When Diversity Drops: Race, Religion, and Affirmative Action in Higher Education 9780813561707

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When Diversity Drops

When Diversity Drops Race, Religion, and Affirmative Action in Higher Education

JULIE J. PARK

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW BRUNSWICK, NEW JERSEY, AND LONDON

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Park, Julie J., 1982– When diversity drops : race, religion, and affirmative action in higher education / Julie J. Park. pages cm Includes bibliographical references (pages ) and index. ISBN 978–0-8135–6169–1 (hardcover : alk. paper)—ISBN 978–0-8135–6168–4 (pbk. : alk. paper)—ISBN 978–0-8135–6170–7 (e-book) 1. Minorities—Education (Higher)—United States. 2. Affirmative action programs in education—United States. 3. Multiculturalism—United States. 4. United States—Race relations. 5. Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship. I. Title. LC3727.P24 2013 378.1'9829—dc23

2012040307

A British Cataloging-­in-­P ublication record for this book is available from the British Library. Copyright © 2013 by Julie J. Park All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. Visit our website: http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu Manufactured in the United States of America

To my parents

CONTENTS

Preface and Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction 1

1

The Cultural and Organizational Contexts of Race, Religion, and Higher Education

2

13

Changing a Culture: IVCF Decides to Make Race Matter

3

28

Pursuing Common Goals: Building Congruence between Race and Faith

4

49

“Man, This Is Hard” : The Possibilities and Perils of Interracial Friendship

69

5

Shifting Strategies : Going Ethnic-­Specific

6

When Race Goes on the Backburner: IVCF Loses Diversity

7

91

When a Minority Is the Majority: Asian Americans in IVCF

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81

112

Renewing a Commitment : Realigning Values, Structures, and Practice

129

Conclusion

143

Appendix

153

Notes

165

References

179

Index

193

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

When I was in college, I visited a childhood friend who was attending Stanford University. One night she invited me to a group discussion on race that was being hosted by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF), an evangelical student organization that she attended regularly. When we got there, we were asked to break into small groups by race and, within race, national origin. The room was filled with subgroups of Asian Americans, and my friend and I walked over to the Korean group. Once assembled, our group began to discuss how strange it was that we were suddenly being forced to clump together as Koreans even though our experiences were so varied. Our group included Korean immigrants, a Korean who had grown up in Hong Kong, Korean Americans who had grown up in Korea, a Korean from Hawaii who did not understand why people on the mainland made such a big deal about race, and my friend and I, who were Korean Americans from Ohio. (Some probably saw our experience as being the most foreign.) When everyone in the room gathered together again and each small group shared insights from its discussion time, I was especially struck by the stories shared by the small group of multiracial students, who explained that they never knew which group they might fit into. Facilitators encouraged students to talk between groups, to share experiences with people of other races and ethnicities. One of these facilitators, a Chinese American woman, told us that she had been called out by a black friend when she had offhandedly commented, “Black people sing so well,” thus learning a lesson about the dangers of positive stereotyping. Then an Asian American female student cautiously shared a stereotype that she had heard about Korean American men: that they “beat their

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wives.” A few other students nodded in recognition. Now Jack, a Korean American from Los Angeles, joined the conversation. He had a strong emotional reaction to that remark, saying how hurtful it was to hear such comments even though he recognized that domestic violence was pervasive within the community. His voice broke as he spoke, and someone passed him a Kleenex box. As the facilitators rushed to diffuse the intensity of the situation, I began to wonder why had I never experienced such raw, honest dialogue during college. What were the students taking from this discussion? And why was this strange forum occurring at a Christian student organization of all places? Years later, as a graduate student interested in understanding how college students experience race in multiethnic environments, these same questions brought me to a different IVCF chapter, which I had noticed was the most racially diverse campus fellowship at an institution where most students worshipped in racially homogeneous groups. My initial plan was to study how IVCF had made that diversity possible and how students were reacting to the experience of participating in a multiethnic community. Eventually, however, I began to hear a puzzling repetition, a remark along the lines of “We’re diverse, but not as diverse as we used to be.” That repeated comment pushed me to wonder what was happening to IVCF and why. Realizing that I did not want to tell the story of IVCF in a single snapshot—­that is, as a group that had “made it” as a diverse organization—­I decided to study its evolution by documenting its journey over an approximately sixteen-­year time period. Moreover, I knew I could not understand IVCF just by studying the organization as an isolated entity; I needed to understand it in the broader contexts of the campus racial climate at what I’m calling, for reasons of anonymity, “California University” (CU) and demographic shifts in California public education due to Proposition 209, which in 1996 banned affirmative action. This book is my best attempt to capture that story. When Diversity Drops went to press at a unique time point in history, shortly after the Supreme Court heard arguments in Fisher v. University of Texas but prior to the announcement of the verdict. By the time the book is released, the landscape for race-­conscious admissions policies may dramatically change. Even if the Supreme Court ruling in Grutter v. Bollinger is upheld, the future of race-­conscious admissions policies will



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likely remain uncertain. Regardless of the verdict, my hope is that this book will be a helpful resource to answer questions about what can happen in student life when an institution loses racial diversity, which can happen for any number of reasons, including, but not limited to, a ban on affirmative action. In January 2006, when I started visiting the IVCF at CU for site observations, I could scarcely imagine that the notes I was jotting down would become part of a book. I am grateful for the many people who have traveled with me along the way. My dissertation committee at UCLA provided much-­needed early validation of the project: Mitchell J. Chang, Patricia McDonough, Walter Allen, and Robert Chao Romero. I especially thank Mitch and Pat for their mentorship from day one and the additional guidance of Sylvia Hurtado, Linda Sax, and Robert Rhoads during my studies. I want to thank UCLA Higher Education and Organizational Change and the UCLA Higher Education Research Institute for offering me tremendous places to grow as a graduate student. Working on the Spirituality in Higher Education Project gave me the chance to understand the dynamics of college student religiosity and spirituality from a quantitative angle, and I thank Sandy Astin and Lena Astin for their mentorship. I also thank the UCLA Institute of American Cultures, the Spencer Foundation, and the Louisville Institute for funding fieldwork and graduate study. Chapter 4 was published previously in the Review of Higher Education 35, no. 4 (2012): 567–593, and I thank the John Hopkins University Press for allowing me to include the material in this book. Colleagues and friends at the University of Maryland (UMD), College Park, and Miami University welcomed me and helped me navigate faculty life. I particularly want to thank Susan Komives, Marylu McEwen, Stephen Quaye, Kimberly Griffin, Michelle Espino, Marcia Baxter Magolda, Peter Magolda, Elisa Abes, Mark Giles, Kathy Goodman, and Dick Nault. I am especially grateful to the Student Affairs Concentration community at UMD and my supportive colleagues in the Department of Counseling, Higher Education, and Special Education and College of Education. I thank Tina Chen and Shozo Kawaguchi for their early mentorship and continued friendship. Over the years, many patient friends have let me share ideas and theories related to race and IVCF: Calvin Chen, Sarah Ihn, Jennifer Kim, Oiyan Poon, Sophia Lai, Jonathan Lew, Warren Chiang, Gloria

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Koo, and Janna Louie. Special thanks to Steph Rue for bringing me to that discussion at Stanford so many years ago and to dear friends from the Calvin Seminar on the Power of Race in American Religion, who patiently listened to my attempts to articulate the core arguments of this book, which were truly powered by our daily after-­lunch ice cream. I thank Michael Emerson for his leadership of our group. Jonathan Wang, Peter Magolda, Jerry Park, Alyssa Bryant Rockenbach, Maria Ledesma, and Lisa Millora read the entire manuscript along the way, and I cannot thank them enough. James Bielo, Ryon Cobb, Sharon Kim, and Sam Museus offered valuable feedback, and Katie Kwon was invaluable in pulling together the reference list. I am grateful to Katie Keeran at Rutgers University Press for her support of the project and for walking me through the process as a first-­time author. I also thank the anonymous external reviewer whose comments for revision were most helpful. I am especially indebted to the church communities that have supported and nourished me from the beginning to the end of this project. Besides being homes away from home, they have been fertile sites to challenge and expand my ideas about race and religion. The Garden and Promise families made my time in Southern California very special; the Navajo team, Wednesday mornings at Sierra Bonita, and the Ahn and Shinn families will always hold special places in my heart. Erin Brindle, Loriel Dutton, and many others make Washington, D.C., a wonderful place to live. Ji Son-­ Kitani is a constant source of intellectual, spiritual, and personal support; thank you to gmail and nytimes.com for making our ambient communication possible. My family—­Mom, Dad, Jenny, Jimmy, Ho, Nellie, Sammy, Jojo, and Eli—­ fill my heart with laughter and love time and time again. Mom and Dad have been my number-­one cheerleaders over the years and have modeled unconditional love to each other and all of us. Thank you for giving us the space and freedom to pursue our passions and for waking me up at 6 a.m. with your singing. Finally, thank you to the sixty past and present IVCFers who shared their stories with me and the IVCF community at CU for welcoming a stranger and humoring my never-­ending questions. Our conversations were a joy and a privilege, and your refusal to settle for the status quo continually inspires me. You are truly people of the dream.

When Diversity Drops

Introduction

It was a warm spring afternoon at what I am calling, for reasons of anonymity, California University (CU), a large public institution on the West Coast. A gaggle of students lined both sides of CU Walk, a pathway where students often gathered during lunchtime to pass out fliers and socialize. There were the usual staples—­a table covered with pamphlets from the Jehovah’s Witnesses, a cluster of Latino/a students wearing Greek letters, a bake sale for a community service group. The students represented a variety of races and ethnicities. With more than 60 percent of the undergraduate population being students of color, whites were technically a minority in the student body. The campus was often lauded as one of the most diverse in America.1 Today one group of students seemed to be disagreeing with this assessment. Standing in the grass was a cluster of students holding poster-­ board signs with large lettering. Two Asian Americans held signs that read, “Why are there so many of me at CU?” A tall black male held a different sign: “Why are there so few of me at CU?” Given the campus climate over the past year, the signs were not too surprising. In recent months, there had been a number of protests, demonstrations, and letters to the editor on the subject of diversity, or lack thereof, at CU. The school, a member of the prestigious University of California (UC) system, was in the midst of a nationally publicized admissions crisis. Even though more than 60 percent of CU students were people of color, very few were black. Only ninety-­ six black students were slated to enter in the fall, less than 2 percent of 1

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the new first-­year class. Black student enrollment had been slipping at CU since the passage of Proposition 209 (known as “Prop. 209”) in 1996, which banned affirmative action in the state’s public institutions. Now black student enrollment was the lowest it had been in thirty years. Indeed, there was nothing too unusual about seeing another diversity protest at CU. Perhaps what was more surprising was who these students were and how they came to be standing there with their brightly colored signs. The students were not part of CU’s many ethnic student organizations or political activist groups. Instead, they were part of an evangelical Christian student organization known as InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF), a campus fellowship (the name commonly used for evangelical student organizations) with chapters across the country. To some, the idea that evangelicals address social issues beyond abortion and same-­sex marriage may seem novel, but subcultures within evangelicalism have addressed issues related to race, poverty, and social justice for decades (Heltzel 2009). For many of its members, IVCF was the first group that had ever challenged them to think about their ethnic identity or diversity issues. The group attracted students from all over the campus, many of whom were in majors where conversations about race were rare. In many ways, IVCF was an educator’s dream: students committed to grappling with issues of race and diversity on their own time and initiative, outside of the classroom. However, IVCF was not always this way. Fewer than twenty years earlier, it had been a predominantly white organization that rarely addressed race. In this book, I document how this community of evangelical college students decided to make race matter and the ensuing complications of that decision over the subsequent years. The group did so by taking on the messy process known as racial reconciliation, which it defined as “people of different races forging relationships based on repentance, forgiveness, justice and love in order to address, heal and redeem the effects of personal and systemic race-­based sin” (Tomikawa and Schaupp 2001, 3). While racial reconciliation frames efforts to improve race relations through a religious lens, many of the activities associated with it parallel outcomes that are highly valued by nonsectarian universities, such as promoting interracial friendship and having meaningful discussions on race. Most campus fellowships are racially homogeneous (Kim 2006; Park

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2010), and I seek to understand the processes of organizational change that made a multiethnic community like IVCF possible.2 In this respect, the IVCF story is an unusual and optimistic tale of how an organization managed to bridge racial divides in a country where education, residential life, and religion are all characterized by high levels of racial segregation (Emerson and Smith 2000; Orfield 2009). Regrettably, this book is also a story of the limits of organizational change due to the demographic constraints of a post-­Prop. 209 university. As my title, When Diversity Drops, suggests, I document how drops in racial diversity at CU due to Prop. 209 adversely affected IVCF’s ability to sustain its racially diverse composition over time. More broadly, I use IVCF at CU as a case study to demonstrate how losing racial diversity at the institutional level hinders students’ ability to sustain racially diverse communities that foster engagement with diversity. The structural failures of CU—­that is, the institution’s inability to recruit and retain a racially heterogeneous student body due to Prop. 209 and other structural inequities that hindered access to higher education—­severely limited IVCF’s attempts to sustain its diversity. In short, I show that while the vision of racial harmony promoted by both the secular university and proponents of Christianity is laudable, it is inevitably limited by the inequities that permeate America.

