Breaking Up with Racial Isolation w/ Dr. Michael Emerson
Episode Summary: In this episode of The Diversity Gap Podcast, Bethaney sits down with Dr. Michael Emerson, co-author of the book, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America. In this impactful conversation, Dr. Emerson and Bethaney unpack what is racial isolation and how to intentionally navigate change.
Dr. Michael Emerson is a Sociologists and Provost at North Park University in Chicago. He is the co-author of numerous books, including “Divided by Faith” and “United by Faith” and “Religion Matters: What Sociology Teaches Us About Religion in Our World.”
Transcript
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
race, cities, white, question, called, diversity, create, racialized, racial identity, emerson, book, racism, problem, color, life, society, happening, ethnic identity, god, racial
SPEAKERS
Bethaney Wilkinson, Dr. Michael Emerson
Bethaney Wilkinson 00:01
A huge turning point for me. And understanding my race and ethnic identity happened when I was 18 years old at this spring break trip on the west side of Chicago, where I was learning about justice and race and racism in the city. And as a part of the curriculum for the spring break experience, we watched a YouTube video showing us and telling us about this dolls experiment. Now, this probably isn't new to some of you, it is a pretty famous test. But Dr. Kenneth Clark in the 1950s was trying to prove the impact of racism on children in the school system. And so he had this test where he gave these kids black dolls and white dolls and asked them a series of questions about the attributes of each doll like which tells the pretty doll which dolls the smart doll, and over and over again, these kids pick the the white doll for all the positive things and they pick the black dog for the negative things. This is probably an oversimplification, but you get the point. So I'm sitting at the spring break trip watching this video, and I start weeping. And I'm the kind of person where I might start crying before I know what's actually going on. So I'm crying. And it was in that moment that I realized, whoa, I've been studying race and racism academically. I've been thinking about it critically for a long time. But this was the first moment where I realized the extent to which I had internalized racism, and the extent to which I had lived up until that point, my whole life, believing all of these negative things about myself and about what it meant to be in my skin. And so I tell the story, because I think we all have the opportunity to have those moments if we're paying attention, moments that profoundly change our direction, and, and completely shift the way we see the world as it relates to race, identity, ethnicity, and what it means to participate in closing the diversity gap. Welcome to the diversity gap podcast where we are exploring the gap between good intentions and good impact as it relates to diversity, equity and inclusion. My name is Bethaney Wilkinson and I am your host. Hello, thanks for tuning in to The Diversity Gap podcast. For today's episode we get to learn from Dr. Michael Emerson. I first encountered Dr. Emerson's work when I was in seminary working on my Master's in theology. He is the co author of divided by faith, evangelical religion in the problem of race in America. This book changed my life and my work. He and Christian Smith, the co author unpack many of the invisible forces that have kept white evangelicals from even beginning to wrap their minds around the problem of race. I see this book changed my life and my work because it helped me better understand what I was up against when I sought out to change people's hearts and minds about racism. In this conversation, we talk a lot about racial isolation, and about the forces beyond individual choice that impact our ability to build diverse and multicultural communities. Now, some things to listen out for Dr. Emerson is a sociologist, and he's an academic by training. So we spend some time unpacking and defining terms throughout this episode. If you get lost, check out the conversation guide on the diversity gap website, where you can read about those terms more. I'm super excited to share this conversation with you enjoy. When did you first learn that you have a race or ethnic identity?
Dr. Michael Emerson 03:48
Great question. I'm going to answer both the ethnic and the race because a quite a bit different. So I'm half Italian, half Norwegian, that's my ethnic identity. I knew that by age four, because my mother and father were so very different. But also because my grandparents were from Italy and spent a lot of time with him. So I knew they were very different than my Norwegian grandparents. So that came to me early, but racial identity interestingly enough, everybody else had a race identity, or had a race, but I didn't until I was age 26. When I realized my word, I'm a white guy. And that really matters that shaped who I am and what I think and who I relate to. So yeah, took a long time.
Bethaney Wilkinson 04:30
Yeah. So what were some of the factors at 26 that helped you begin seeing that it may mean that you have a racial identity.
