically at this point), applying the weight variable renders the LSAF representative of the population. It would be convenient to assume that, within each subcategory for which the weight corrects, those who did not respond are much like those who did respond. If this assumption were correct, it could be stated with confidence that the LSAF now represents the population. However, without additional information, this assumption may not be justified. For this reason, a comparative analysis of initial respondents to refusal conversion respondents was undertaken. The aim was not just to compare these two groups by demographic variables, as was done with the CPS, but also to compare them by a number of attitudinal, religious, and social network variables. Comparisons were tested statistically using independent-sample ttests and, when the comparison variable was not interval-level, chi-square tests of significance. Statistically comparing initial respondents to refusal conversion respondents on over fifty variables produced three clear patterns. First, the two groups were statistically identical on about 90 percent of the comparison variables. Second, the refusal conversion respondents are shyer, as measured by the fact that they, compared to initial responders, are more likely to prefer being with people they know as opposed to meeting new people. This explains in part why they initially refused an interview and had to be coaxed into agreement. Third, the four other differences that exist can be attributed almost exclusively to one key difference: the refusal conversion respondents were twice as likely to be over sixty-four years of

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age as were the initial respondents (31 percent to 15 percent). This led to employment status difference, in that the refusal conversion respondents were also twice as likely to be retired as were the initial respondents (30 percent to 15 percent). All other initial differences—racial makeup of social network, the belief that morality ought to be universal, and the belief that able-bodied people should not receive welfare—disappeared when age was accounted for. The results are instructive for assessing the representativeness of the LSAF. Nonresponders are more likely to be over sixty-four years of age and retired. This population is typically underrepresented in surveys, which, for the variables of interest in the LSAF, can lead to a slight overstatement on the degree of interracial networks and a slight overestimation of more liberal stances on a few selected attitudinal variables. Based on the fact that when age is accounted for, these differences disappear, it does appear that weighting can correct for these biases. As stated earlier, when weighted for race, sex, and education, within these categories, the age distributions of the LSAF and CPS are similar. What cannot be adjusted is the fact that nonrespondents are likely shyer than respondents. Yet this difference did not lead to any differences between initial respondents and refusal conversion respondents. The apparent impact of this difference on the representativeness of these results is statistically zero. Because a listed sample of Asian surnames was used for more than half the Asian American respondents, it is important to ensure the representativeness of that portion of the sample. The probability group of Asian Americans was compared with the listed sample after both samples were weighted by the CPS data. This comparison was made by age, education, sex, ethnicity, and a variety of attitudinal variables. There are no significant differences between these two groups on any of these measures, and these groups are statistically the same after the proper weights are applied. Several questions depended upon the racial identity of the respondent. However, there were two situations anticipated that might have made assessing the racial identity of the respondent more difficult: (1) those who identified themselves as being multiracial and (2) those who refused to give their race or gave their race as “other.” In both cases, these individuals were dropped from the analysis presented in this book. The LSAF was designed to tackle the underrepresentation of nonblack minorities without compromising the advantages of random sampling, namely generalizability.5 It used random-digit dialing to get an initial sample. Specific racial quotas were set as targets, and once those quotas were reached, members of that race were no longer surveyed. Using this quota method, the LSAF ensured enough racial minorities for the sample so that valid cross-racial comparisons could be made.6 The race question allows individuals to choose “white,” “black,” “Hispanic,” “Asian,” “Pacific

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Islander,” “American Indian,” “mixed,” or “other.” By giving the respondents such a variety of potential responses, the LSAF was able to more accurately measure the racial diversity among the respondents.7 The breakdown of the different races can be seen in Table A.1. Although this survey located enough respondents to allow for an assessment of the effects of interracial contact, it still did not locate enough individuals who attended multiracial churches to allow for productive analysis. Thus, for the analysis concerning the possible effects of contact in multiracial churches, I included respondents who were discovered through a local knowledge technique: metropolitan areas were randomly chosen, and churches in those areas were called until several multiracial congregations had been located. The leaders of those congregations were then contacted and asked to provide the names of and contact information for eight church members whom we could call for an interview. We obtained 385 individuals with this technique. An important improvement incorporated into the LSAF was that it assessed the racial makeup of the respondents’ social network, the race of their best two friends, and the racial makeup of their religious institution. In doing so, the LSAF was able to make real examinations of the propensity of interracial contact to correlate to the racial attitudes of the respondents. Respondents who indicated that their only friend of another race is white or that the best friend they have known the longest is white scored a 1 on the dummy variable white friends. Questions 28 and 29 were used to create that variable. The same technique created the variables black friends, Hispanic friends, and Asian friends. The independent variable racial diversity of circle of friends was created by question 33 and racial diversity of all people known was created by question 37. To assess the racial makeup of the religious institutions the respondent attended, the multiracial church and racial minority variables were constructed. In question 74 the respondents were asked whether they attended a

Table A.1

Racial Makeup of LSAF Sample Number

European Americans African Americans Hispanic Americans Asian Americans Pacific Islanders Native Americans Mixed race Other Total

1,662 298 307 210 6 30 33 17 2,556

Percentage 64.9 11.5 12.0 8.2 0.2 1.2 1.3 0.7 100.0

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church that contained more than 80 percent of their own race. Those who stated that this was not the case were asked in question 75 for the percentage of their own race that was in their church. Answers to this question indicated who went to a church where their group was in the numerical majority but was less than 80 percent (multiracial church) or went to a church where they were in the numerical racial minority (racial minority). To control for social and demographic differences between those who had interracial contact with others and those who did not, several other independent variables were used. These other independent variables include age, income,8 and male, a dummy variable. Education is determined by the number of years of schooling the respondent completed. Political viewpoint is the respondent’s self-assessed political orientation, with low numbers representing a more liberal political orientation. I used dummy variables to measure whether the respondent lives in the South, West, or Northeast region of the United States (North Central is the reference group). The regional designations were determined by General Social Survey categories. In the models where I looked at the effects of belonging to a multiracial church, I also included attend, a variable that measured the frequency of church attendance among the respondents. The description of the dependent variables was provided in Chapter 4. The questions used can be seen in the partial survey placed at the end of this Appendix. The variables support affirmative action, immigrants should be reduced, and too much talk about race were created with questions 48, 56, and 57, respectively. The variables welfare, patriotic,9 and arrogant were created with questions 64, 65, and 66, respectively. It should also be noted that in these last three questions, we asked about the attitude of respondents toward all four major racial groups (i.e., European Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, and Hispanic Americans).10 However, each respondent was asked about only one of the racial groups so that asking the same question about each and every group would not bias the respondents. Instead, we randomly assigned the racial group about which the respondent was asked. The same basic technique was also used for the question upset if child outmarry (question 67), 25% each (question 93), and special tax breaks (question 63), except that the respondent could not be asked about his or her own group. With this method, respondents heard the question only once and about only one racial group, but the survey of the entire population can assess the question in response to each racial group. Thus, in the special tax breaks question, about half of European American respondents were asked about how they would feel about tax breaks in an African American community and about half were asked how they would feel about tax breaks in a Hispanic American community. Any contrasting attitudes about the two groups can then be linked to the effect of being asked about a different racial group. I measured the effects of race by comparing how dif-

