“Diversity Is Important to Me”: White Parents and Exposure-to-Diversity Parenting Practices

Abstract

Drawing upon interviews with 40 parents in Cincinnati, Ohio, the author explores how “exposure to diversity,” an implicit racial socialization practice, has become a defining feature of how some middle-class white parents teach their children about race and reflect on what it means to be a good white parent. Exposure to diversity involves white parents’ active efforts to expose their children to people of color via trips to multiracial parks, enrollment in multiracial schools, or residence in multiracial neighborhoods. The author argues that white parents’ efforts are informed by their adherence to both a “diversity ideology” wherein racial diversity is frequently, but not always, framed as a positive social dynamic that enriches their family’s white life, and a middle-class desire to craft a high-status white child via distinction-oriented parenting practices. Taken together, white middle-class parents pursue an exposure-to-diversity strategy because they believe, whether consciously or not, that diversity provides them and their children with the means to facilitate small-scale social change and to craft a comfortable, open-minded white child who possesses racial and class distinction.

Keywords

white racial socialization parents diversity ideology racial comfort distinction

I first learned that white parents seek “exposure to diversity” for their children during the spring of 2013 while frequenting a multiracial park in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio. Having no yard, my daughter and I made regular trips to the park a few blocks from our home. During one of these visits, I became acquainted with a white father whose daughter was of a similar age as my own. While watching our daughters play in the sandbox, we struck up a conversation about places in Cincinnati we liked to visit with our children. The father, Michael, noted that he lived in an outlying suburb “where there are no black people” and therefore brought his white daughter to this park, a half hour’s drive away, several times a week. He told me he wanted his daughter to “see and play with black people. Because that’s the real world, you know—not the little white bubble where we live.” He later explained that he and his wife “are trying to be intentional parents when it comes to race.”

Michael’s comment about purposefully visiting the park so that his white daughter could be in the same space with black people surprised me because it flew in the face of research suggesting that white parents avoid multiracial spaces with their children (Johnson and Shapiro 2003). However, in other ways, his comment resonated with me. Like Michael, I too was trying to be an intentional white parent when it came to race, a somewhat puzzling proposition given how few white racial socialization resources existed at that time. Indeed, in 2013, there was almost no published research on the subject of white racial socialization. Most of the available racial socialization research focused on families of color. From this scholarship I learned that some middle- to upper-class parents of color engaged in similar exposure-to-diversity practices with their children, specifically if they and their families lived in segregated neighborhoods (Pugh 2009; Tatum 1987; Tuan 1998; Winkler 2012). The culmination of these two sources of information, one anecdotal and personal and the other academic and empirically driven, motivated me to explore whether other middle-class white parents were pursuing exposure-to-diversity practices with their children and, if so, how and why.

This study draws on interviews with 40 middle-class white parents from Cincinnati. My findings indicate that exposure to diversity has become a defining feature of how some middle-class white parents teach their children about race and reflect on what it means to be a good white parent in the post–civil rights era. Exposure to diversity involves white parents’ active efforts to expose their children to people of color (POC), blacks specifically, by attending multiracial parks, establishing residence in multiracial neighborhoods, and/or enrolling their children in multiracial schools or extracurricular activities. Although there are many reasons middle-class white parents adopt this implicit racial socialization strategy, what ultimately informs their efforts is the belief that diversity is valuable (Ahmed 2012; Reay et al. 2007). Because of diversity’s value, white parents who pursue an exposure-to-diversity practice feel simultaneously a sense of pleasure, pride, and ambivalence regarding their exposure-to-diversity efforts. Ambivalence is most pronounced with respect to exposure to poor black individuals.

I argue that parents’ efforts reflect what others have identified as a “diversity ideology” (Embrick 2006; Mayorga-Gallo 2014).¹ This ideology positions racial diversity as a valuable social good that enriches white institutions, organizations, communities, and families, particularly within the social context of white childhood. Part of diversity’s value stems from its ability to mark the diversity advocate as a morally upstanding person. Indeed, in the post–civil rights context of the United States, there exists an implicit association between the inclusion of diversity and morality, as evidenced in everything from corporate advertising campaigns such as the 2013 Cheerios commercial featuring a multiracial family to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s 2017 publication “Ten Ways to Fight Hate,” in which individuals are urged to “teach acceptance” of diversity by “exposing your child to multicultural experiences [and] by intentionally expanding your circle of friends and experiences” (p. 27). No matter the medium, inclusion of diversity is framed as a panacea to racism and the diversity advocate is positioned as someone on the right side of history.

By exposing their children to POC, middle-class white parents endeavor to teach their children about “race” (i.e., POC). That said, parents’ exposure-to-diversity efforts are also fundamentally about white identity construction. Parents desire to raise a particular kind of white middle-class child and to be a particular kind of white parent. These are financially privileged parents who possess the financial means to enact a range of different decisions regarding their children’s upbringing. Hence, these parents are not simply facilitating interracial contact for their children, they are also “doing” racial and class distinction via exposure to diversity.