Dr. Michael Emerson 04:40
So I had become at that point I was in my first year as a professor, and I was assigned to teach race and ethnic relations. So that started it been giving some formal scholarly thought to it but what really was the transformation is I got invited to something called Promise Keepers. This is way back in the 90s It was a men's movement. And one of their seven promises was on racial reconciliation. That was to this white guy. I'd never heard of such a thing before. What is that about? Why is that so important? And I think if you read x two, and they talk about tongues of fire, that's what happened to me. While sitting in this huge stadium, on the issue of race, it was like my life change right then and there. And I knew it would. And it was scary. And yet, it was like, God's and total charge. And, yeah, that's when I realized, I'm a white guy. And that matters.
Bethaney Wilkinson 05:39
Yeah. Oh, gosh, that's awesome. And so I one more question about that before moving into some of your work and professional background. Um, so when you realize that you are a white guy, what were some of like, following that kind of wake up experience? What were those early months of engaging that? Like, what, how did you feel? Was it mostly intellectual that you have relationships? Like, where do you go from that initial awakening,
Dr. Michael Emerson 06:05
being a professor, my course I went to the intellectual first. And so I bought every book I could possibly find on race and religion. And in fact, at that conference, they had a makeshift bookstore. So I bought every book there. And I often say this, but I stayed up pretty much like 72 hours straight, because I could not stop reading, and I, I didn't feel tired or anything, I read every book, when I finished the last page of the last book, I then became very tired, went to sleep, and I slept for a very long time. But it's the sounds bizarre, but I had a vision of what's to happen in the vision was this that henceforth until I tell you, otherwise, you will live as a racial minority. Okay, so let me just tell you how we were living at that point, we were living in what was honestly, and I've looked up the data, the widest metropolitan area in the United States at that time, St. Cloud, Minnesota. So contact with people other than white folks, essentially zero. So I found it very odd that God had given this like, what is that going to mean? I remember telling my wife who was pregnant with our third child at the time, I said, you might want to sit down for this. I have some news in our skip all the drama, but there was plenty of drama. One of the things we realized is we looked at, at that time, we send out Christmas cards to people, and we had a list of 100 people we sent to. And so for the first time in my life, I said, What would be the race of the people that we are most closely connected to? Well, all 100 were white, there was zero exceptions. So I started realizing Yeah, how completely isolated. And in a world that we lived, what God did was, provide a new job, which I knew he would, because I didn't see any other way we have to move. And that led to moving move to an African American neighborhood, started attending black church, children went to school where they were the minority and such, you know, God provided the way and everything changed from there.
Bethaney Wilkinson 08:11
That's really powerful. Um, gosh, okay, so I want to circle back to that here in a second. I do want to hear especially that racial isolation piece and some of the big changes your family had to make in order to be intentional about living as a racial minority. So I will get I'm gonna circle back to that in a moment. But from your work, I love for you to describe a little bit about what you do, how you arrived at I know you're a scholar, researcher, Pirlo, Saudi University. Tell me more about your work, background and history.
Dr. Michael Emerson 08:44
Yeah, so you know, of course, because of everything that was going on, and personal life God, hey, wouldn't you know at the same time, brought this big funded research project to study Evan Jellicle Christianity in us and put it on me to study race and the church. So my first book was called divided by faith, and that came out of everything that was happening in the personal life, plus what was happening scholarly. So that's been one stream of study all the way along is race and religion. The other is always been urban, and studying the effect that cities have on us as people and what our values are and how we live and how we relate to each other.
Bethaney Wilkinson 09:26
And so with that focus on cities, what do you love most about cities? Why do you think they matter?
Dr. Michael Emerson 09:33
So cities are the source of all streams, or you might say, the crucible of creativity. What I love about cities is, I really think there and I think it's biblical, God designed cities to be among other things, the place where human creativity is realized. And in my own field of sociology, we call it the sub cultural theory of urbanism. Well, let me give you the stat so something like 99% of all inventions in the world come from cities. And the bigger the city, the faster and higher the rate of inventions not at a what you'd call a linear fashion meaning while there's more people, of course there's going to be. But it's called a log linear relationship and increases at ever faster rate, the more people you have the reason, the bigger the city, the wider area it draws its people from and the more diverse the people are. Those people come into a small space, they bump into each other. They all bring their cultures, their cultures collide, they connect, whatever and you get out of that merging of cultures. That's where creativity comes a new way to think of something a new way to do something, a new way to wear your hair, a new style, a new type of food is created. So that's, I think, the excitement and dynamism of cities, they've always been that way to design to be that you're endlessly fascinating for that reason.