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ferent individuals within the same race responded to the same question, except with the mentioned racial group changed. Finally, as was discussed in Chapter 4, I also included assessments of different racialized scenarios as a way of evaluating racial attitudes. Cab driver was created with question 82. Homeowner was created with question 83. School test was created with question 84. In the LSAF seven scenarios were used, but each respondent was only asked about three of those scenarios.11 This was done to prevent the respondent from experiencing attention fatigue from being asked about the scenarios and to limit the time we would have to keep the respondent on the phone. The respondent provided a yes or no answer that would create a dichotomous variable assessing how the respondent defines racism. I chose the three scenarios that would be the most useful for getting at institutional racism.12

The Limitations of the LSAF Like any research endeavor, this effort has its limitations. Because the LSAF examined the attitudes of only four racial groups—European Americans, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans—critics may ask questions such as, Why not include smaller racial groups such as Native Americans or individuals of Middle Eastern descent? Why, given the diversity of the ethnic groups that the “Asian American” category comprises, assume that all Asian Americans have similar social attitudes? Or, for that matter, why assume that different Hispanic American ethnic groups have similar social attitudes? Where do the attitudes of mixed-race individuals fit into these issues? These are legitimate questions. It is impossible to assess all potential racial groupings in the United States with a single survey. In this research I included Hispanic Americans and Asian Americans, which is an upgrade from previous research efforts that concentrate only on European Americans and African Americans. Including Hispanic Americans and Asian Americans is significant because they are the largest American nonblack minority groups, and documenting the effects of interracial contact with these groups provides an assessment of the largest possible effect of interracial contact on the racial reality of the United States. Nevertheless, Middle Easterners, Native Americans, mixed-race individuals, and other smaller racial groups deserve study, and future research should include them as subjects. I appreciate the ethnic diversity found within the Hispanic and Asian American communities. A researcher can argue that, because of the diversity of ethnic groups who are designated as “Hispanic American or “Asian American,” there exists no “Hispanic” or “Asian” culture by which the

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social attitudes of these groups can be captured. When I assess social attitudes toward these groups, I find little merit in this critique. Although there is a diversity of ethnic groups who are considered Asian American, most non–Asian Americans still perceive Asian ethnic groups as similar to each other.13 The same can be said for Hispanic Americans. However, this critique has relevance when the LSAF assesses the attitudes of Hispanic or Asian Americans. Clearly, the perceptions of newer immigrant groups likely differ from those of more established Hispanic or Asian American groups. Future research is needed to assess whether these current findings are replicated within the different Hispanic or Asian ethnic groups in the United States. Despite these legitimate critiques, this research is a positive step forward in the assessment of the relationship between racial identity and social attitudes. The expanded racial classification is a vast improvement over the minimal categories used in the existing literature. The questioning about Latinos and Asian Americans allows for an assessment of the informal racial hierarchy in the United States that is superior to past efforts, and the LSAF will allow me to test the Contact Hypothesis in ways that were not previously possible.

Multiracial Churches Having looked at how these data were gathered and examined the construction of the dependent and independent variables of the LSAF, I am now in a position to explore the effects of interracial contact.14 The results in Chapter 4 already tell us our general findings about interracial contact. The purpose of further examination in the Appendix is to control for possible social and demographic differences between those with extensive interracial contact and those who do not have such contact and to provide assurance that the results documented in Chapter 4 are not created by spurious relationships related to social and demographic variables. For the purpose of this analysis, I am not interested in the actual direction and significance of social and demographic variables such as age, region, or sex. I used those variables so that I can control for their effects while I look at the results of the variables that measure interracial contact. For this reason, I will not include independent variables in the tables used in the Appendix unless they directly measure one of the interracial contact effects.15 Thus, the results in Table A.2 show only the effects of multiracial church and racial minority. These models indicate that European Americans who are racial minorities in their churches are more supportive of tax breaks for businesses in minority areas, of legal immigration, and of interracial marriage for their children. Those who attend multiracial churches are more

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142 Table A.2

Appendix Unstandardized Betas and Standard Errors of Multiracial Church and Racial Minority on Selected Racial Attitude Variables (all respondents)

Support affirmative action Multiracial church Racial minority N Nagelkerke R2 Immigrants should be reduced Multiracial church Racial minority N Nagelkerke R2 Too much talk about race Multiracial church Racial minority N Nagelkerke R2 Special tax breaks Multiracial church Racial minority N Nagelkerke R2 Upset if child outmarry Multiracial church Racial minority N Nagelkerke R2

European Americans

African Americans

Hispanic Americans

Asian Americans

–.066 (.291) –.158 (.183) 1,465 .161

–.259 (.439) .602 (.538) 334 .499

–.984 (.591) .033 (.715) 361 .427

.873 (1.546) –5.068c (1.614) 171 .607

.261 (.274) .592c (.174) 1,572 .17

.413 (.41) 1.112b (.489) 332 .383

–1.211b (.5) .127 (.262) 304 .411

1.11 (1.236) –1.367 (1.043) 178 .559

–.228 (.279) –.023 (.173) 1,608 .221

.446 (.407) .6 (.503) 348 .467

–.766 (.521) –.181 (.579) 317 .494

2.665b (1.22) 1.479 (1.122) 185 .462

.125 (.267) .4a (.171) 1,570 .156

.234 (.378) –.1 (.455) 334 .322

.275 (.489) .128 (.552) 307 .319

3.386c (1.28) –2.455a (1.297) 172 .617

.544a (.29) .662d (.188) 1,612 .183

.862 (.603) 1.119 (.707) 345 .37

.147 (.647) .178 (.739) 317 .393

1.517 (1.527) .344 (1.296) 178 .531

Source: Lilly Survey of Attitudes and Friendships. Notes: Entries are estimates. Standard errors are given in parentheses. These models control for age, income, education, sex, region, political orientation, and church attendance. Column represents the racial group that makes up the population examined. a. p = 0.06. b. p < 0.05. c. p < 0.01. d. p < 0.001 (two-tailed tests).

supportive of interracial marriage at the 0.06 level. African Americans who are racial minorities in their churches are more supportive of immigration. Hispanic Americans in multiracial churches are more likely to agree that legal immigration should be reduced. Asian Americans who are racial

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minorities in their churches are more supportive of tax breaks for racial minorities (at the 0.6 level) and of affirmative action. Those who are in multiracial churches but are a numerical majority are less supportive of these tax breaks, but are less likely to think that we talk too much about race. These results suggest that European Americans who are racial minorities within their churches are more supportive of the concerns of racial minorities than other European Americans. They demonstrate political support for racial minorities since they support tax breaks for minority neighborhoods and legal immigration. These European Americans also exhibit lower levels of social distance in their acceptance of interracial marriage— the only measure of social distance on this particular table. Likewise, European Americans in multiracial churches also exhibit lower levels of social distance than other European Americans but do not illustrate the sympathy to the political concerns of minority group members that those who are racial minorities in their churches display. There is little evidence of any effects for racial minorities with the possible exception of Asian Americans. However, the results from Table A.2 may not be conclusive because these results include the entire sample. Barry A. Kosmin and Seymour P. Lachman (1993) and H. Wesley Perkins (1985) contend that individuals who attend church have qualitatively different racial attitudes than nonattendees. They argue that even before religious institutions influence them, attendees may possess different racial attitudes than nonattendees. Given this possible self-selection effect, it can be argued that a better comparison should be between those who attend multiracial churches and those in segregated churches. I account for this by constructing models that eliminate those who do not presently attend a church. These models can be found in Table A.3. With three exceptions, the significant findings in Table A.3 mirror those in Table A.2. Among church attendees, Asian Americans who are racial minorities in their church are significantly less likely to believe that there is too much talk about race, and those in multiracial churches where they were the numerical majority are not more likely to support tax breaks for racial minorities. Among Hispanics, church attendees who attend multiracial churches where they are the majority are less likely to think that there is too much talk about race. Given the similarity of these two tables, it is clear that the effect of attending a multiracial church or being a racial minority in a church is basically the same, whether or not the reference group contains nonattendees. One final dependent variable remains to be tested—the 25% each variable. Since there is only one measure of social distance—upset if child outmarry—in Tables A.2 and A.3, this variable is important for assessing the association of the racial makeup of churches the respondents attended with the propensity of the respondents to have social distance from racial outgroups. Since 25% each is dichotomous, I used logistical regression to