Other researchers have also documented efforts made by upper- and middle-class white parents to teach their children about race through an exposure strategy (Hagerman 2014, 2016; Vittrup 2018). This research has focused on how white parents use exposure practices, primarily as they relate to the choice of their children’s schools, to teach their children about race for the purpose of “social activism” (Hagerman 2014; Posey-Maddox 2014; Reay et al. 2007). My study extends this research by providing further insight into how and why white middle-class parents attempt to expose their children to POC. In addition to a “diversity ideology,” I identify a middle-class desire to craft a high-status white child via distinction-oriented parenting practices. That is, my participants pursue an exposure to diversity strategy because they believe, whether consciously or not, that diversity provides themselves and their children with the means to facilitate small-scale social change and to become comfortable, open-minded whites who possess racial and class distinction.

Theoretical Background

Racial Socialization

Racial socialization is the lifelong process by which people learn about race and racism (Castelli, Zogmaister, and Tomelleri 2009; Hughes 2003; Hughes et al. 2006). Although children learn about race and racism from a variety of sources—the state, media, schools, and peers—parents remain among the most important agents in the racial socialization process. As Pugh (2009) noted, parents “establish the contexts of their [children’s] social worlds—the neighborhoods, the schools, the afterschool activities” (p. 81). This is especially true during early and middle childhood, when children are most reliant upon their parents to navigate public spaces, facilitate friendships, and access information (Mose 2016; Underhill 2017).

Parents teach their children about race and racism through explicit instruction and implicit actions (Castelli et al. 2009; Hagerman 2014; Rockquemore, Laszloffy, and Noveske 2006). Explicit racial socialization efforts among white parents include a color-blind discussion of race and racial socialization through silence: not mentioning race, giving the impression that it should not be mentioned (Hagerman 2016; Underhill 2017; Vittrup 2018). Although many middle-class white parents may refrain from speaking with their children about race, that does not mean that racial socialization is absent from the white home. It continues to occur, albeit implicitly via parents’ every-day “acts of inclusion and exclusion” (Lewis 2003:137). For example, white children learn about race by observing how their parents interact with POC, whom their parents socialize with, or which families their parents invite over to their homes for play dates. Furthermore, parents’ decisions about the most appropriate neighborhood to raise a family or school to enroll their children fundamentally shape the social context in which children develop an understanding of race (Hagerman 2014; Rockquemore et al. 2006; Winkler 2012) and may influence the development of children’s attitudes and beliefs more than a parent’s explicit instruction (Castelli et al. 2009).

A growing body of scholarship examines an implicit racial socialization practice I refer to as “exposure to diversity.” Exposure to diversity consists of parents’ active efforts to broker racial contact for their children, either through direct interpersonal contact, including travel to diverse locales or enrollment in a multiracial school, or via consumption-oriented contact involving food, music, books, or film associated with POC (Hagerman 2014; Posey-Maddox 2014; Pugh 2009; Reay et al. 2007; Sweeney 2017; Winkler 2012). What is interesting about this racial socialization practice is that it appears to be a distinctly middle- to upper-class practice that parents from multiple racial backgrounds pursue (Hagerman 2014; Posey-Maddox 2014; Pugh 2009; Tuan 1998; Sweeney 2017; Winkler 2012). That said, the reasons parents engage in this practice varies by race.

For POC in the post–civil rights era, middle-class status is often associated with more interracial contact, especially to whites, as they pursue professional opportunities in formerly all-white occupations or move into neighborhoods with higher ranked, better funded schools, both of which frequently possess white middle-class, majorities (Tatum 1987, 2004). Among families of color who reside in majority-white cities or neighborhoods, including white parents with transracially adopted children, parents pursue intraracial exposure opportunities for their children. They join clubs, organizations, or extracurricular activities with Asian or black majorities to help their children develop meaningful relationships with other members of their racial and ethnic groups (Pugh 2009; Sweeney 2017; Tatum 1987; Tuan 1998). In contrast, Winkler (2012) found that middle-class black families who reside in majority-minority cities and neighborhoods, pursue interracial exposure opportunities for their children. These families travel to majority-white cities or neighborhoods to expose their children to white people and, in the process, teach their children about racial prejudice and discrimination (Winkler 2012). By exposing their children to “white spaces,” black parents strive to equip their children with the skills to successfully and safely respond to future acts of discrimination (Winkler 2012).

Exposure-to-diversity research among whites focuses primarily on privileged whites who enroll their children in multiracial schools (Hagerman 2014; Posey-Maddox 2014; Reay et al. 2007). White parents in these studies report exposing their children to POC for one of two reasons. Some parents describe their decision as a kind of social activism that allows them to “give back” to the multiracial schools their children attend (Hagerman 2014; Posey-Maddox 2014). Others characterize diversity as an “asset” that helps their children develop racial tolerance as well as “social and cultural fluency” to navigate diverse spaces (Hagerman 2014; Posey Maddox 2014; Reay et al. 2007).

Little is known about whether white parents adopt exposure-to-diversity practices other than enrolling their children at multiracial schools or how white parents feel about their exposure efforts. Although research on this subject is growing, we continue to have a limited understanding of the motivations that fuel white parents’ exposure efforts, ideological or otherwise. I argue that parents’ racial socialization efforts are related to and informed by a distinction-oriented parenting logic associated with middle-class status, as well as an adherence to a diversity ideology, subjects I discuss more fully in the next section.

