Interdisciplinary reflections on the resilience of racial constructs

Divided by and over race

Despite landmark civil, legal, and even visible social reforms ¹ in the past fifty years, race-related tensions continue to be a pervasive social and missiological issue in the United States. ² This tension, more pronounced in some locales than others, is a tinderbox, filled with decades of pent-up feelings of frustrations, mistrust, and hostilities; it lurks just beneath the surface and emerges periodically in an explosion of mass-publicized civil unrest. The tragic and fatal shootings of two young African American males, Michael Brown of Ferguson, Missouri, and Trayvon Martin of Sanford, Florida, are examples of recent incidents that have incited such outbursts of anger and lament.

Following the Michael Brown killing, the Pew Center released the findings of their study which revealed the stark differences in how “blacks” and “whites” reacted to the police shooting (Pew Center 2014). “Blacks” were more than twice as likely (80%) as “whites” (37%) to believe that this incident raises important issues about race (i.e. there is a race problem). “Blacks” were also twice as likely (65%) as “whites” (33%) to say that police response has been excessive. The reality of this disparity in perceptions is described ably by Michael Emerson and George Yancey in Transcending Racial Barriers (2010). Emerson and Yancey broadly classify various perceptions or diagnoses of racial tensions into two categories before proposing their own: ³ (1) those rooted in the perception that intervention is necessary to achieve racial justice and which place all or most of the obligation for corrective action on the majority group members (e.g. white responsibility, reparations, elimination of capitalism, multiculturalism) and (2) those that tend to see racial oppression as a thing of the past and shift the burden on minority group members (e.g. colorblindness, no victimhood, Anglo-conformity). Perhaps the one thing that all parties can agree on is that there is clear lack of agreement on fundamental matters like what the nature and scope of the problem is, how the problem ought to be remedied, and even what a desired, just future would look like. ⁴ Such dissent presents a formidable barrier to progress and societal harmony.

The focal point of this article is in better understanding the nature of the race problem, which presupposes that there is a problem in the first place. As such, this article affirms the basic premise that far from having achieved a post-racial society, the problem of race in the post-civil rights era has transitioned from overt (e.g. Jim Crow laws) to more covert forms of racism, or what Eduardo Bonilla-Silva calls “color-blind racism” (Bonilla-Silva, 2010). ⁵ Racial profiling is one example of this phenomenon:

Over time, as racial contestation increases, legal and extralegal practices force a movement towards more covert forms of racialized law from the racial state. Such movement from overt to covert social practices is expected in the era of color-blind racism. (Glover, 2009: 12)

Before proceeding to the central issue, preliminary comments regarding terms need to be made. I realize that the terms race and ethnicity are not used consistently, neither in public discourse nor within scholarly materials. It can be confusing to discern what people mean by them. The dynamic nature of words and their meaning adds to the complexity of studying race and ethnicity. I do not use (or at least do not intend to use) race and ethnicity interchangeably. I think that these terms carry different baggage since the concepts behind them were developed at different times and applied in different ways. I define race as a modern, social construct that attempts to categorize groups or subgroups of people primarily on the basis of phenotypic differences (visible traits that result from one’s genetics and effects of the environment). Racism then is the prejudicial use of the race construct, in which denigrating generalizations or assumptions are made about other supposed races (e.g. “white” people are imperialists; “black” people are lazy; Koreans are rude; Native Indians are ignorant). I see ethnicity as a similar but different means of categorization that relies on social distinctions like heritage, language, religion, and culture. So, I don’t associate “Korean” with race but rather with ethnicity. “Asian” is more ambiguous since many associate the term with both race and ethnicity. In this article, I am speaking primarily about race, though the arguments I make about the causes for resilience also apply to ethnic categories.