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Standardized Betas and Standard Errors of Multiracial Church and Racial Minority for Examining Effects on Selected Racial Attitude Variables (church attendees only)

Support affirmative action Multiracial church Racial minority N Nagelkerke R2 Immigrants should be reduced Multiracial church Racial minority N Nagelkerke R2 Too much talk about race Multiracial church Racial minority N Nagelkerke R2 Special tax breaks Multiracial church Racial minority N Nagelkerke R2 Upset if child outmarry Multiracial church Racial minority N Nagelkerke R2

European Americans

African Americans

Hispanic Americans

Asian Americans

.086 (.289) .189 (.178) 1,134 .192

.223 (.436) .53 (.531) 303 .355

–1.058 (.586) –.415 (.755) 238 .984

–2.47 (2.265) –5.703c (2.05) 109 .792

.397 (.272) .745d (.169) 1,206 .178

.376 (.402) 1.118b (.488) 302 .403

–1.579c (.519) –.792 (.601) 258 .496

2.463 (1.369) 2.568 (1.958) 116 .802

–.027 (.312) .111 (.198) 1,238 .216

.347 (.399) .692 (.489) 318 .592

1.093b (.543) .183 (.588) 268 .652

3.222a (1.714) 5.555c (1.887) 121 .879

.269 (.263) –.465c (.166) 1,209 .162

.037 (.373) –.276 (.455) 304 .333

.059 (.488) .443 (.559) 261 .366

–.504 (1.307) –4.41b (1.798) 111 .699

.593b (.288) .719d (.184) 1,240 .193

1.01 (.599) 1.228 (.692) 314 .367

.111 (.649) .106 (.797) 268 .443

–.906 (2.029) –.669 (1.866) 117 .749

Source: Lilly Survey of Attitudes and Friendships. Notes: Entries are estimates. Standard errors are given in parentheses. Only those who attend church are included in these models. These models control for age, income, education, sex, region, and political orientation. Each column represents the racial group that makes up the population examined. a. p = 0.06. b. p < 0.05. c. p < 0.01. d. p< 0.001 (two-tailed tests).

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examine attitudes about living in a multiracial neighborhood. This variable measures the willingness of the respondents to live in a neighborhood where their racial group is not the numerical majority. Table A.4 shows the effects of multiracial church and racial minority on 25% each. For the models in this table, the beta coefficients, instead of unstandardized betas, are reported. The results of these models indicate that European Americans who attend multiracial churches or are racial minorities in their own churches are more willing to live in neighborhoods where they are racial minorities than are European Americans from uniracial churches. This was true in models with just church attendees and one that included all respondents. It is the same basic result as the other variable measuring social distance—upset if child outmarry—both indicate that a multiracial religious environment reduces social distance for European Americans. Even though multiracial church attendance does not matter in the shaping of the political attitudes of European Americans, it is associated with whether they are socially comfortable with racial minorities. The only effect for racial minorities is that among church attendees, Hispanic Americans who are racial minorities in their churches are more willing to live in neighborhoods where they are numerical racial minorities.

Table A.4

Beta Coefficients and Standard Errors for Multiracial Church and Racial Minority in the Measurement of 25% Each

All respondents Multiracial church Racial minority Church attendees only Multiracial church Racial minority

European Americans

African Americans

Hispanic Americans

Asian Americans

.936b (.311) .601b (.191)

–.05 (.424) –.488 (.487)

.322 (.581) 1.159 (.872)

1.242 (1.2) –.665 (.94)

.901b (.311) .566b (.192)

–.098 (.427) –.514 (.488)

.428 (.606) 1.559a (.901)

1.061 (1.182) –.515 (.943)

Source: Lilly Survey of Attitudes and Friendships. Notes: Entries are beta. Standard errors are given in parentheses. These models control for age, income, education, sex, region, and political orientation and whether the respondent is a Catholic, Mainline Protestant, or Conservative Protestant. When appropriate, the rotation of the racial group was used in the dependent variables. For simplicity, the betas and standard errors are not shown for those independent variables. Columns represent the racial group that makes up the population examined. a. p < 0.05. b. p < 0.01.

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Finally, I wanted to see if these results held up when I eliminated the respondents collected through the local knowledge survey. I conducted the analysis (not shown here) with a dummy variable that separated the random sample from those chosen through local knowledge. I replicated the twentyfour models that I put in Tables A.2, A.3, and A.4 using this dummy variable. There were only six models in which this dummy was significant to the 0.05 level, indicating that the nonrandom sample may have a significant effect on the overall findings only in those six models. These models were African Americans in the immigrants should be reduced variable, European Americans in the too much talk about race variable, and European Americans and Hispanic Americans in the 25% each variable for both church attendees and all respondent models. When I excluded the local knowledge respondents from these models, I found multiracial church was not significant in the pure random models for European Americans in the models with 25% each as the dependent variable. When I looked at only Hispanic American church attendees, racial minority was significant in the pure random model for 25% each at the 0.1 level. All other significant effects for multiracial church or racial minority were similar to what I found in Tables A.2 through A.4. Given the minor effects of the random dummy variable, I have confidence in the major results in Tables A.2 through A.4. These results include three major findings. First, European Americans who are racial minorities in their churches have different racial political attitudes than other whites. On a variety of measures, these majority group members tend to have more sympathetic attitudes toward the political interest of racial minorities.16 Second, the presence of racial minorities in the churches of European Americans tends to lower the social distance between whites and nonwhites, at least from the perspective of majority group members. Finally, racial church integration appears to have little effect upon the racial attitudes of racial minorities. Since these findings are in concert with the general findings in Chapter 4, I assert that the basic findings about multiracial churches are not the result of possible spurious effects.

Racially Mixed Social Networks Having explored the possible effects of multiracial churches, I now turn my attention to the possible effects of racially mixed social networks. Here I explore both the possible effects of having a close friend of a different race and of having a racially mixed social network. Although both of these variables are significantly correlated to each other, as we saw in Chapter 4, there still may be important and distinctive effects that can arise from each type of social arrangement.