Diversity and the Cultivation of Distinction

Research indicates that people do not occupy a class and racial status unreflexively; they also “do” class and race by making active, though not always conscious, decisions about the best way to protect or enhance their and their children’s social-structural location (Bourdieu 1984; Burke 2012; Hughey 2012; Lareau 2003). These distinction-oriented efforts are a response to the hierarchical and competitive character of both class and racial social structures (Bourdieu 1984; Lareau 2003). Within both social structures, members of the dominant group limit access to valuable resources and opportunities so as to protect and naturalize their privileged position (Bourdieu 1984; Weber [1922] 1948). According to Bourdieu (1984), one of the primary ways dominant group members achieve an aura of class distinction is by distinguishing themselves from members of subordinate groups via the cultivation of specific “tastes” that evidence a “distance from necessity.”

Annette Lareau’s (2003) research builds on Bourdieu’s work. Her findings detail how middle-class parents adopt time- and money-intensive concerted cultivation parenting practices to help their children succeed in a society characterized by “declining fortunes” (p. 5). The goal of parents’ efforts is to craft children who exhibit class distinction and who can parlay their class-based skills into future educational and professional opportunities. What Lareau does not examine is how middle-class parents use distinction-oriented parenting practices to approach other forms of socialization, namely, racial socialization. Nor does her research examine the relationship between diversity and the cultivation of distinction, a topic other researchers explore. For example, Peterson and Kern (1996) contended that a cultural shift has occurred regarding how high-status taste is understood and expressed. They argued that high-status taste is no longer evidenced via elite exclusivity but instead by a measured celebration of and inclusion of diversity (Khan 2011; Peterson and Kern 1996). As such, members of today’s elite now work to position themselves as “cultural omnivores” who evidence a social and “corporal ease” when interacting with people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds (Khan 2011; Peterson and Kern 1996).

Although the main thrust of this research is oriented toward understanding diversity’s role in achieving class distinction, there is also scholarship that investigates the relationship between racial diversity and the construction of a privileged white identity (Burke 2012; Hughey 2012; Mayorga-Gallo 2014). This research examines how white individuals use diversity to perform a kind of ideal whiteness that establishes their moral worth as nonracists, their liberal credentials as social progressives, and their high-status taste as cultural omnivores. In this way, white consumption of diversity serves an instrumental purpose; it transforms the unexceptional white individual into someone more noteworthy and distinctive (Berrey 2015; Burke 2012; Hughey 2012; Mayorga-Gallo 2014; Reay et. al 2007).

I argue that a “diversity ideology” informs parents’ distinction-oriented parenting efforts. According to Embrick (2006), this ideology emerged at the conclusion of the civil rights movement and gained prominence during the white backlash of the 1980s. This ideology appeals to white Americans because it advances the humanistic principles of egalitarianism and equality and provides white individuals with the means “to substantiate their non-racist or post-racial standpoint” (Doane 2003:19; Embrick 2006). Because white understandings of diversity “deal with difference but not equality,” white diversity proponents are able to focus on the “happy talk” of diversity, without having to consider past or present forms of racial inequality (Bell and Hartmann 2007). In this way, a diversity ideology achieves a similar outcome as color-blindness; it allows people to believe that the civil rights movement achieved racial equality and race now “no longer matters” (Doane 2014: 5). Thus, by embracing a diversity ideology, white individuals and organizations garner accolades for their “good intentions” rather than the outcomes of their diversity-related actions, enabling them to substantiate their claims of white moral goodness (Mayorga-Gallo 2014).

Given this evidence, how do white parents use diversity to teach their children about race and to craft a distinctive white middle-class identity for their children? These are subjects I explore in subsequent sections.

Methodology

Interviews for this research were conducted in Cincinnati, a midsized, southern Ohio city with a population of 300,000 that is almost half black (45 percent) and half white (49 percent). Within Cincinnati, race is painfully etched into the city’s landscape. As the 12th most segregated city in the United States (Logan and Stults 2011), most Cincinnati neighborhoods are segregated by race and class. In general, white middle-class Cincinnatians live in suburban communities with little racial or class diversity. Their single-family homes and manicured lawns stand in sharp contrast to the multiunit buildings found in many of Cincinnati’s majority-black neighborhoods, which often bear telltale signs of poverty-induced neglect. Indeed, black Cincinnatians are twice as likely to live in poverty as whites (42 percent vs. 19 percent), a figure that is nearly triple the national average (U.S. Census Bureau 2013). Because of the city’s enduring racial disparities, Cincinnati is an instructive site to conduct race-related research.

Upon obtaining human-subjects approval for this project, I recruited parents from two Cincinnati neighborhoods, River Park and Greenfield, which are equidistant to downtown. Within both neighborhoods, the median household income is $48,000 per year and 25 percent of residents live in poverty. Where the neighborhoods differ, however, is in terms of their racial composition. River Park is a multiracial neighborhood in which POC constitute 42 percent of the neighborhood, and Greenfield is majority white; only 12 percent of its residents are nonwhite. In both neighborhoods, most residents of color are black (36 percent in River Park vs. 7 percent in Greenfield) (U.S. Census Bureau 2010).

Interested participants were told that the research study was oriented toward understanding what parents said to their children “about their own social background, and the social backgrounds of people who differ from them.” I chose not to center race in my study description because I feared it would impede participant recruitment, a problem that has been documented elsewhere (see Frankenberg 1993). My recruitment materials listed two inclusion criteria: participants must have children between the ages of three and 18 years, and they must reside in one of the two study neighborhoods. As long as both inclusion criteria were met, I interviewed any interested participant, regardless of race or class. Data for this article are limited to the 40 interviews I conducted with middle-class white parents.

