Another feature of color-blind racial ideology is the belief that talking about race makes things worse—that it promotes racism and/or is racist in and of itself.40 Those who bring up race are “playing the race card” and creating problems where otherwise there would be none, or so the logic goes. This last feature of color-blind racial ideology serves to silence those who seek to challenge institutional racism within organizations and the larger society and is another way that color blindness perpetuates the status quo. When someone raises questions about racial practices or policies in an environment where White color blindness is the norm, the response is often one of hurt and defensiveness, as in “Are you calling me a racist?!” Remember Dovidio and Gaertner’s description of aversive racism—called “aversive” because the person is averse to acknowledging any link to prejudice or racism. The conversation then often becomes about hurt feelings rather than the systemic issues that need addressing.
Ian Haney López, author of Dog Whistle Politics, succinctly describes this pattern:
Claims to have been personally attacked take productive conversations about current racial patterns and collapse them into a stultifying ventilation of wounded feelings. It shifts attention from racial dynamics that hurt everyone, and focuses our eyes instead on the bruised egos of those whites who feel themselves personally targeted whenever the conversation turns to race. The imagined charge is of small-minded bigotry. The actual charge, written across society… is that race in various forms continues to harm us all. Histrionic distress about supposedly having been called a racist impedes recognizing the truth about race’s continued harmful power.41
Learning how to have these conversations is a necessary part of moving forward as a healthy society. You can’t fix what you can’t talk about. “Refusing to talk about powerful social realities does not make them go away but rather allows racial illiteracy, confusion, and misinformation to persist unchallenged.”42 Learning to have the conversation is of particular importance for White people who want to see social change.
Because one of the characteristics that White aversive racists or uncomfortable egalitarians exhibit is the tendency to avoid or withdraw from interracial interactions due to the unease they often feel in those situations, it may be more effective for a White peer to take the initiative in naming and addressing racial bias in organizational or group settings.43 The White person who has engaged in the kind of exploration of racial identity and reeducation described in the previous chapter (Chapter 6) is often willing to demonstrate that kind of courage. It is not easy, but that is the way effective ally work gets done. Keep in mind that when the environmental cues are clear about what the right thing to do is, the aversive racist or uncomfortable egalitarian will do the right thing. The voices of white allies in the room can help to make the right thing clear.
Affirmative Action Revisited
It is clear from the research evidence that interventions like affirmative action programs are still needed. It is not clear from the survey data discussed earlier that public support for these programs will be maintained. Eight states have already passed legislation eliminating any such programs in state educational or employment settings.44
Nevertheless, it is important to note the benefits of affirmative action programs in the workplace. To the extent that employee diversity is enhanced throughout an organization, employers find that they are better able to serve the needs of a diverse customer base. Diverse work teams lead to more effective problem-solving.45 Removing artificial barriers to advancement broadens the talent pool. Affirmative action programs have also been shown to strengthen the bottom line. Companies that have increased their representation of women of all backgrounds and men of color have outperformed less-diverse companies in stock performance and reputational standing.46
Much of the research that has been discussed in this chapter has been framed in terms of Black-White relationships, a reflection of the way most of the studies were conducted. Of course, affirmative action programs may also involve other people of color as well as White women.47 Yet the Black-White emphasis in the aversive racism framework seems well placed when we consider that researchers have found that negative attitudes toward affirmative action are expressed most strongly when Blacks are identified as the target beneficiaries. When asked in research studies to respond to affirmative action programs benefitting people with disabilities, Native Americans, or Blacks, the most negative responses were directed to policies benefitting Blacks. As Audrey Murrell and her colleagues discovered, “Whereas giving preference based on nonmerit factors is perceived as unfair, giving such preference to Blacks is perceived as more unfair.”48
Keeping Our Eyes on the Prize: Goal-Oriented Affirmative Action
Though the research on evaluator bias is dismaying, it also points us in the direction of an effective response. Again, recall that when expectations for appropriate behavior are clearly defined and a biased response can be recognized, most egalitarian Whites are consistently as positive in their behavior toward Blacks as toward other Whites. If administrators clearly articulate the organization’s diversity goals and the reasons that such goals are in the organization’s best interests, the appropriate behavior in the search process should be clear. If we keep our eyes on the prize, we can get past the bias.
Some might say, “Doesn’t such an outcome-based focus lead to instances of ‘reverse discrimination,’ when well-qualified majority-group candidates are rejected in favor of a less-qualified candidate from an underrepresented group simply because that candidate meets the diversity goal?” Certainly that could happen, but only in a poorly administered program. When affirmative action programs are functioning appropriately, no one is ever hired who is not qualified for the job. Such an occurrence would undermine the program and would be patently unfair to the newly hired person, who has in effect been set up to fail.