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Table A.5

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Regression Coefficients of the Effects of the Race of Best Friends on Selected Racial Issues Too Immigrants Much Support Should Talk Affirmative Be About Action Reduced Race

White respondents White friends N Nagelkerke R2 Black respondents Black friends N Nagelkerke R2 Hispanic respondents Hispanic friends N Nagelkerke R2 Asian respondents Asian friends N Nagelkerke R2

N Nagelkerke R2 Black respondents Black friends N Nagelkerke R2 Hispanic respondents Hispanic friends N Nagelkerke R2 Asian respondents Asian friends N Nagelkerke R2

Upset If Child Outmarry

25% Eacha

.465b (.224) 1,293 .155

–.717c (.211) 1,379 .165

–.029 (.216) 1,409 .23

.124 (.21) 1,376 .157

–1.37d (.283) 1,409 .219

–.779d (.233) 1,452 —

.412 (.451) 246 .727

.027 (.43) 245 .489

–.392 (.454) 254 .546

–.386 (.414) 247 .431

–.088 (.728) 255 .526

–1.209b (.564) 258 —

–.549 (.378) 235 .656

1.259d (.349) 258 .443

.188 (.349) 269 .561

–.202 (.34) 261 .419

.31 (.493) 270 .456

–.1 (.294) 268 —

.259 (.493) 160 .618

.405 (.479) 167 .58

.643 (.419) 173 .455

.415 (.418) 162 .598

–2.013c (.607) 168 .581

.029 (.368) 181 —

Welfare White respondents White friends

Special Tax Breaks

Patriotic Arrogant

Cab School Drivera Homeownera Testsa

–.141 (.228) 1,221 .177

–.016 (.225) 1,152 .157

–.024 (.219) 1,300 .13

–.569 (.372) 576

–.065 (.348) 629

–.298 (.372) 624

–.8 (.511) 231 .466

–.076 (.445) 225 .492

.441 (.508) 235 .462

–.321 (.591) 103

.685 (.647) 110

.727 (.605) 102

–.351 (.369) 240 .545

–.044 (.355) 233 .461

.199 (.361) 244 .552

–.516 (.465) 116

.4 (.52) 107

–.049 (.51) 104

–2.061d (.579) 145 .668

.674 (.499) 145 .669

–1.604c (.464) 156 .473

–.131 (.593) 79

.811 (.681) 66

–.539 (.712) 83

Notes: Entries are estimates. Standard error is given in parentheses. a. Standard betas are reported for logistical analysis. b. p < 0.05. c. p < 0.01. d. p < 0.001.

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Table A.5 contains the partial results of twenty-four ordinal regression models that used the previously mentioned independent and dependent variables. I dropped the oversample of those respondents who attend multiracial churches, so that this entire sample was collected through probability sampling. Each model contains only respondents of one racial group (whites, blacks, Hispanics, or Asians). In these models I used three independent variables to assess the possibility that intimate friendships help shape racial attitudes. Table A.6 contains the partial results of forty ordinary least squares (OLS) models that assess the possibility that having a racially mixed social network and being an acquaintance of members of different racial groups are correlated with distinctive racial attitudes.17 Like the models in Table A.5, each model contains only one racial group and uses the previously mentioned dependent and independent variables. In these models one of two other independent variables is included. In Table A.5 the independent variables reported are white friends, black friends, Hispanic friends, and Asian friends. These variables are always the same as the race of the respondents, which allows me to gauge the power of same-race friendships in predicting racial attitudes. In Table A.6 racial diversity of circle of friends and racial diversity of all people known are reported. The results of Table A.5 indicate that European Americans with only white best friends are significantly less likely to support affirmative action, more likely to agree that legal immigration should be reduced, more likely to be upset if their child wants to interracially marry, and less willing to live in a neighborhood where they are the clear numerical minority than those who have best friends of color. In the twelve possible models that measure the relationship of European American close friendships and their racial attitudes, there are significant effects in four of them. Black respondents with only black best friends are less willing to live in a neighborhood where they are the clear numerical minority, but it was the only way in which they significantly differed from other blacks. Hispanic respondents with only Hispanic best friends are less likely to agree that legal immigration should be reduced. Asian Americans with only Asian friends are more likely to believe the welfare/arrogance stereotypes of non-Asians and are less likely to support the outmarriage of their children. Table A.6 indicates that the effects of racially mixed social networks are more robust than intimate friendships for majority group members. Thirteen of the twenty-four variables measuring relationships between social networks with out-group members and the racial attitudes of European Americans are significant. White respondents with diverse circles of friends are more supportive of affirmative action, less supportive of the reduction of legal immigration, more supportive of special tax breaks, more supportive of their children outmarrying, more willing to live in a neighborhood where they are the distinct numerical minority, less accepting of the

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Regression Coefficients of the Effects of the Racial Diversity of Circle of Friends and the Racial Diversity of All People Known on Selected Racial Issues Too Immigrants Much Support Should Talk Affirmative Be About Action Reduced Race

White respondents Racial diversity of circle of friends N R2 Racial diversity of all people known N R2 Black respondents Racial diversity of circle of friends N R2 Racial diversity of all people known N R2 Hispanic respondents Racial diversity of circle of friends N R2 Racial diversity of all people known N R2 Asian respondents Racial diversity of circle of friends N R2 Racial diversity of all people known N R2

Special Tax Breaks

Upset If Child Outmarry

25% Eacha

–.143b (.059) 1,290 .156

.23d (.058) 1,379 .071

–.033 (.057) 1,410 .125

–.114b (.056) 1,377 .043

.351d (.051) 1,407 .174

.457d (.069) 1,455 —

–.086 (.061) 1,288 .07

.294d (.06) 1,376 .075

.006 (.058) 1,408 .124

–.189d (.058) 1,375 .048

.37d (.052) 1,404 .174

.411d (.071) 1,452 —

.09 (.086) 248 .021

–.02 (.118) 247 .073

–.303b (.116) 256 .239

.139 (.117) 250 .073

.061 (.174) 257 .057

.333b (.159) 260 —

.209 (.096) 248 .036

.072 (.133) 247 .074

–.222 (.131) 256 .227

.298b (.128) 250 .088

.014 (.077) 257 .054

.207 (.165) 260 —

–.024 (.095) 233 .02

–.285b (.107) 255 .058

.147 (.096) 266 .061

.001 (.107) 258 .087

.026 (.078) 267 .153

.074 (.119) 270 —

–.039 (.103) 232 .021

–.288b (.117) 253 .052

.174 (.103) 264 .067

.167 (.113) 256 .101

.081 (.084) 265 .155

.092 (.128) 268 —

.097 (.119) 162 .082

.064 (.126) 169 .091

–.028 (.119) 175 .029

.213 (.12) 164 .095

.274b (.104) 170 .21

.103 (.15) 182 —

.157 (.146) 161 .08

.015 (.143) 167 .102

.075 (.14) 173 .033

.115 (.147) 162 .093

.131 (.127) 168 .177

.186 (.178) 180 — (continues)

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(continued)

Welfare White respondents Racial diversity of circle of friends N Nagelkerke R2 Racial diversity of all people known N Nagelkerke R2 Black respondents Racial diversity of circle of friends N Nagelkerke R2 Racial diversity of all people known N Nagelkerke R2 Hispanic respondents Racial diversity of circle of friends N Nagelkerke R2 Racial diversity of all people known N Nagelkerke R2 Asian respondents Racial diversity of circle of friends N Nagelkerke R2 Racial diversity of all people known N Nagelkerke R2

