Chapter Three

In-groups and out-groups

Let’s start with some good news: you probably already have the foundation for building authentic relationships across differences. You likely treat people with respect, listen, empathize, and stick with your friends through disagreements and challenging times. We are also fairly certain that your friends, colleagues, and family members do, as well. The problem is not that you and your peers are unfamiliar with healthy behavior. The problem is that you and they, like the rest of us, may be limiting your best behaviors to what we call the “in-group,” or the people we know and like best. An in-group might be people who went to the same university you did, people from your hometown, or, more problematically, people who share racial and cultural similarities to you. Remember from the previous chapters that when the bias relates to people-based differences, particularly the ones we cannot change or control, that is where trouble lurks. People who are not part of this in-group, however it’s defined, become an out-group. Unfortunately, we tend to demand more from out-groups in order to trust them, or to see them as competent.

Differences that people cannot control or change are biases we need to look out for.

The phenomenon of in-groups and out-groups undercuts efforts to build relationships across difference. When groups are in conflict, explicit pressure can be exerted to prevent cross-group friendships. More often we simply find it easier to hang out with people with whom we can quickly build trust, because they understand our histories, get our jokes, and share our values. Part of your work of building authentic relationships across differences in order to overcome bias is to begin to notice how the in-group and out-group phenomenon works in your own life, and begin to expand your own in-group.

That lack of trust in out-groups is one of the reasons we should look for the similarities even in the face of obvious differences. Every time a hot political topic gains the spotlight in the national or international media, your Facebook feed probably lights up with political commentary. You know you have diversity in your relationships if at least some of the opinions and positions make you crazy. When that happens, most of us question the sanity of our family members or misguided acquaintances. But how often do we stop and engage in conversations that seek to understand an opinion we disagree with—even the politically charged ones? We don’t need agreement to be authentic, but we do need respectful, honest communication.

We had the distinct privilege of facilitating a special program for the Congressional Leadership Institute, a partnership between two Washington, DC–based nonprofits, Search for Common Ground and the Faith and Politics Institute. The program was a bipartisan, dialogue-based, 18-month series of conferences with a race and democracy theme. Members of Congress, Democrat and Republican, discussed some of the most challenging topics, and they came together based on the values and goals they had in common. Obviously this is no easy task, but they understood the need and the urgency of working together.

One episode that took place during the conference series offered a poignant illustration of the difficulty of expanding your in-group. The congressional delegation from two different parties went to watch a sports championship game together, and they posted some pictures on Twitter of their bipartisan group cheering for their respective teams. The result? Angry responses from their constituents for collaborating with “the enemy.” Democrats sent angry messages to their Democrat representatives, and Republicans did the same. There is tremendous pressure in our society not to expand your in-group, so don’t make the mistake of thinking it is an easy journey.

Of course not all members of Congress participated in our dialogues, but the ones who did are very forward thinking and built lasting relationships as a result. Can you imagine how much the United States and the world could accomplish if all of our leaders were willing to come together to seek solutions despite the differences that divide them?

Honor the differences while seeking similarities.

Studies of human infants show that people are social animals who display positive bias toward people who look like their immediate family and toward people they are exposed to early in life.¹

Fortunately, however, those positive preferences can change and we can learn to expand our “family.” We need people who are willing to overcome their subconscious preferences for people who look, act, and think like they do if we are to truly overcome bias.

Tiffany, for instance, was almost always the only black girl in predominantly white schools and neighborhoods. Her early familial influences were still African American, but her friends were as different from her as you can imagine. She recounts her experience here:

The people around me were white, and while that privileged them societally, my parents were doctors, which privileged me socioeconomically. The interesting thing is that when it came time to get married, I had somehow received a cultural cue that people are supposed to marry within their own tribes. How many interracial couples did you know in the 1990s? Even if you knew several, how many of them were black women with white or Asian men? Statistically speaking, it is still rare today, but it was even more so back then. So I attempted twice to marry within my tribe, and twice those unions failed. I am not implying that they failed because of race alone, but what I learned was that beyond skin color, I had little in common with my first two husbands. Sometimes you have to rewind the messages of your life and reevaluate their accuracy and relevance.