I met the earliest study participants at community council meetings. After I interviewed these parents, many sent e-mails to neighborhood friends or posted short descriptions of my study on their Facebook pages. Upon seeing these recruitment announcements, several of their friends or acquaintances called or e-mailed me for interviews. In total, two thirds of participant interviews came from network referrals. Once these were exhausted, I recruited the remaining participants by reaching out to area schools and churches, daycare centers, and Facebook neighborhood groups for assistance. Administrators at these organizations distributed my fliers, placed announcements in online forums or organizational newsletters, and invited me to community events where I might meet neighborhood parents. My status as a white mother assisted with participant recruitment. Participants saw me as a parenting insider, and most offered to help me find additional participants.

In total, I interviewed 22 white middle-class parents from River Park and 18 from Greenfield. Most participants were women (77 percent) and financially privileged. Although all self-identified as middle class, participants’ annual household incomes were high relative to their neighborhoods and the city; 70 percent reported household incomes of $100,000 or more. Participants were also well educated; 80 percent held undergraduate or graduate degrees. Although family size varied, the average parent had two children between the ages of three and ten years (63 percent). Participant demographics differed somewhat by neighborhood. In general, River Park parents had fewer children, were slightly better educated, and were more socially and politically liberal than Greenfield parents. Their annual household incomes were also slightly higher, in part because all River Park, but not all Greenfield, families earned two incomes.

Participants were interviewed at locations of their choosing, though most occurred at neighborhood coffee shops or restaurants. On average, interviews lasted an hour or two, and all were audio-recorded. Interview questions focused on family members’ social networks, school and neighborhood choice, extracurricular activities, consumption habits, and parent-child discussions about race and class. It is important to note that my interview guide did not include a question about diversity; participants initiated all of the diversity discussions, often in response to a question asking them to describe their neighborhoods. In the case of River Park, participants spoke enthusiastically about the racial diversity of their neighborhood, framing it as an asset. In contrast, Greenfield parents bemoaned the lack of racial diversity in their neighborhood and described other ways they tried to racially complicate the social context of their children’s lives.

I transcribed and read each interview shortly after it occurred. Then, I uploaded my interviews into NVivo, a qualitative software program, and inductively coded each interview twice using a grounded theory approach (Charmaz 2001; Glaser and Strauss 2012). During the first round of coding, I identified large conceptual categories, or master codes, such as “exposure to diversity.” Then I went back through each interview and identified smaller, more specific subthemes within each master code. These subthemes primarily examined how and why parents engaged in exposure to diversity. Some of the codes that emerged during the second round of analysis included “racial and/or class ambivalence,” “social change,” “racial comfort,” and “diversity as an asset.” During this phase of analysis, I also created a codebook in which I described each code and discussed the relationship between codes.

Once the coding was complete, I examined whether participants’ responses varied by neighborhood. Neighborhood differences emerged in terms of how participants pursued exposure to diversity, not why. Both sets of parents framed diversity as an asset and said that they pursued exposure-to-diversity practices because they wanted to raise nonracist white children who were “accepting of differences” and comfortable around people from different racial backgrounds. Because of these similarities, I present the neighborhood findings together rather than separately.

In the following section, I examine how participants in both study neighborhoods pursue exposure-to-diversity practices. After, I explore why participants believe these practices are necessary and important.

Findings

How Parents Pursue Exposure to Diversity

I argue that a set of logics including both a desire to lead a more racially integrated life and a sense of ambivalence about some of the ways diversity manifests dictates parents’ exposure practices. The following section begins with a discussion of the strategies parents use to expose their children to diversity and then examines some of the limitations, contradictions, and ambivalences associated with this practice.

Parents in both neighborhoods spoke earnestly about the importance of their children “seeing people of color” and described the efforts they took to achieve this goal. As Caitlyn, a Greenfield mother of one, explained, “diversity is really important to me. I try to expose my daughter to all kinds of different people.” Like Caitlyn, many Greenfield parents wanted to raise white children who were “tolerant of everyone’s differences and trying to celebrate everyone’s culture.” However, because there was little racial diversity within Greenfield, parents’ friendship networks, or, for some, their children’s schools, parents organized periodic trips to parks in multiracial, gentrifying areas of the city. Parents realized that if they wanted their children to encounter nonwhite individuals, they would have to leave their neighborhoods and visit other areas of the city. Justin, a father of two who recently moved to Greenfield, explained

The lack of racial diversity [in Greenfield] was a concern of mine although I didn’t realize the degree to which it was a reality until after we moved in. We go to [multiracial park] on a regular basis and it makes me feel friggin’ awesome when we go there and I see my kids playing with African American kids. I feel like that’s a really, really good thing.

As evidenced from the comment above, it was common for participants to feel good about themselves and their exposure efforts, especially when their children played with black children. In general, parents understood that frequenting multiracial spaces was unlikely to result in cross-racial friendships, but they hoped, at least, to make interracial contact appear unexceptional and routine.

Greenfield parents did not see these trips to multiracial parks as trivial. Instead, most described feeling as if this was a progressive and, for some, subversive act that radically differed from the racially isolationist practices of their own parents. For example, most participants recalled their parents sending them the message, sometimes stated but often implied, that black people and black spaces (i.e., downtown) were dangerous and best avoided. Hence, by placing their children in a racially diverse space, parents felt that they were signaling their good intentions as nonracists and also helping cultivate nonracist children.