Affirmative Action and Prop. 209 Race-­ conscious admissions policies, commonly known as affirmative action, continue to be a hot button issue in higher education. The Supreme Court has heard arguments on affirmative action three times. In Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, the Court struck down the use of set-­asides, or spaces relegated to specific racial/ethnic groups. However, recognizing the educational value of diversity, the opinion written by Justice Powell allowed universities to consider race as a factor in admissions decisions. Later, in a series of two decisions concerning the University of Michigan, Powell’s compromise was upheld in Grutter v. Bollinger, but the use of a points-­based system (wherein students could receive points for being from a specific racial/ethnic background, in addition to numerous other categories, such as being from a certain part of Michigan) was struck down in the companion case, Gratz v. Bollinger. In Grutter, the Court upheld

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the ability of institutions to consider race as a relevant factor in the holistic review of applicants. Most recently the Court heard arguments in Fisher v. University of Texas. California remains a compelling example of what can happen in a state when affirmative action is banned. To date, public understanding of the effects of Prop. 209 has been informed by studies conducted from a macrolevel viewpoint: research documenting and analyzing the drop in underrepresented minority (URM) enrollment and implications for college admissions (see, for example, Gándara 2012; Grodsky and Kurlaender 2010b; Kidder, forthcoming; Pusser 2004; Santos, Cabrera, and Fosnacht 2010). Indeed, the numbers tell a powerful story. In 1995, there were 289 black students in the entering first-­year class at CU. In 2006, there were just 96 black students in the entering class, meaning that black students made up just 2 percent of the first-­year class. Prop. 209 has not only affected the demographic makeup of the most selective UC institutions but also created a ripple effect on enrollment patterns statewide, stratifying opportunity and access to higher education (Grodsky and Kurlaender 2010a). These macrolevel statistics and studies are vital and necessary, but they are less suited to show how demographic changes within an institution influence the everyday lives of students. It is logical to assume that the drop in URM enrollment has negatively affected the campus climate for diversity at UC institutions over the years, and indeed some studies showcase black and Latino/a students’ discussions on the challenges of attending colleges where they are sorely underrepresented (see, for example, Solórzano, Ceja, and Yosso 2000). Still, we have surprisingly little documentation of how drops in racial diversity at institutions in California and elsewhere affect student life: that is, how macrolevel shifts in campus demography affect the microlevel patterns of social relationships that students have, or do not have, across race. A missing piece of the Prop. 209 story is how the policy has affected student subcultures at UC institutions that have lost significant amounts of racial diversity. The term subculture refers to the distinctive communities that exist within a university. They generally are characterized by persistent interaction between members, distinct value orientations, and tight social bonds (Gottlieb and Hodgkins 1963; Jayakumar and Museus 2012; Newcomb 1966). Students are not islands; they form relational

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networks, communities, and organizations that influence how they interact (or do not interact) across racial/ethnic lines during college (Antonio 2001a). There are numerous types of student subcultures within a single campus, and student organizations are one type that plays a prominent role in shaping student experiences during the college years, including how they make sense of racial dynamics on campus (Renn 2004). In this book, I showcase CU, an institution affected by Prop. 209, as a case study to understand how broad-­scale changes in the demography of an institution can affect student life over time. One way to study these phenomena would be to conduct campus-­wide audits of student life in the years following Prop. 209. However, I have chosen to focus more intimately on a student subculture, IVCF, as a microcosm of the university. Examining the Prop. 209 story through the lens of a student subculture gives us a chance to study how the demographic conditions of the university—­and the changes that can occur due to ordinances such as Prop. 209—­affect the everyday lives of students, including their ability to interact and form friendships across race within a bounded community. As organizational structures that exist between macrolevel demographic conditions and microlevel patterns of social relations, student subcultures play a key role in shaping the campus climate for diversity. They act as filtering agents between the two levels, shaping how students within a subculture make sense of diversity and influencing the likelihood that they will form friendships across racial/ethnic lines. Further, student subcultures are prime venues in which to study the effects of diversity over time because their organizational structures inhabit a distinct space on campus. Students cycle in and out of college, but student subcultures possess historical legacies, rituals, and patterns that influence the values and behaviors that new members of the subculture will come to see as normal (Magolda and Ebben Gross 2009). However, we have little understanding of how these campus subcultures change over time in response to a loss of racial diversity in the broader institution. American individualism suggests that we have a high amount of agency and that human relationships are simply a matter of preference; thus, choosing to interact or befriend someone across race seems to be just that: a choice (Emerson and Smith 2000). We rarely think about how organizational structures and demography influence our ability to meet

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and befriend one another. By asking what happens to student subcultures when campuses lose racial diversity, this book offers a rare opportunity to understand how structural conditions (campus demography) interact with organizational culture (the norms, values, and expected behaviors within a student subculture) to influence students’ experiences with race during the college years.

Why Study Race and Campus Evangelicals to Understand Diversity? I do not claim that the IVCF story represents the experiences of all students or even all evangelical students. In fact, IVCF was actually an outlier within the evangelical student population at CU because of its racial diversity; the other campus fellowships were made up of mostly white or mostly Asian American students. Rather, IVCF is a helpful site in which to study the dynamics of organizational culture and, correspondingly, how the demographic conditions of the university affect student subcultures. As I demonstrate, because racial diversity is unusual within campus fellowships, IVCF had to explicitly communicate and reinforce its values regarding diversity until they became part of the group’s organizational culture. Thus, it is a rich source for understanding how organizations communicate their values both explicitly and implicitly as well as how these values develop and shift over time. The way in which values, norms, and priorities play out in other student subcultures may look very different from the way they existed in the IVCF context, but most student subcultures have some set of values, norms, and priorities that implicitly or explicitly discourage or encourage racial diversity and inclusion. Studying IVCF’s particular organizational culture may help readers understand the greater phenomena of organizational culture, how such cultures can change, and how they are influenced by the demographic conditions of the university. Despite their unique characteristics as religious groups, campus fellowships are a surprisingly rich site in which to examine the dynamics of race. Many of the issues that make racial reconciliation a challenging issue for evangelical college students affect the general student population and its willingness to engage with diversity—­for instance, a propensity toward colorblindness and little prior experience with diversity. Like all student experiences that occur outside of the classroom, campus fellowships are

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based on voluntary associations and thus are susceptible to the trend of homophily, when people with similar demographic attributes attract others who share those attributes—­more simply, likes attract likes or “birds of a feather flock together” (Kim 2006; McPherson, Smith-­Lovin, and Cook 2001, 415). In fact, because of the pervasive racial homogeneity of the U.S. religious landscape, fewer than 10 percent of U.S. congregations can be classified as racially diverse, and religion is the most segregated arena of American life (Dougherty and Huyser 2008; Emerson and Chai-­Kim 2003). Religiously observant college students are less likely to have friends of other races during college (J. J. Park 2012). Diversity is especially difficult for evangelical college students to achieve because most of them worship in racially homogeneous environments before, during, and after college. If we consider that the odds were already stacked against IVCF’s efforts to diversify, the organization’s story becomes even more noteworthy. Studying diversity in a campus fellowship can help us better understand how racial dynamics evolve in organizations that were not founded with the intention of promoting race relations or supporting students of a particular racial/ethnic group. IVCF was founded first and foremost as a Christian student organization, not as an explicitly race/ethnicity-­affiliated organization such as an Asian American Christian Fellowship or a Black Student Association. Following IVCF’s evolution from being a predominantly white group concentrating solely on supporting the religious needs of students to becoming a racially diverse organization that addressed both faith and race shows us how student subcultures can evolve to make diversity a priority. While my primary reason for studying IVCF was to shed light on the dynamics of higher education, readers who are interested in American religion will find the group a fruitful case study of how evangelicals wrestle with issues of race and diversity. The IVCF story offers examples of how religious values mediate race relations as well as how external politics and structural conditions affect the ability of evangelicals to implement their values.

Advancing the Study of Racial Diversity This book tells the story of how a sizable community of students made diversity work on their own time, outside of the classroom or university-­ initiated programming. At the same time, it also reveals the limitations of

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such efforts, no matter how well intentioned, in light of the structural inequities that permeate U.S. higher education. When Diversity Drops makes several novel contributions to the study of racial diversity in higher education. First, it is one of few studies to elucidate the underlying processes of organizational culture that facilitate or hinder cross-­racial interaction, highlighting how a student subculture can experience demographic transformation. Although some of the dynamics attributed to IVCF are unique to religious subcultures, the book helps educators understand how underlying values, norms, and priorities shape a student community, which in turn can facilitate or hinder engagement with racial diversity. Furthermore, it shows how such values have to be intentionally fostered before they can become part of the taken-­for-­granted assumptions that are part of a group’s organizational culture. Second, this book is one of few studies that examine how student subcultures are shaped by the structural diversity of institutions and one of the first to shed qualitative insight into this process.3 The term structural diversity refers to the racial composition of the student body (Chang 1999; Hurtado, Milem, Clayton-­Pedersen, and Allen 1998) and is one of several elements that shape the campus racial climate. It is generally measured by either the racial heterogeneity of the student body or the percentage of URM students (Chang and Yamamura 2006). Other elements of the campus racial climate include the behavioral dimension (inter-­and intragroup relations), the psychological dimension (perceptions about race relations), and the historical legacy of the institution (Hurtado, Griffin, Arellano, and Cuellar 2008) Third and finally, the book is unique in examining how changing demographic conditions (that is, an institution’s loss of structural diversity) can affect a student subculture over time—­both its racial composition and its organizational culture. My study shows how large-­scale policy decisions such as Prop. 209 trickle down into the everyday lives of students, influencing their ability to sustain racially diverse communities on campus. As various models stipulate, elements of the campus racial climate, including structural diversity, intergroup relations, and policies affecting diversity, cannot be understood in isolation (Hurtado et al. 1998; Milem, Chang, and Antonio 2005). The story of IVCF and its evolution at CU showcases these interconnections.

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The Setting: CU and IVCF CU is a large, research-­intensive public university. It underwent a major demographic transformation as Asian American, Latino/a, and black enrollments rose during the 1970s and 1980s. Asian American enrollment in particular spiked during the 1980s and 1990s, but black enrollment slowed and dropped following the passage of Prop. 209 in 1996. When I began field work in 2006, CU’s undergraduate enrollment was 24,522 students: 3 percent black, 0.4 percent Native American or Alaska Native, 38.5 percent Asian American or Pacific Islander, 15 percent Latino/a, 34.4 percent white, 3.6 percent international, and 5.1 percent unknown or other. Only ninety-­six black students were part of the entering first-­year class in fall 2006, the lowest number in thirty years. IVCF has existed at CU since the 1940s, and the chapter is part of a broader national IVCF organization. According to the national organization’s website, “InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA® is an evangelical campus mission serving more than 35,000 students and faculty on more than 560 college and university campuses nationwide. Incorporated in 1941, InterVarsity has a rich tradition of campus witness, thoughtful discipleship, and a concern for world missions” (InterVarsity Christian Fellowship 2009). A major IVCF event is Urbana, a triannual conference on world missions (Schmalzbauer 2010). Also listed on the national organization’s website are twelve “Core Commitments,” one of which is “Ethnic Reconciliation and Justice.” IVCF identifies itself as an evangelical organization, but evangelicals are “an amorphous group defined by admittedly blurry boundaries” (Putnam and Campbell 2010, 13). Several sources note at least four commonalities characterizing evangelical faith: (1) a high view of scripture and adherence to biblical authority; (2) emphasis on sharing one’s faith through evangelism; (3) belief in the need for personal conversion, often called being “born again”; and (4) an emphasis on Christ’s death on the cross and belief that salvation comes through faith alone (Bebbington 2008; Smith 1998). While the term is typically used to encompass theologically conservative Protestants (Putnam and Campbell 2010), evangelicals can disagree remarkably about the implications of their faith, as we will see.

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Due to variations in regional leadership and identity, IVCF chapters around the United States can look very different from one another.4 The organization’s relatively decentralized leadership structure has allowed for experimentation and innovation at the local chapter level; and as I will show, this context set the stage for the CU chapter’s move toward addressing the issue of race. During the bulk of my fieldwork, the IVCF staff team at CU had five members, all of them people of color. This staff team supported the arsenal of students who led small-­group Bible studies and helped plan IVCF activities. When I began participant observation in 2006, IVCF had four ethnic-­specific small groups: Black Student Ministries (BSM), LaFe (for Latino/a students), Vishwasa (for South Asian American students), and KORE (for Korean/Korean American students). Later, BSM and Vishwasa went on hiatus due to a staffing shortage. There were also small groups that supported other subgroups, such as transfer students and artists.

