Talking About Race
For some time now, the push for colorblind discourses, policies and practices around race and ethnicity in the United States has become more and more pronounced. Some justify this push with reference to the mistaken belief that nowadays racial identity has only marginal effects on a person's or group’s social interactions or access to social and economic opportunity. Some advocates for colorblindness go further: more than superfluous, they say, race talk of any kind is inherently divisive and pernicious.
At Kirwan, we agree that all too often implicit and explicit race talk has indeed been used to divide and alienate. At the same time, we believe colorblindness, though sometimes urged by people and organizations with the best intentions, is a mistake—one with profound consequences. The critical question is not whether to use race, but how to talk about race in a variety of contexts. That question is an empirical one we engage in through a number of projects. In some cases we specifically examine how people talk about race and how such conversations impact their behavior. In other work we look at how issue "frames" operate. And in still other projects we look at the efficacy of using class-based or universal policy approaches to racial matters.
In the Diversity Advancement Project, for example, the Institute is collaborating with the Center for Social Inclusion to develop strategies to increase public support for racial, ethnic and gender diversity in our public and private institutions. Our project on Democratic Merit aims to push colleges and universities toward greater investment in those communities and students whose success is needed to enhance the health and strength of our multiracial democracy. And in our projects on African American-Immigrant coalition building, we work to understand the conditions and contexts that facilitate constructive, institutionalized relationships across lines of race and nativity, and those that tend to undermine or preclude such relationships.
It is impossible to quickly summarize all of this work, much of it ongoing. What we can say is that context, audience, and environment all matter in determining how best to promote racial justice. We can also say that, drawing on our own efforts and those of numerous colleagues and experts, we expect to make steady progress toward agreement on how the findings of this growing field can usefully shape our collective social justice advocacy and activist practice.