In this case, Tiffany’s bias favored her in-group—people of color. The in-group bias was the default, the assumption. Sometimes, cultural cues and messages are tacit and they become part of people’s decision-making matrix unbeknownst to them. What other messages might we be sending and receiving that we are unaware of?

Don’t be afraid to question your own beliefs and family values.

Tiffany’s upbringing was akin to that of a middle-class white American girl. Nonetheless, the pressure to culturally conform was strong, and she has always marched to the beat of her own drummer.

I believe I had a subconscious preference for the family portraits that had surrounded me my whole life—parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles. Most everyone around me was half of a brown couple. Who was I to break tradition? Well, I finally did and it was a total paradigm shift. I have more in common with my white husband than I did with both of my black husbands combined. And let’s not forget that I do race and diversity work for a living, wear dreadlocks, and am quite comfortable and happy being a black woman. This is by no means a denial of identity. It is a recognition that I did not have to submit to a subconscious bias toward my primary in-group in order to find love and compatibility.

Be aware of your in-groups, but don’t let them control your decisions. You are an individual first.

In-groups and out-groups are not always clear and consistent. Our friend, journalist and professor Chris Dovi, shared a story of in-groups and out-groups from his own life.

My father’s family is Italian, and they’re particularly dark complected, with black, very curly hair. As a young kid, I looked to be right out of the mold, minus the curly hair. Growing up in Hampton Roads in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I attended a small Catholic school where the student body was either upper-middle-class, blond-haired, blue-eyed locals, or refugees from South and Central American countries taken in by the Carmelite nuns who ran the school. There was no in between . . . except me.

The two groups did not mix. I found myself stuck in the middle, but excluded by both. Unable to speak Spanish, I was confusing to the Latino students, who wouldn’t interact with me. The white students were also confused and didn’t tend to associate with me because I looked like the Latino students they were accustomed to looking down on. It was a strange bit of irony that the school also was home to a small group of black students, and they were better and more easily accepted by white students at the school.

You really can’t call this treatment racism—eight-year-olds shouldn’t be saddled with a label like that. But it definitely introduced me to the idea of being “other,” and I carry that experience with me. And I know that, from their own perspective, these are the formative experiences that my classmates carry with them as well, informing their adult ideas that harden into the -isms that are so much easier to label. I try to use this experience as a reminder to myself that I must consider all sides and all experiences when dealing with people’s “natural” prejudices. We all have them. And while there may be right or wrong ideas—even though which of these are right or wrong changes with seasons and generations—there are no right or wrong people. There are people carrying with them the collective baggage of their life experiences.

Chris uses a great exercise with his university students to get them out of their comfort zone.

Every time I object to a stereotype that someone else applies to me or to someone else, I’m aware of my own biases. It is my immediate reflex to judge a person based on their bias. But for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. It is a natural human reaction to defend your ground, to defend your own viewpoint. But there’s often a fine line between a viewpoint and a bias.

I now teach journalism at Virginia Commonwealth University. Each year, I give a lecture on the controversy over Richmond’s Shockoe Bottom and efforts to locate a baseball stadium on top of a historic area that once was the epicenter of the domestic, wholesale slave trade in this country. The area has never been excavated, but because of how it was developed, we know that many of these sites representing the shame of our nation still exist undisturbed since they were buried more than 100 years ago.

I typically spend nearly an hour walking students through the emotional and fraught history of Shockoe, and of Richmond, as it charts the story of the divergent paths toward liberty for black and white America, in a city that can authentically lay claim to being the place where the foundations were laid for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, but also where the framework making possible the commercial farming of slaves and the philosophical undergirding of the Confederacy were constructed. This entire history can be told between St. John’s Church, the Virginia capitol, the Burial Ground for Negroes, and Rocketts Landing—basically the boundaries of Shockoe Valley.

This emotionally exhausting review typically draws out a couple of tears, and never fails to charge up students who beforehand will profess no interest in history, but who afterwards are ready to lay down in front of bulldozers to prevent the evil hands of developers from destroying this national treasure. When I give this lecture, I make a point of drawing it out so I’m left with just about three minutes to outline the rebuttal—the “other side” of the story. And I ask my students after I finish the history review if they think I can sway them to the other side. The answer is always an emotional no.

