Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: We challenge the contact hypothesis as a theoretical framework by demonstrating that, in today’s era of colorblind racism, contact with blacks is not a particularly progressive racial change agent for many whites. By comparing two qualitative data sets of white antiracists and whites who have a close black friend, we find there are a good number of whites for whom relationships with people of color are not the prime impetus for becoming antiracist. Whites often bracket out their black friend from their limited understandings of racism, and white antiracists often adopt progressive ideologies from other whites. Our most important point, of great political significance, is that progressive racial change today comes from bearers of antiracist ideology (the “message”) who may or may not be persons of color (the assumed “messengers”.) We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for “token” diversification of institutions and alternative ways of implementing progressive racial change that do not merely depend on black “bodies” as symbols alone.