How

Do Relations Between Blacks & Whites

Shape their Receptivity toward Immigrants?
HELEN B. MARROW
Sociology, Tufts University

With :
MICHAEL JONES-CORREA
Political Science, Cornell University
DINA G. OKAMOTO
Sociology, Indiana University
LINDA R. TROPP
Psychology, University of Massachusetts Amherst

2015 Annual Meeting of the

National Immigrant Integration Conference (NIIC)
Brooklyn, NY (December 14, 2015)

New
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What are contact experiences between immigrants & natives

in local areas like?
How can we make use of these experiences to improve natives
receptivity toward immigrants, or to encourage immigrants
integration & intergroup understanding?

But: Immigrant-Native Contact Doesnt Occur

in a Vacuum

How Does White-Black Contact also Shape

Receptivity
toward Immigrants?

1. Accepting-ness
2. Desire to Know
3. Trust

4. Policy preference: Too many immigrants

1. ACCEPTING-NESS/WELCOMING-NESS

+ (in Atlanta only)

Whites
Whites
frequent
frequent
contact
contact with
with
BLACKS
BLACKS

Blacks
frequent
contact with
WHITES

+ in main model
(& Atlanta)

Accepting-ness toward
Mexican immigrants

+ in main model
(& Atlanta)
Accepting-ness toward
Indian immigrants

2. DESIRE TO GET TO KNOW (FOR CONTACT)

+ in both metro areas

Whites
Whites
frequent
frequent
contact
contact with
with
BLACKS
BLACKS

Blacks
frequent
contact with
WHITES

+ in both metro areas

Desire to get to know
Mexican immigrants

+ in both metro areas

+ in both metro areas

Desire to get to know

Indian immigrants

3. TRUST

+ (in Phila only)

Whites
frequent
contact with
BLACKS

Blacks
frequent
contact with
WHITES

+ (in Phila only)

Trust in
Mexican immigrants

+ in both metro areas

+ in main model

Trust in
Indian immigrants

4. IMMGN POLICY: TOO MANY IMMIGRANTS

Whites
frequent
contact with
BLACKS

Blacks
frequent
contact with
WHITES

- in main models (controlling

for direct contact with both
immigrant groups)

- in main models (controlling

for direct contact with both
immigrant groups)

Belief that there are too

many immigrants in the
local area

Summing Up: How White-Black Relations

Shape

Receptivity toward Immigrants

More Frequent White-Black Contact Can Help!

1. All signicant results run in the same direction

2. Simply bringing whites & blacks into more frequent contact

(regardless of its quality) produces these positive outcomes

Thank you!
* * *

Example 1: PHL_BLACK_10060

PHL_BLACK_10060 thinks that being embedded in diverse contexts which offer the
opportunity for cross-group contact and interaction is critical to smoothing intergroup
tensions and building an understanding of one anothers cultures. She noticed in her
daughters more integrated charter school setting that both students and parents learned
the implicit lesson that we all have the same goal in mind, and that the way we act teaches
our kids how to act, so kind of if we act like we dont want to interact with each other, then
theyre going to kind of take that from us and think oh, well I just want to stay with my
people. Compared to her daughter, who was more exposed to [diversity] and she think its
like nothing, she now notices that her 1st-grader son, who attends a less diverse,
predominantly black elementary, is already beginning to understand racial distinctions in
public, even making comments about the black and white people he sees as not being able
to date each other. So PHL_BLACK_10060 thinks you can dispel some of that just by
interacting with people. She thinks that she herself learned this by being intimately
exposed to people of other races throughout her own life by living part of her life in New
Jersey, by going to a school that was outside of our [predominantly black] neighborhood, by
being always integrated with other people, and by getting to know other people. She hopes
that in the future such intimate exposure to other groups can help reduce the intergroup
distrust she currently sees mainly between whites and Asians, on one side, and blacks and
Hispanics, on the other. She attributes this divide both to history but also to the lessons
that parents and grandparents nurture in their children when they continue to tell them
Dont trust white people or Dont trust black people, they take our jobs, or whatever the
case is.

Example 2: ATL_WHITE_71179

In fact, contact with these two Mexican teammates contributed to a decision to begin
venturing out to play pick-up soccer games in a park in neighboring Little Mexico when he
was about 13 or 14 years old, toward the end of 8th grade. He knew about the park because
it was close to my house. Usually he is the only white kid there, and that a black kid or
two also sometimes goes; several Mexican immigrant youth who played on competing
soccer teams in his schools league also play there, but Mexican immigrant adults join the
high-schoolers as well. ATL_WHITE_71179s mother would warn him about the crime rate
in the area (implying she thought it was unsafe), but he never personally felt unwelcome or
unsafe. He also never experienced any intergroup hostility, other than heated situations
relating to plays in the games themselves. Still, he says while its not a place that feeling
unsafe would keep him away from, he isnt nave and so keeps his wits about his
surroundings when he goes, and doesnt go at night. While ATL_WHITE_71179s
personally appreciates this opportunity and the set of friendship networks it has created for
him, he says it is sometimes awkward to mix his networks in and out of school. For
example, when he brings his Mexican soccer friends to his high school football games, his
white female classmates simultaneously ignore or idolize and tokenize them, depending
upon their personal appearance: they just wouldnt talk to the Hispanic guys unless they
looked like one of the Brazilian soccer players and the latter they would be like idolized
almost but almost jokingly. Its like they wouldnt be treated as equal, but not necessarily in
a bad way if that makes sense.