Methods I conducted participant observation from January to May 2006 and September 2007 to June 2008 in numerous settings. Weekly large-­group gatherings were the central hub for IVCF students and the primary public face that IVCF showed to the larger campus. Attendance usually varied from about 120 to 200 people but was sometimes lower around exam time. I frequently attended IVCF events throughout the year, including a weekly morning prayer meeting, weekly Bible studies (which took place in small groups), and off-­campus workshops related to race. I also participated in more informal activities, such as loitering with other attendees after a large-­group meeting and eating in the residence halls with students. Finally, I visited several other campus fellowships to get a feel for how IVCF was similar to or different from the other Christian student organizations at CU. Although I do not highlight these groups in this book, they helped me contextualize the uniqueness of IVCF as an organization. In addition to the sixty interviews I conducted, I took notes on relevant conversations (a form of informal interviewing) that I had throughout my fieldwork. After witnessing events, I wrote detailed field notes (usually immediately after each event) documenting my observations and reactions. More details

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about the sample, fieldwork, and my identity as a researcher appear in the appendix. Chapter 1 of this book outlines the context for the study by addressing research on how race affects both higher education and evangelical America. I introduce a framework to explain how organizations such as campus fellowships influence the extent to which students engage with racial diversity during the college years. Chapter 2 documents the organizational change that took place in IVCF as it began to prioritize the issue of race during the early and mid-­1990s. Gordon Allport (1954) argues that pursuing common goals is essential to successful interracial interaction, and Chapter 3 shows how the common goal that united IVCF’s diverse membership was a race-­conscious conceptualization of faith that viewed race as highly relevant to faith and identity. I describe the tools that IVCF used to support this goal and show how they were integral to fostering the underlying norms and values of the group’s organizational culture. Chapter 4 tracks how the process of pursuing common goals affected black student participation in IVCF and explains how the passage of Prop. 209 began to affect the dynamics of the organization. I argue that while the common goals of faith and racial reconciliation were successful in bringing together a multiethnic, multiracial group of students, IVCF’s ability to achieve these goals were threatened by CU’s inequitable campus environment. Chapter 5 demonstrates how, in the face of shifting demographics at CU, IVCF decided to create ethnic-­specific small groups to support the needs of URM students in the fellowship. Chapter 6 visits IVCF, beginning in 2007, and explains how CU’s drop in black enrollment and rise in Asian American enrollment opened the door for IVCF to lose much of its diversity. I demonstrate how, in contrast to previous years in IVCF, race was not addressed in an intentional fashion for the majority of the school year. I also explain the implications of this silence on race for IVCF’s racial/ethnic makeup and its organizational culture. Chapter 7 illuminates how Asian American students responded to the uneasy position of being the majority group in IVCF. I argue that while the students had a certain responsibility to uphold the fellowship’s organizational commitment to racial reconciliation, their agency was limited in light of the demographic reality of CU. Chapter 8 documents IVCF’s efforts to make racial reconciliation a key priority once again and notes that, despite IVCF’s best efforts to foster

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an organizational culture supportive of diversity, the group was greatly limited by the lack of structural diversity at CU. The book’s conclusion comments on implications for higher education institutions and considers how broad-­scale policy changes such as Prop. 209 have real effects on the everyday lives of students and their efforts to cross racial boundaries during the college years.

1 The Cultural and Organizational Contexts of Race, Religion, and Higher Education

Several scholarly examinations of campus fellowships focus on how these groups function as oppositional subcultures that shield evangelical Christian students from the ungodly influence of the secular university (see, for example, Bramadat 2000; Bryant 2004; Magolda and Ebben Gross 2009). In the late twentieth and early twenty-­first centuries, issues of race and diversity have been among the most hotly contested topics within the university, but they scarcely register in the lives of the mostly white students depicted in these narratives. In such accounts, evangelical college students inhabit a university where race is more or less a non-­issue. In this book, I provide a different depiction of evangelical Christian life during the college years by showing how race became a front-­and-­center issue in IVCF. I begin by discussing the context of racial diversity in higher education and show that the racial composition of student subcultures matters because these groups are filtering agents between the macrolevel structural diversity of an institution and the microlevel interactions that students have across race. Further, the ability to sustain diverse organizational subcultures is contingent on a racially diverse student body. Lastly, I explain the legacy of racial divisions in evangelical Christianity in the United States and its influence on various models of organizational culture.

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The Context of Racial Diversity in Higher Education American colleges and universities have experienced a significant demographic transformation over the past several decades. Although the majority of undergraduates nationwide are white, the tide has shifted in certain states and metropolitan areas (Kim 2011). For instance, in California, students of color made up 67.6 percent of first-­time students in the public postsecondary education system in 2009 (California Postsecondary Education Commission 2011). Although this statistic may suggest that California has achieved racial equity for students of color, a closer look at the prestigious UC system reveals persistent racial divides, In 2008, URM students made up 47 percent of high school graduates but only 24 percent of first-­ year students in the UC system (Chang and Rose 2010). These gaps are even more pronounced in the system’s most selective institutions. In 2011, black students only made up 4 percent of undergraduate enrollment at UC Berkeley, 3 percent at UCLA, and 2 percent at UCSD (University of California, Office of the President 2012).1 Why are these numbers so low? Both in California and nationwide, black, Latino/a, Southeast Asian American, Pacific Islander, and Native American students encounter pervasive barriers to accessing higher education, often because they attend struggling K–­12 schools that face numerous challenges in supporting a college-­ going culture (Massey, Charles, Lundy, and Fischer 2003; Solórzano and Ornelas 2002; Swail, Cabrera, and Lee 2004). California has widespread racial and socioeconomic disparities related to education (Gándara 2012; Teranishi and Parker 2010). While no panacea, affirmative action was one tool that helped broaden access to UC institutions prior to Prop. 209, which was passed in 1996. The measure, titled the “California Civil Rights Initiative,” banned affirmative action in the state’s public institutions. Other states followed: Initiative 200 in Washington, the Hopwood decision in Texas, and Prop. 2 in Michigan. Since the passing of Prop. 209, the UC system has used multiple strategies to try to recoup diversity. In an amicus brief filed in the Supreme Court case Fisher v. Texas, wherein plaintiff Abigail Fisher challenged the use of race-­conscious admissions at the University of Texas, the president and chancellors of the UC system commented on the efficacy of its efforts to attract diversity using race-­neutral admissions policies:



CULTURAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXTS 15

To date, however, those measures have enjoyed only limited success. They have not enabled the University of California fully to reverse the precipitous decline in minority admission and enrollment that followed the enactment of Proposition 209, nor to keep pace with the growing population of underrepresented minorities in the applicant pool of qualified high school graduates. These effects have been most severe and most difficult to reverse at the University’s most highly-­ ranked and competitive campuses. (Brief of the President and Chancellors of the University of California 2012, 4)

Beyond affecting enrollments at more selective UC institutions, Prop. 209 has had ripple effects on postsecondary enrollment across institutional type. In their analysis of state enrollment trends, Eric Grodsky and Michal Kurlaender (2010a) identified a process of “resorting” that took place as a result of Prop. 209, in which black and Latino/a students were shuffled into less selective institutions. It has also adversely affected diversity at the graduate school level, as the state’s law, medical, and other graduate programs are beholden to the policy (Garces 2012; Kidder, forthcoming). The stratification of educational opportunity presents a serious problem for higher education institutions, given that racial diversity in colleges and universities is a compelling educational and civic interest (Milem 2003). Engagement in a racially diverse student body is associated with multiple benefits, including enhanced civic interest, bias reduction, critical thinking, interracial friendship, and overall satisfaction with college (Antonio et al. 2004; Bowman 2012; Chang, Astin, and Kim 2004; Denson 2009; Fischer 2008; J. J. Park 2012; Tanaka 2003; Villalpando 2002). Racial diversity contributes to student learning when it spurs students to challenge their assumptions, contributing to more complex and critical ways of understanding (Gurin et al. 2004). Because so many students grow up in segregated environments (Orfield 2009), college is, for many, the first time they have the opportunity to live, learn, and work in a racially diverse setting.2 This is especially pertinent if we consider the legacy of racial tension, conflict, and misunderstanding among various racial/ethnic communities in the United States. Historically, both legislation and political manipulation has kept American society separate and unequal (see, for example, Emerson and Smith 2000; Foley 1997; Takaki 1989). Even aside

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from explicit acts of racism or discrimination, implicit bias and more subtle forms of racialization are endemic in society (Kang 2005). Individuals’ perceptions of other racial/ethnic groups are more likely to be shaped by TV and media than by meaningful interactions with one another. Tellingly, in 2004, only 15 percent of U.S. adults reported having a friend of another race with whom they discussed important matters (McPherson, Smith-­ Lovin, and Brashears 2006). By giving students an opportunity to engage with one another across racial boundaries, racially diverse universities can help break the cycle of segregation in society (Sáenz 2010). Hence, universities argue that fostering racial diversity in college environments in turn fosters larger democratic outcomes, such as preparing students for citizenship in a diverse democracy. The University of Michigan marshaled this evidence in 2003 to defend affirmative action before the Supreme Court, arguing that universities need to recruit and retain racially diverse student bodies and that considering race as one of multiple factors in admissions decisions can help them achieve this aim (Gurin et al. 2004). However, when universities successfully attract a certain amount of racial diversity, the question remains: How do they support that diversity? Universities offer various student services and academic offerings aimed at meeting the needs of a diverse student body: for instance, diversity programming, cultural centers, and academic support services (Engberg 2004). Over the years, students have also lobbied for ethnic studies programs, faculty and staff positions, and ethnicity-­themed residence halls (Gurin and Nagda 2006; Rhoads 2000). Still, the “racial crisis in American higher education” (Smith, Altbach, and Lomotey 2002) is far from over. Universities still struggle to coordinate institutional structures that support diversity (Harper and Hurtado 2009; Smith 2009). Students of color tend to be less satisfied than their white peers are with the quality of their college experience and campus race relations (Ancis, Sedlacek, and Mohr 2000; Park 2009). Finally, campuses often struggle with fostering healthy intergroup relations and cross-­ racial interaction, which is troubling because such efforts are a key part of maximizing the benefits of diversity. Just bringing together a racially diverse group of students is not enough; students have to interact in order to learn from one another. Interracial contact and friendship are essential to the functioning of a healthy society. Both play a pivotal role in reducing



CULTURAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXTS 17

stereotypes and forging social ties between different sectors of society (Allport 1954; Pettigrew 1998). Campus journalists and political pundits have latched on to the term self-­segregation to describe the tendency of students of color to cluster with peers of the same race at times (see Blitzer 2000; Lipsky-­Karasz 2003; Mincer 2005).3 Even though white students are rarely accused of self-­segregating, affluent whites are the most likely to have racially homogeneous friendship groups (Aries 2008; Espenshade and Walton Radford 2009). Still, students of color are often blamed for choosing to spend time with peers of the same race/ethnicity, even though they have higher rates of interracial contact and friendship than white students do (Espenshade and Walton Radford 2009).4 Conversations about whether students are interacting across race are often disconnected from discussions about the structural conditions that influence the enrollment of students of color. The attention given to the phenomenon of self-­segregation exemplifies this disconnect by implying that students have total agency in choosing where they spend their discretionary time (Abelmann 2009). While students undoubtedly make choices about where they spend their time, they are also influenced by social structures that exist beyond their immediate control: the structural diversity of institutions and societal inequities that impede college access. Most students are oblivious to the influence of these structures on their everyday lives, but structural conditions and interpersonal relationships are deeply intertwined (Blau and Schwartz 1984; Hurtado et al. 1998). However, we have few examples of what these interconnections look like in day-­to-­day life and, over a significant period of time, how demographic shifts affect the ability of students to create and sustain student communities that foster positive interracial contact and friendship.

Structural Diversity, Organizational Culture, and Interracial Interaction Before considering how student subcultures mediate the relationship between macrolevel structural diversity and microlevel cross-­racial interaction, I will address the question of why promoting interracial contact and friendship is so difficult in the first place. One key reason is that social

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relationships based on voluntary associations tend to breed along lines of similarity, the most dominant of which is race and/or ethnicity (Blau and Schwartz 1984; Kim 2006; McPherson et al. 2001). The term homo­ phily describes this phenomenon of “likes attract likes.” Individuals often divide along racial lines because race is what Blau and Schwartz (1984) call a consolidated characteristic: that is, because background traits such as religion, income, and residential background are highly correlated with race, people who share a racial background often share other social attributes. Sharing multiple affinities increases the chances that individuals will see each other as being similar, thus making it potentially harder to form bonds that cut across race.5 Another challenge is low structural diversity in universities. In the college setting, structural diversity is a precondition for interracial contact and friendship because “patterns of social relations in a community are affected by the social environment, and the other people in their environment determine the options people have in establishing social relations” (Blau and Schwartz 1984, 8). In the university, the opportunity for students to create relationships with students of other race/ethnicities is contingent on the actual presence of students of color in the student body. Simply put, “we are obviously not free to become friends if there are no opportunities for such friendships in our surroundings” (Blau and Schwartz 1984, 13). Students may desire to have a diverse group of friends, but the availability of potential friends of different races influences whether or not they can actually form such friendships. Thus, structural diversity is needed to foster interactions and friendships across race within the broader campus racial climate (Hurtado et al. 1998).6 Structural diversity is also important because it can encourage equal status among students, which in turn facilitates positive interracial contact (Allport 1954). In The Nature of Prejudice, Gordon Allport (1954) outlines the conditions under which intergroup contact can contribute to the reduction of prejudice: “Prejudice . . . may be reduced by equal status contact between majority and minority groups in the pursuit of common goals” (281). For instance, contact is more likely to be equitable between two students versus a relationship between a professor and a student, where the difference in power is clearer. In the college setting, structural diversity affects the ability of students of different races to share equal



CULTURAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXTS 19

status because those from underrepresented populations are more likely to experience tokenization and marginalization in contexts that are not diverse (Kanter 1977). Having a critical mass of students of color can promote more equitable interracial contact; and as I explain in Chapter 4, equal status is threatened in contexts that lack structural diversity. Much of the quantitative work on the relationship between structural diversity and cross-­racial interaction links the two in a direct and linear fashion, partially because researchers have focused on studying how cross-­ racial interaction varies between institutions rather than on how it might vary for different students within a single institution (Antonio 2001a). Still, on a campus with a high level of structural diversity, some students may experience high levels of interracial contact and friendship, while others will not form any meaningful friendships with someone of a different racial/ethnic background (Espenshade and Walton Radford 2009). Institutional demography is one set of boundaries that facilitates or limits student engagement across race, but structural diversity is also filtered through the various student subcultures where students invest time and energy in creating and nurturing friendships. The term subculture refers to a distinctive community that exist within a university, such as a student organization, members of a major, or an ethnic minority group. David Gottlieb and Benjamin Hodgkins (1963) define a student subculture as “a segment of the student body at a given institution holding a value orientation distinctive of that of the college community and/or other segments of the student body” (272). Subcultures are characterized by persistent interaction among members, and certain subcultures tend to promote tighter social bonds and closer relationships for their members (Jayakumar and Museus 2012; Newcomb 1966). Students may spend time in multiple subcultures and invest different amounts of time and energy in these environments. The existence of student subcultures within the university helps explain why even on a racially heterogeneous campus, students often have varying levels of engagement with diversity. On a diverse campus, students can cluster by race in subculture environments. This does not mean that they will be totally shielded from diversity; they likely encounter it in their classes, residence halls, or other communities. However, there are particular environments in which students invest more time and energy (for example, a sorority or a campus fellowship) that foster close-­knit social

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bonds. When subcultures require high levels of commitment from their members, such communities intentionally or inadvertently discourage students from forming meaningful relationships outside of the subculture. Subcultures are prime avenues for students to build relationships and peer networks because the proximity among people who belong to the same subculture or community influences the likelihood that they will form a relationship, a phenomenon known as propinquity (Sigelman and Welch 1993). Accordingly, friendship groups often reflect the demography of the environment where an individual spends most of his or her time (Antonio 1998), and engagement in various student subcultures and friendship groups influences student engagement with diversity outside of the classroom (Antonio 2001a; Park 2012). Subcultures are also venues where students become socialized into various norms, values, and expectations that potentially shape their attitudes around issues of race and diversity (Sidanius et al. 2004). I posit that the organizational cultures of student subcultures work as filters between the macrolevel structural diversity of the university and the microlevel interpersonal relations that students have or do not have across race. In turn, these interpersonal relations further shape the organizational culture of the subculture. I borrow Edgar Schein’s (2004) definition of organizational culture as “a pattern of shared basic assumptions that was learned by a group as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid, and therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems” (17).7 His framework defines three layers of organizational culture: artifacts (visible organizational structures and practices), values (espoused strategies, goals, and philosophies), and underlying assumptions (unconscious, taken-­for-­granted beliefs, thoughts, and feelings, the ultimate source of values and action) (Schein 1990, 9). Of the three, underlying assumptions are the most difficult to identify, and artifacts are the most external, easily identifiable markers of organizational culture.8 For instance, an institution might be highly diverse, offering the possibility of diverse student subcultures that promote a high level of interracial interaction amongst its members.9 However, a racially homogeneous student subculture such as a predominantly white sorority could work as



CULTURAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXTS 21

a filter between the structural diversity of the campus and members’ patterns of social relations. If the group harbors an organizational culture that is comfortable to whites with an underlying assumption of colorblindness that sees no need to actively diversify, it would likely attract more white students who in turn spend most of their time interacting with other white students.10 Not all sororities work this way, but I offer the scenario as an example of how the organizational culture of a student subculture (or organizational subculture) can act as a filtering agent between the structural diversity of the institution and the actual interracial interaction (or lack thereof) that students experience in their day-­to-­day lives. To summarize, Figure 1.1 shows a conceptual model for the interactive relationship between structural diversity, organizational subcultures, and interracial interaction: The smaller arrows describe the process just described. The righthand large arrow shows the simultaneous direct relationship between structural diversity and interracial interaction/ friendship (Fischer 2008; J. J. Park 2012; Sáenz 2010). The large lefthand arrow is not a central focus of this book but reflects how the state of interracial interaction and friendship may over time affect the structural diversity of an institution. (For instance, an institution known for poor intergroup relations may have trouble attracting structural diversity.)11

Macro level: Structural diversity

Organizational subcultures that facilitate or hinder interracial contact and friendship

Micro level: Cross-racial interaction and interracial friendship

FIGURE 1.1.  Conceptual Framework for Relationships among Structural Diversity,

Student Subcultures, and Cross-­Racial Interaction

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The Cultural Context of Campus Fellowships: Racial Diversity in U.S. Evangelical Churches, or the Lack Thereof What groups do in their organizational subcultures influences the relationship between macro structural diversity and micro interpersonal relations. An organization’s culture “is reflected in what is done, how it is done, and who is involved in doing it” as well as the values and underlying assumptions that motivate action (Tierney 1988, 3). Both universities and religious organizations face dilemmas in fostering organizational cultures that attract racial diversity. While unique circumstances affect each group, both struggle to attract, retain, and cultivate diversity. These challenges collide in the context of campus fellowships, where two cultural legacies intersect: the racial divides of the university and the racial divides of evangelicalism.12 What are campus fellowships and how did they come to be? Higher education in America started with strong ties to religion but underwent a major secularization process during the twentieth century (Marsden 1994). As the American university embraced research as one of its primary functions (Kerr 2001), religious devotion gave way to scientific authority and, to some extent, religious skepticism. Old markers of religiosity on American campuses, such as mandatory chapel and prayers at school events, are gone from virtually all public institutions and many private institutions, with the exception of religiously affiliated colleges and universities (Cherry, DeBerg, and Porterfield 2001).13 An effect of the secularization of the academy was the outsourcing of students’ religious and spiritual needs to campus ministries that were not run by the university. Now that universities were less likely to institutionalize religion and religious activities, off-­campus actors such as parachurch organizations stepped in to support students’ religious and spiritual development.14 Like any student organization, a campus fellowship can range in size from just a handful of students to hundreds. Some are sponsored by national parachurch organizations such as InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, Campus Crusade for Christ, or the Navigators; some are sponsored by local congregations; and others operate as independent entities. Even though the institutionalization of religion within nonsectarian institutions has diminished over the years, religion and spirituality continue



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to play prominent roles in the lives of many college students (Astin, Astin, and Lindholm 2010; Bryant 2011; Jacobsen and Jacobsen 2008; Lee 2002; Moran 2007; Stewart 2002). Campus fellowships are the main infrastructure for evangelical student subcultures at public and nonsectarian private colleges. Student subcultures are shaped not only by the internal dynamics of the students currently inhabiting them and the universities that they populate but also by the broader external cultures that they are linked to beyond the university. Hence, it is important to understand how the legacy of racial exclusion, segregation, and homogeneity in U.S. churches shaped and continues to shape campus fellowships. Numerous sources document the history of segregation within Protestant Christianity as well as how many churches were complicit to slavery, segregation, and Jim Crow laws (Bailey 1964; Bennett 2005; Emerson and Smith 2000; Noll 2006).15 The immutable division between the black and white races was preached from many a pulpit (Hawkins 2009). The role that white, God-­fearing men and women played in fostering one of the greatest evils this country has ever known cannot be understated. In an ironic twist, the same Bible used to justify subordinating blacks as slaves and second-­class citizens was a source of inspiration for slave resistance in the nineteenth century and the civil rights revolution of the twentieth century (Chappell 2004). The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used nonviolent tactics to challenge racism, opening the floodgates to change. It is this paradox that likely led Allport (1966), best known for his work on equitable interracial contact and its role in reducing prejudice, to write, “There is something about religion that makes for prejudice and something about it that unmakes prejudice” (447). During the decades following the civil rights movement, major change in America was indisputable. Still, in the twenty-­first century, Michael Emerson and Rodney Woo (2006) began their book about the rarity of multiracial religious congregations in the United States by observing: “It is sometimes said that the most segregated time of the week in the United States is Sunday morning.” They estimate that only 7 percent of American churches are racially mixed and that only 2.5 percent of all American congregations consist of 50 percent of one racial group and 50 percent of another.16 This trend persists even though evangelical Christians in the United States currently represent a greater diversity of backgrounds than they have at any other time in history (Rah 2009).

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So why do churches, especially evangelical Protestant churches, remain divided along racial lines when other areas of American life have undergone a relatively higher level of integration? One reason is that church attendance is based on voluntary associations; one is not assigned to a church but chooses to join.17 Just as homophily affects students’ tendency to cluster in racial/ethnic groups, it also is a key reason why racially homogeneous churches persist. Such churches provide a sense of belonging and often have distinct styles of worship and preaching that are linked to cultural and historical traditions (Lincoln and Mayima 1990). This dynamic extends to white churches, which often employ practices that are culturally familiar to their congregants, although these practices are usually seen as race-­neutral due to society’s tendency to normalize whiteness (Edwards 2008b). While the principle of homophily suggests that individuals gravitate toward those who share a similar background, we live in a racialized society where perceptions of similarity are based in part on how ethnic and racial categorizations shape our lives (Edwards 2008a; Kim 2006). These perceptions are also shaped by legacies of exclusion and the evolution of ethno-­religious identities, wherein religious practice reinforces ethnic boundaries (Park 2011). During much of the twentieth century, theological justifications for racial separatism were not uncommon among ordinary Americans (Hawkins 2009). However, the absence of formal exclusionary policies in contemporary times does not mean that Christians are always comfortable bridging racial divides today. Colorblindness, an approach to race relations that basically disregards or downplays the significance of race, tends to be the dominant mode of operation in many evangelical circles (Emerson and Smith 2000), leaving most evangelicals, particularly white ones, without tools or language to diagnose and counteract homophily. So how do evangelicals bridge racial divides? How do their organizational cultures attract and foster diversity? The answer is that the vast majority, more than 90 percent, do not; they worship in racially homogeneous congregations (Emerson and Chai Kim 2003). The same pattern applies to campus fellowships (Abelmann 2009; Bramadat 2000; Bryant 2004; Kim 2000; Kim 2006; Magolda and Ebben Gross 2009; J. J. Park 2012). To date, studies on campus fellowships have primarily focused on groups that are predominantly or completely white or Asian American, and other collegiate religious subcultures such as gospel choirs tend to



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be monoracial (Strayhorn 2011). While most studies of campus fellowships are qualitative single-­institution studies, an analysis of a national sample of college students confirmed that most campus fellowships are racially homogeneous environments (Park 2010). This homogeneity has a notable effect on the dynamics of students’ friendship groups during college; students involved in religious student organizations are significantly less likely to have close friends of other races (J. J. Park 2012).18 It is important to note that racially homogeneous campus fellowships, particularly those populated by students of color, can play a key role in offering students a sense of belonging on campuses where they are a minority (Abelmann 2009; Strayhorn 2011). Similar to ethnic student organizations, these groups give students of color a safe space to recharge (Museus 2008). Also, students of color generally cross racial boundaries both inside and outside of the classroom, regardless of their engagement in ethnic student organizations or campus fellowships (J. J. Park 2012). However, similar to fraternity or sorority membership, a predominantly white or completely white campus fellowship can shelter its students from engaging with the broader diversity of the student body. Racially diverse campus fellowships, like racially diverse churches, can act as bridging organizations that foster social ties between different racial/ethnic populations, both on the college campus and more generally in society (Emerson and Woo 2006). Racially diverse campus fellowships pave the way for racially diverse churches (Garces-­Foley 2007), and such organizations are critical to healthy intergroup relations because they foster interracial friendship and relationships between different sectors of society (Wong 2009). In the rare case that churches and campus fellowships diversify, their pursuit of common goals, which Allport (1954) lists as a key element of fostering interracial contact, is crucial. Pursuing common goals is essential to any organization’s efforts to bridge racial divisions, but there are multiple ways to pursue a common goal while seeking diversification. One option on the colorblind end of the spectrum is the process of recategorization (Gaertner and Dovidio 2000). In this model, a new superceding identity is created for a diverse population; accordingly, out-­group members can be brought into the in-­group and be associated with the positive feelings assigned to in-­group members. Pursuing common goals is a key component of fostering the new common identity.19 Recategorization focuses on setting aside racial

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and ethnic differences in favor of incorporating out-­group members into a common group identity that is unrelated to race. Gerardo Marti’s (2005) work is an example of recategorization in a religious organization, a process that he labels ethnic transcendence. In studying Mosaic Church in Los Angeles, he concluded that the church sustained a racially diverse membership by encouraging members to transcend racial differences by adopting a new identity as a member of Mosaic’s unique Christian community and playing down race. Notably, Mosaic’s diversity came mostly from its white, Asian American, and Latino/a members; few black Christians found the church’s approach appealing despite the shared religious identity. Universities also intentionally or unintentionally foster recategorization by giving students a common identity as members of a residential college, major, or program (Gurin and Nagda 2006; Sidanius et al. 2008). A second approach to cultivating racial diversity within organizations is a process known as ethnic reinforcement (Garces-­Foley 2007; Marti 2010).20 Organizational cultures that use ethnic reinforcement, rather than ethnic transcendence, communicate that race and ethnicity are salient identities that influence contemporary life while still stressing that individuals share commonalities such as faith. While many evangelicals do not highlight race and ethnicity as being relevant to spiritual life, some advocate for a spiritual framing of improving race relations, which they call racial reconciliation. Racial reconciliation includes efforts to recognize, apologize, and repent for offenses committed by racial/ethnic groups. In turn, other racial groups accept these apologies, offer forgiveness, and move forward in unity. Racial reconciliation may be a one-­time event or part of a lifelong process for individuals, religious organizations, and churches to encourage racial healing and build meaningful relationships across racial lines (Yancey 2003). While powerful and necessary symbolism lies behind racial reconciliation, such efforts may be limited because many white evangelical Christians hesitate to recognize systemic injustices that permeate society (Emerson and Smith 2000; Hinojosa and Park 2004). Evangelicals differ in how they approach racial reconciliation, with some believing that it is best achieved through personal relationships and others asserting that it is impossible without a commitment to challenging systemic racial inequities (Garces-­ Foley 2007). Racial reconciliation efforts by evangelical groups such as the Promise Keepers have been criticized as consisting mainly of fleeting



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moments during which men of different races hug each other without making any commitment to advocacy or even sustained interracial friendship (Alumkal 2004).21 Some have critiqued the IVCF national organization for promoting a shallow, individualist, and even colorblind framing of racial reconciliation (Alumkal 2004), while others have documented cases in which IVCF chapters have promoted a more critical and structural critique of racial inequities (Garces-­Foley 2007). Yet given that most campus fellowships tend to be racially homogeneous and pay scant attention to race, the fact that IVCF even addresses the issue up front is unusual. Future chapters examine how IVCF adapted the value of racial reconciliation into their organizational culture and the ensuing complications, moving from an ethnic transcendence model to an ethnic reinforcement model over time. It is important to note that these two approaches are not mutually exclusive, and an organization may choose to reinforce ethnicity at certain points while stressing a common identity at other times.