Parents from River Park pursued exposure-oriented practices with greater zeal. They committed more time and energy to exposing their children to black individuals and adopted a broader array of exposure practices than Greenfield parents. All River Park participants framed their multiracial residence as a “lifestyle choice” and said that they moved to River Park because of its racial diversity. For example, Francine, a mother of two, said that River Park appealed to her because she believed it provided “more of a spirit of inclusion and acceptance of differences . . . and also more of a liberal political ideology” than the suburban, white neighborhoods where many of her family and friends lived. In general, these white parents were more socially and politically left leaning than parents in Greenfield, a trend that is consistent with research on white residence in multiracial neighborhoods (Bobo and Zubrinsky 1996; Mayoga-Gallo 2014) and that is underscored by parents’ decisions to raise their children in a multiracial neighborhood, an uncommon residential choice for white families (Goyette, Iceland, and Weininger 2014).² At the same time, study participants acknowledged that moving to River Park did not necessarily mean that African Americans lived next door or even on the same street as study participants, a finding that is consistent with the literature on white residence in multiracial neighborhoods (see Mayorga-Gallo 2014). As Charlotte, a long-term resident, told me, “we don’t deal directly with African Americans you know on our street but we definitely like knowing that we are all a part of the same community.”

Many River Park participants also enrolled their children in the neighborhood elementary school, where the majority of students were racial minorities (67 percent) and low income (64 percent). As other researchers have documented, this is an uncommon schooling decision for white middle-class parents (Johnson and Shapiro 2003; Reay et al. 2007).³ As with other exposure practices, parents stated that they enrolled their children at River Park Elementary because they wanted their children “to be exposed to things I wasn’t. You know, basically racial diversity.” Isabelle, an executive at a national corporation, said that she expressly looked for racial diversity when determining where to enroll her son in kindergarten:

When he was really little and started kindergarten, I wanted him to grow up around kids of color. I wanted there to be enough kids of color in his class so that seeing a child who is black, or Indian, or Asian whatever it was, was not, was not a weird experience. I mean that was part of his every day and there was nothing unusual about that.

Isabelle views her son’s school decision as a way she can demystify and normalize POC for her son. She, like most parents, appears content knowing that her son is sharing space with individuals of color in a polite and friendly manner.

In contrast, Marianne, a mother of four and an elementary art teacher, felt that neither her neighborhood nor her children’s school gave her children enough exposure to African Americans, the second largest racial group in her neighborhood. Unlike most participants, Marianne is very interested in the outcomes of her exposure practices. More than anything, she wants her children to have “black friends,” but only one of her four children does. Hence, she adopts a greater variety of exposure practices than other parents to meet this goal:

That’s why I insist on going to the Rec Center to do the swim team. I take my kids there because they aren’t getting exposed to enough diversity at their school. [At the Rec Center] I see and get to know people, and my children see me having friends and hugging, you know, African American people, and having that relationship and hugging the kids and getting to know them. That’s important to me.

Marianne said that she had never seen her parents interacting with black people in a warm and friendly manner. Her hope was that these weekly interactions would teach her children that whites and blacks need not live separate lives; they could be friends. Marianne was one of the few participants in this study who reported having friends of color. That said, her relationships with black parents at the community recreation center were fairly superficial. Her efforts to model for her children what successful interracial interaction might look like, and her children’s lack of black friends was typical among participants’ children. Most parents were also passive in seeking to determine the outcomes of their exposure efforts.

In general, living in River Park ensured that blacks were a visible part of their family’s life, but it did not mean that members of their family had sustained or regular interaction with their black neighbors. Naomi, an Ohio native and a mother of two, explained that she considered visibility a positive thing: “at least when we walk we—even if we don’t have a long conversation with an African-American person or whatever, we happen to be on the same street, we nod and say ‘hello.’” She considered this superior to her own hypersegregated upbringing. Her statement highlights a central tenet of diversity ideology, namely, that emphasis is placed on an individual’s good intentions rather than the outcome of their actions (Bell and Hartmann 2007; Mayorga-Gallo 2014).

Despite participants’ expressed interest in interracial exposure, parents described feeling uncomfortable in the presence of lower income people, black or white, and expressed concerns that too much contact with low-income blacks would tarnish their children’s middle-class presentation of self. For example, Hannah described enrolling her daughter at River Park Elementary, the minority-majority neighborhood school, because she was vehemently opposed to de facto racial segregation and believed if she wanted things to change, she would have to “cross the aisle” and make decisions that reflected her political and social beliefs. Yet she also expressed concern at some of the ways her 13-year-old daughter’s racial contact affected her performance of race and class:

Mathilda quickly became able to imitate the sound and the words—and it came out more in a—I would say more of a subtle way—but we would hear her speak and say “That’s slang. You might say a lot of slang at school, but we don’t talk slang at home” and so—there was about a year when I seriously considered that by the summer she was going to need to go to some kind of little finishing school, or some kind of etiquette thing to kind of reestablish a little bit of culture. But she managed to find a balance where she understood that you could talk one way one place and another at another.