In a well-conceived and well-implemented affirmative action program, the first thing that should be done is to establish clear and meaningful selection criteria. What skills does the person need to function effectively in this environment? How will we assess whether the candidates have these required skills? Will it be on the basis of demonstrated past performance, scores on an appropriate test, or the completion of certain educational requirements?49 Once the criteria have been established, anyone who meets the criteria is considered qualified.
Now we can consider who among these qualified candidates will best help us achieve our organizational goals for diversifying our institution. If one candidate meets the criteria but also has some additional education or experience, it may be tempting to say this candidate is the “best,” but this one may not be the one who moves us toward our diversity goal. Because of the systematic advantages that members of the dominant group receive, it is often the case that the person with the extra experience or educational attainment is a person from the majority group. If our eyes are on our organizational goal, we are not distracted by these unasked-for extras. If we need someone who has toured Europe or had a special internship, it should already be part of our criteria. If it is not part of the criteria, it shouldn’t be considered.
And if making our organization a more-inclusive environment is a goal, then perhaps that goal should be reflected in our criteria so that whoever is selected can support the organization’s goals. Fletcher Blanchard, author of “Effective Affirmative Action Programs,” suggests what some of these new criteria might be: the extent and favorability of one’s experience working in multicultural settings, the experience of being supervised by managers of color, experience of collaborating in multicultural workgroups or living in racially mixed communities, fluency in a second language, or substantial college coursework in the study of multicultural perspectives.50
In my own consultation with school systems interested in increasing their faculty of color, we have discussed the need for such new criteria. The number of young people of color entering the teaching profession is still too small to meet the deman
d. While effective recruiting strategies can increase a school system’s likelihood of being able to attract new teachers of color, many White teachers will still be needed to replace retiring teachers in the coming years. Schools concerned about meeting the needs of an increasingly diverse student population should be looking specifically for teachers of all backgrounds with demonstrated experience in working with multiracial populations, with courses on their transcripts like Psychology of Racism; Race, Class, Culture, and Gender in the Classroom; and Foundations of Multicultural Education, to name a few.
Criteria like these are important for all candidates, but they are also criteria that are more likely to be met by candidates of color, because people of color often have more life experience in multiracial settings than many White people do. However, because such criteria are not explicitly race-based, they also should withstand the legal assaults that some affirmative action programs have experienced.51 Should these legal challenges move us into a post–affirmative action age, such criteria will be increasingly important in the search and selection process. Under any circumstance, clarity about organizational goals and qualification criteria will lead to better and more equitable selection decisions.
Faye Crosby, a White female psychologist who has studied affirmative action for many years, explains why it is so important to her: “[M]y fervent support of affirmative action comes ultimately from being the mother of White boy-men. It is because I want a better world for my children that I bother to fight for affirmative action.”52 All of us want a better, more peaceful world for our children. If we want peace, we must work for justice. How do we achieve a more just society in the present context of institutional and cultural racism? Goal-oriented affirmative action is but one potentially effective strategy. Serious dialogue about other strategies is needed, and that dialogue needs to be expanded beyond the Black-White paradigm that has shaped discussions of affirmative action. The voices of other disenfranchised groups need to be acknowledged in the process, because, as my students taught me long ago, “racism is not just a Black-White thing.”
PART IV
Beyond Black and White
EIGHT
Critical Issues in Latinx, Native, Asian and Pacific Islander, and Middle Eastern / North African Identity Development
“There’s more than just Black and White, you know.”
To get to know my culture, I would tell teachers to understand my language. Take a course or something.… The other way they can learn about our culture is by asking us about it. Ask us.1
—ALICIA, A CHICANA HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT
There’s a certain amount of anger that comes from the past, realizing that my family, because they had to assimilate through the generations, don’t really know who they are.2
—DON, AN AMERICAN INDIAN COLLEGE STUDENT
Being an Asian person, a person of color growing up in this society, I was taught to hate myself. I did hate myself, and I’m trying to deal with it.3
—KHANH, AN ASIAN AMERICAN COLLEGE STUDENT
I’m not really sure I understood what was going on when 9/11 happened, but I was old enough to feel the world shift on its axis that day and change everything forever.4
—AMANI, A MUSLIM GIRL OF MIDDLE EASTERN HERITAGE
LIKE THE AFRICAN AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN AMERICAN STUDENTS I have described, each of the young people quoted above has experienced a process of racial or ethnic identity development, an internal process triggered by external events and interactions with others. Although conversations about race, racism, and racial identity tend to focus on Black-White relations, to do so ignores the experiences of other targeted racial or ethnic groups. When we look at the experiences of Latinxs, Native Americans, Asian and Pacific Islanders (APIs), and, more recently, Middle Easterners and North Africans (MENAs) in the United States, we can easily see that racial and cultural oppression has been a part of their lived experiences and that it plays a role in the identity development process for individuals in these groups as well.5
In this multiracial/multiethnic context, Jean Phinney’s model of adolescent ethnic identity development is particularly useful. Grounded in both an Eriksonian understanding of adolescence and research studies of adolescents from various racial or ethnic groups, Phinney’s model is made up of three unique phases: (1) unexamined ethnic identity, when race or ethnicity is not particularly salient for the individual; (2) ethnic identity search, when individuals are actively engaged in defining for themselves what it means to be a member of their own racial or ethnic group; and (3) achieved ethnic identity, when individuals are able to assert a clear, positive sense of their racial or ethnic identity.6 Phinney’s model shares with both Cross’ and Helms’ models the idea that an achieved identity develops over time and that race-related encounters often lead to the exploration, examination, and eventual internalization of a positive, self-defined sense of one’s own racial or ethnic identity.