Patriotic Arrogant

Cab School Drivera Homeownera Testsa

.074 (.061) 1,260 .083

–.008 (.071) 1,216 .04

.144b (.065) 1,325 .13

.327c (.112) 579

–.035 (.106) 631

–.032 (.388) 623

.225 (.101) 1,256 .092

–.083 (.073) 1,212 .04

.233d (.067) 1,322 .136

.336c (.115) 578

.01 (.11) 629

.051 (.114) 622

.016 (.13) 237 .13

–.036 (.145) 230 .096

–.064 (.14) 239 .21

–.542c (.22) 103

.072 (.228) 111

–.127 (.197) 104

.144 (.142) 237 .134

–.221 (.156) 230 .105

.176 (.149) 239 .214

–.248 (.234) 103

–.045 (.243) 111

–.305 (.238) 104

.299b (.125) 243 .192

.177 (.124) 239 .09

.179 (.126) 250 .178

.163 (.208) 118

.035 (.209) 110

–.009 (.198) 107

.227 (.135) 241 .196

.287b (.133) 238 .098

.265 (.133) 249 .199

–.008 (.202) 118

–.026 (.453) 106

.042 (.227) 105

.344b (.137) 152 .211

.171 (.155) 150 .056

.341b (.139) 162 .14

.365 (.253) 79

–.648b (.322) 66

–.142 (.306) 83

.336b (.169) 150 .194

.157 (.188) 148 .06

.274 (.162) 160 .125

.699b (.306) 78

.363 (.294) 65

–.288 (.345) 82

Notes: Entries are unstandardized betas. Standard error is given in parentheses. a. Standard betas are reported for logistical analysis. b. p < .05. c. p < .01. d. p < .001.

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stereotype of arrogance for nonwhites, and more likely to interpret the cab driver scenario as racism. Whites with more racial diversity among all people known are less supportive of the reduction of legal immigration, more supportive of special tax breaks, more supportive of their children outmarrying, more willing to live in a neighborhood where they are the distinct numerical minority, less accepting of the stereotype of arrogance for nonwhites, and more likely to interpret the cab driver scenario as racism. Blacks with more diverse circles of friends are less willing to talk about race, more willing to live in a neighborhood where they are the distinct numerical minority and less willing to perceive the cab driver scenario as racism, whereas those with more racial diversity among all people known are less supportive of special tax breaks. Hispanic respondents with more diverse circles of friends and more diverse networks of all people known are less supportive of legal immigration, whereas those with more racially diverse circles of friends are less supportive of the stereotype of welfare among non-Hispanics, and those with racial diversity among all people known are less likely to support the stereotype of patriotism for nonHispanics. Finally, Asian respondents with more diverse circles of friends are more supportive of their children outmarrying, less likely to support the welfare/arrogance stereotypes among non-Asians, and less willing to see the homeowner scenario as racism. Those with more racial diversity among all people known are less supportive of the stereotype of welfare among nonAsians and more likely to see the cab driver scenario as racism.18 Once again, the basic findings of Chapter 4 are upheld. First, racially mixed social networks are more powerful in predicting distinctive racial attitudes than having a close friend of a different race. In over half the measures, European Americans with racially mixed social networks have different racial attitudes than other European Americans, but having a friend of color only occasionally was connected to attitudinal differences. Second, European Americans with racially mixed social networks are likely to have different racial attitudes than other European Americans. Consistently, such European Americans have lower social distance and more progressive racial attitudes than other European Americans. Third, the same powerful effect is not found for people of color. Although at times people of color who had friends of other races have attitudes that differed from other people of color, this effect is sporadic compared to the consistent differences found between whites with diverse friendship networks and those without such networks. These findings indicate that the results in Chapter 4 as they concern interracial friendships are not due to social and demographic differences. These basic effects hold up even after applying the proper controls. Thus, the findings that interracial contact through racially mixed social networks is correlated with distinctive racial attitudes among European Americans are upheld

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in this research. When we take into account the results of the study of multiracial churches and the general qualitative findings of Chapter 5, we have even more confidence that interracial contact can produce different racial attitudes among European Americans. Although the vast majority of this Appendix has focused on the quantitative research, it is worth a little space to comment upon the qualitative work presented in this book. Much of the organization of the IFI is described in Chapter 5, and I will not bore the reader with a recap of that discussion. However, I do want to point out a couple of personal observations that should be taken into consideration. First, this sample was collected largely through my own social network. I located potential respondents mostly through my job and my friends of faith. This sample is likely biased toward those with high levels of education and high religiosity.19 Given that this is not an attempt at gathering probability data, I had to accept this bias. Second, an interviewer effect is a possibility with this research. Being an African American who was interviewing whites on racial issues, the chance that my race would influence their answers remains a strong possibility. Most of my respondents knew that I myself am in an interracial marriage, which might ameliorate the interviewer effect, but I do not believe that this effect completely disappeared. In a perfect research design I would interview the blacks in the sample, or at least the people of color, and I would have a white interview the whites in the sample. But the ideal is not always practical. Most of the time I interviewed both spouses on the same evening, either at my office or at their home. People are busy in our society. It is hard enough for me to ask them for an evening of their lives for a project that most of them will never hear about again. For me to ask them to set aside two nights so that I can send a white interviewer back to see the white spouse was highly unpractical. Practicality may be the enemy of the perfect research design, but it is also how we eventually get our work done.

Selected Questions from the Lilly Survey of Attitudes and Friendships Could we speak with the person who is over 18 and will have the next birthday in your family? [If no: “May we interview you?”] First we’d like to ask a few questions to make sure we are talking to a wide range of Americans. [Screen: “How long have you lived at your current residence?” If < 3 months: “Thank you for your time.” Otherwise, proceed with the interview.]

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Q1. Are you currently married, or are you living with someone in a marriage-like relationship, widowed, divorced, separated, or have you never been married? [If the respondent says divorced and separated, code as divorced. If marriage-like relationship and divorced/separated/widowed, code as marriage-like.] 1. Married [go to Q2] 2. Living with someone [go to Q2] 3. Widowed [go to Q2] 4. Divorced 5. Separated [go to Q2] 6. Never married 7. Don’t know [go to Q2] 8. Refused Q2. [If Q1 = 1–3, 5, or 7] Have you ever been divorced? 1. Yes 2. No 3. Don’t know 4. Refused Q3. What race or ethnic group do you consider yourself? [Prompt if necessary: “That is, are you white, black American, Hispanic, Asian American, Pacific Islander, American Indian, or of mixed race?” If respondent says “Human,” ask, “Would you mind telling us your ethnicity?”] 1. White/Caucasian/Anglo 2. Black/African American 3. Hispanic/Latino/a 4. Asian/Asian American 5. Pacific Islander 6. American Indian/Native American 7. Mixed 8. Gave ethnicity [coded in Q4] 9. Other (only if volunteered and cannot be placed in a category 1–7) 10. Don’t know 11. Refused Q4. [If Q3 = 1–5 or 7, read categories under appropriate racial group.] If the respondent says Asian: “Are you: Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Asian Indian, Korean, Vietnamese, or something else? Other? Mixed [if volunteered]?” If the respondent says Hispanic: “Are you: Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican, other Caribbean? Other? Mixed [if volunteered]?”