Hannah reported being deeply committed to living a racially integrated life, yet the interaction she describes also reinforces a message of white normativity and superiority. For example, her statement about considering a “finishing school” so that her daughter could “regain a little bit of culture” explicitly suggests that white middle-class culture is superior to African American culture. Other parents were more explicit, telling their children not to “talk black.” As linguists note, however, African American vernacular is as linguistically correct as standard English, “but only white English gets privileged, normalized, and posited as ‘universal’ and ‘proper’” (Winkler 2012:74–75). Thus, parents’ statements normalize the racial and class positions of white middle-class families and construct the racial and class practices of their children’s poor, black classmates as deviant. By devaluing African American vernacular, participants “inherently devalue black people themselves [because of] the blackness of black English” (Winkler 2012:122).

Other parents in this study also expressed ambivalence regarding their children’s contact with low-income blacks. Elizabeth, a stay-at-home mother of three, said, “diversity is good but sometimes it’s kind of like eh, maybe not necessarily people I want my kids hanging around.” This remark accords with other research documenting feelings of racial ambivalence among whites in multiracial environments (Burke 2012; Rich 2009). For example, Burke (2012) argued that “caution and ambivalence [are] the core of a white habitus” and that this ambivalence “structures or inhibits social action” (p. 648). According to Burke, whites’ ambivalence stems from a preference to consume diversity so as to add value to the white self, rather than a desire to engage with diversity for the purpose of enhancing racial equity.

In the next section, I examine parents’ statements regarding why they pursue exposure to diversity despite the feelings of discomfort and ambivalence that these practices sometimes engender.

The Purpose of Exposure

Like the whites Lewis (2004) discussed in her landmark essay “‘What Group?’” white parents in this study understand whiteness as an unimportant individual attribute rather than a defining feature of a white group identity. Participants’ inability to imagine themselves as members of a white racial group was best exemplified when I asked participants to describe what they said to their children about their white racial identity. Without fail, participants responded with bafflement and dismay: “Nothing. What is there to say?” Because few white parents in this study thought of themselves as members of a white racial group, it almost never occurred to them to speak with their children about their white racial identity. Additionally, participants preferred to show their children how to treat POC rather than tell them; “actions speak louder than words” was a refrain invoked by many parents when describing their racial socialization practices.

That said, when asked why “exposure to diversity” was important, parents cited two reasons. Participants described “exposure to diversity” as a means of facilitating social change, at least on an individual level, or as a way of crafting a distinctive white child who exhibited ease and comfort in the presence of people from different backgrounds, a trait parents believed would provide their children with a competitive edge in future educational and occupational settings.

Exposure as a Mechanism of Social Change

“Social change” was the most common response parents provided when asked why they felt it was important to expose their children to POC, blacks specifically. They saw their efforts as a way to atone for some of America’s segregated past and to redress, on an individual level, whites’ social, residential, and educational isolation from black Americans. We see this sentiment evidenced by Kerri, a mother of one, who described why she “chose” to raise her son in the multiracial neighborhood of River Park:

I read a lot and Cincinnati has always been very segregated. But I want him to see. . . . The best that I can, all races existing together in harmony. I’ve never really had to enunciate it before but that’s kind of what I want. That we all live together happily and we don’t have to be put in separate groups.

Drawing upon the “happy talk” of diversity, Kerri believes her exposure parenting practice helps her convey an important nonverbal message to her son about racial integration: that people of all races “can exist together in harmony” (Bell and Hartmann 2007). Responses such as Kerri’s were common among participants. Less common were discussions of how parents worked to foster racial integration within their neighborhoods after establishing residence, a significant consideration given River Park participants’ overwhelmingly white neighborhood friendships.

In addition to creating a more integrated society, parents also hoped to produce nonracist children. They believed their exposure efforts would counteract the negative racial stereotypes their children would confront throughout their lives and that they themselves encountered growing up in communities they described as “99 percent white,” where there were only “one or two” black people whom parents knew or recalled. Parents wanted their children to understand that “racial stereotypes are not appropriate” and that there is “nothing wrong” with POC; “they are the same as us. They are normal.” For example, Otto, a manager at a local catering company, described the pleasure and relief he derived from his daughter’s close friendship with Monique, an African American:

That’s why I’m so glad that Monique is her best friend. You know, it’s like, sweet man, my daughter is not seeing color at all right here. They are just good friends. And so, for somebody that’s growing up, that’s helpful to understand that people are people in general. Doesn’t matter their race or whatever. The less sheltered your kid is, the better, right?

Like many of the parents in this study, Otto feels proud that he has socialized his daughter into color-blindness, wherein “people are people in general” no matter their racial background. As Otto’s statement suggests, part of what makes him feel happy about his daughter’s friendship with Monique is that his daughter is capable of forming a friendship with a person outside of her race. Consistent with diversity ideology’s logic, Otto considers his daughter’s friendship with an African American as proof that he and his family have “no problem” with black people and that he and his wife have successfully raised a child who “doesn’t see color” and is “not racist.” For Otto, like many contemporary Americans, color-blindness epitomizes what it means to be “nonracist” and hence also a morally upstanding “good white.”

Parents’ desire to cultivate nonracist white children through interracial contact reflected most parents’ psychological understandings of racism. The majority of parents in this study believed that racism inhered in the minds of bigoted individuals who had little knowledge of world history or contact with people outside their race. Like the U.S. population at large, few study participants understood racism as a structural phenomenon (Bonilla-Silva 1997, 2014; Doane 2003). Hence, most felt as if they were making a progressive choice pursuing an individualistic, child-oriented, racial exposure strategy. Furthermore, by exposing their children to black Cincinnatians and making racial contact seem like an unremarkable feature of everyday life, parents desired to add weight to the explicit, color-blind message they relayed to their children (i.e., “everyone is the same”).