I then give a three-minute lecture outlining the challenges that have been created by 200 years of development and decay that now prevent revitalizing an area that is the symbolic and physical heart and soul of the city. I explain how and why development in the area is impossible unless flooding can be alleviated—one of the few realistic plans to do so requires building a giant basin, in this case used as a baseball stadium—that will provide a retention pond and drain field for the floodwaters that inevitably destroy the area every 20 to 50 years. And then there are the people who own property, who own businesses, and who try to make the area better today, but who are prevented from realizing their potential.

The students walk out of my class confused, and questioning themselves. Which is the point. They also walk out understanding that context matters, and that there are no bad guys in this modern political drama that pits the preservationists versus the developers. The world certainly has bad guys who come along now and then, but most of the time there are only protagonists—and everyone is fighting for what they think is right.

Activity #4 increases your critical thinking skills. Some of the most successful leaders in the world are able to see all sides of an issue and synthesize perspectives into solutions that work for everyone. Of course there is always some compromise, but when you can really see someone else’s perspective and validate their view even a little, it goes a long way toward building bridges across difference.

When you engage in this sort of work, it’s important to beware the temptation of remaining in the soft embrace of a comfort zone. You know what we mean: it’s when we naturally gravitate only toward people just like ourselves. Why? Because it’s easy, the path of least resistance! Matthew Freeman has some great examples of noticing how this in-group phenomenon shaped the world in which he grew up.

I was raised in the affluent suburbs of Richmond, Virginia. I wasn’t there because my family was rich; I was there because my father was a white United Methodist pastor and the denomination, at that time, assigned pastors primarily to churches where they were racially similar to the congregation. The west end of Richmond, River Road specifically, is very affluent and fairly homogeneous. In fact, it was designed that way on purpose. Most of the neighborhood had been built during the height of white flight. The church I grew up in had, in fact, relocated from the downtown core to the suburbs in the 1960s. Members included a governor, a Fortune 500 CEO, business owners, doctors, and lawyers. I sometimes find it surprising that, having grown up surrounded by such wealth and privilege, I ended up doing the kind of work I do and writing a book like this.

Maybe some of you reading this book are from a similarly homogeneous background, surrounded by those from a similar racial, educational, and socioeconomic background. Making small but deliberate choices to expand your access to different people and ideas is all that’s needed to begin the process of noticing and moving out of your comfort zone.

A series of small steps each led me further and further away from the kind of environment I was comfortable with and introduced me to new kinds of people. I went to college 45 minutes from where I grew up, at the College of William and Mary, not a risky choice. But there I sought out people who disagreed with me for conversation and friendship. I joined both a hard-partying fraternity and a weekly Christian Bible study. I intentionally chose classes that challenged my received notions of how the world worked. And when I decided to go to graduate school, I chose to leave the South in order to gain some critical distance on the culture in which I’d been raised. In my search for grad schools, I came across a seminary that had the programs I was interested in plus an incredible mix of faculty and students from all over the globe. And so I took the step to attend Regent College, a part of the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, Canada.

At Regent, I learned theology from a Brit, sociology from an Australian, and history from a Canadian who was the descendant of Russian Mennonites who fled to the prairies of Canada to escape religious persecution. As a teaching assistant for that history professor, I typed up his translations of letters from the early 1900s, written by these Russian communities seeking sanctuary around the globe. And I learned, with some surprise, that many of them wanted to avoid coming to the United States because it was not perceived as welcoming and tolerant of newcomers, and they were unsure whether they would have the religious freedom they sought as Christian pacifists who wanted to avoid forced military service. At 22 years old, I had sadly only encountered a narrative that proclaimed the United States as “the greatest nation on earth,” and that “everyone wants to come here.” Living in Canada, a country that from its early days welcomed dissenters from the American Revolution who wanted to stay loyal to the crown, reshaped my narrow perspective on American exceptionalism.

Learning history from the other side of the border helped Matthew realize how narrow his perspectives were, how much they had been shaped by an in-group dynamic that shared only stories from their own viewpoint. It also opened his eyes to the reality that people from diverse backgrounds could help him uncover assumptions he didn’t even know he held.