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If the respondent says Mixed: “What ethnic/racial groups are part of your heritage?” Q5. Do you identify with one of these more than the others? Q6. [If Q1 = 1–2] What race or ethnicity is your [spouse/partner]? 1. White (includes European, Middle Eastern) 2. Black (includes African American, African, Dominican, other black) 3. Hispanic (includes Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican, other Latin American) 4. Asian (includes Asian and Pacific Islander ethnicities) 5. American Indian (includes Native American and tribes) *

*

*

Now I would like to ask you a few more background questions. Q12. Do you consider yourself to be Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, nothing in particular, or something else? 1. Protestant (includes Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Mormons, Reformed) 2. Catholic 3. Jewish 4. Eastern Orthodox Christian 5. Muslim 6. Buddhist 7. Nothing in particular/Not religious 8. “Just a Christian” [go to Q15] 9. Other: [go to Q16] 10. Refused [go to Q17] 11. Don’t know [go to Q19] Q13. How often have you been attending [church/synagogue/mosque/ temple] services in the last year? 1. Never 2. Less than once a month 3. Once a month 4. 2–3 times a month 5. Once a week 6. More than once a week 7. Don’t know 8. Refused

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*

*

155

*

You’re doing great. To help us learn more about Americans’ friendships, I want to ask you about your friends. To help guide you, I will ask you about a few specific categories. Please remember, we are not taking an inventory of you personally, but of American friendships in general. Think about your 2 very best friends. [If Q2 = 1–2, add “other than your spouse/partner.”] Q17. For your 2 very best friends, how many are [the respondent’s race]? 1. 2 friends 2. 1 friend 3. 0 (neither) 4. Don’t know 5. Refused Q18. [If Q17 = 2 (1 friend)] What is the race of your other friend? [If Q17 = 3 (neither)] What is the race of the friend you have known the longest? 1. Asian/Asian American [includes any specific Asian ethnic groups] 2. Black/African American [includes African] 3. Hispanic/Latino [includes any specific Latin American ethnic groups] 4. White/European/Middle Eastern 5. American Indian/Native American [includes any specific tribes] Now think of your circle of friends, people that you like to do things with and have conversations with. They may be people you see often, or because they may live far away, they may be people you primarily keep in contact with by calling or writing. Q20. For your circle of friends, how many [their race] are among these people? 1. All 2. Most 3. About half 4. Few 5. None 6. Don’t know 7. Refused Q24. [If Q13 = 4–7] Now think about the people, if any, that you have frequent contact with and enjoy being around in your church [church/synagogue/mosque/temple]. With these people in mind, how many [respondent’s race] are among these people?

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1. All 2. Most 3. About half 4. Few 5. None Q25. Now please think about all the people that you have frequent contact with and enjoy being around, including people in your neighborhood; [if Q24 = 1–4] [church/synagogue/mosque/temple]; [if Q11 = 1–2 or 5–6] [workplace]; [if Q11 = 3] [school]; any associations or clubs to which you may belong; and any other people that you have contact with and enjoy being around. With these people in mind, how many [respondent’s race] are among these people? 1. All 2. Most 3. About half 4. Few 5. None 6. Don’t know 7. Refused *

*

*

Now I am going to read you some statements about morality and America. For each, please tell me whether you agree or disagree, and if you do so strongly, moderately, or slightly. Q26. Religion is a private matter that should not influence social and political issues. Do you personally agree or disagree with this statement, and do you do so strongly, moderately, or slightly? 1. Strongly agree 2. Moderately agree 3. Slightly agree 4. Neither agree nor disagree; “in between” (only if volunteered) 5. Slightly disagree 6. Moderately disagree 7. Strongly disagree 8. Don’t know 9. Refused *

*

*

I am going to read you a list of about 20 statements. For each, please tell

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me whether you agree or disagree, and if you do so strongly, moderately, or slightly. Q33. I support affirmative action policies. Q42. The number of immigrants who can legally enter the United States should be reduced. Q43. There is too much talk today in the United States about racial issues. Q49. We should give businesses special tax breaks for locating in largely [rotate racial group with either black or Hispanic] areas. Q50. Compared to other racial groups, [rotate racial group] on average tend to prefer to live on welfare. Q51. Compared to other racial groups, [rotate racial group] on average tend to be patriotic to the United States. Q52. Compared to other racial groups, [rotate racial group] on average tend to be arrogant. Q53. I would be upset if I had a child who wanted to marry a person who is [rotate racial group with either white, black, Hispanic, or Asian but not respondent’s race]. *

*

*

We want to ask you a few questions about your [church/synagogue/ mosque/temple]. Q57. Though hard to know for sure, would you say that [respondent’s race] make up more than 80 percent of the worship service that you normally attend at your [church/synagogue/mosque/temple]? 1. Yes 2. No 3. Don’t know 4. Refused Q58. [If Q57 = 2 or 3] About what percent of the people at the worship service that you normally attend would you say are [respondent’s race]? Q59. [If Q57 < or = 80%] What other racial groups are represented in the

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worship service that you normally attend? [Record all that are mentioned.] *

*

*

Q75. Given a house that you very much like, would you prefer this house to be in a neighborhood that is a. 25% [respondent’s race] and 75% [rotate Asian, black, Hispanic, white (not respondent’s own race)]. b. 25% each [respondent’s race] [each of the three racial groups respondent is not]? c. No preference d. Don’t know e. Refused *

*

*

We are interested in what you consider to be prejudice and what you consider to be racism. I am going to read you 3 short scenarios. For each please tell me if you think it is racism or not. Q82. A white cab driver can pick up a black man in a suit and tie or a white man wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt. The driver has no ill feelings toward African Americans but does not want to risk being asked to go to an innercity black neighborhood, since he fears this will put him at a risk of being assaulted. Therefore the driver passes the black man and picks up the white man. Has the driver engaged in racism? Q83. A white homeowner decides to move out of the neighborhood because she has noticed several racial minorities moving into the neighborhood. Even though she does get along with nonwhites, she is afraid that the value of her home will decrease. Is her decision to move racist? Q84. In a certain city, most white children go to schools that are predominantly white. Since they live in different neighborhoods, most black children go to schools that are predominantly nonwhite. Standardized tests were taken 5 years in a row. While 80% of the white students passed, 80% of the black children failed. Is this an example of racism? *

*

*

Q89. On a political scale of 1 to 7—with 1 being extremely liberal, 4 being middle of the road, and 7 being extremely conservative—how would you describe yourself politically?

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1. Extremely liberal 2. Liberal 3. Slightly liberal 4. Moderate, middle of the road 5. Slightly conservative 6. Conservative 7. Extremely conservative 8. Don’t know 9. Refused *

*

*

You are being very helpful. We are almost done. Just a couple of final background questions, and that will be it. Q126. [If not sure about respondent’s sex] Are you male or female? Q138. What is the highest grade of school, year in college, or graduate degree you have completed? Q139. And to do our statistical analysis, we need to have respondent’s zip codes. We will not use this to contact you or send you anything. Your answers are totally anonymous. What is your zip code? Q140. Now here is the last question. I am going to read you a list of income categories. Please tell me to stop when a category I read best describes your total household income before taxes. 1. < 10,000 2. Between 10,000 and 20,000 3. Between 20,000 and 30,000 4. Between 30,000 and 40,000 5. Between 40,000 and 50,000 6. Between 50,000 and 60,000 7. Between 60,000 and 70,000 8. Between 70,000 and 80,000 9. Between 80,000 and 90,000 10. Between 90,000 and 100,000 11. More than 100,000 12. Don’t know 13. Refused [Prompt: “Remember, your answers are totally anonymous, and we don’t need to know your exact income, just an income bracket within ten thousand dollars. It would really help us out.” (Wait for respondent to give a yes or no before reading answer categories again.)]

