Whistling Vivaldi: Chapter 10 Summary & Analysis

The author Sheryll Cashin has a private joke with her husband. Both Sheryll and her husband are black, and on Southwest airplanes (which allow people to choose seats on a first come, first served basis), they notice that black passengers tend to have open seats next to them, even when they're the best seats—so Sheryll and her husband hope that a black man will sit in a good row and then "save" it for them with his very presence. What, Steele asks, causes the evidence of racial prejudice that Cashin points out? Are the passengers conscious of their own racism? Or is there something subtler going on?

Assuming the “identity threat explanation,” one might conclude that the white passengers on Southwest flights aren’t actively racist. Rather, they’re afraid of saying or doing something racist during the time they spend with a black person—much like Ted McDougal in his predominately black college class. Ironically, this makes the white passengers more likely to do something that is perceived as racist—namely, not sitting next to black passengers.

With his graduate student Philip Goff, Steele conducted research into the structure of contemporary American society. Goff and Steele wanted to study the factors that cause different kinds of Americans to be “driven apart.” The writer David Brooks has written about the de facto segregation of American society: in contemporary times, Americans have increasingly been divided into smaller and smaller enclaves, based not only on race but also on class, education, and political affiliation.

It’s impossible to deny that Americans are still segregated—sometimes voluntarily, sometimes not—by race. Twenty years after the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, desegregation in schools was still being hotly debated, and the Supreme Court made other decisions that made desegregation slow and effectively impossible in many cities. In 2000, American schools and neighbors were more racially segregated than they were in the mid-1980s.

It could be argued that group segregation in America isn’t a serious problem. If one assumes that Americans are “independent actors” who can make their own choices in life, then the increasing segregation of American society is just proof that people prefer to be around other people who are like them. But if one assumes, as many social scientists do, that people benefit from knowing many different kinds of people, then group segregation is a serious problem. Not all groups are equal—some groups have more power and access than others. Therefore, if America is segregated by race, income, or education, then certain groups will continue to enjoy a greater amount of power and access, and continue sharing their opportunities for success only with other people in their network.

The sociologist Glenn Loury came to a counterintuitive conclusion about group segregation in America. He suggested that networks of friends and colleagues are the primary cause of racial inequality in America, rather than direct discrimination against blacks. For example, a white applicant may be more likely to get a job than a black applicant—however, this may be because the white applicant has an influential friend who’s recommended him for the position, while the black applicant doesn’t.

As Goff and Steele researched group segregation, they developed an experiment that could measure the impact of “identity threats on association preference.” In the experiment, white male Stanford students were brought to a lab, supposedly for a study of social communication. The students were asked to speak with two students, both black. Half of the students were instructed to talk about racial profiling; the other half were instructed to talk about love and relationships. Each student was asked—seemingly as an afterthought—to arrange the three chairs in which he and his two conversation partners would be sitting.

The results of the experiment suggested that the way the students grouped the three chairs varied with the topic of the conversation. When the topic was racial profiling, the students tended to put the two black participants’ chairs close together, and then sit far away. But if the topic was love and relationships—a less racially charged topic—the students chose to group the three chairs close together.

To get a better sense for the dynamics of racial discrimination, Steele and Goff included two other groups of white Stanford students in the study. Half of the students spoke to two white conversationalists. The students who spoke to white partners put the chairs close together regardless of conversation topic. Finally, Steele and Goff asked participants to complete a list of word fragments—for example, they were asked to complete the fragment, “rac--t” (which could be “racist” or “racket”). Participants who spoke to black partners about racial profiling tended to complete the fragments with words associated with stereotyping. In all, the experiment suggested that white participants were implicitly worried about being seen as prejudiced.

Goff and Steele conducted a similar experiment to rule out whether or not simple racism was the cause of this. The only difference between this experiment and its predecessor was that this time, participants were asked to complete two tests on prejudice a day before the experiment. The "implicit racism" test, developed by Harvard social psychologists, was designed to measure the speed of association between images of black people and negative things. Participants who associated images of black people with bad things most quickly (and, thus, could be considered the most prejudiced people) didn’t sit farther away from black conversationalists than any other participants. This suggests that prejudice didn’t have much impact on distancing—the fear of being seen as racist was the deciding factor.

The desire to avoid stereotypes is a powerful motivator for Americans. On a Southwest flight, white passengers might want to avoid confirming the stereotype that they’re racially prejudiced, and don’t know how to interact with black people without being offensive—or just don't want the "hassle" of trying to do so. Like many Americans, the passengers simply avoid associating with people who are different from them—which, ironically, could be interpreted as prejudiced behavior.

Goff and Steele collaborated with Paul Davies (whom Steele introduced earlier in the book) to develop another experiment. This experiment was almost identical to Goff and Steele’s previous experiment. But this time, when the researchers gave the white Stanford students their instructions, they told half of the students that talking about racial profiling with black students could be uncomfortable, and that the students should treat the conversation as a learning experience. With these instructions, the white participants moved their chairs closer to their black conversation partners. Furthermore, when they took a word fragment test, they no longer completed so many fragments with race-related words. Interestingly, Steele notes, it was only this kind of instruction that made the white students more comfortable. It didn't work when the researchers assured the students they wouldn't be judged for what they said, or that their perspectives were valid.

Steele’s findings are encouraging. Identity threats may keep people apart, but there are simple ways to minimize their impact. More broadly, people need to begin to recognize that, while they’re autonomous individuals, their behaviors are more tied to social identity, and the fear of doing or saying the wrong thing, than they probably realize. And finally, he reiterates his main point: "Stereotype threat is a broad fact of life."