While Phinney’s work describes the identity process for adolescents of color in general, it is important to continually keep in mind the cultural diversity and wide range of experience represented by the groups known as Latinxs, APIs, Native peoples, and MENAs. Because of this tremendous diversity, it is impossible in the space of one chapter to detail the complexities of the identity process for each group.7 Therein lies my dilemma. How can I make the experiences of the Latinx, API, Native, and MENA students visible without tokenizing them? I am not sure that I can, but I have learned in teaching about racism that a sincere, if imperfect, attempt to interrupt the oppression of others is usually better than no attempt at all. In that spirit, this chapter is an attempt to interrupt the frequent silence about the impact of racism on these communities of color. It is not an attempt to provide an in-depth discussion of each group’s identity development process, an attempt that would inevitably be incomplete. Rather, this chapter highlights a few critical issues pertinent to the identity development of each group, particularly in schools, and points the reader to more information.
What Do We Mean When We Say “Latinx”?
Latinxs now represent the largest “minority” group in the United States, a position formerly held by African Americans. According to the US census, as of 2015, Hispanics (so labeled by the federal government) numbered approximately fifty-seven million, representing 17.6 percent of the total US population.8 Though the largest community of color in size, the Latinx population is no longer the fastest-growing demographic segment in the US, a designation now held by Asian Americans. Since the onset of the Great Recession in December 2007, there has been both a drop-off in immigration from Latin America and a declining birth rate among Latinx women in the US, slowing the growth rate of the Latinx population. Still, Latinxs have accounted for 54 percent of the total US population growth thus far in the twenty-first century (2000–2014).9 Over the last two decades of the twentieth century (1980–2000), the Latinx immigrant population jumped from 4.2 million to 14.1 million; however, between 2000 and 2014, it was the increase in babies born to Latinx families in the US that drove the population growth. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, there were 9.6 million Latinx births as compared to 6.5 million new immigrants.10 Consequently, as of 2014, two-thirds of all Latinxs living in the US were born in the US, and nearly half of those US-born were under the age of eighteen. With a median age of twenty-eight, Latinxs are the youngest major racial or ethnic group in the US. (By comparison, the median age of Whites in 2014 was forty-three; for Blacks and Asians, the median age was thirty-three and thirty-six, respectively.)11
Approximately 67 percent of Latinxs are of Mexican ancestry, a population that includes US-born Mexican Americans (also known as Chicanxs), whose families may have been in the Southwest for many generations, as well as recent Mexican immigrants. Approximately 9.5 percent of Latinxs are Puerto Rican, 3.8 percent are Salvadoran, 3.7 percent are Cuban, 3.3 percent Dominican, and 2.4 percent Guatemalan. The remaining 10.3 percent are from other Central or South American countries.12 Each
of these groups is a distinct population with a particular historical relationship to the United States.
In the case of the Chicanx population, the US conquest and annexation of Mexican territory (a geographical area extending from Texas to California) following the Mexican-American War (1846–1848) created a situation in which people of Mexican ancestry became subject to White domination. Like African Americans and Native peoples, Mexican Americans were initially incorporated into US society against their will. It was the general feeling among White settlers that they were superior to Mexicans, who were descendants of Native peoples or mestizos, with a combination of Native and European ancestry. The question of how Mexicans should be classified racially was decided in 1897 by Texas courts, which ruled that Mexican Americans were not White. In California, they were classified as “Caucasian” until 1930, when the state attorney general decided they should be categorized as “Indians,” though “not considered ‘the original American Indians of the US.’”13 In both Texas and California, Mexican Americans were confined to segregated schools, and in both states legislation was passed in the nineteenth century outlawing the use of Spanish for instruction in the public schools. During that time, Mexican families sought to preserve their culture and language by sending their children to Catholic schools or private Mexican schools where bilingual instruction was maintained.14
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? Page 26