Bethaney Wilkinson 10:56
What's interesting to me about cities also is that even though they can be these places of like immense, like convergence, quote, like culturally and racially, there is this reality of like segregation and racial isolation within cities. So how do you make sense of that, like the reality that cities are incredibly diverse statistically, and yet they can also be so segregated? Over the course of time?
Dr. Michael Emerson 11:24
Yeah, thanks for identifying that, because therein lies the greatest wound, a massive injury that humans inflict upon themselves, God designs, cities for us to come together to produce all this creativity and solutions to the problems that we face. And we don't like the negative side, right? The complexity of meeting people, we quickly judge are way better other ways. And we solve that dilemma. By segregating by Ranking ourselves, we're better than you are. Got this little book, given to my granddaughter, and it just it has in the in the world, there are only three colors, and the three colors move to the city. So yes, the yellows, the blues, and the reds, and they all got along fine. But then one day, the red said were brighter, and better than the blues and the yellows. And then they started to say we need to live apart. And then they started to say, because we're better, we shouldn't associate with them, and so on and so forth. Right, you get it. But it's a simple way to illustrate what humans actually do. But then we rob ourselves of God's design.
Bethaney Wilkinson 12:33
Well, it's interesting to how. And I think what's so remarkable about your life story, as much as I know about it is that it was this hasn't just been like an intellectual exercise for you. And you did pick up your family and you didn't move and kind of resist that norm of segregation. And then to complicate that further, and my City, Atlanta, we do have I mean, the reality of gentrification is happening all over the country. But it is this interesting, like, how do we it's a question of how do we move closer to one another in ways that are dignifying, I suppose, as opposed to doing it in ways that are exploitative, or exploitive? And is that a tension you wrestled with earlier on when you moved? Or is that been something that you've learned about over the course of your journey? Like how do you push back against segregation move towards integration without causing harm?
Dr. Michael Emerson 13:24
Yeah, so wonderful question. Because when it happens in mass, it often causes harm, as we know, it pushes people out. So just quickly, so when it's our family, it's just an individual family moving, we have very little impact on the neighborhood itself, because we're just a unit at that time of six people for children. But if you know, hundreds of such families moved to a neighborhood, that would be problematic. So it is, it is always a balance. The thing about gentrification is, if you study it, it's mostly directed by the market rather than really people's choices. The market says, here's an area that has become so downtrodden, we can get land very cheaply, redevelop it and convince people this is the new hot spot to go. Once we get a few people to start doing that. Then you create a cycle and the people come flowing in and they're not they're trying to integrate it all. They're there because it's the hot spot the in place to be. They're not thinking about race or the people that are there. That's the problem. Oh, that's
Bethaney Wilkinson 14:26
a great point. Yeah, there's a distinction between what's purely market driven versus the intention of creating a new kind of community. If another family is listening to this podcast, and they're thinking like, hey, maybe we should pursue a life of experiencing what it's like to be racial minority. And if they are also observing, wow, my world is really racially isolated. What would you recommend to them?
Dr. Michael Emerson 14:51
Okay, so let's talk about the ways in which we are racially isolated. So we obviously we've mentioned, where we live, so our neighborhood there's also So where are we worship, there's where we work. There's where we play. And if we are such an age where we go to school. So there's all these levels at which you could be isolated or not. And all of those shapes, what are fundamentally also important, such as friendship networks, general acquaintance networks. So I often will say, think of those areas and find a way to change to have them, the easiest way is simply to move somewhere else, because that's going to change all kinds of things. But if that's not possible, then think how to change where you worship, perhaps think, how to change where you go to school, and how to change something about your friendship networks.
