Abstract
Reviewed by: Reginald A. Byron, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Southwestern University, Georgetown, TX, USA DOI: 10.1177/0730888415570574
Talking about race is difficult for many Americans. Indeed, a widespread acceptance of the colorblind ideology—the belief that race is now largely unimportant when it comes to differences in life circumstances—and lingering anxieties about offending others make discussions surrounding race especially challenging for white Americans. It should therefore come as no surprise that, despite institutional proclamations supporting racial diversity, explicit conversations about race at work are scarce.
In The Color Bind, Erica Foldy and Tamara Buckley begin by describing a color bind in America—one wherein race is seen as an important topic yet rarely discussed in conversation. Given this contextual backdrop, the authors’ central goal is to analyze how and why different teams of (mostly White) social workers in a child welfare agency either talk or do not talk about race or culture while on the job. The question itself is fascinating and, correspondingly, there is a lot to like about this book. The authors’ remarks about how they personally struggled with this project, given their different backgrounds, and their conclusion that there is much more to know about breaking the color bind are simultaneously reflexive and commendable. Additionally, the longitudinal ethnographic data lend themselves to the authors’ rich qualitative descriptions of the multiple influences (team leaders, the teams, and particular office contexts) important to the creation of a work team’s racial-cultural practice—practice that, in line with recent scholarly work (Braunstein, Fulton, & Wood, 2014), offers ideas for building productive group cultures across diverse workers.
After a short description of their sample and analytic strategy, the authors then delve into individual-level interpretations of the importance of race and culture. Extending theory, the authors explain that there is an ambivalent state that lies between individual colorblindness and color cognizance—a state they coin color minimization (or the acknowledgement of race but subsequent devaluation of it because presumably some other characteristic matters more; e.g., Grace from Team East). The bulk of the book (Chapters 4–6), however, centers on three teams (out of seven in the larger study) that represent the range of racial-cultural approaches. Team North is described as color-cognizant; Team East is color evasive (not as individuals, but as a team); and Team South is color hostile. Team North is central to the book’s contribution, as it has pivotal color-cognizant actors and is furthest along the path to color cognizance owing to its “safety climate” (where team members can express their perspectives safely) and strong “learning behaviors” (where disparate points of view are integrated to move conversations forward). These attributes serve as an “intergroup incubator” in support of the team’s color-cognizant racial-cultural approach (p. 138).
Importantly, Foldy and Buckley are upfront about some of the limitations of their analyses. This includes the lack of an intersectional approach and the uniqueness of a child protection agency as a study site given the salience of race in such a context. Their argument that race is particularly charged and deserves special focus is sensible. Yet, some discussion of gender would have, in my view, shed important light on workers’ interpretations and behaviors, such as Team North’s disagreement about workers assisting families with household duties or Team South’s treatment of Radhi (a female teammate of color). Foldy and Buckley also provide a list of analogous organizations where similar racial-cultural conversations could arguably occur. Unfortunately, however, each either has an explicit racial policy focus or involves a seemingly egalitarian and racially diverse work scenario, whereas many American jobs do not have such a focus and are racially stratified. One is thus left to wonder, how might color-cognizant practices be incubated in these average U.S. workplaces?
The authors describe color cognizance as an achievement. It is an orientation that fosters the acknowledgement and discussion of race, though endorsers are not committed to a specific action. This flexibility allows workers, for example, to discuss the strengths and limitations of matching clients and workers by race, leaving specific recommendations up to individual teams. However, introducing readers to more critical color conscious orientations—orientations that would compel teams to recognize and discuss power differentials within racial systems and then take specific actions against them (Freire, 1970)—would have provided an informative extension to the colorblind-color cognizant theoretical continuum.
Foldy and Buckley’s recurrent description of how the workers invoked “race or culture” may similarly be read as problematic. Race and culture are two distinct, albeit sometimes intertwined, constructs that are often differentiated in the American experience. When race is combined with culture, we tend to downplay the ways that the particular histories of racial oppression in the United States matter (Andersen, 1999)—leading race to be a more taboo topic than culture. The authors themselves even acknowledge that although Team North paid frequent attention to culture they only discussed race twice in the meetings that were observed and “once quite briefly” (p. 65). Team North did discuss race more than other teams when considering interview questions, but the notable absence of explicit, unprompted race-specific discussions suggests that these two constructs should be separated and that, even on a color-cognizant child welfare team, talking about race was difficult. Despite these limitations, The Color Bind is certainly an interesting and worthwhile read and one that will benefit scholars interested in the ways that multiple microlevel factors interact in the suppression or production of color-cognizant work teams.