Ultimately, then, parents pursue color-conscious exposure practices because they believe it will help them cultivate color-blind children for whom “race doesn’t matter.” Marianne, a River Park parent, affirmed this sentiment: “It matters [to me] that my children’s [multiracial] neighborhood and school doesn’t matter to them.” Although seemingly contradictory, parents’ color-conscious yet color-blind racial logic makes sense within the framework of a diversity ideology in which parents focus on the positive aspects of group differences while simultaneously ignoring racial topics that conjure feelings of upset or discomfort (Lavelle 2015; Underhill 2017). Whites who subscribe to this ideology and who pursue exposure-oriented parenting practices take comfort in the fact that they are leading less racially segregated lives than whites from generations past and, as a consequence, are nonverbally signaling to their children that there is “nothing wrong” with POC, multiracial spaces, or interracial interaction.

Racial Comfort and the Cultivation of Distinction

“Racial comfort” was the second most common response parents cited when asked why they desired to expose their children to diversity. Stated briefly, parents believed that exposure to POC would help their children feel more comfortable around nonwhites, a feeling that eluded many participants during their early adult years because of their hypersegregated childhoods. Parents’ lack of exposure to POC, blacks in particular, proved difficult, especially when participants left home and began studying, working, and living in more racially diverse environments. Penelope, a property administrator who grew up in rural Ohio, described how her experience with racial discomfort informed her decision to move to River Park, a multiracial neighborhood:

I moved to River Park because of the racial diversity. I grew up out in the country, only white people, so when I grew up and got into the world a little more, it was a little difficult for me just because I’d never been around anyone who was even just a little different. When I was in college, I know it was awkward when I met people because I had a horrible scare in college. [Laughter] You know I’d just never been around people with any other skin color and I was very curious, like, “wow,” you know this is interesting. And I was scared of people, and it was, I know it was, awkward for everyone. . . . I did not want my children to grow up and not know other cultures.

Julia, a stay-at-home mother who lived in Greenfield, recalled a similar experience. She described experiencing “culture shock” when she left her childhood home in an all-white suburb and moved to a majority-black neighborhood close to her college campus. With a sense of profound shame, she admitted feeling embarrassed and at times even fearful interacting with blacks during her early adult years.⁴ Julia’s fear of black individuals was not unwarranted considering that her prior contact with black people was limited to television and film, both of which are rife with deviant depictions of racial minorities (Dirks and Mueller 2007).

A smaller contingent of participants also discussed the instrumental benefits their children might derive from their racial comfort, which they framed as a soft skill. These parents noted how contemporary society was becoming increasingly more interconnected and suggested that individuals who were comfortable with people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds would have a leg up on those who were not. Bradley, a senior graphic designer at a global corporation, was one participant who argued that exposure-related comfort helped people “from a career and business standpoint. Or, even a social standpoint because it helps you interact with people better overall.” He also noted that exposure to diversity “makes you more interesting as a person because you know, you have stories that not everyone has.” Bradley’s statement perfectly captures white understandings of diversity as an asset. It also highlights another aspect of whiteness, namely, its “demand for social comfort” (Dalmage 2004:213). As Dalmage cogently argued, it is vital for researchers to understand “the centrality of ‘comfort’ in the creation and maintenance of white racial identities [because it] can help us better understand the way whiteness and white privilege are reproduced in society” (p. 216). Given that POC frequently feel uncomfortable in spaces populated primarily with whites (Feagin and Sikes 1994), racial comfort is a distinctively white form of privilege that other racial groups have difficulty obtaining.

It is important to remember, however, that parents’ exposure “choices” are a product of their privileged social position. Participants racial and class backgrounds provide them with the means to elect into particular racial environments and to exert control over when, where, and with whom they and their children interact. Thus, although parents appear to be “choosing against the grain,” they, like the middle-class whites in Reay et al.’s (2007:1042) study, do in fact benefit from their exposure decision. Like whites in other studies, white parents in this study use their proximity to POC as a means to mitigate feelings of white racial emptiness and to achieve instead “color capital” (Hughey 2012) or racial distinction as dynamic, interesting, and progressive whites. Racial comfort also helps participants’ children achieve the “corporeal ease” necessary to successfully communicate class distinction (Khan 2011). Consequently, although it is true that parents believe exposure to diversity will improve race relations in the United States via the cultivation of nonracist white children, it is also true that parents use their proximity to POC as a means to cultivate high-status children who are comfortable in diverse, multicultural settings (Khan 2011; Peterson and Kern 1996).

Conclusions

I argue that exposure to diversity is a post–civil rights racial socialization practice that a segment of middle-class parents of all races pursue, albeit for different reasons. For middle-class whites, exposure to diversity is viewed as a departure from, and improvement upon, the racial socialization practices of their parents, which were characterized by white isolation. It is important to recall that middle-class status for whites has historically been associated with social and spatial distance from POC, blacks specifically, resulting in white isolation (Pulido 2006). Although residential segregation in the United States has declined (Fischer and Lowe 2015), most whites continue to live in majority-white neighborhoods, particularly whites with school-aged children (Goyette et al. 2014).