Bethaney Wilkinson 15:44
Yeah, that's great. And super practical, too. I would imagine that experience would feel pretty costly.
Dr. Michael Emerson 15:51
It's interesting. Yeah. So people often say, hey, that's great advice. But you'd have to be called, implying they don't ever say but I'm not called to that. Right. That's what if they were to finish their thought. And so of course, I think we were designed to be together in our differences. God created us differently. Yes, it can be problematic. But it's also the most beautiful thing about being a human. So insofar as we are living a homogenous life, we're not living God's best life. To borrow a phrase from a certain pastor. I think it's a calling for all of us. And you can do it in a small way by getting started just by diversifying one of those areas, or you can go all out like our family did and change everything. But even though and this is interesting part, like you say, yes, there were times when it felt costly. There were times when we worried about our children who usually because we were at the extreme, or the only white children in their, you know, in their church in their in our neighborhood in their schools. Like, are we going too far, but our children are grown now. And every single one of them says the same thing. They wouldn't trade it for the world. They are grateful it made her family closer, immediately closer to God. It allowed them to see a world as they think God wants it to be.
Bethaney Wilkinson 17:07
Wow. Yeah, I love that. And I, I think that's so important. Because as I connect with young families now, um, that is a question like, Oh, am I causing my children harm by putting them in this situation? I think as a black woman who grew up as a minority, and like I grew up and I'm fine. I can.
Dr. Michael Emerson 17:29
Yeah, exactly.
Bethaney Wilkinson 17:31
Yeah. Because it's like a superpower that I have. And why wouldn't you want your kids to have it? Like, it's encouraging to hear like, your kids are grown. And they all say like, oh, I'm better, but better person, a better citizen, a better follower of God, because of this experience as a kid. So I think that's super encouraging. So one of the questions I have for you is to talk a little bit more about racialization. And how, how racial identities are formed, specifically, white racial identities. And so how do you define racialization? What is it? And then what impact do you think it has on white leaders?
Dr. Michael Emerson 18:10
Racialization, as some people may be familiar with the term, some not, it's a term that's grown in use over the last couple of decades. And we often refer to it as Entire societies are racialized. So South Africa, we would say is racialized. The United States are racialized, and they're usually the two societies held up as the most racialized meaning that they have been impacted from their beginning and all through their history, by this human invention that we now call race, which was invented around debated, but around 1500, somewhere in there, for specific reasons. So let me a formal definition. So it's a society where race matters profoundly for differences. Okay. So depending on what race you are born into, or assigned to, is going to shape your life experiences, it shapes your life opportunities, it shapes as we've been talking about your social relationships, who you'll hang out with, or you'll get married to, and so on. But ultimately, this is what makes a racialized society on some of its negative consequences is that it takes whatever our society's goods so goodies and society's rewards, and distributes them on equally by racial group. Okay, so that you can always in a racialized society clearly ranked the racial groups, yes, there's variation within the group. Some people in the group have more, some less, but in the US, clearly, whites have the most access to wealth and the best neighborhoods and so on. And you can do that same kind of ranking in South Africa. So that's what a racialized society is. And that's what we mean by racialization. That's super helpful.
Bethaney Wilkinson 19:56
How do you see that play out in that in like identity formation? For individuals if at all
Dr. Michael Emerson 20:02
It deeply impacts so, okay, I'll speak as the white man again here. So racialization when you're white typically means in the US, I don't have a culture and I don't have an identity because I'm American. So I guess if I have an identity, it's I'm American, and then you have diversity or subcultures, that would be African American subcultures and various Latino subcultures. Those are deviations from the norm. So in a racialized society as white, I am the norm, anything that's different, isn't like, just different. It's a violation of the norm. It's, yeah, so if there's one group that has less, that's a violation of the norm, you should have what I have. So if you don't have it, wow, what's what is wrong with the way your group does things that they don't have it. So it really colors and shapes my mind, it places me as a white person in this false idea that I am better, more important, more central to the world than I actually am.