The question of fundamental causes

Following the 2010 State of the Union address, MSNBC host Chris Matthews, impressed with President Obama’s eloquence, stirred up controversy with his awkward comments: “He is post-racial by all appearances . . . I forgot he was black tonight for an hour” (Washington, 2010). Perhaps without knowing it, Chris Matthews clearly had a category of “blackness,” and despite his presumably noble intentions, he unwittingly conveyed that being “black” was a handicap that needs to be overcome (Washington, 2010). I suspect that many Americans shared similar sentiments or have had similar moments of expressing back-handed comments with innocuous intentions. If in fact Matthews’s comments were racist, does Bonilla-Silva’s white-privilege theory (i.e. racial constructs persist because of the desire of the powerful to remain in a place of privilege) offer a satisfactory, prima facie explanation for these sentiments? Might there also be less sinister reasons—that is, not born out of a conscious desire to maintain privilege—for the persistence of racial constructs? After all, it is not only those with power and privilege or the “whites” that employ racial constructs or other types of prejudice to denigrate others within supposed out-groups. Racialized prejudice is not just a “black” versus “white” issue, as it is often framed, but it nefariously operates even within supposed racial groups (Johnson, 2014)—“whites” condescendingly dismissing other “whites” as poor, backwards, “white trailer trash”; “blacks” disparagingly accusing other “blacks” seeking educational and economic advancement by “acting white”; Asian Americans derisively distancing themselves from recent Asian immigrants or refugees who are not American enough. ⁶ As Emerson and Yancey surmise,

Despite consistent claims to the contrary by many U.S. citizens, social and psychological research consistently shows that we cannot live in this country and not hold racial stereotypes. They simply are ever-present, overtly and subtly. They float in the air, seemingly impervious to contradictory evidence, shaping what we see and influencing our interpretations, typically along racial lines, of course. (2011: 66)

So how do we explain this seemingly ubiquitous phenomenon? While relatively few ⁷ today would affirm the validity of 19th- and 20th-century racial ideology, ⁸ propagated and widely held by then-majority groups, the race construct has proven to be resilient despite being exposed for what it is. ⁹ When we are asked to describe someone whom we have just met briefly and whose name escapes us, we often reach for racial, ethnic, or physical identifying markers. If we know racial categories like “black” and “white” are inadequate and flawed, why do we keep using them? Some social scientists rightly suggest that racial and ethnic constructs meet a powerful human need for identity and solidarity, even if it does so in illusory and artificial ways (Meneses, 2006: 44). In addition to the fundamental need for belonging that drives groups to construct identities based on both visible and presumed or mythical characteristics, and apart from understanding the race/ethnicity concept as it has developed historically, are there some deeper, underlying causes for the existence of these constructs and reasons for their resilience despite various efforts to deconstruct them? I contend that there is an overlooked, fundamental reason that not only helps us to understand why race constructs are resilient, but can also aid us in forming better approaches to racial reconciliation.

Cognitive categories

The idea that human beings impose, construct, or shape their own perception of a greatly vast and complex reality has been widely attested across various disciplines. For example, Immanuel Kant postulated that the human mind is not simply passive but active in shaping experience and knowledge, which for the most part is restricted to the realm of sense experience (Kant, 1998). John Hick (2005) adapted Kant’s phenomenal–noumenal distinction as the epistemological foundation of his pluralistic hypothesis, positing his own distinction between reality an sich (as it really is) and the various perceptions of reality as projected by different religious traditions. Peter Berger, speaking of humanity’s unique, dialectic relationship to society (both helping to construct it and being shaped by it) and their intrinsic need to live in their socially constructed worlds, posited, “Men are congenitally compelled to impose a meaningful order upon reality” (Berger, 1967: 22). Jean Piaget, renowned for his theories of cognitive development, suggested that the human mind constructs schemes or mental categories to achieve organization, a basic human impulse. Piaget theorized that our minds have a natural tendency to make sense of the world (organization) by creating complex systems of mental categories, which normally grow and change with age and experience through the process of adaptation (Yount, 1996, 74–81). The mind has a natural tendency, called equilibration, to maintain balance between what one already knows, as reflected in the complex system of mental schemes, and what one actually experiences in the world, which may or may not correspond to existing schemes. Adaptation then consists of a constant negotiation of two complementary processes; assimilation, which refers to interpreting experiences so they fit into what we know (sometimes distorting reality), and accommodation, which entails adjusting schemes to fit what we experience, either by adjusting existing schemes or creating new ones (Piaget, 1985). When people are confronted with something they do not know, creating disequilibrium, the mind is driven by equilibration to reduce the discomfort of disequilibrium through the process of adaptation.