The segregated context of white life presents many middle- and upper-class white parents with a social and moral conundrum: how do they teach their children about race (i.e., POC) and evidence that they are “good” whites who value diversity if they and their children have minimal to no contact with POC in their day-to-day lives? Exposure to diversity helps white parents resolve this contradiction. By taking active steps to expose their children to POC, blacks specifically, white parents feel that they are able to nonverbally relay nonstigmatizing messages to their children about black individuals and, in the process, establish they and their children as morally upstanding “good whites” who are different from and superior to their parents, “suburban” whites, and rabid racists.

Participants’ racial socialization efforts are guided by a diversity ideology. This ideology holds that any differences, whether they are related to race, gender, sexual orientation, or lifestyle choices, should be accepted and perhaps even celebrated (Embrick 2011; Mayorga-Gallo 2014). This ideology provides people and organizations with the social space to acknowledge race, provided critical aspects of racial difference, including racial inequality, are ignored. Thus, it reproduces the color-blind belief that race in the post–civil rights era “no longer matters” and that racial equality has been achieved (Embrick 2006; Doane 2014:5). This ideology is significant because it helps us make sense of why white parents pursue color-conscious exposure practices when for most parents the goal is to cultivate color-blind white children to whom “race doesn’t matter.”

For participating parents, what is most important about their exposure effort is what they believe it represents—racial progress—and what it promises—casual interracial interactions, park play, and perhaps even friendships with their black neighbors or their children’s classmates. Parents frame their efforts to expose their children to diversity as an individual way to combat racism, which they understand as a psychological phenomenon manifested in discriminatory thinking. Above all else, parents wanted their children to understand that there is nothing strange or dangerous about POC, interracial interaction, or multiracial spaces, messages that participants themselves never heard from their own parents.

Although this was the predominant narrative parents hoped to convey to their children about African Americans, it was not the only narrative parents relayed to their children. Parents’ ambivalent responses with respect to contact with low-income blacks contradicted and undermined parents’ celebratory, egalitarian racial rhetoric. Ultimately, there were hints that parents’ tolerance of difference was actually quite narrow, as evidenced by Hannah’s response to her daughter’s use of slang. These parental responses reinforce ideas of white normativity and superiority.

Furthermore, participants’ exposure efforts were frequently symbolic or partial. This was especially true of Greenfield parents, whose primary exposure practice was family field trips to multiracial parks. Although these trips may have enhanced their children’s racial comfort, it is unlikely they led to a more pronounced racial awareness with respect to individuals of color or themselves. Additionally, although River Park parents were more committed to exposure parenting practices, few lived racially integrated lives. For almost all of the participants in the study, valuing diversity required them to be near blacks but not to establish more enduring relationships (Burke 2012; Mayorga-Gallo 2014). In many ways, parents’ exposure-to-diversity efforts echo the “assimilationist assumptions . . . that privilege white cultural norms and values” issued by white participants in Bell and Hartmann’s (2007:907) study. Like Bell and Hartmann’s participants, parents’ understanding of diversity is informed by a logic of white normativity such that POC are understood as an “add-on” to the white experience. According to this logic, white parents embrace diversity that enriches the social context of white childhood and reject diversity that challenges their children’s racial and class privileges.

Exposure-to-diversity parenting practices are one strategy, among many, that middle-class white parents draw upon to craft distinctive white children and to mark themselves as distinctive white parents. Although parents envision their efforts as teaching their children about nonwhites, parents efforts are also fundamentally about middle-class white identity construction. When thinking about this practice in relation to Bourdieu’s (1984) theory of distinction, we can view parents’ exposure-to-diversity efforts as partially motivated by instrumentalist concerns. Within this framework, middle-class parents’ exposure efforts serve as both a classifying practice used to mark intraracial distinctions between themselves and other whites (i.e., suburbanites, white racists) and as a tool to enhance their children’s racial and class distinction. In this way, exposure to diversity becomes a means of doing and achieving racial and class distinction for white children and parents. Parents derive pleasure from exposing their children to POC (“It feels friggin’ awesome”) in part because they value what their exposure practices communicate to others about themselves as white parents. In this way, exposure to diversity provides white parents with the means to evidence a kind of “moral whiteness” as progressive white parents.

Ultimately, however, the “doing” of diversity for middle- and upper-class whites (via consumption or proximity) is optional and attests to whites’ power and privilege. Participants’ status as members of the middle class and the racial majority mean that many whites encounter few individuals of color in their neighborhoods, schools, places of worship, or places of employement. Participants’ high annual incomes allow them to exercise discretion about where their families live, where their children attend school, and the extracurricular activities their children pursue. Hence, participants’ can opt in or out of racially diverse contexts whenever it suits them. These actions reinscribe white invisibility by positioning POC as symbolic racial tokens who “have race,” while whites do not.

Future research should investigate whether white parents in other regions of the United States adopt exposure-to-diversity parenting practices, particularly those who live in cities and states with greater pluralities of racial and ethnic groups. It would be useful to learn whether parents’ exposure practices vary by racial group and, if so, how. Exposure-related research that includes children would also be valuable. Indeed, this project sheds light on how and why white middle-class parents pursue these practices, but study data cannot tell us what these practices mean for middle-class white children or how they might influence the development of their racial awareness or identity.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to David Brunsma, Jennifer Malat, Sarah Mayorga-Gallo, Erynn Casanova, and three anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback on earlier drafts of this article.

Notes

Author Biography

Megan R. Underhill is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina Asheville.

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