Conclusion Overall, while enrollment for students of color has increased nationwide in higher education, some universities have lost racial diversity due to anti–­ affirmative action ordinances and other barriers to accessing higher education. While broad quantitative studies depict a fairly linear, direct relationship between structural diversity and cross-­racial interaction, substantial variation in student engagement with diversity exists, in large part due to student subcultures that exist between macrolevel structural diversity and microlevel cross-­racial interaction. The organizational culture of a student subculture can alternately promote or discourage diversity and cross-­racial interaction, and research on campus fellowships shows that most of these groups inadvertently discourage racial diversity, cross-­racial interaction, and interracial friendship. Instead, influenced by the cultural context of evangelical Christianity, the default mode of operation for most of these groups is colorblindness. Since its arrival on the CU campus in the 1940s, IVCF has for the most part operated in a similar fashion, even when the campus diversified in subsequent decades. As we will see, however, the changes that took place in IVCF were not inevitable but came from an intentional effort to transform it into a community that reflected the racial diversity of CU.

2 Changing a Culture IVCF Decides to Make Race Matter

[IVCF] was very diverse and that was relatively new. I mean, diversity for me was white people, all white or all Asian, and I saw a lot of everybody else in the fellowship. It wasn’t even just like half white and half Asian, it was everything, African Americans, Hispanics, Latinos, Middle Eastern, and Indian and stuff. . . . I enjoyed the diversity of the leadership as much, if not more, than the diversity of the group itself. I think racially, it’s always been the most diverse place I’ve ever seen. Yeah, I’ve never seen another fellowship as diverse. —­Jake, IVCF alumnus

Jake grew up in Torrance, California. The son of a Vietnamese mother and a white father, he was accustomed to being in environments that were either almost all white, all Asian, or, on rare occasions, mixed between the two groups. He started college in 1996 and quickly found a group of friends in IVCF. If he had started college just five years earlier, however, he probably would not have described IVCF as “the most diverse place” he had ever encountered. In this chapter, I consider how and why the staff team leader of IVCF made the highly intentional decision to prioritize racial reconciliation in the mid-­1990s. I trace some of the key forces and decision-­ making processes that influenced the transformation of IVCF’s identity from a predominantly white Christian fellowship with tangential overtures to racial reconciliation to a racially heterogeneous group that addressed it 28



C hanging a C ulture 2 9

frequently. It is a story of how students began to take risks, talk honestly about race, and cross racial lines in friendship.

Where We Begin: IVCF at CU in the Early 1990s There were many individuals involved in IVCF’s transformation during the 1990s, but Doug, the leader of the IVCF staff team, played an indispensible role in pushing the group into a new direction.1 As a white male, Doug might seem to be an unlikely person to shepherd a group toward a new focus on race. In 1989 he came to CU as an IVCF staff worker after graduating from a nearby predominantly white liberal arts college whose IVCF chapter had experienced some messy conflicts with race. At his alma mater the group began a Bible study for students of color that was mainly attended by black students. A contentious debate emerged over its future, and the Bible study ultimately dissolved. During the conflict, Sandy, a Korean American student who would later marry Doug and become a CU IVCF staff worker, began to form cross-­cultural friendships. She and another Korean American student befriended John, one of the black leaders of the Bible study. CU IVCF alumni from the 1990s, particularly black and Latino/a students, regularly mentioned in interviews that Sandy was a strong advocate for students of color in the organization. However, as Doug, Sandy, and John all agreed, Doug did not have the same affinity for reaching out across race when he joined the staff team at CU and even after he became the staff’s team leader. John joked that Doug “married into the value,” while Doug noted, “Sandy was committed cross-­culturally way before I was. And I always assumed that I was vicariously righteous because of her multiethnic commitments, and she had black and Latino friends, and I thought, well, because she has black and Latino friends, I kind of do.” When Doug became the team leader of IVCF, the organization mainly consisted of white students. Alumni involved with the group during the early 1990s recalled that the fellowship was still more diverse than CU’s other campus fellowships but that racial reconciliation was just one of many values that the IVCF staff communicated during the weekly sermons at large group gatherings. What did they mean by racial reconciliation? A definition co-­authored by two staff members defined the term as “people of different races forging relationships based on repentance, forgiveness,

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justice and love in order to address, heal and redeem the effects of personal and systemic race-­based sin” (Tomikawa and Schaupp 2001, 3). Apparent in this definition is an undeniably spiritual component. Spiritual as it was, racial reconciliation still had to compete with the other values that IVCF staff wanted to instill into students during the year. Weekly messages incorporated mainstays of Christian culture such as prayer and evangelism (the practice of sharing one’s faith) as well as topics relevant to college student life such as deciphering one’s life purpose or navigating the terrain of relationships and dating. Doug recounted the approach that IVCF took to racial reconciliation in his early years at CU: “So racial reconciliation is one of twenty values. If you have thirty large group [weekly meetings], you can have thirty talks in a year. And one talk out of thirty would be on racial reconciliation in God’s cart, right. So it was like one thing among many, but it is really hard to make it a real value when it is one thing among many.” For IVCF at CU, racial reconciliation could easily fade to the background in lieu of competing priorities. “I remember a talk on it once in awhile, but it wasn’t really a big deal,” said Jina, an Asian American woman who attended IVCF in the early 1990s. “Still, they were the only fellowship on campus talking about it.” As she hinted, the fact that IVCF even addressed the existence of race was unusual in the early 1990s. Against the backdrop of the culture wars over multiculturalism, diversity, and the curriculum, the Christian groups at CU were silent on the issue.2 Thus, even infrequent references distinguished IVCF from other Christian organizations at CU that were silent on race or unaware of its relevance; and, over time, a combination of external and internal forces pressed IVCF to address the topic in a more proactive fashion.

External Force #1: IVCF National During the early 1990s, the CU chapter’s decision to start intentionally addressing race did not result from any mandate or directive from IVCF national. However, the history of IVCF national helps illuminate how IVCF at CU was positioned to address race and how the campus chapter’s decision to adopt values around racial reconciliation and diversity paralleled the national organization’s broader historic relationship with race.



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What role did race play in the early days of IVCF national? The document “InterVarsity’s Multiethnic Journey,” posted on the IVCF website, notes some of the historical events that influenced the organization to begin addressing race (Rendall and Hammond 2007). It begins by noting the context of the country and higher education in which IVCF originated: When InterVarsity started in the USA in 1939 there were 1 million college students in a country with a population of 139 million people. The college campus was an elite place and it was 98% white. The attitude of whites, North or South, towards blacks and other minorities was negative and oppressive. . . . It was into this racist world of the 1940s that IVCF was born. And it is amazing that we began to take steps to face racism in ourselves and in the larger campus world as our ministry developed in those early years.

The document identifies several early events in IVCF’s history related to race. In one notorious incident during the 1940s, a staff worker, Jane Hollingsworth, “confronted an IV Board member when she refused to permit black students in her home for the city’s monthly meetings.” IVCF also refused to hold conferences at segregated campgrounds (Hunt and Hunt 1991). Yet even though a handful of people of color joined IVCF staff over the decades, the organization was still almost completely white in makeup and culture. In 1967 a landmark event occurred when two hundred black students attending IVCF’s signature conference, Urbana, mobilized to present a list of demands to the group’s leadership: “The list of demands called for changes in IVCF if it was to touch the lives of black American college students. It was a scary time for IVCF leadership” (Rendall and Hammond 2007). Change came slowly during the 1970s and 1980s as infrastructure serving black, Latino/a, and Asian American students began to emerge. In 1985 the national president, Gordon MacDonald, appointed Jeanette Yep, a Chinese American woman who would go on to become IVCF’s second vice president of multiethnic ministries, to head a task force on multiethnicity. The task force addressed questions such as “What would InterVarsity look like if it became a true multiethnic ministry?” and “What changes will be necessary in the structure if this is to be accomplished?” (Rendall and Hammond 2007). By 1992, a task force that included national president Steve Hayner was working to “develop a theological foundation for

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multi-­ethnicity in IVCF as a movement. ‘The Commitment of InterVarsity to Biblical Multi-­ethnicity’ is the position paper of this task force” (Rendall and Hammond 2007). Nonetheless, IVCF national’s growing commitment to addressing racial reconciliation was not a strong direct external influence on the shifts that eventually occurred in the CU chapter. In contrast to other parachurch groups, such as Campus Crusade for Christ, IVCF regional and campus chapters have historically been relatively autonomous from the national governing body (Turner 2008).3 Instead, the national organization played an indirect external role by affirming the changes that were to occur in the CU chapter, which were consistent with IVCF national’s commitments to promoting multiethnicity and racial reconciliation.

External Force #2: Shifting Demographics at CU The remarkable demographic and cultural transformations that took place on college campuses around the country was a second external influence that set the stage for CU’s IVCF chapter to take a more proactive approach to addressing race. The diversity at CU starkly contrasted with the “98 percent white” campuses that were the norm when IVCF national was founded. Like many West Coast public universities, Asian American student enrollment spiked there during the 1980s and early 1990s, and black enrollment was higher than it would be in later years. The conversations about diversity among the leadership of IVCF national paralleled discussions about demographic changes in U.S. higher education. Campuses were changing, and IVCF had to rethink its approach to ministry if it wanted to continue to reach a new generation of students. At the same time, many individual IVCF chapters had yet to incorporate the commitment to multiethnicity that had been formalized at the national level. Even though CU had undergone a demographic transformation and was heralded as one of the country’s most diverse campuses, IVCF at CU was still predominantly white. Minimal demographic conditions existed for the chapter to diversify, but the spark of organizational change had yet to ignite. Still, as we will see, the demographic availability of a racially diverse student body was essential to IVCF’s efforts to diversify.



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External Force #3: The 1992 LA Riots and Their Aftermath In 1991, members of the Los Angeles Police Department were caught on video using excessive force to beat a black man, Rodney King. Three of the four police officers were acquitted in April 1992. Racial tensions in Los Angeles exploded in the aftermath of the verdict, and the CU community watched as the city burned. As an external influence on the campus IVCF, the Los Angeles riots stand out for two reasons: not only how the group reacted but how it did not.4 Both Doug and Sandy identified the riots as a watershed event in Doug’s recognition of the importance of race. He recalled: The riots hit . . . [and] I thought, this is just really serious and I didn’t understand the anger and I didn’t understand the division. I was also reading a book at the time, More than Equals [Perkins and Rice 1993], and so it was the riots and just the intensity of the problem. More than Equals says if you are not part of the racial healing you are re-­enforcing the racial divide. I looked at my life and I realized I am sort of down with the cause in theory but I am not doing anything that people could look at and say, Doug is helping the racial problem. So through the conviction and through prayer and conversation with my wife, I just got to a point where I thought I have to get my life working proactively on the multiethnic racial reconciliation issues or I’ll just go back to being the nice white guy who got a lot of nice ideas but didn’t really bring them out. So that was the turning point in my life on this subject.

Although Doug identified the riots as a key turning point in his commitment to pursuing racial reconciliation, changing the culture of IVCF took some time. In a separate document, he recounted how he accompanied students to South Central Los Angeles and “pushed a broom for eight hours” to help clean up the rioters’ mess (Harper, Schaupp, Schaupp, and Shyr 2001, 60). He admitted that he still did not fully grasp the issue of race and how deeply it would affect the organizational identity of IVCF. Nonetheless, the riots were a catalyst in his understanding of the importance of race and where he was going to lead the fellowship on the issue. The riots also served as an external influence on IVCF because, for some students, such as Tammy, they accentuated how the group had failed

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to address race. Tammy came to CU in 1990 and was the sole black member of IVCF at the time of the riots, which took place toward the end of her sophomore year. She remembered feeling frustrated about being the only black student in the fellowship. Shortly after the riots, IVCF held a conference on forgiveness, and Tammy was shocked that no one mentioned them because they were still fresh in her mind: The Rodney King verdict came out and the riots happened and we went to this conference on forgiveness in the spring. I remember that I went into that conference feeling like “I’m done with this. I can’t do it anymore. I’ve tried. I don’t understand these folks; they don’t understand me. This is a mess.” You don’t want to feel like you’re always the person bringing up race, but you’re like “Look, that’s my life,” and it wasn’t working. So I was going to go to this conference and try to make it work, but by that time I had relationships. Doug’s wife, Sandy, had really invested in me. So we went to this forgiveness conference and we went almost the whole conference talking about forgiveness and we talked about everything. We talked about forgiveness of your family, forgiveness between the genders, forgiveness . . . I mean, we talked about everything except race. . . . This is right after the riots, and to me, it was so pivotal. I was just like “Oh, my gosh.” It was an eye-­opener, like “The city is burning and we are not going to talk about this.” . . . We were trying to figure out who we need to forgive, and yet we weren’t talking about this and I was like “I am done. When I get back to campus, I’m out of here.”

