Friends and Mentors — Cross-Racial
Relationships in the Workplace

Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum is the president of Spelman College. She is a clinical psychologist whose areas of research interest include black families in white communities, racial identity in teens, and the role of race in the classroom. She is the author of Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria and Other Conversations About Race. Her new book, Can We Talk About Race? and Other Conversations in an Era of School Resegregation (Beacon Press) will be available in April.

happen without intentionality and a willingness to talk about race.

Can We Talk About Race?

Research on diversity in higher education has shown, not surprisingly, that white people and people of color come to the challenges of cross-racial connection with very different perspectives and expectations. For example, in a study of University of California students, sociologist Troy

Duster observed that white students were interested in interacting with black students, but they preferred social opportunities such as getting together on a Saturday afternoon and sharing pizza—an informal, unstructured social setting. Black students, too, shared the desire to connect, but they wanted structure around those interactions. They preferred to engage with white students in formal settings like classrooms or workshops where issues related to race could be discussed. Typically, white students did not want to participate in those workshops, reluctant to talk about power and privilege. They just wanted to “hang out” together, not realizing that it is often in such relaxed social environments

(with or without alcohol) that unexamined stereotypes emerge in casual language, often disguised as humor, causing discomfort that hangs awkwardly in the air but too often goes unnamed and undiscussed. These findings translate easily to the world of work, recognizing that it is the same pattern of avoidance of “race talk” that often keeps

In a society where residential segregation persists, and school segregation is on the rise, the diverse workplace is one of the few locations where adults have the opportunity to have frequent and ongoing cross-racial interactions. But do those interactions lead beyond mere acquaintanceship and the congenial collegiality to genuine friendship and effective mentoring? Both types of relationships are characterized by the authenticity and mutuality that come from candid communication— relationships that generate enough trust to allow for honest exchange about matters large and small and permit the sharing of one’s true thoughts and feelings. Such relationships can be one of the intangible benefits of our work lives—creating a context in which we feel understood, appreciated, supported and empowered.

But can such relationships exist between those who have learned from firsthand experience or secondhand history to be wary of one another? Can they exist between

those who have breathed in the smog of societal assumptions of individual and cultural racial and ethnic superiority and those who

have been labeled as inferior by the dominant culture? Can we have the kind of relationships across lines of race and ethnicity that are truly authentic and mutual? My answer to all of these questions is yes—