Bethaney Wilkinson 21:04
So it's interesting. We live in a racialized society. And yet colorblindness still seems to be a really popular idea or notion. Can you speak to what color blindness is, and why it's probably helpful, but just my opinion, I'm projecting that onto you. But we cannot Some,
Dr. Michael Emerson 21:25
yeah, colorblindness is a great term, because it is what exactly what it says it is, which is this idea that I don't see color, but it has with it a normative idea behind it. That is, we should not see color. And that will help us to overcome whatever racial issues we may have. That is the solution to our problem of race in this country. It's rooted in individualism. So it's this idea. Really, let's take the three terms. So you have racism, prejudice, discrimination. So prejudice and discrimination. We found in our studies, especially for white Americans, and some actually some older African Americans as well, that racism equals individual level prejudice, and or discrimination. So if that's how you define what racism is, it's a problem of individuals having bad views about people or not acting fairly to somebody because of their race, then, if that was true, then the answer if none of us saw race, then you couldn't be have race prejudice, or race discrimination. And so we solved the problem, I would argue, I can tell you, it argues, well, that's a misdiagnosis of the problem of what racism is, and therefore not only candidate solve it, solve it, but it actually is directly in the way of allowing us to solve it.
Bethaney Wilkinson 22:49
Given that you research race and religion for a living, how is your research specifically on race translated into your role as provost of North Park University?
Dr. Michael Emerson 23:02
Golly, so let me people probably don't know what a provost is. So that means your chief academic officer. So in universities, you have professors, and you have department chairs, and then you have Dean's, and then the head person over the whole academic enterprise, then the provost. So that's my job. I took the job really, as a challenge can Is there any way to actually live out the things you've been studying and apply them to the university? So I've just give a few examples? And are we perfect? Oh, my word. We know, we are not perfect. And we have far to go. So one of the things is that I have learned that I don't have the answers, and I must listen. So to have regular gatherings, especially with the faculty of color, what's working, what's not working? What are the frustrations? What do you want to see, hold me accountable. And they do, they'll call me out. When they think that I'm acting too white, they're not looking out for their, their needs. So let me set a quick context. Our university is majority minority and its student body. But our faculty, as of last year is only 18%. faculty of color. Obviously, we got a problem and in research says, for people to succeed, they need to see examples of themselves. So we need to diversify our faculty. So we came up with a goal that by 20, we called 25 by 25. So in year 2025, which is just six years from now, 25% of our faculty will be faculty of color, then we'll set the next goal but that we determine is realistic. It means that 1/3 of our hires from now on have to be faculty of color. So we can say that we set it as our goal, but we have to do it. So we had to put structures in place to do it. One is to create a position in the office that thinks about this all the time and is overseeing holding us accountable. We have what we call the Rooney Rule. This comes out of the NFL. When we interview, we usually select three finalists and bring them to campus. If one of those people isn't a person of color, you do not get to do your search. If you say, well, we can't find someone, then I get to say your searches canceled, and you try again next year. Because if we don't interview people, we will not be able to hire. Wow. Yeah. So we just had to do this this year and finalize that hiring and about 42% of our hires were people of color this year. So we know we had to be at least a third. So we're on our way. But you have to have the structures in place.
Bethaney Wilkinson 25:37
I do wonder, for you, do you find that once diversity is increased, like once there are more perspectives and people and races and ethnicities in the room, that there's a different set of skills required to leave that group constructively, because of all of the diverse dynamics that are happening in the space.
Dr. Michael Emerson 25:58
And because of that, I think people will sometimes default to not wanting that, then that well, it's just easier when it's the group I know and I was raised in, but then you lose your creativity, you lose your edge. I also say that once you are able to start diversifying that that diversity can feed on itself, the folks that you have recruited help you recruit others and can help you understand if you're in a leadership position. Most important thing when you're in a leadership position, listen, you don't know the answer is you simply been put in a place that has, you know, power and influence. So listen to the people that know and use your power and influence for their benefit.
Bethaney Wilkinson 26:40
So great, it's very helpful. Okay, so and landing the plane here have a couple of less questions for you. And you're working on a new project to update the findings of your previous book divided by faith. So can you tell us more? And yeah, tell us more about this project? Why are you leading it? And what do you hope it will accomplish?