Internal Force #1: The Unique Needs of Students of Color Tammy went on to describe how three of her friends—­one Korean American, another German, and the third Portuguese—­began to pray for her at the conference when she felt torn between wanting to grow as a Christian and feeling isolated and misunderstood as a black student in IVCF. I remember just being like “I want more of God, but I can’t do this.” Honestly, it was just a very supernatural special experience. I cried and they wept and it’s so interesting because later on we found



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out that a good friend of mine, Elijah, says he remembers coming into the church and seeing us weeping and crying and he was in the balcony . . . [and] he just started to pray. I think it was pivotal, because I think he had enough relationship with me at that point that, at least for him, race was on the spectrum. I think when he walked into that church and he saw what was going on, I think he realized, “Oh, crap, this is a mess. How did we not see this?” So honestly I don’t remember what happened after that, but I know some conversations really started to happen.

Tammy’s story illustrates some of the internal forces that made IVCF leaders rethink whether their current strategy of addressing race through one sermon a year was sufficient. The actual presence of ethnic minority students such as Tammy made leaders wonder how they could better care for and respond to their unique needs. At the same time, interracial friendships played a pivotal role in keeping Tammy involved with the fellowship. Elijah, a white student, developed empathy for the alienation she felt in IVCF, while Sandy was a mentor, pushing Tammy to serve as the organization’s worship leader during her junior year. Another staff member even drove six hours to Tammy’s hometown to talk with her parents and assuage their worries about their daughter’s involvement in this predominantly white group.

Internal Force #2: A Leader Takes a Risk More internal conversations followed the riots. As the team leader, Doug raised questions about his own personal role in racial reconciliation. Spurred on by a book on racial reconciliation, More than Equals (Perkins and Rice 1993), and a sense of conviction sparked by the riots, he and Sandy sought out opportunities to enact the value of racial reconciliation. In 1994 they visited Calvary Baptist Church, a black congregation in a nearby neighborhood, and Doug was asked to join the pastoral team. Calling it “our big multiethnic risk,” he became a member of what was jokingly called the “Oreo cookie team”: three men—­two black and one white—­who were preaching to a predominantly black congregation. Kimberly, a black CU alumna, reflected on Doug’s plunge: “He definitely has my respect for

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being an assistant pastor at a black church. . . . Him being at a black church kind of says something like ‘Well, if he’s willing to put himself out there like that, I can say hi to the black person I see in my cafeteria.’ His big steps kind of made people think they could take the little steps.” By stepping outside of his comfort zone, team leader Doug modeled behavior that encouraged students to take risks and cross racial boundaries. As Sandy said, “I think for him to really own [racial reconciliation] . . . and not just be satisfied with other people in the fellowship doing it, . . . that was a huge turning point.” This shift was essential to Doug’s desire and ability to take the fellowship in a new direction.

Internal Force #3: Integrating the Value of Racial Reconciliation Once Doug began to internalize a commitment to racial reconciliation, it was time for the staff team to decide how IVCF at CU could adapt the value as an organization. In March 1996, he invited Raleigh Washington and Glen Kehrein from the Rock of Our Salvation Evangelical Free Church in Chicago to an IVCF retreat and had chapter members read their book Breaking Down Walls (Kehrein and Washington 1994). Doug saw this conference as the “launch” to making racial reconciliation an “all-­play value.” Perhaps more significantly, staff leadership began to discuss what it would be like to fully integrate the value of racial reconciliation into the fellowship. The evolution was apparent, as Sandy explained: “In the past, we assumed that if we teach in our large group meeting fall quarter on racial reconciliation, the value will sink in and our students will start to reach out to people different from themselves. Unfortunately, we were sorely mistaken” (Harper et al. 2001, 47). What does it mean to make racial reconciliation a value? When I began observing IVCF in 2006, I noticed that students often mentioned values, such as having a value for the poor or a value for community; and IVCF national listed “ethnic/racial reconciliation” on its website as one of twelve “core values.” After analyzing interviews with campus IVCF staff and students, I identified two main elements behind what these members meant when they referred to values. First, values were concepts or ideals deemed as important or crucial in and of themselves. Secondly, values were principals that IVCF worked to actively foster and prioritize. In describing the



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group’s approach to racial reconciliation during the early 1990s, Sandy made this distinction: “We talked about racial reconciliation as a value, but it did not affect the day-­to-­day lifestyle or thinking of the fellowship or individuals.” Thus, while IVCF could view a value as important because of its intrinsic worth, enacting the value was necessary to affirm its worth. Sandy recounted the process by which racial reconciliation became a “top value” for IVCF: “We made a decision that we are going to make racial reconciliation our top value. It doesn’t mean that everything else is not important, but we’re going to do whatever it takes to make this become an integrated value throughout the fellowship. So we talked about, you know, ‘How would we do that, how would we do training, how would we do fellowship meetings, how would we do small group activities,’ so we basically talked about this value being integrated at every level, at every structured thing.” In contrast to earlier days, when racial reconciliation was “one of twenty values” to cram into a year’s worth of weekly sermons, IVCF at CU focused on racial reconciliation as a key value beginning in 1995 and as its top value from 1999 to 2004. A former staff member recorded her amazement at how IVCF had changed over the years as a result: Over the years I’ve watched the CU chapter be transformed from a mostly White and Asian fellowship, with very little understanding of race, racism, their own racism or issues of justice, into a light on the campus where even non-­Christians come and are astounded by what they see. They’ve never seen anything like it. They’ve never seen White people so open to admitting their racial sin without condemnation, but with real conviction of their sin and real repentance. They’ve never seen so many Black and Latino people taken seriously in a multi-­ethnic setting. And they’ve never seen so many real cross-­ethnic friendships being forged where race is a normal part of conversation. (Harper et al. 2001, 89)

Values at Work: Moving from Vision to Implementation Beginning in the mid-­1990s, IVCF worked to emphasize the value of racial reconciliation in three key ways: through group demography, in its “Race Matters” forums, and by prioritizing displacement and intentionality as

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ministry-­ driving concepts. Not only were these activities and changes byproducts of the group’s efforts to make racial reconciliation its top priority, but they also reflected the way in which racial reconciliation had become a critical, integrated value in IVCF.

Demography Demographic shifts are among the most visible indicators of change in a group. Before Prop. 209, the CU of the early 1990s was more diverse than the campus that I encountered beginning in 2006. Despite this heterogeneity, IVCF at CU was still predominantly a white student organization in the early 1990s. As I’ve already mentioned, Tammy, who attended CU from 1990 to 1994, recounted that she was the only black student in IVCF during her first year of college. Alumni estimates of the Asian American student presence in the fellowship in those years varied slightly, from about one-­fourth to one-­third of the group. The first major academic publication recognizing the increased participation of Asian Americans in evangelical campus fellowships did not appear until 1996 (Busto 1996), suggesting that their explosive growth in participation was yet to come or still in the early stages. How did IVCF transform from a predominantly white organization in the early 1990s to a racially heterogeneous group in the late 1990s and early 2000s? IVCF staff members were aware that prioritizing race would affect the demographic composition of the fellowship, and their first fear was attrition. Doug noted that, in 1993, a student frequently asked him when they were going to have their “Summer of ’83” discussions, a reference to the book More than Equals (Perkins and Rice 1993), which chronicles a group of black and white churchgoers in Mississippi who finally began to have honest conversations around race. As a consequence of those conversations, a significant number of members left the congregation. In other words, “Summer of ’83” represented the point of no return in confronting race relations. Doug said, “I shuddered at that thought. I replied to [her], ‘I’m not ready to lose half our chapter over this issue.’” He explained that, at the time, diversity in membership and organizational growth seemed to be mutually exclusive goals: “So there was no campus model of thriving multiethnic ministry and chapter growth. There were intense multiethnic



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efforts in pockets, like at [my alma mater], but they were not integrated into the whole [organization]. And so usually there was a blowout and a fight and then a split off, right? So, number one, I wasn’t personally committed to the process of growth and looking at my own racism and bias and all that goes in it for a leader who is leading the cause.” Although not directly involved in the controversy over the Bible study for black students, negative memories of the incident clearly influenced Doug’s views on the sustainability of multiethnic campus fellowships. If multiethnic community were to take root, it would likely be at the expense of growth and outreach to the greater campus.5 Actively embracing diversity could even result in a chapter split similar to the one that took place at his undergraduate institution. Doug went on to explain that jumping into issues of race was unknown territory for him: I asked [racial reconciliation experts] Raleigh [Washington] and Glenn [Kehrein], “When’s the right time to introduce Race Matters [a discussion program on race]?” and they said, “When’s the right time for you to introduce chaos?” and I was like “Uh, never.” And today you know it’s the same answer. So that’s what pushed me over the edge. I think the Lord worked in me personally to endure that displacement and feeling of helplessness as a learner. A willingness to create a campus model that was never seen in InterVarsity before, . . . a sense that proactive chaos is better than reactive chaos, and finding ways to lift the pressure cooker of race relations instead of the blowups of race relations and doing it more systematically and continually.

Although pursuing racial reconciliation was a major step out of his comfort zone, he and his team sought to pursue it. Still, they were aware that white students might leave IVCF, as Sandy recollected: Basically we also said that if we did this, it will probably cause some people, particularly white students, to leave the fellowship because they would feel like “This is too much. This is not what I signed up for.” We wrestled with God and prayer and said, “Is this what you want?” Because I, for one, was like “About time, let’s do this,” you know, “If that’s the cost, then that’s the cost.” So basically we as

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a team decided, “Yes, we’re willing to pay whatever cost. . . .” You know, it was probably being overly dramatic, but it was like “If half the fellowship decides to leave, we still feel like God’s calling us to do this.”

To their surprise, half of the fellowship did not quit, although a few students did decide that the new IVCF was not what they had signed up for. Doug recounted, “Some of our students still feared that our focus on racial reconciliation was merely a sign that we were embracing the politically correct movement which had swept the rest of the campus. Therefore, a few students rejected our prioritization of racial reconciliation, and they left our chapter. However, compared to the total fallout that I had feared several years before, the costs we suffered were minor” (Harper et al. 2001, 62). Kat, a multiracial Latina alumna, recounted that attrition became a sort of annual tradition for the group: “At the beginning of the year, there [were] always more white students and they would come to the barbecue, but after hearing some of the racial rec talks or whatever, a lot of them would move on to [another church]. I don’t think we were the most comfortable group for people who had grown up in an all-­white context.” Chapter demography also shifted because, as some students left the fellowship, others joined because of its emphasis on racial reconciliation. Doug noted, “For as many who weren’t interested [in racial reconciliation], there were new people who were interested.” In part, IVCF drew some students because it was directly talking about race, a rarity in campus ministries.6 Eventually IVCF began actively to recruit black and Latino/a students as members. During my observations, most campus fellowships at CU tended to be primarily or completely made up of a single race or ethnicity. Interviewing alumni, I was told that the situation had been similar a decade earlier. However, there were no fellowships that specifically catered to Latino/a students and only one, the Joshua Generation, that focused on black students. IVCF students became especially purposeful in building relationships across race following the end of a weekly Bible study that Doug had for black male students, as Doug reported: So the beginning of the second year they were like “Doug, quit coming around. You are a white guy you know, and you are great, but



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we don’t trust you.” So they just broke my heart, and I came back to our student leaders team at the time. I just said, “What can I say? My black outreach efforts have tanked and here we are. Pray for me.” And something profound happened in our student leaders at that point because I think the fact that I had gone and tried and failed made it a little bit less scary to everybody else. So that class of ’97 went out and on their own initiative were much more cross-­ culturally fruitful with black and Latino students than I ever was.

Perhaps feeling less pressure because of Doug’s failure, IVCF students took the initiative to cross racial lines. The resulting increase in black and Latino/a membership was no accident. According to alumni, IVCF students made a point of working in the residence halls during Freshman Summer Program, a session dedicated to ethnic minority students. Although the chapter was still largely white and Asian American, members held barbeques and family outreach nights to foster a sense of belonging and community among black and Latino/a students. IVCF created small-­ group structures such as Bible studies for black and Latino/a students, which evolved into Black Student Ministries (BSM) and LaFe (for Latino/a students) that in turn drew more ethnic minority students. A document written by staff recorded a structural development that occurred in the late 1990s. For about a decade, IVCF’s campus outreach had concentrated almost exclusively on residence halls. However, eventually the chapter decided to allocate one-­third of its leadership to running small groups for black and Latino students, with staff members “going out of their way to connect with [these students] and cater to their unique needs” (Harper et al. 2001). In my observations, IVCF recruitment generally followed a relationship-­based model: students formed friendships with other students, dropping by to strike up conversations and inviting them to IVCF events and activities. The residence halls were a natural environment for this approach, but black and Latino/a students were less likely to live on campus. Thus, by deciding to shift a third of their human resources to outreach outside of the residence halls, IVCF sent a message about the type of community that they wanted to pursue. Over the years, levels of involvement among ethnic minority students fluctuated in IVCF. Additionally, some students in the black and Latino/a

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small groups did not feel truly welcome in the general IVCF community (an issue addressed in later chapters). Still, there was no question that the demography of IVCF had changed remarkably, and Doug shared a memory that epitomized the shift: So the biggest trend from ’95 to ’99 was the reduction of white students. . . . We didn’t notice the white flight too badly; we just noticed “Wow, this is really a multiethnic community now.” And I remember one Race Matters where we said to everybody, “Who’s the majority in this community?” Or we said, “Who feels like a minority?” and everybody raised their hands. The black students felt like a minority, the Latino students felt like a minority, the white students felt like a minority, the Asian students felt like a minority, and the biracial students felt like a minority. And we said, “We are like 52 percent Asian; Asian folks, you are the majority,” and everyone was shocked.