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Notes 1. Obviously, any racial breakdown will have a category of “other”; inevitably there will be people who do not easily fall into the selected racial categories. Nevertheless, it is important to minimize the number of people in that category so that racial identity questions will have more explanatory power. 2. Because nonblack minorities were not classified, it is impossible to conduct the types of sophisticated analysis necessary to sufficiently assess the attitudes of those minority groups. For example, the 1998 GSS data generated 2,832 subjects. Given that African Americans composed about 13 percent of the US population, Hispanic Americans about 13 percent, Asian Americans about 3 percent, and Native Americans about 1 percent, the 1998 GSS should have obtained about 368 African Americans, 368 Hispanics, 84 Asian Americans, and 28 Native Americans. With such numbers, a comparison of African Americans and Hispanic Americans to majority group members is possible, since there would be more than 200 of both African Americans and Hispanic Americans, enough to create meaningful comparisons. In reality, the 1998 GSS obtained 400 African Americans and 191 individuals classified as “others.” Since “others” likely includes Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, multiracial individuals, and anyone else whose racial identity is not easily classified, this number indicates an underrepresentation of nonblack minorities. Even if nonblack minorities were properly classified, the small numbers in these groups prohibit useful comparison between nonblack racial groups and whites or blacks. 3. There are surveys sponsored by the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) that also examine social attitudes. These surveys tend to be funded by news organizations such as ABC–Washington Post and CBS–New York Times and come with their own biases. Like the other three minor polls, these surveys have asked race questions beyond the “white/black/other” categories used in the GSS and Gallup polls. However, these surveys also share the same shortcomings of those minor polls in that they do not include sufficient numbers of nonblack racial minority respondents. 4. To fully explore the possibility of interracial marriage shaping racial attitudes, researchers must investigate whether having a black marital partner correlates with attitudinal change. This is important because research has suggested that interracial marriages that contain a black partner have a different social reality than those without a black partner (Herring and Amissah, 1997; Yancey, 2003c; Yancey, 2005). However, there were only twenty-one individuals in the LSAF who were in an interracial marriage where one of the partners was black, so it is impossible to quantitatively test for black/nonblack effects. 5. Commonly, this is done though geographically targeted interviews. Nevertheless, the problem with this method is that minorities who live in areas where there are high numbers of their own race might have different social attitudes than minorities who live in majority white areas. 6. Because of the low absolute number of Native Americans who dwell in the United States, cost considerations prohibited an attempt to oversample that group. 7. The respondents were also asked to assess their ethnic groups. The groups used as ethnic categories can be seen in the questionnaire in this Appendix. While useful for other types of analysis, this book will focus upon differences between racial groups, rather than ethnic differences within racial groups. 8. The respondents were given eleven categories to classify their household income. Those categories were below $10,000, $10,000 to $20,000, $20,000 to

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$30,000, $30,000 to $40,000, $40,000 to $50,000, $50,000 to 60,000, $60,000 to $70,000, $70,000 to $80,000, $80,000 to $90,000, $90,000 to $100,000, and more than $100,000. 9. Because the survey was taken in 2000, the results from this variable are likely different than in our post–September 11 society. The basic tendency of individuals to stereotype has not likely changed, but rather the group they stereotyped may have been altered by the terrorist attack. 10. One of the difficulties of capturing attitudes toward so many groups is the creation of a high number of questions. This is especially problematic when utilizing a phone survey, which limits the number of questions that can be asked. To compensate, on certain questions the racial groups asked about were randomly alternated. The number of respondents interviewed allows for intragroup comparisons about whether the attitudes of individuals in a certain group toward a given situation are correlated to which group they are asked about. For example, in respondents’ assessment of racial exogamy, this technique allows me to investigate whether it matters to European Americans if their child marries a black, a Hispanic, or an Asian. 11. The LSAF respondents were also asked whether each situation is a condition of prejudice as well. However, since prejudice tends to be seen as an individualist endeavor and I am interested in how individuals interpret institutional racism, I dropped the use of the prejudice measure from this current work. 12. Two of the other scenarios dealt with racism that racial minorities may have potentially used against majority group members, and another scenario considered attitudes toward interracial marriage. The final scenario dealt with the individualistic action of a foreman at work. All seven scenarios can be seen in Emerson (2006). One can argue that other scenarios may have been a better measure of institutional racism, or that these scenarios in general were not a good measure of institutional racism. However, the distinct interpretations that respondents placed upon these scenarios clearly indicate that different segments of our society perceive racism in contrasting manners. As such, these scenarios are useful tools for discovering how Americans interpret racism and are important proxies of racial attitudes. 13. This lumping together of different Asian groups can be seen in the tragic case of Vincent Chin, a Chinese American who was killed in 1982 because he was believed to be a Japanese American. Reports of the incident indicate that the reason for the mistaken identity appears to be that his assailants tended to group all Asian Americans into a single category and thus did not identify Chin as a Chinese American instead of a Japanese American. 14. The work in this section is based on the results reported in “Racial Attitudes: Differences in Racial Attitudes of People Attending Multiracial and Uniracial Congregations” (Yancey, 2001). 15. The full tables can be obtained by contacting the author. 16. The only exception may be that Asian Americans have different racial attitudes based upon membership in multiracial churches. Since new Asian American immigrants are highly likely to stay in immigrant churches (Yang, 1999; Chai, 2001), this result may be connected to the process of Asian American acculturation into the mainstream of our society rather than interracial contact effects. 17. Ordinal tests were run with the variables in this table. However, unlike the key friendship independent variable in Table A.5, the key social network independent variables in Table A.6 had several categories, which adds complexity to how I can report ordinal data. Thus, in Table A.6, I used OLS tables for ease of reporting. The basic findings of friendship patterns being more important to whites than to nonwhites seen in the OLS models was upheld in the ordinal analysis, except for measurements of racial diversity of all people known among Asian Americans.

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18. Interaction effects, not captured in these models, may account for the findings that support these hypotheses. Tests for interaction effects found little evidence supporting interactions between the friendship variables, and the other independent variables account for these findings. F-tests indicated that models with interaction variables that controlled the significant findings of the friendship variables only happened with white respondents in the upset if child outmarry model containing racial diversity of circle of friends, black respondents in the too much talk about race model containing racial diversity of circle of friends, and black respondents in the special tax breaks model containing racial diversity of all people known. 19. However, higher religiosity and high educational levels generally were not qualities that were found in the same respondents. In this sense I likely overemphasized two very different subcultures among my respondents. The fact that I was able to establish certain trends while looking at different subcultures lends credibility to the assertion that these qualitative results are not tied to any one subculture.