Example 2: ATL_WHITE_71179

Contact with black teammates on his high school basketball team has also generated
greater knowledge of their economic situations, plus racial struggles. On one hand, being
equal-status players on a unified team has contributed to the breaking down of some racial
and class divides among them (I mean, we were a team. all like loved each other, we were
all good friends and that was from basketball cause we loved basketball.) On the other
hand, spending more time with them over the years has given ATL_WHITE_71179 a better
sense of how much racial discrimination his black friends experience in their everyday lives.
For example, he sees some white peers at school treating them inappropriately, when they
put on fake ghetto accents to sound cool around them, or anonymous whites in public
spaces treating them differentially, such as when he once took three of his black teammates
along to his familys vacation house in Florida and some white girls in a car just stared at
them across a traffic light before driving off. Through these friendships, he has even
learned that while his own friendship networks are diverse, for a white person, his black
friends continue to live in a far more segregated world:

ATL_WHITE_71779:
It wasnt just that they were all Black and I was White it
was also that my family had a lot better situation noticeably than theirs. And so they
would see me and since there was one that told me I was the only White person that
they ever had talked to on more than like 3 accounts.
In this way, his intimate contact with minorities at school and in sports has taught him that
the experiences of white immigrants in the U.S. have been fundamentally different from
those of blacks, Latinos, and Asians.

1. ACCEPTING-NESS/WELCOMING-NESS

+ in both metro areas

Whites
frequent
contact with
immigrants

+ in both metro areas

Accepting-ness toward
Mexican immigrants

+ in both metro areas

Blacks
frequent
contact with
immigrants

+ in both metro areas

Accepting-ness toward
Indian immigrants

2. DESIRE TO GET TO KNOW (FOR CONTACT)

+ in both metro areas

Whites
frequent
contact with
immigrants

+ in both metro areas

Desire to get to know

Mexican immigrants

+ in both metro areas

Blacks
frequent
contact with
immigrants

+ in both metro areas

Desire to get to know

Indian immigrants

3. TRUST

+ in both metro areas

Whites
Whites
frequent
frequent
contact
contact with
with
immigrants
immigrants

+ in main model (& Atlanta)

Trust in
Mexican immigrants

+ in both metro areas

Blacks
frequent
contact with
immigrants

+ in both metro areas

Trust in
Indian immigrants

4. IMMGN POLICY: TOO MANY IMMIGRANTS

Whites
frequent
contact with
Mexican
immigrants
Whites
frequent
contact with
Indian
immigrants
Blacks
frequent
contact with
Mexican
immigrants
Blacks
frequent
contact with
Indian
immigrants

- (only in main model)

- (only in Phila)

Belief that there are too

many immigrants in the
local area

COMPOSITE FREQUENCY OF CONTACT

2.5

2
contactwh

1.5

contactbl
contactmx
contactind

1
0.5
0
Whites

Blacks

COMPOSITE FRIENDLINESS OF CONTACT

1.4
1.2

1
0.8

contactwhfr

contactblfr
contactmxfr

0.6

contactinfr
0.4
0.2
0
Whites

Blacks

1. ACCEPTING-NESS/WELCOMING-NESS

(measured toward all 4 groups)

Overall, when you think about X in [greater Philadelphia/Atlanta],

how often do you attempt to welcome them into your community?
(0) never, rarely, sometimes, or often (3)

2.5
2
acceptwh2

1.5

acceptbl2
1

acceptmx2
acceptind2

0.5
0
Whites

Blacks

2. DESIRE TO GET TO KNOW (FOR CONTACT)

(measured toward the other 3 outgroups)

Thinking about X who live in [greater Philadelphia/Atlanta], to what

extent are you interested in getting to know them better? Are you:
(-2) not interested at all very interested (2)

0.6
0.5
0.4

knowwh2
knowbl2

0.3

knowmx2

0.2

knowind2

0.1
0
Whites

Blacks

3. FREQUENCY OF TRUST

(measured toward the other 3 outgroups)

Overall, when you think about X, how often do you feel

that you can trust them?
(0) never, rarely, sometimes, or often (3)

2.5

whtrust2

1.5

bltrust2
1

mxtrust2
indtrust2

0.5
0
Whites

Blacks

IMMIGRATION POLICY PREFERENCES

4. TOO MANY IMMIGRANTS

(0) not too many (1)

5. UNDOCUMENTED POLICY PREFERENCES

5a. DEPORT

(0) dont deport (1)
5b. ALLOW CITIZEN
(0) dont allow (1)

0.8
0.7

0.6

0.5

toomany2

0.4

deport

0.3

allowcitizen

0.2
0.1
0
Whites

Blacks