Although Asian American students had become the majority group in the fellowship, the culture of the fellowship had shifted to the point where no group felt that it held a majority presence.

Introducing Race Matters Another way in which IVCF implemented the value of racial reconciliation into the life of the fellowship was to create a space for students to converse about race. Race Matters started at CU in 1996 and spread to other campuses around the country, and the program has attracted a fair amount of controversy and attention over the years (Garces-­Foley 2007). When I asked CU IVCF students and alumni about how race came up in the group, they almost always mentioned Race Matters. Race Matters was the cornerstone of IVCF’s efforts to directly and unambiguously address race. The program was based on Fudge Ripple, a dialogue program at Rock of Our Salvation Evangelical Free Church in Chicago (Harper et al. 2001). The CU version was first called Rainbow Sherbet and later Race Matters. Race Matters generally included small breakout groups, which could be intra-­or interethnic, and there was always a prompt to lead the night’s discussion. The prompt might ask students to respond to a specific race-­related incident on campus, as when a black



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woman was kicked down a flight of stairs and called racial slurs (Harper et al. 2001). During a Race Matters that I attended in 2006, we watched the movie Crash, which focuses on race in Los Angeles, and then divided into small groups to discuss the film before gathering together again for a facilitated discussion. Alumni told me that Race Matters during the 1990s and early 2000s often veered into explosive and highly emotional territory, as the introductory description on the CU IVCF alumni Facebook page indicates: For anyone who was ever a part of IVCF at CU . . . Been to Campus by the Sea? Ever make a late night trip to Shaumay? Did you ever cry at a Race Matters? In addition to reflecting the intense emotions associated with Race Matters, its inclusion on the list shows how integral it was to the CU IVCF experience during a certain time. Other alumni descriptions of Race Matters included “very charged and tense” and “draining.” Having heard about the intensity of the program, Kat was initially hesitant about attending: The whole idea of a bunch of people of different races getting together and talking about race to me just sounded really stupid and dumb. And I think because I value peace and harmony, I was like “I don’t want anything to do with this. People are going to get mad.” And they would warn you, too, “Hey, this isn’t always going to be pretty.” A lot of time there were tears and there’s pain brought up, but we’re family. Ultimately I think I was scared of diving into the pain personally and addressing these scary issues of not belonging or not being accepted or whatnot. So the only reason I actually went to the first one was because we were stuck on an island at the end-­of-­the-­year retreat.

Kat’s desire to preserve “peace and harmony” contrasted with an almost inevitable element of the Race Matters process: conflict. Talking about race in a frank and honest manner was usually a messy affair. It may have been “proactive chaos,” as Doug described it, but it was still chaos. Why promote a process that was so prone to messiness and conflict? Two main

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motivations were apparent: Race Matters encouraged students to engage meaningfully with issues of race, and it helped them develop empathy for people from different backgrounds. In the introduction to a paper that IVCF staff members wrote about Race Matters, Doug spoke about the group’s desire to initiate meaningful engagement on issues of race instead of just assembling a diverse community of students: We believe that there is a vast difference between multiethnic chapters and chapters that practice racial reconciliation. In other words, when you get various ethnic groups together, they do not necessarily tend to break down the walls between each other on their own initiative. In my limited experience, the opposite is unfortunately true: when we bring various ethnic groups together, we tend to gloss over the differences between us, which can actually produce more pain than healing in the long run. (Harper et al. 2001, 5)

His comment reflects a foundational principle of Gordon Allport’s (1954) contact theory: that racial diversity on its own does not lead to harmonious race relations. Race Matters was a way to see to diversity as a vehicle for transformational learning and meaningful engagement rather than a list of demographic statistics. In the same document Doug noted that the experiential nature of Race Matters could stimulate growth and learning in ways that a sermon or a lesson could not. Something in the messiness of discussion and personal sharing allowed students to begin to connect around race, not just to coexist. Lisa, a former campus staff worker, explained that another aim of Race Matters was to help students develop a sense of empathy for each other’s experiences. Citing Michael Emerson and Christian Smith’s (2000) text on racial divisions in the church, she told me that black and white Christians often have different beliefs about, for instance, poverty or injustice despite sharing the same religious faith. Only by immersing themselves in one another’s worldviews can they begin to understand each other’s perspective. She said: What Race Matters did for us was it gave our students a Petri-­dish experience of that immersion because we would bring our fellowship



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together, our community together, once a quarter and deal with these issues. A significant portion was black and Latino. They were not the majority, but they were black and Latino, right? So you actually got white and Asian folks who were more affluent who heard the stories of blacks and Latinos and were really moved, and their worldview shifted and they began to understand and accept the reality of racism in their midst. I think most significantly, because of the value for individual accountability, they began to embrace and understand the reality of the racism in their own hearts, the partiality in their own hearts, and that was what really propelled them forward.

For many URM students, dealing with race was not optional; it was their everyday reality. For students who had the option to ignore or overlook race and racialization, Race Matters gave them the opportunity to develop an awareness of how such issues affected their peers. It also spurred them to look at their own perceptions about race. Jennifer, a black alumna, noted that bringing race to the forefront made it everyone’s issue to some extent: “So even though I think it tended to get messy, the discussion in the fellowship, I feel glad that we had it. I mean, not just for me, but for a lot of folks who would never think to talk about race ever.” Race Matters also helped lead students from empathy to action. In later years, it fostered a corporate sense of perspective taking in which IVCF acted organizationally to protest injustices. Staff members recounted a particularly powerful Race Matters that occurred shortly after a black female student on campus had been thrown down a flight of stairs and called racial epithets (Harper et al. 2001). Not content to merely discuss the issue, students mobilized to write editorials in the campus paper, joined a coalition of groups that protested the incident, and met with the university chancellor to present their concerns. Still, Race Matters was not immune to criticism. Alumni described the program as emotionally draining, and both former students and staff noted that URM students were sometimes unfairly put into the position of speaking as representatives of their race. In addition, as I discuss Chapter 4, Race Matters sometimes ignited explosive emotions around sensitive issues. While largely unrelated to the Cornel West (1993) book of the same name, which he happened to publish in the same decade, the words Race

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Matters neatly summed up the broadest aim of the program: to help race matter in IVCF. In the chapter’s paper about Race Matters, Catherine, a former staff team leader, wrote: Prior to launching Race Matters, our chapter strategy consisted of devoting one large group talk per year on the subject. That’s not enough. It isn’t enough to help our students gain this value. . . . Race Matters has been that for us. It is the most effective way that we have found to move our students ahead in racial reconciliation and in loving people across ethnic divides like Jesus did. Race Matters takes a concept that can seem overwhelming and helps make it tangible and doable. It takes something that we are tempted to see as an optional part of discipleship and makes it a core structure in the life of the fellowship. . . . Of course, it is not a panacea; however it is the most effective tool that we have found so far. (Harper et al. 2001)

High Intentionality and Displacement The concepts of high intentionality and displacement drove the actions of the group; staff and students often referred to them as forces that made racial reconciliation possible. By intentionality, I refer to active initiatives that IVCF leaders took to encourage racial reconciliation and discussion of race as well as efforts that IVCF students invested in initiating friendships across race. Displacement describes the act of going out of one’s comfort zone, usually in a purposeful manner. Because engaging in displacement usually involves some measure of intentionality, the two concepts are closely related. Intentionality characterized several of the developments already discussed, such as intentional efforts to reach out to different populations of students on campus. Another example was the formation of the Racial Reconciliation Risk Team, a group of students who planned events to encourage racial reconciliation within the fellowship and reached out to the ethnic student organizations at CU. According to Kat, different ethnic groups within IVCF would take turns hosting the large group meeting, “so we’d have, like, African American large group or Latino worship where we would kind of introduce little parts of our culture. We’d provide



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the snacks, we’d do the decorations, Mexican flags or Spanish worship or whatever it would be. . . . We wanted to be a team that would serve other ethnic minority groups on campus. We wanted to reach out to them with the love of Christ through that service, and we wanted to educate the rest of IVCF about our cultures.” Intentionality also characterized IVCF’s general approach to community life and relationships, as Johnny, an alumnus, described: “I think the biggest thing that I always remember is . . . really being intentional in reconciling and not avoiding the uncomfortable . . . and making the effort to reach out to someone that’s not the same.” Even within a multiethnic student subculture, students of different races can coexist without deep engagement with one another. Thus, IVCF students intentionally sought to build friendships across race. Addressing displacement, Doug said, “[It] creates a sense of ‘I don’t know what’s next.’ It’s pretty hard. It’s like chasing the rabbit hole all the way to the bottom wherever it’s going to go.” Yet IVCF put a high premium on this sort of risk taking. As Johnny stated, part of being intentional was “not avoiding the uncomfortable” that could come with initiating friendships across race or engaging in challenging conversations.7 Including risk in the name of the Racial Reconciliation Risk Team showed that IVCF saw the concept as an organizational norm. Instead of being something to avoid, risk was lauded and encouraged. Leaders modeled risk and displacement, and students took notice—­for instance, when Doug joined the pastoral staff of a local black congregation. Students also experienced displacement in IVCF because there was no majority racial/ethnic group that dominated the makeup or culture of the multiethnic community. Doug noted, “Here we were a multiethnic community but everyone had a minority experience, and we said, ‘Okay, guess what? We are all displaced. We are all a minority.’” For some students who were used to being in the majority, the IVCF experience could be disorienting. Staff wrote that the “value of consistent displacement and perseverance” was among the top three lessons that IVCF had learned about racial reconciliation between 1999 and 2004, proof that the experience of displacement had become integral to IVCF’s approach to race (Harper 2004).

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Conclusion IVCF’s decision to designate race as a top priority did not come out of any single pivotal event or realization; instead, it stemmed from a combination of external and internal forces. In contrast to previous years, when racial reconciliation was just one of twenty values that IVCF staff, imparted to students over the course of the year, leaders made a conscious decision to integrate racial reconciliation and make it a top value within the group. Commitment to this vision was reflected in outward changes such as shifts in group demography, the implementation of Race Matters, and a heightened premium on intentionality and displacement. All of these developments reflected IVCF’s new organizational commitment to recognize the relevance of race in the fellowship.8 In the context of Edgar Schein’s (1990, 2004) framework for organizational culture, most of the changes described in this chapter fall into the levels of artifacts (structures and practices) and values (strategies, goals, and philosophies). I will discuss the third level, underlying assumptions, in the next chapter.

3 Pursuing Common Goals Building Congruence between Race and Faith

In the public’s mind, evangelical Christians are known more for their aggressive advocacy on issues such as abortion and same-­sex marriage than for their commitment to racial justice. Sandy explained how she struggled to justify IVCF’s emphasis on race to fellow Christians: I think [racial reconciliation is] just a harder issue for people to swallow. I don’t think that even evangelism, as hard and challenging as it is, no one’s going to argue about it being a biblical value, right? No one’s going to argue. Now they might argue whether or not they’re responsible for it because “I’m not gifted and blah, blah, blah,” but no one’s going to argue about it. But everyone argues with you about whether or not issues about race or multiethnicity are biblical values. I mean, there are people out there that really think they’re not, and they think that we’re the devil that we’re teaching this stuff.

Considering that race and racial reconciliation are often not seen as “biblical values,” how did IVCF persuade students to think otherwise? It did so by positioning race consciousness and faith as complimentary value systems. As Gordon Allport (1954) wrote, “prejudice . . . may be reduced by equal status contact between majority and minority groups in the pursuit of common goals” (281). Rather than working to foster a new identity that transcended race (Gaertner and Dovidio 2000; Marti 2005), IVCF pursued the goals of Christianity without downplaying the uniqueness or relevance 49

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of race. Borrowing Edgar Schein’s (1990) terminology, this chapter probes the third layer of IVCF’s organizational culture schema, underlying assumptions, which Schein defines as “the ultimate source of values and action,” to reveal how this evangelical subculture had to position faith as its ultimate motivation for taking on issues of race and diversity. Most evangelicals lack a toolkit or frame of reference to discuss and recognize the significance of race (Emerson and Smith 2000). In addition, due to residential and educational segregation, most students come to college without meaningful exposure to racial diversity (Gurin et al. 2004; Orfield 2009). Faced with this dynamic, IVCF made the choice to equip its students with tools, frameworks, and approaches that encouraged them to develop race consciousness and embrace racial reconciliation. Specifically, it used five tools to construct congruency between race and faith: it (1) looked to the Bible for insight on issues of race and racial conflict, (2) relied on the foundations of Christian community to discuss race, (3) reframed ethnic identity, (4) rejected colorblindness, and (5) distanced itself from secular diversity initiatives.

