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Reaching across the racial divide is not always a positive experience, especially for minorities, Princeton University psychologist Nicole Shelton said during a discussion Jan. 16 at the Institute for Social Research (ISR).
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Part of a panel on inter-group relations honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Shelton shared findings from recent studies of freshmen roommates. The purpose of the studies was to see how minorities and their white roommates, randomly assigned to room together, feel about their interactions.
She found that whites rate their interactions with minority roommates more positively than minorities—especially those who see themselves as likely to be the targets of racial prejudice—rate their interactions with whites.
“Minorities who expect to be the targets of prejudice engage in a variety of compensatory strategies to try to deflect prejudice,” Shelton said. “They smile a lot, talk a lot, and generally try to relax white people and put them at ease. This can be exhausting, a real strain.”
Sponsored by ISR and its Research Center for Group Dynamics, and the newly formed National Center on Institutional Diversity (NCID), the event included comments by Patricia Gurin, the U-M psychologist who heads the center and is an expert on the benefits of diversity. ISR researcher Scott Atran spoke about the increasingly conflicted relationship between science and religion, especially Islam.
“Science will never replace religion,” Atran said. “Martin Luther King knew this, and used this knowledge in a masterful way to advance the cause of civil rights.” An expert on suicide terrorism and the evolutionary origins of human behavior, including religion, Atran went on to discuss the complex ways in which Islam is and is not related to terrorism.
“The key to reducing the incidence of suicide bombings is not to try to undermine the sacred values of others, or try to inculcate others with our own values,” he said, “but to help them channel those values into less destructive, violent paths.”
University of Washington psychologist Ratnesh Nagda concluded the panel by weaving together personal observations with an account of his professional activities to increase communication and understanding among different groups. An Indian who grew up in Kenya, Nagda said his situation made him feel like a wedge between colonials and Africans.
Twenty years ago he was an undergraduate living in West Quad, protesting to encourage U-M to recognize MLK Day. Today he is working with South Africa’s Desmond Tutu Peace Centre to further the social transformation needed to build a new South Africa, and collaborating with Gurin on ways to improve inter-group dialogues at Michigan, as part of the NCID.
“I’ve gone from being a wedge to a bridge,” he said, “bridging differences between groups.”
