Earlier this month, a poll by POLITICO found that a majority of voters believed race relations in the U.S. had gotten worse since Trump took office. The poll was conducted in the weeks leading up to the one-year anniversary of a violent rally of white nationalist groups in Charlottesville, Virginia, which resulted in the death of one counter-protestor and injuries to several others.
Social psychologists have offered new ways of understanding how individuals interpret and react to racial inequality, particularly between whites and minority groups. In a recent report published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, former visiting scholar Linda Tropp (University of Massachusetts, Amherst) and Fiona Barlow (University of Queensland) argue that contact between different racial groups offers one of the most promising pathways for encouraging whites or other advantaged racial groups to acknowledge or care about racial inequality.
While much of the prior research on intergroup contact has focused on how such contact can minimize the kinds of feelings of anxiety and threat which lead to racial prejudice, Tropp and Barlow contend that intergroup contact not only lessens hostility but might also even help whites become “psychologically invested” in the well-being of members of disadvantaged racial groups. “Put simply,” the authors write, “members of advantaged racial groups can develop a great capacity for caring about the perspectives, experiences, and welfare of members of other racial groups.”
Drawing from multiple prior studies, they discuss how intergroup contact helps spur several psychological processes that together lead to whites’ psychological investment in members of disadvantaged racial groups. They show that that whites who reported greater contact with blacks felt more empathy regarding black individuals’ experiences, and also felt greater anger regarding racial discrimination. Intergroup contact also increased the likelihood that whites would come to view other groups’ experiences and plights as relevant to their own. In one study, white female undergraduates were paired with either a white, Latina, or Asian American partner and asked to engage in friendship-building exercises over several weeks. At the end of this period, the white students participated in a fictional procedure where they were asked to “advise” the university on how funding for different student organizations should be distributed. Compared to whites who had been paired with a white partner, the white students who had been paired with either a Latina or Asian American partner recommended significantly smaller cuts to the Latino and Asian American student organizations.
While Tropp and Barlow acknowledge that there are a number of barriers—such as racial segregation—that continue to stand in the way of meaningful contact between members of different racial groups, they conclude, “We believe that contact between racial groups offers a key pathway through social divisions, with the prospect of easing racial tensions and toward greater social inclusion.”
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