I also learned from my fellow students. I was in a weekly community group with Nigerians, Germans, Chinese, and New Zealanders. For the first semester we took turns each week sharing our life stories. I learned just how sheltered I had been in the privileged enclaves I’d inhabited in Virginia. While American Christians complain about religious persecution when corporations say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas,” my Nigerian friend shared what it was like to live in a country where Christians and Muslims have been killing each other for decades. My friends from Hong Kong talked about their fear for the future economic and religious freedom in their city since China had taken back control from the British. And my Canadian friends and neighbors taught me about how differently other countries approach social challenges from poverty, to drug addiction, to violence, than the Southern American context I was from.

I also learned, in more mundane ways, just how deeply culture shapes each of us. I’ll never forget when my German friends, Henning and Cornelia Grossman, asked, “Do you not like us?” I was shocked! We hung out several times a week, shared coffee and dinner regularly. How could they think I didn’t like them?

“Of course I do,” I replied. “Why would you even ask that question?”

“Because whenever you come over, you’re always 10 minutes late.”

A light bulb went off. I was taught, through experience if not through words, that it’s polite to arrive just a few minutes after the invitation time. That way the host won’t be frazzled and has just a minute to catch their breath after finishing the cooking, cleaning, or whatever pre-event details need attending. My German friends, on the other hand, see timeliness as a sign of respect, and would often show up 5 to 10 minutes early, causing me a great deal of panic and last-minute scrambling to get food on the table. In my book, they were not just 10 minutes early, but 20! I wasn’t expecting them until 10 minutes late. And in theirs, I was 20 minutes late, as they expected me to be early. And it was these kind of subtle, daily interactions with people who were different from me in some way that revealed to me the depth of assumptions that I presumed were more widely shared than they were.

Even these kinds of simple differences can raise far deeper questions about why we believe the way we do. We are all shaped, more deeply than we can fathom, by the context in which we live. Our families, religious communities, neighborhoods, countries—they all form a context that teaches you how to interpret the actions and behaviors of those around you. Matthew continues:

Is showing up late to a party a sign of disrespect? Or is it polite? Or is it a manipulative way to declare your relative importance vis-à-vis those who have invited you to their gathering? Is it OK to date outside of your race? Your faith? Your nationality? What about adopting children from a race or nation other than your own?

While in graduate school I participated in an informal, coffee-shop debate with a Bolivian and a couple from Poland. The question on the table: Should you return land to people whose ancestors had it stolen from them? The Bolivian passionately argued that yes, Spanish colonialists had stolen land from the indigenous peoples of Bolivia, and the current poverty and destitution afflicting native peoples was a direct result of this history of land theft. Justice required figuring out some way to redistribute the land.

Incidentally, this has been tried with varying levels of success in multiple postcolonial societies, including South Africa. The response from the Polish couple: nonsense. The borders between Germany and Poland have shifted so many times over the past century, not to mention millennia, that it would be an act of foolishness to renegotiate current borders and land claims. History is full of injustice, and we cannot possibly undo all the mistakes of the past. If our sense of justice is predicated on that, we are doomed to failure.

For Matthew, it was fascinating to see how each position was defensible, both morally and logically, but was also completely bound up in the cultural and historical context in which these folks lived. It is only through encounters with others that we can begin to see how and to what extent we ourselves have been shaped by our context.

So how can you discover your assumptions? By expanding your in-group. Meet people different to you and talk to them—about anything really, but don’t avoid the hard stuff.

In the words of our friend Doug Brown:

As a white male in the US, it is often difficult to cross racial and cultural lines without committing some kind of wrong. Some people of color say Caucasians shouldn’t teach children of color, or live in neighborhoods that historically have been for people of color, or parent children of color, or sing music by people of color, and who am I to disagree? Yet, I think we must step into some places where we don’t quite belong, with love and with our eyes, ears, and hearts stretched wide open.

Can expanding your in-group really help you overcome bias? The research on unconscious bias is relatively new, and the research on overcoming it newer still. Although more is needed, the path toward de-biasing seems fairly clear: exposing yourself to counter-stereotype examples leads to at least a temporary decrease in implicit bias scores on the IAT. And although it is entirely possible to have people in your life about whom you hold stereotypes—we all know sexist men who love their wives or the prejudiced woman who “has a black friend”—if you follow our prescriptions to both expand your circle and check your privilege, research is pointing to this two-part move as key to overcoming bias.

CALL TO ACTION

Meet people where they are if you want them to experience your sincerity and you want to experience theirs. Move out of your comfort zone and into theirs.