Biren (Ratnesh) A. Nagda

Fostering Meaningful Racial Engagement Through Intergroup Dialogues

Current attention on improving intergroup relations and participation in diverse societies compels us to understand the requisite values and skills for such participation. An action research approach examined an applied model of engagement across differences—intergroup dialogues that are facilitated in face-to-face encounters of college students from diverse social backgrounds meeting over a sustained period of time. Results show that overall program effects are evident only for racial identity outcomes—importance and centrality. However, regression analyses show students’ valuing of the dialogic learning process (e.g. peer facilitation, sharing experiences, and asking questions) is significantly related to increase in frequency of thinking about racial group membership, perspective-taking ability, comfort in communicating across differences, positive beliefs about conflict, and interest in bridging differences.

Getting to the What, How, and Why of Diversity on Campus

What kinds of diversity initiatives and cross-racial interactions foster learning among diverse students? In response to that question, the authors trace various social psychological theories that inform campus diversity programs. Making a case for moving beyond traditional intergroup harmony or intragroup solidarity approaches, the authors elaborate on a model that uses group identities as resources for intergroup understanding and collaboration. This model, which we call intergroup dialogue, engages students in exploring commonalities and differences in group identities and experiences, working constructively with intergroup conflicts, and building collective identities as socially just people. The article concludes with an agenda for future research addressing both substantive and methodological issues.

INTERGROUP DIALOGUES: AN INNOVATIVE APPROACH TO TEACHING ABOUT DIVERSITY AND JUSTICE IN SOCIAL WORK PROGRAMS

This article reports on intergroup dialogues, an innovative pedagogical method to address cultural diversity and social justice issues in social work curricula. Intergroup dialogues—facilitated face-to-face meetings of students from different social identity groups—are aimed at exploring cultural identities and differences, fostering deeper understanding about issues of oppression and privilege, and building alliances for social change. Intergroup dialogue can also serve as a foundation to prepare social workers for cultural ly competent and social justice-oriented practice. Results from a formative evaluation are included together with suggestions for social work programs interested in incorporating intergroup dialogues into their curricula.

Fostering a Commitment to Social Action: How Talking, Thinking, and Feeling Make a Difference in Intergroup Dialogue

Intergroup dialogue is designed to foster commitment to action. This article analyzes papers written by students in 52 intergroup dialogue courses (N = 739) to test a theoretical model of how intergroup dialogue is expected to encourage frequency of acting to educate others and to collaborate with others. The theoretical model posits that dialogue pedagogy fosters distinctive communication processes, which influence psychological processes that, in turn, relate to action (Nagda, 2006; Sorensen, Nagda, Gurin, & Maxwell, 2009). Statistical analyses of the number of references to each of these concepts that were coded in the students’ papers provide substantial support for the model. Dialogue pedagogy, communication processes, and psychological processes all influenced how much students wrote about action, and the influence of these concepts conforms to the theoretical model. Results also show that educating others was written about more by students in race/ethnicity dialogues than in gender dialogues, at least partially because students in race/ethnicity dialogues also wrote more about the communication processes and psychological processes that specifically related to educating others.

A praxis and Research Agenda for Multicultural Human Services Organizations

Human services organizations in the United States are currently faced with the problems of a diminishing and shifting resource base coupled with increasing demands for services. In addition, national demographic changes with increasing social diversity, and a rise in racial, ethnic, gender and other group-based tensions have posed special challenges for human service organizations. By tracing the history of social work approaches to working with ethnic minorities, this paper argues that responses to environmental flux have in fact been inadequate in addressing issues of social inequalities and injustices. We articulate a vision of socially just and diverse human services organizations that are both empowering and empowered. We call these Multicultural Human Services Organizations (MHSO). We spell out praxis and research agendas that continue the social justice-social diversity mission that is central to our vision.

Intergroup Dialogue: Race Still Matters

Contrary to popular depiction of young people in the United States as post-racial in their views about race, survey evidence confirms numerous differences in the views of White and non-White young people. These differences are seen both in studies of young people in the nation at large as well as among those attending colleges and universities. This chapter, which reports on a large experiment (N = 730 students) based on random assignment of student applicants to 26 race dialogue courses and to 26 wait-list control groups, also shows that students of color, compared to White students, held different explanations for racial/ethnic inequality when they applied to enroll in race/ethnicity dialogue courses. Participation in the race/ethnicity dialogue courses: (1) increased structural attributions for racial/ethnic inequality, although this effect was statistically reliable only for White students, and (2) narrowed but did not erase the initial differences between the two groups of students on the measures of structural attributions for racial/ethnic inequality. Thus, although race still matters at the end of the dialogue courses, the narrowing of perspectives on causes for racial inequality augurs well for possible coalitions of White youth and youth of color in attempting to reduce racial inequality.