Though these thinkers used different language and concepts, they share the common assertion that human perceptions of reality are mediated by constructs. In the postmodern era, where overly optimistic Enlightenment ideals have been abandoned in favor of a more modest assessment of our ability to comprehend reality, affirming that our perception of reality is necessarily filtered through various socially shaped lenses has become nearly axiomatic.

The race construct, albeit a faulty and inadequate approach, can be explained as an expression born out of the human impulse to categorize. Differentiation is a basic building block of categorization, which according to Piaget and others is a natural human process. If categorization and differentiations are unavoidable, our concerns should be directed toward developing responsible and legitimate means of differentiation and identification. Paul Hiebert’s use of set theory to explain different, culturally informed, and conditioned approaches to forming categories is especially helpful in this consideration (Hiebert, 1979, 1994).

Hiebert proposes that category construction is mediated by various sociocultural factors and the manner in which categories are constructed can facilitate or obfuscate understanding of the realities being categorized. Hiebert explains that there are two essential variables in defining a category: (1) the basis on which elements are assigned to a category and (2) the nature of its boundary. First, membership within a set can be determined on the basis of intrinsic or extrinsic characteristics. Intrinsic characteristics refer to qualities inherent to the object being classified and so intrinsic sets are formed on the basis of “the essential nature of the members themselves.” ¹⁰ In contrast, extrinsic (also called relational) sets are formed, not on the basis of what things are in and of themselves, but on their relationship to an external reference point (or center). ¹¹ Second, with regard to boundaries, sets can have either well-formed boundaries or fuzzy boundaries. Well-formed sets have clearly defined boundaries; things either belong in the set or they do not. In contrast to the binary or digital nature of well-formed sets, fuzzy sets are analogical sets which do not have sharp boundaries. ¹² Objects can be both inside and outside of the set at the same time. The combination of the two variables, each of which has two options, creates four possible types of categories—intrinsic well-formed sets (bounded-sets), intrinsic fuzzy sets, extrinsic well-formed sets (centered-sets), and extrinsic fuzzy sets.

Hiebert also contends that Western culture, being deeply influenced by the ancient Greek philosophical worldview and its emphasis on the “intrinsic nature of things,” is primarily based on bounded sets:

We use fuzzy sets, but as qualifiers . . . But we perceived the fundamental reality of nature in terms of bounded-set nouns . . . We want uniform categories . . . We use bounded sets in classical music . . . We edge our sidewalks so that the grass does not creep onto the cement . . . we in America tend to think in terms of opposites . . . In modern science we created endless taxonomies . . . Westerners view law as an impersonal set of norms that apply equally to all humans. (Hiebert, 1994: 113–14)

Accordingly, like Carolus Linnaeus’s racialized taxonomy, Americans seem to largely understand racial categories on the basis of bounded sets, which are characterized by clear boundaries and homogeneity. That is, racial groups are seen as natural or primordial divisions of humanity (Payne, 2002: 206–16); they are static sets, constructed on the basis of easily visible intrinsic characteristics, upon which projections and judgments are made on the group. Hiebert suggests that intrinsic fuzzy sets, which allow for degrees of inclusion within a set and simultaneous inclusion in other sets, are a preferable way to perceive racial categories:

Americans use well-defined sets to divide people sharply into different races, such as blacks, whites, and Latinos. In reality, races blend into one another along continuums of intermarriage. A person may have one, two, three, or four great-grandparents from one race and the rest from another. Ancestors may come from three or more races. There are no “pure” races. Seen in fuzzy-set terms, races form continua between poles, so sharp lines cannot be drawn. (Hiebert, 1994: 118)

In speaking of racial categories, Hiebert seems to be speaking of ancestry as a primary marker of identification. So what he is calling race here, I would call ethnicity (see note 2). Nonetheless, the point is that constructing racial or ethnic categories as intrinsic fuzzy sets seems to be a preferable approach that accounts for both its fluidity as well as well as allowing for some stability, lest it becomes vague and entirely useless as a category. Race, when construed as a bounded-set, not only fails to adequately account for the reality of variability and the possibility of multiple membership, the logic of the category also promotes stereotyping.

