Frequently, someone asks me if they are supposed to be colorblind. Most recently, the question was asked while I was facilitating a group on how to foster inclusion in community settings.

I asked why this type of question came up only regarding race or ethnicity; no one thought to ignore gender or religious orientation. As I explained:

“Women want to be identified as women. Men as men. And nonbinaries as nonbinaries.  People sort out preferences early in a relationship and that’s that. If a woman says she’s a woman, no one wonders whether they should ignore that fact. If you know you’re talking to a teenager, no one tries to pretend this is a middle-aged person. Why is it such a big deal when it comes to race and ethnicity?”

Actually, I was asking that question rhetorically, but the group took it very seriously.

We’re afraid of saying something wrong.” We don’t know what to do or if the other person will take offense if we mention their race.” It’s a minefield, so we stay away.”

Staying away often means not interacting outside of one’s own racial or ethnic group or comfort zone.

Go into any multicultural workplace or school cafeteria and you’re likely to see people interacting only with people like themselves.

My husband and I walk along the jogging track at a local high school. On weekends, groups of Latinos play soccer with their kids; clusters of Asian dads are out there with their kids; and the White dads take up the same spot every day on the schoolyard teaching their kids baseball or football. 

Seldom are the groups integrated. People are relaxing and enjoying their families with people similar to themselves.

How are people supposed to feel comfortable with different ethnic groups if given a choice, they stick to their own kind?

If you’re holding out hope it will happen in the school system, I am sad to tell you that the talk nowadays about schools is how they are becoming re-segregated. 

The UCLA Civil Rights Project reports:

Black students are far more segregated from White students now than in the civil rights era but attend school with many more Latinos. In 1991, the typical Black student was in a school with a third White students but now only one fourth. However, the Latino share is up from 9% to 21% in the same time span. In the South, at its peak, about 42 percent of Black students were in majority White schools, that percentage has declined to 27%.1 So if re-segregation is occurring in the schools, not only in the US but around the world, how are people supposed to get comfortable with those who are different?

How to overcome discomfort in interethnic interactions – What the research says

I recently read a research study from Australia seeking to answer this question. The majority group members were non-Muslim Anglo Australians. Australia is highly multicultural with many different minority groups. For this study, the researchers chose Middle Eastern Muslims as the minority group because the rates of racism toward them has been found to be three times higher than the national average. 

The researchers gave the majority member participants hypothetical situations designed to exacerbate their anxiety and avoidance about appearing prejudiced in multicultural interactions. Each majority member was then paired with a Muslim and asked to discuss “issues concerning the integration of ethnic minorities into the broader Australian society.” The intervention consisted of material to reduce this threat.

There were two control groups. In one, the majority members were paired with other majority members like themselves and asked to discuss the topic. In the second, the majority group members received information about marital interactions.

The intervention worked! Majority group members paired with Muslims and given information on how to handle a threatening interaction reported less anxiety and less desire to avoid the interaction. This contrasted with those who were paired either with majority members like themselves or who received the control material.

What was the intervention and why did it work?

The intervention was a document summarizing four evidence-based strategies and techniques that have been shown to improve intergroup interactions. The strategies were:

1. Think about your similarities with the interaction partner.
2. Acknowledge race or group identity in the discussion -- in other words, don’t pretend to be colorblind. This is consistent with what I told the group I was facilitating. As I explained, if race is relevant in the discussion and you avoid talking about it, you have just positioned yourself as unsafe. Similarly, the instructions said:

When people are in an intergroup interaction with a person from a minority group, they often attempt to ignore or avoid in the discussion the fact that the person whom they are interacting with belongs to a different group, even if the discussion topic is relevant to that person’s group identity. This is often done with the intention to not appear prejudiced. However, this approach has been found to be counterproductive, as a number of psychological studies have found that avoiding group identities during intergroup interaction results in superficial discussions and the perception that their interaction partner is not very friendly. However, participants who acknowledged their partner’s race or group identity, on the other hand, are perceived as more friendly and involved in the interaction by their interaction partner. That is, acknowledging the race or group identity of one’s interaction partner if it is relevant to the topic of discussion leads to better intergroup interaction outcomes.2

3. Approach the interaction as an “opportunity to have an enjoyable intercultural dialogue” and focus on the partner, rather than taxing your cognitive system by focusing on what you are saying or doing.
4. Think about positive personal experiences from the past when interacting with someone from that cultural group.

 

Why did it work?

Go back to my initial statements where people explained that they are afraid to engage in this conversation for fear they will say something wrong. These instructions counter those feelings of inadequacy by telling people how to be successful when interacting with people from different ethnicities!

Instead of wondering and worrying if one should be colorblind, the participants were explicitly told not to pretend to be colorblind but to bring up race as relevant. I emphasize the “as relevant,” since bringing it up when there is no context can backfire.

Once the study group was informed on what to do, they could confidently enter into the intercultural conversation knowing that their actions were firmly supported by the behavioral sciences. Ambiguity and ignorance were taken off the table. 

The four steps worked for me on first try

I chuckled to myself when I read the four steps in the intervention. I’ve been using the equivalent since I left my segregated school in the South and entered an integrated high school in upstate New York. 

My cousin had gone to the same Quaker high school before me and told me that the students there were “not prejudiced,” and so I should go in expecting positive experiences. Crucially, she explained that the Quakers had taken a leadership role in the Underground Railroad during slavery and that she herself had had a White (gasp!) boyfriend.

Off to Oakwood Friends School I went, and on day one as I stood outside alone wondering what I was supposed to do, a White girl approached me and asked if I wanted to go to the gym with her to play basketball with some of the others. ³

I had never played basketball but had watched dozens of games in my previous high school, so when she offered me a lifeline, I eagerly took it. Here’s how the four action steps had worked for me:  Interest in basketball gave us a common frame of reference (similarity). My cousin had indirectly assured me that race was a discussable (acknowledge group identity) and I could relax with the students there. While I had never before had a positive experience with a White person, my cousin had, so I vicariously took her word for it (opportunity and positive experiences from the past).

What does this mean for you?

Fast forward a few decades and we in Leading Consciously now include equivalent action steps in the module in our curriculum on increasing our comfort level with differences.

They work. 

If you try them and they don’t write work, let me know.  If you’re reluctant to try them but really want to, let me know. If you try them and you are underwhelmed, or if they succeed beyond your imaginings, let me know.

We at Leading Consciously are dedicated to helping you create the world you want to have and the world we all want to live in. We encourage you to let us know how we’re doing and what works for you. 

For more information about the advantages of not being colorblind, check out our previous blog on the subject: https://www.leadingconsciously.com/blog/why-colorblindness-is-racism-covert-way-of-protecting-26 

 

 

[1] Orfield, G. J., Danielle (2020). Black segregation matters: School resegregation and black educational opportunity. The Civil Rights Project, UCLA Civil Rights Project. 2.

[2] Because the focus in these Reflections is on the problems with claiming colorblindness, I am giving their instructions in full.

[3] Shout-out to my friend, Maureen McCann. We remain friends to this day.