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Activism, 8, 69, 120, 122, 129; leftist, 19; of multiracial churches, 117–118 Affirmative action, 9, 79, 85, 115–116 African American(s), 8, 18–19, 119–120; assimilation, 6; attitudes toward authority, 68; belief in structuralism, 30–31; bicultural, 60; churches, 30, 121; interracial contact effects, 32, 37, 39; and interracial friendship, 33, 51, 56, 93; and interracial marriage, 81, 87; in multiracial churches, 44, 46, 122; racial attitudes, 16, 29; selfefficacy, 104; SES and educational attainment, 98, 100–102; social capital, 100, 102, 129–130; social rejection, 33, 78 Allport, Gordon, 31 Anglo-conformity, 7, 76, 87 Antiracism, 9, 19–20, 67–68, 82 Asian American(s), 30–31, 94; assimilation, 6; ethnic groups, 140; interracial friendship, 51; interracial marriage, 81; oversample techniques, 135, 137 Assimilation, 8, 10, 22, 30, 123; cultural, 5, 59; fear of, 3, 6–7, 59, 93; and interracial contact, 4–6, 20–21; marital, 5–6; straight-line, 5; structural, 5 Athletic teams, 35–36, 118, 126, 129

Biracial children, 85 Black/nonblack divide, 6 Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo, 3–4 Brown v. Board of Education, 15 Cohen, E. G., 27 Color blindness, 3, 17, 20, 40, 69, 114, 116 Contact effect, 11, 40–41, 59–60, 129 Contact Hypothesis, 2–3, 11, 16, 36, 62, 108, 123; cultural, 5, 59; marital, 5–6; as a microlevel approach, 4, 8–10, 130; and people of color, 87–88; and racially diverse friendship, 31–32; social change, 128; structural, 5; tests of, 21–22, 25–27, 56, 141 Content effect, 40–41 Crane, Marie, 32–33, 46 Cultural pluralism, 59, 120 Discrimination, 5, 76, 113; whites learning about, 80; whites witnessing, 81, 84 Diversity programs, 119, 124–126 Dovidio, John F., 27 Education, 98, 100; diversity training, 125; of Hispanic Americans, 56–58, 62; institutions of, 15, 127; and interracial contact, 95; of people of color, 18, 93–94, 102; set-

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ting of interracial contact, 27–28; social capital, 102 Emerson, Michael, 30 Ethnocultural allodynia, concept of, 20–21 European American(s), 3, 9, 70, 126; becoming antiracist, 9, 67; belief in individualism, 30–31; culture, 7, 86; empowering people of color, 107; interracial contact, 8, 19–20, 32, 46, 61; and interracial friendship, 56, 60–61, 151; and interracial marriage, 74, 79–80, 82–84; learning about racism, 74–79; and multiracial churches, 29, 40, 44, 143; racial attitudes, 16, 22, 68, 90; racial identity, 17–18; social capital, 95, 107; stereotypes, 27; women, 19, 34 European cultural normalcy, 17 Evangelicals, 30 Gaertner, Samuel L., 27 Gordon, Milton, 4–5 Gratz and Hamacher/Grutter v. the Regents of the University of Michigan, 116 Group threat theory, 15, 21–22 Hispanic American(s), 30–31, 51, 56–60, 94; assimilation, 6; ethnic group, 140; interracial marriage, 81, 87–89; racial attitudes, 86–87; SES and educational attainment, 98, 100; social capital, 100, 102, 129–130; support of immigration, 46, 59–60 Hopwood v. Texas, 116 Immigrant groups, 30–31, 141 Immigration, 30; Hispanic support of, 46, 59–60 Individualism, 17–18, 20, 30–31, 47, 82 Interracial contact, 11–12, 39, 61–63, 67–68, 115–116, 126–130; and assimilation, 4–6; conditions of

productive contact, 25–26; and Contact Hypothesis, 2–3; desirability, 7–8; effect on Americans, 10, 15, 107–108; effect on minority cultures, 6–7; healthy contact, 121–123; Hispanic Americans, 51, 56–58, 99–100; influence on European Americans, 19–20, 88, 90, 119, 121; influence on people of color, 20–21, 60; and interracial marriage, 77, 87, 113–114; microlevel nature of, 8–9, 116–118; and multiracial churches, 44, 46, 141; and racial alienation, 3–4; residential and educational settings of, 27–28; sex differences, 84–85; and social capital, 94–95, 98–99, 102; testing of, 40, 69 Interracial marriage, 10–11, 88–90; and interracial contact, 69–70, 74, 80–81; and people of color, 86–87, 124; as a setting for interracial contact, 33–35; sex differences, 77–78, 84–86; and social capital, 102–108 Intimacy: as condition of productive contact, 26, 62; in interracial friendship, 31–32; in interracial marriage, 34, 77, 88 Irish American(s), 5 Jackman, Mary, 32–33, 46 Karis, Terri A., 34 Korgen, Kathleen O., 32, 60, 77 Kosmin, Barry A., 143 Lachman, Seymour P., 143 Majority group ignorance, 4, 16–17, 19–20, 77, 107–108 Military, 35, 118, 128–129 Multiculturalism, 59, 120 Multiracial churches, 10–12, 29–31, 36–37, 39–40, 59, 68–69, 96, 121–122, 125, 141–146, 152; activism in, 117–118, 128–129; and

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Index interracial contact, 29; and people of color, 93, 98, 100–101; and racial attitudes, 41, 44, 46, 61, 67

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Residential assimilation, 6; as a setting for productive contact, 28 Residential segregation, 15, 20, 94 Rosenblatt, Paul C., 34

Native American(s), 7, 140 O’Brien, Eileen, 9, 19, 67 Perkins, H. Wesley, 143 Pettigrew, Thomas F., 27 Powell, Richard D., 34 Prejudice, 5, 26–27, 34, 86, 88 Racial alienation, 2–4, 8–10, 15, 22, 108; and African Americans, 6; combating, 129 Racially mixed social networks, 10–13, 39–40, 62, 89, 95, 116, 127, 146–151; and interracial contact, 31–32; and people of color, 56–57, 59–60, 93; and racial attitudes, 51, 60–61; as a setting for interracial contact, 31–33; and social capital, 96, 98 Racial profiling, 76, 80, 82–84 Racism, 1–4, 16, 30, 118–119, 121– 122, 128; dealing with, 8–10; modern, 13, 16, 22, 48, 126; perception of, 21; structural, 17, 75, 80, 93, 114–117, 126, 130; whites learning about, 76–77; whites witnessing, 81–85

Self-selection, 26–27, 61–63, 67, 89–90, 143; in interracial marriage, 74; and people of color, 93–94, 98–102, 108 Sigelman, Lee, 32 Smith, Christian, 30 Social capital, 94–95, 98, 100–103, 107–108, 116, 127, 129 Social change, 6; and Contact Hypothesis 8–9, 116, 128; and interracial contact, 115–116; and majority group members, 13, 121 Social exchange theory, 31 Social networks, 39, 59, 94–95, 116, 126 St. John, Nancy, 27 Transracial adoption, 7 Troop, L. R., 27 Welch, Susan, 32 White racial identity, 17–18, 48, 59, 69, 114; effect on people of color, 20, 22–23, 87–88 White racial purity, 84 White supremacy, 16, 18

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About the Book

I

n this thought-provoking analysis, George Yancey reevaluates the controversial Contact Hypothesis as he explores if and when interracial contact can combat the racial animosity and inequality permeating US society. Yancey draws on quantitative and qualitative investigations of interracial religious congregations, families, and friendships to demonstrate that extensive interactions with people of color can alter the racial attitudes of whites. In the process, he challenges the assumption that contact necessarily results in people of color assimilating white values and culture: it may strengthen their socioeconomic positions, but it does not subvert their racial identity. Contact, Yancey concludes, is not a panacea for society’s racial ills . . . but it is a vital supplement to the structural changes that must occur.

George Yancey is associate professor of sociology at the University of North Texas. He is author of Who Is White? Latinos, Asians, and the New Black/Nonblack Divide.

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