If Hiebert is right in arguing that people in Western cultures tend to build their world on the basis of bounded-sets, then this in small part may explain the predilection for the resilience of primordialist views of racial categories. Perhaps the race construct, built on the basis of bounded-sets, subconsciously appeals to those whose cognitive processes have been socialized to favor neat boundaries and a static view of reality. Whether or not this is the case, Hiebert’s work provides a profound reminder that there are different ways to construct categories—something that we all do. And the ways in which we construct categories greatly affect the way we perceive reality.

Missiological implications

This section explores several implications for developing approaches to racial reconciliation that recognize and serve the human need for category construction and organization while promoting human dignity and solidarity.

First, the taboo approach to racial discourse or the “don’t talk about it because it’s not real” approach must be set aside. There continue to be awkwardness and confusion among many Americans about how we ought to think and talk about race and ethnicity, as exemplified by Matthews’s misguided comments. In our post-civil rights, “color-blind racism” era, there are strong social pressures that dissuade public expression of sentiments or attitudes that carry even a suspicious waff of racism, perhaps to the extent of being overprotective and counterproductive.

For example, in his provocative book, Jon Entine begins with what he sees as a phenomenological reality—African Americans are disproportionately represented in certain sports ¹³ and certain positions—and concludes that the scientific evidence for black athletic superiority is overwhelming (Entine, 2001: 341). In writing about this topic, Entine is part of a few who have dared to explore plausible explanations to questions that many others privately wonder. Entine recounts what Earl Smith, an African American scholar and chairman of the department of sociology at Wake Forest, said after a panel discussion on Taboo at the 1998 North American Society for the Sociology of Sport. Smith, “clearly exasperated at the reticence of the public and those in his profession to even broach such heretical questions,” mused, “Maybe we are just too quick to automatically think that the answers that might have been accurate thirty years ago are correct today. I want to know why every man at the start of the Olympic 100 meters is black . . . I’ve looked at the sociological explanations and they don’t fully convince me. Maybe there are other explanations. Let’s look at the science. We have to be willing to go where the evidence takes us” (Entine, 2001: 340). In short, Entine’s research reveals that even sociologists experience dissonance between what people think is plausible and what is appropriate to express.

The naïve narrative of color blindness encourages the banishment of honest public discourse about race into the safer confines of private thoughts or conversations. Rightly or wrongly, people will construct categories of social others based on anecdotal evidence and social cues, using existing social artifacts like the misleading phenotypic categories “white” and “black” to construct personal notions of whiteness and blackness. Categories do not have to receive perfect validation to exert belief-shaping power. As Entine’s research demonstrates, there is enough stability to these race constructs (e.g. “blacks” are good at basketball, Asians are good at math and science) to lend plausibility to racial constructs. Such privatization of thoughts about race can only breed the growing disparity between front-stage and back-stage behaviors and attitudes, particularly when personal observations and opinions cannot be reconciled with that of public expectations. However, social pressure toward racial political correctness should not lull us into thinking that we live in a post-racial society. We only need to look at studies that target back-stage attitudes and behaviors related to race and ethnicity to know that there is clearly more going on than what is claimed on the front stage (e.g. Implicit Association Test). Bonilla-Silva for example notes, “If we take seriously whites’ self-profession to color blindness, one would expect significantly high levels of racial interaction with minorities in general and blacks in particular” (2010: 16). In short, we need sustained conversations about the deep racial divide in America, and not just ones that merely follow the fickle news cycle. Despite whatever awkwardness and discomfort they anticipate with such an emotionally charged topic, Christian leaders ought to be facilitating such conversations rather than avoiding them.

Also, while honest and amicable dialogue is essential, there is no substitute for interpersonal contact in creating opportunities for healthy dissonance that can expose our bias, challenge our constructs, and prompt us to build better constructs. Gordon Allport’s intergroup contact hypothesis helped spawn a bevy of studies related to intergroup contact theory (Wagner et al., 2008; Pettigrew et al., 2007; Dixon and Rosenbaum, 2004). Allport theorized that prejudice reduction can be effectively facilitated by interpersonal contact under certain conditions—equal group status, common goals, intergroup cooperation, and authority support (Allport, 1954; Pettigrew and Tropp, 2008). More recent studies have sought to understand how intergroup contact reduces prejudice. According to three commonly cited explanations, intergroup contact reduces prejudice by “enhancing knowledge about the outgroup,” “reducing anxiety about intergroup contact,” and “increasing empathy and perspective taking” (Pettigrew and Tropp, 2008).