Dr. Michael Emerson 27:02
So that book if people aren't familiar with it, looked at evangelicalism, white evangelicalism in America and diagnosed that this idea of individualism and so on, and these things actually getting in the way of racial progress, even as people meant to try to be a positive force for it. That was 20 years ago. So one thing I kept getting from various folks is, are you going to do an update? Are you going to do an update? Are things still the same that they changed? So that's one of the reasons we're doing it. And we'll ask many of the same questions to see also because I know things have changed. We have technologies we didn't have 20 years ago, we have political realities, we didn't have 20 years ago. So we're in a whole different context as well. So now we're trying to understand what does race and religion mean and contemporary times?
Bethaney Wilkinson 27:56
And will it be one of those things kind of piggybacking off of our conversation about diagnostics versus creating solutions? Do you anticipate that there will be more action items around it? Or how do you hope people will be able to respond to the new findings that you that you create, or that you research?
Dr. Michael Emerson 28:17
Okay, so instead of writing a single book, and a story, there it is. This project is designed this way? First of all, it's two books, because it's a bigger issue. And part of it is to diagnose the problem. Yes, but the other part is, so what do we do about it? Okay, that's one difference. We spent this first four months or so filming people of color leaders in race and religion, talking about the realities, both them personally but more at the national level, what are they seeing? What are they feeling, you know, slicing those down into like three minute segments, so that people can look at different topics and see what leaders of color are saying on these issues. We hope to make a documentary out of it. But more importantly, we're doing all of this to create what we're calling our CRE center right now center on racial equity and inclusion. And we formed a national network, which you are part of, as you know. And out of that, we want leaders from there to come to run it, it's to create a center that works on this full time partnering with other places that are doing so doing it specifically from the Christian perspective. And we're using this research to help catapult and get us started on the right foot.
Bethaney Wilkinson 29:36
Okay, so as you know, my whole project, this diversity gap, thing really is a question where I'm trying to figure out how we as leaders and teams, as a society, how we can close the gap between what we intend and the impact that we end up having. And so my last question to you is, in your own words, what is the diversity gap and how can you The close it.
Dr. Michael Emerson 30:01
Diversity gap is anything that separates us anything that ranks groups, anything that's communicates in any way shape or form it some humans are worth less or worth more than others. So it's a complete and fundamental violation of biblical principles, biblical teaching and our design, how to close it, we need more Bethany's. That's what we need. People often will say, Well, you know, when I speak or others on this topic, and what can I do, and I'll say, find an organization that's already doing and join it, because you have to create a groundswell. You have to create a social movement with momentum. And you do that by joining others with the same passions, they already exist, so find them and become part of them.
Bethaney Wilkinson 30:52
That is so good. So helpful. Thank you, person for your time and your wisdom and and for letting this question of what does it look like to build communities where all people are valued? Thank you for living that both academically and in your real life. It is such a gift to me, I know it has been to countless other people. So thank you. There were so many things from this episode that stuck out to me, there are two takeaways I want you to consider. The first is what might it look like to diversify your everyday life? Dr. Emerson shares about a few key areas where people spend the most of their time, namely, where you live, where you work, where your kids go to school, and where you practice your faith. He says that if you want to be more intentional about racial and ethnic diversity in your life, pick two of these areas and change them. Now this is super practical, he picked up and moved his entire family. And I'm guessing that that wasn't easy. I'm sure that it's not simple, but it is practical. So that's one thing you can consider. The second piece that stood out to me was how Dr. Emerson and his team have set clear benchmarks for their diversity and inclusion priorities. With the guidance from people of color on their team. They set clear parameters so that they can measure progress and make changes as necessary. This is again a super practical way that we as leaders can prioritize and track change in our organizations. Alright, that's all I've got. I would love to hear from you as you're listening to this podcast. If you have any questions or insights, send them my way at thediversitygap. com or drop me a line on Instagram Thank you for listening to The Diversity Gap podcast. If you've been challenged or inspired by what you've heard, please rate and review the show. You can also subscribe to make sure you never miss an episode. If you have thoughts or questions I'd love to hear from you connect with me at thediversitygap.com or on Instagram at The Diversity Gap. This episode was produced by DJ opdiggy for Soul Graffiti Productions