Looking to Increase Buy in for Racial Equity? Read This.

New Research Shows that Talking About Race and Class Together is Key

With US election results finalized, the demographic data show that Black voters overwhelmingly supported Biden, while 57% of white voters chose the incumbent president. Why the huge disparity?

Professor Ian Haney López, a specialist in race and racism, sheds light on this situation. In an interview with Next Economy Now, Professor López discusses the results of his two year research project about race and class political messaging. López’s team conducted national polling and focus groups to test different combinations of campaign narratives around economic and racial justice. The researchers found that a combined message of economic prosperity and racial equality moved the most voters to support working together across racial lines. However, when those messages were separated, voters were not as convinced to support either a message of “colorblind economic populism” or a racial division message.

López gave a real world example of this finding that he experienced when speaking to a national trade union. Trade union leaders and members were majority white, and when López asked if racism was a problem in the union, they laughed and became disengaged. He went on to explain to the trade union the history of how rich elites have used racial division to keep working class people from organizing together. He explained how the future economic health of the union and their families hinged on the economic health of fellow Black workers.

After this lesson, trade union members were eager to talk about racism in the union and wanted to know how to organize with Black workers. When the message connected racial justice with economic justice for people of all colors, white people were motivated to work toward a future that benefits all.

López explains that this strategic separation of race and class is nothing new. He reference’s Bacon’s Rebellion as an early example of elites cracking down on solidarity between working class white and Black enslaved people. In 1676, British aristocrat Nathanial Bacon united with discontented people in the Virginia Colony against Governor William Berkeley. Professor Dale Craig Tatum writes in the Journal of Black Studies that Bacon joined in solidarity with “farmers, former indentured servants, indentured servants, and enslaved African Americans who wanted to create a more egalitarian society.”

Although the rebellion failed, the elites still felt threatened by solidarity between white and Black poor people. To combat this new unification, landed elites gave free land to poor whites and intensified chattel slavery. Tatum writes that elites bought “the support of working class Whites by offering them a few crumbs” and convinced the working class whites that “they were partners in the political system when they were not.”

In order to gain racial equity buy in López’s research shows that race discussions must be combined with class discussions. In an organization class is about distributing opportunities for growth and development based upon visibly transparent and fair workforce development systems, structures, and programs.

As Matthew Syed discusses in his book Rebel Ideas: The Power of Diverse Thinking, teams of diverse ‘rebels’ outperform teams of ‘clones.’ Solidarity between all races will make our economy stronger overall. We will be able to come up with a larger range of useful solutions for our complex problems when different perspectives are included. Despite hundreds of years of divisive messaging and tactics, we now know that diversity helps, rather than hurts, our society. López’s research pinpoints the specific message that convinces people that this is true. To learn more about diversity as the key to progress, check out our article Why Cognitive Diversity Can Save Lives and Lead to Team Success.

We at Small World Solutions know that building diverse teams and teaching team members how to communicate across their differences increases the team’s overall effectiveness. One of our first steps in this process is to help team members realize that cultivating diversity is essential for them to achieve complex project goals. While Professor López’s research focuses on political messaging, we leverage science-based communication tactics tailored to the government and private sectors. After team members become aware of diversity’s importance, they are motivated to participate in the process, and begin to deepen their interpersonal intelligence abilities — what we call the New IQ.