Intergroup Relations
Immigrants and refugees are entering the U.S. in growing numbers, and across the country we find increasingly diverse neighborhoods, workplaces, and schools. Typically, neither these newcomers nor their receiving communities possess the tools needed to manage the encounter constructively. The resulting racial and ethnic tensions complicate the work of organizers and educators, who increasingly call for support to carry out their work in this milieu. The Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity is conducting a “mapping” of existing curricula, facilitation guides, and other materials for cross-racial relationship-building between immigrants and native-born communities of color to make these broadly available and relevant, thus meeting an ever-growing need of social justice workers everywhere.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
National in scope, Rooting Intergroup Relations for Social Justice: A Curricular “Mapping” of the Field will locate institutions which are engaged in the intentional building of relationships across differences of race, ethnicity, and nationality—including worker centers, unions, and other community organizations—in order to collaboratively catalogue and critically analyze the materials and their use. We will employ content analysis, interviews with creators and users of the various curricula, and observation of programs in action to answer the following questions: What are their methodologies? Their theories of change? Their contexts of use? Their strengths and shortcomings?
Guided by an advisory committee of activists, educators, and organizers, this research will determine the successes and challenges of existing approaches and materials and their ability to meet the needs of those working to build cross-racial alliances. Recognizing the importance of local contexts and national discourses, the analysis will provide practitioners with an enriched framework and the concrete tools necessary to bridge divides between marginalized communities of color. The resulting online resource center, comprised of curricular materials, “best practice” strategies, analysis and recommendations, will empower leaders to engage their membership in intentional, culturally-relevant dialogue about immigration, racialized identity, and power, thus identifying mutual interests, constructing a shared vision, and deepening our collective potential for achieving economic and social justice.
WHAT ARE THE STAKES?
By 2050, one in five Americans will be immigrants. One in three will be Latino. And African Americans and Latinos together will comprise one half of the U.S. population. These numbers alone tell us that the future of progressive social change in the United States hinges largely on the ability of these groups to see one another as human beings, political allies, and friends. Such an outcome is far from given, however. Proactive measures to move us in that direction are vital for building a society that is fair and just for all people, where opportunity is not limited by race, ethnicity, gender, class, or immigration status, where democratic ideals inform social policy, and where all people recognize and embrace the universal responsibility that each person has for the welfare of others. But how do we get there?
During our prior work on the dynamics of African American-immigrant alliance formation, practitioner-informants provided this key insight: Even when the focus of the alliance is on policy advocacy and change, learning experiences that increase understanding of each group’s culture, history, and worldview are critical to alliance building. Without them, even well-intentioned efforts are likely to founder on the shoals of misunderstanding and mistrust. But with them, groups report that they begin to see one another in a new light, identifying commonalities of experience upon which to build the power necessary to affect change.
Following our collaborators’ lead, we root the current project in the recognition that structured, intentional spaces for relationship-building are necessary to create lasting multi-racial, trans-national, and inter-cultural coalitions that can contest policies and practices of economic, political, and social exclusion. Curricula and other tools developed through engagement with communities confronting these tensions are a crucial piece of the puzzle, not only for their specificity to local circumstances, but also for the signal they send about the importance of the relationship.
The creation of formal instruments for facilitating conversations around the histories and futures of race, immigration, privilege and oppression exacts a high cost, requiring time, money, human capital, pedagogical training, and structural social analysis. While many groups have identified the need for such tools, few have the resources to develop them. Some instruments do exist, but they are often geography- or industry-specific and/or not widely available. Vital for the future of racial justice, then, is the consolidation, critical analysis, and dissemination of knowledge currently housed in the minds and offices of disparate individuals and organizations.
Rooting Intergroup Relations for Social Justice will catalyze such change. By collaborating with organizational leadership across the country to locate and evaluate the relationship-building curricula developed to date by and for communities of color, our recommendations for adaptation and further use will amplify their voices and help ensure that other social justice workers can benefit from their insights.
CONCLUSION
At the heart of this project is an effort to consolidate and build on existing fragmented attempts to educate and inform communities of color, and whites, about the structural and systemic underpinnings of racial inequality and privilege that so dramatically shape a range of important individual and group outcomes, inter-group relations and workers’ political mobilization among them. Rooting Intergroup Relations for Social Justice will put an array of tools and analytical frames in the hands of organizers, educators, and advocates across the country so they may more effectively conduct their work in an increasingly multicultural America.
ADVISORY COMMITTEE
Jennifer Gordon, Fordham University School of Law
Dushaw Hockett, SPACES
Gerald Lenoir, Black Alliance for Just Immigration
Carmen Morgan, Leadership Development in Interethnic Relations
José Oliva, Restaurant Opportunities Center-United
Steven Pitts, UC Berkeley Labor Center
Laura Rivas, National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights
Saket Soni, New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice
Eric Tang, University of Texas-Austin Center for African & African American Studies and Center for Asian American Studies
Gustavo Torres, CASA of Maryland
RESEARCH TEAM
Angela Stuesse, Principal Investigator, University of South Florida Department of Anthropology
Cheryl Staats, Lead Research Assistant, Kirwan Institute
Kerra (Kaycee) Carson, Research Assistant, Kirwan Institute
Carlos Teel, Research Assistant, Kirwan Institute
Andrew Grant-Thomas, Deputy Director, Kirwan Institute
For more information, please contact Dr. Angela Stuesse at astuesse@gmail.com.