“Oil and Water”? Latino-white Relations and Symbolic Integration in a Changing California

Abstract

Existing research on race relations between racial/ethnic groups in the United States highlights how personal contact can lead to increased harmony or conflict between groups and may reduce intergroup prejudice. This study engages this literature and draws from more than 20 months of ethnography and 66 interviews in a Spanish/English dual-language school in Los Angeles to qualitatively examine Latino-white relations in diverse settings. Interactions between Latino and white adults of varying class statuses are characterized by politeness and civility, yet parents segregate within the school and rarely form meaningful cross-racial relationships that transcend the campus. Despite regular interpersonal contact, a shared goal of bilingualism, and shared class status for some, divisions between Latino and white parents persist, and interactions between them are characterized by what the author terms symbolic integration. Symbolic integration refers to polite, but surface-level, interactions between racial/ethnic groups that are enjoyable, voluntary, and additive. This type of integration nuances our understanding of race relations and elucidates how sustained regular contact and the absence of negative racial stereotypes do not ensure lessened racial stratification between racial/ethnic groups.