Where can we find settings which embody Allport’s conditions so that the three common mediators of prejudice reduction can be experienced? ¹⁴ I suggest the local church. In the New Testament, the early church was idealized as a rare, countercultural oasis, where unequal social structures and oppressive constructs that undermined intrinsic human dignity were cast aside. Within the lived reality of the local church, the social significance of slave or master, rich or poor, Jew or Gentile, male or female, gave way to the shared experience of being aliens who were adopted into the family of the great Patriarch. In this family of brothers and sisters, all were to be equally valued members, spiritual equals who shared in the commonality of the indwelling Spirit and the common calling to participate as priests in God’s redemptive work in the world.

However, congregational studies have revealed that the majority of our local churches in the USA are not multicultural, even those that are situated in ethnically diverse communities. The authors of United by Faith: The Multicongregation as an Answer to the Problem of Race cite a 1998 national congregation study in claiming that less than 5.5% of Christian congregations are racially mixed, operationalized as a congregation in which no one racial group represents 80% or more of the congregational makeup (DeYoung et al., 2004: 2). Setting aside the issue of what one thinks about whether or not all Christian congregations in the USA should seek diversity, ¹⁵ the tragedy I see is that the vast majority of Christians in the USA are missing the opportunity to be part of a community that is ideally suited to helping people work through their bias, experience reconciliation, and facilitate change in the broader community. A mosaic is an apt metaphor (not the outmoded image of the assimilating “melting pot”) for how we ought to see humanity—one that recognizes both the beauty of diversity and commonality, the part and the greater whole. The local Christian church, a visible manifestation of God’s kingdom, is one such place where this idealized vision can be experienced and realized.

If categorization and differentiation are fundamental human cognitive processes, then in a sense, people are intrinsically category-makers. It seems to me that the problem is not with forming the categories themselves for the sake of identity formation and differentiation but in how these categories are formed, what is assumed about members of these socially constructed categories, and how they are applied. Furthermore, if categorization and differentiation are natural functions of humanness, then it is not the idealistic pretense of “colorblindness” ¹⁶ that we ought to pursue and encourage but rather better categories, including a valid basis for categorization, an understanding of its limitations, and its ethical, appropriate use. But such a change at the societal level is daunting to say the least, given the historical and cultural rootedness of racialized categories and the human propensity for the oppressive misuse of such categories. ¹⁷ Trying to find better social categories has been a long struggle for even the US Census Bureau, and they are now considering moving away from referring to terms like “race” and “origins” in the 2020 census, as they concede such terms are confusing to many people and understood in different ways (Cohn, 2015). ¹⁸ I would support such a change, not merely because of the potential expediency in reducing confusion and the non-response rate on a census by moving away from sloppy categories like “white” and “black,” but because words, far from being merely arbitrary, neutral symbols, can wield the power to shape perceptions; these words provide the language for our children and citizens in our society in the construction of their identities and that of others. Specifically, I believe racial categories like “white” and “black” continue to lend prominence to skin pigmentation as a means of differentiation and work culturally to perpetuate the legitimacy of such means of categorization. Though I realize such categories are convenient and common parlance for Americans, I believe using racial categories that still carry a deeply injurious and divisive legacy do not seem to be a prudent way to move forward. If needed, I resort to ethnic categories (e.g. African American, African descent, Asian American); even better, I fight the culturally conditioned urge to locate someone within such categories (not uncommonly wrongly) and instead allow those I meet to share the prominent markers of their identity (which may or may not even include ethnic heritage).

For the foreseeable future, it is not reasonable to presume that most Americans will forgo or ignore obvious phenotypic differences, like pigmentation, within humankind in identifying self and others. In the absence of better explanatory theories of differentiations, people will construct their own. We must, then, as a part of Christian discipleship and our kingdom mission to promote shalom in our communities, scrutinize, and sanctify the language and the social constructs that we employ to perceive and categorize others.