Race and Faith: Complementary or Contradictory? Why do so many evangelical Christians resist addressing race? At the very least, they fall into step with the rest of the colorblind United States, which perceives race and racism as issues of the past, irrelevant to today’s American meritocracy. Evangelicals are influenced by their cultural context, and western individualism lends itself to colorblindness as the dominant framework for addressing race (Emerson and Smith 2000; Rah 2009).1 Historical context also influences evangelicals’ general myopia on race. Peter Heltzel (2009) proposes that “evangelical resistance to civil rights was based on its deep roots in apolitical fundamentalist thought, often shaped by a nexus of beliefs that included orders of creation, social conservatism, and white racism” (61). After years of actively promoting explicit, color-­ conscious racism, evangelical Christians veered to the other extreme and embraced colorblindness as an appropriate way to address race, claiming that it was indicative of fair treatment and equality (Hawkins 2009).2 Colorblindness also provided a convenient way for many white evangelicals to



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avoid addressing contemporary manifestations of racism and racialization in society and the church. Many contemporary evangelicals also overlook issues of race because they see existence as divided into two, mutually exclusive realms: the heavenly/eternal and the secular/worldly (Bramadat 2000). To many evangelicals, issues of race, diversity, and social justice are temporal, worldly concerns and thus irrelevant to faith.3 Reflecting this cultural context, IVCF staff in the early to mid-­1990s recalled making few connections between race and faith before college. Fred, a staff member, explained, “I think for the longest time race and identity were separated from spirituality so there were certain things that kind of fell under the spirituality category and it did not entail your identity in general. I’m not even talking about race, but also gender, cultural experiences, geography, those kind of things. It was very much, spirituality was what you do, the moral life you lead and the certain tenets of doctrine that you believe.” This bifurcation between spirituality and identity was consistent among students and IVCF alumni. Catherine, a former staff member and CU IVCF alumna, became a Christian in college but saw little overlap between faith and race: “As a freshman, I discovered a relationship with Jesus for the first time, but somehow racial reconciliation looked like an optional and unattractive part of the Jesus package. I don’t think I am the only one. In fact, I think that generally our students are apathetic towards racial reconciliation and see it as optional and/or overwhelming” (Harper et al. 2001, 11). Likewise, most of the students with whom I spoke had rarely thought about race before they entered college, let alone race in a Christian context. Black students were an exception to this trend, but only one non-­black interviewee said she had been encouraged to think of race as relevant to her faith.

Establishing Congruency Looking to the Bible for Insight on Race To reverse this trend among its students, IVCF worked to establish a biblical rationale for pursuing racial reconciliation. Evangelical Christians see the Bible as the ultimate source of authority, and biblical study is a prominent

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activity within their communities (Bielo 2009). As 2 Timothy 3:16 summarizes, “all Scripture is God-­breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.” Thus, any effort to promote values centering on race and faith needs to link back to the Bible, which is literally “the ultimate source of values and action” for any evangelical organizational culture (Schein 1990). While attending IVCF meetings, I noticed that Bible passages that I had heard my entire life were being interpreted and applied to race in ways that were novel to me. In the IVCF paper “Creating an Acts 6 Racially Reconciling Community: How ‘Race Matters’ Works as a Campus Strategy,” a chapter titled “Biblical Values Undergirding Race Matters” contains six Bible passages and explanations of their relevance to racial reconciliation (Harper et al. 2001). For example, citing Matthew 18:15–­20 on conflict resolution, the authors explain how individuals can honestly address disagreements on race. They refer to a passage on forgiveness to discuss ways to reconcile groups that have committed atrocious acts of racism. IVCF encouraged students to dig into the Bible to find guidance for dealing with their daily lives, which included issues of race. For instance, Danny, a senior at CU, had attended a highly competitive high school with a large concentration of Asian American students. As one of few white students in his Advanced Placement classes, he came to resent Asian Americans, seeing them as one-­dimensional and obsessed with academics. But coming to IVCF forced him to confront this stereotype: “I’ve recognized a lot of ways in which I am racist, especially, I think, with Asian Americans. . . . This InterVarsity term racial reconciliation kind of creeps into your language, and I do think it’s a good thing to pursue. I’ve actually even researched racism in the Bible for myself to find passages and stories that describe a biblical perspective on race.” Other students saw the Bible as the foundation of their views on the importance of branching out beyond one’s ethnic group. Yuka, a Japanese American senior, said, “I think the Bible has a lot to say about how I view the world, but in terms of unity, it just talks a lot about how we’re not an isolated group that only loves our own specific type of people. It talks specifically about loving everyone universally, and so that has opened up many spheres in my life to just relate more with other types of people, just being conscious of that.”



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When I asked Nancy, a Korean American senior, about how her thinking on race had changed over the years, she, too, referred to the Bible. During her first year of college, she had attended a Korean campus fellowship but began to visit IVCF as a sophomore: I think being a part of IVCF and just seeing . . . all these different ethnicities and cultures coming together and worshiping God together, . . . I was like “Wow, this is a very beautiful image.” I think also if you look at [the book of] Revelation, how it says that people from all nations, tribes, and languages came together and worshipped God in one voice, I feel like that’s what heaven’s going to be like. As I was reading, just reading [the Bible] and studying it on my own, I think I’ve just seen a lot of how Jesus’ teaching in general is just to love your neighbor and to love others as yourself. If we as Christians were really loving other people regardless of their race or ethnicity as ourselves, then there shouldn’t be this segregation, you know. Ideally, I think if we were really taking His teaching seriously, then there shouldn’t be some sort of favoritism over one ethnic group.

Nancy cited the description of heaven in Revelation 7:9—­ “After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language” This biblical description of heaven guided her philosophy on how Christians on earth ought to act. In all of these cases, students either used the Bible as a starting point for thinking about race or had already been thinking about race and used the Bible to expand their understanding of the issue. For other students, the connection between the Bible and issues of race was not so linear; and they cited numerous sources that had influenced their thinking. Still, because of evangelical Christians’ heavy emphasis on the Bible as the divine word of God, acknowledging that IVCF students looked to the Bible for direction on issues of race is pivotal to comprehending how they bridged the worlds of race and faith.

Addressing Race As a Christian Community IVCF students and staff also drew on a foundation of Christian community, along with attributes that participants associated with Christianity,

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to facilitate discussions of race. Students told me that traits such as civility and humility, which they associated with their faith, made discussing race easier or even possible. Danny said, “You know, we’re pretty brutal sometimes when pointing out each other’s flaws, especially with racism. It’s such a heated issue that it’s hard to accept gracefully because it’s often not told to you in a graceful way.” He commented that Christian environments were not immune to this lack of grace but later noted that Christians at least had more of an obligation to converse civilly. Erica, a black senior, explained how this dynamic played out in her life: I’ve learned a lot about different people’s perspective on race, and it has been a respectable time. We’re Christian people, so we’re not, like, screaming at each other. . . . I would say that in a Christian setting, there’s a certain freedom that comes with knowing that everybody respects each other’s opinions; we understand that we are different. We’re very deliberate in making the younger students feel welcome and expressing whatever their experiences have been. It’s more of a safe environment to talk about race as opposed to an African American Studies class or African Student Union meeting where you got to be more politically correct in how you say things.

Although discussions such as Race Matters could be a hotbed for strong emotions, other students echoed Erica’s comment, saying that they felt more comfortable discussing race in the IVCF community than in large collegiate lecture halls. Another trait students associated with their faith was humility. Robin, a black senior, described how important it was to her that her friends came to her with humility when they discussed race: “Especially with some of my closer friends, some people have just been able to come in humility and be like ‘You know, I really don’t know as much as I feel like I should.’ We’ve been able to talk about things and that’s just amazing, I think, that like in the body of Christ we can do this. So it’s definitely not perfect. It’s definitely a select group of friendships that I’ve chosen into, but I can’t think of that many people outside of InterVarsity people that I would be able to do that with.” While imperfect, the humility that Robin associated with Christian community (the “body of Christ”) helped students approach the issue of race in their friendships, making it more acceptable to admit



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mistakes or ignorance. The Bible provides a rationale for this sentiment; in the New Testament, Philippians 2:3 exhorts Christians to, “in humility, consider others as better than yourselves.” In interviews, some older students noted that first-­year students had little experience in talking about race. Still, I observed that older students did not immediately dismiss younger students’ remarks. For instance, during one Race Matters, a first-­year student, Tony, said that he did not “see race” but preferred to see people as humans. Around the room, older students winced, and the hand of Soomie, a senior, shot up immediately. When called on, she paused and then addressed Tony’s comment calmly and respectfully. She explained that she understood his viewpoint but challenged him to consider a different perspective. Beyond civility, this cooperative approach may have been a byproduct of the voluntary nature of IVCF participation. In contrast to the mandatory classroom environment, students may have felt a collective investment in building a strong sense of community in order to sustain membership. This sense of community had another asset. While the same blunders that could happen in the classroom could also happen in a Race Matters forum, students in IVCF had relationships with one another that continued after the discussion and formed the basis of their community. In a Christian setting, concepts such as forgiveness were not considered to be optional. Community life played a significant role in making IVCF more than a place where students came once a week to hear a sermon. They hung out, ate, and studied together; and many lived together in residence halls and apartments, where they became invested in each others’ lives through ordinary daily activities that formed and strengthened social bonds over time. This is not to say that IVCF was a perfect model of harmony. In the next chapter, I describe an explosive Race Matters session. Yet participants’ ability to reconcile with one another was facilitated by forgiveness, humility, and other aspects of their faith. Still, when it came to talking about race, not every IVCF student believed that the group had a completely open environment. Cindy, a Latina junior, explained that conversations could still be difficult: I think they’re just hard things to talk about and then it’s hard to be “Well, as Christians, how do we talk about those things?” You know

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[in a voice imitating others], “Because we’re not racist,” or “Oh, no, we love you.” I think it’s definitely a difficult place, and I really feel that some people don’t want to talk about [it], but I think it is an issue and it’s something that’s very, very important to talk about. I think people sometimes may not be as open just because it’s a tricky place to be and they don’t want to feel awkward.

“God Made Race for a Reason” IVCF facilitated congruency between race and faith by encouraging students to see their ethnic identity as important and God-­ given. Just as students expanded their preexisting frameworks of faith to recognize the issue of race as relevant, they also adjusted their conceptions of ethnic identity to include a spiritual dimension. However, for most this connection was not immediately apparent. A key way that students made sense of the relationship between their ethnic and faith identities was to latch on to the idea that “God made race for a reason,” a concept that Sharon, a multiracial sophomore, first heard at an IVCF conference: I didn’t grow up in a black community, and I’m both black and Latina. I’m not full, and so at the conference, I knew I was going to be uncomfortable. Then the idea came up that God made race for a reason, and I realized that I’d never thought of it like that before. So for the whole year I’ve been on an identity crisis journey, I guess you’d call it, just figuring out what it means for me to be multiracial and why God would do that and how that’s shaping my life. Now I’ve thought about it a lot more than before.

She continued: [My reflection on my racial identity] mostly happened within IVCF. We were going through a book called Check All That Apply, and it’s by an InterVarsity staff about being multiracial. I had talked to my parents about it, and at first they didn’t realize how big of a deal it was for me. They told me, “You know, your identity comes in Christ first.” I knew that, but being multiracial is really hard, and I told them that I wanted to be both parts at the same time. I didn’t know how that would work. I mean, it’s fun being multiracial, but I



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think it has made me more aware of race in everyday situations. I’m always conscious of race, all the time.

Sharon resisted a rank-­order conceptualization of her identity in which spiritual identity was seen as superior to ethnic identity.4 Instead, she found a way to bring these two worlds together when she encountered the idea that her ethnic identity had been created by God and was therefore important. Nancy considered another way in which the relationship between ethnic identity and faith had influenced some students: I think, as Asian Americans, especially if you grew up in a majority white community, you try to be white. You try to fit in and relate to that kind of culture, but I think in that you kind of lose who you are. I think it’s really important that IVCF addresses the fact that God created you a certain way, with this background and this skin color and this language for a reason, and you shouldn’t shun or ignore that part of yourself. Because essentially when you do, I feel like then you’re ignoring an essential part of who you are, and you don’t see the entirety or the bigger picture of who God created you to be.

Unlike Sharon, Nancy described a scenario in which Asian Americans could reject their ethnic identity altogether by purposefully assimilating into white culture.5 She challenged that tendency by proposing that God had made each person’s unique ethnic identity; thus, to overlook it was dangerous. By invoking the language of the creation narrative, she brought ethnic identity into the realm of God-­created things that were intrinsically good.6 Rosa also highlighted the role of God as the creator of ethnicity. Although she had not identified strongly with her Latina identity before college, she came to a new understanding of why different ethnicities existed after attending the LaFe 2007 conference, a national gathering of Latino/a students in IVCF: I feel like God was really emphasizing the fact, like “I made you this way for a reason. Like every trait, every gift that you have, I gave you for a reason, and your culture is also given to you for a reason. You’re not all the same for my purpose.” You may not fathom it right

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now, but he made a certain number of us that are in IVCF Latino. Like we’re not all meant to be the same, one of the girls put it, “God created different races in order to show off his creativity, like his imagination and stuff,” and I thought that was really interesting, just like it is pretty crazy to build so many different races and even, like, mixing up races and stuff. I thought that was pretty interesting, and it kind of got me into thinking that like everything in our spiritual walk and identity is definitely a part of that and our race is definitely a huge part of that, whether we want to embrace that or not.

By reframing ethnic identity as part of God’s unique design and purpose, IVCF members generally cast it in a highly positive light. Even though several students stated that their ethnic identity was secondary to their Christian identity, I did not encounter any who asserted that recognizing ethnic identity was irrelevant or counterproductive to Christian unity. Instead, ethnic identity and faith identity were generally seen as mutually reinforcing. By better understanding their ethnic identity, students hoped to gain a more authentic sense of who God had created them to be. To use religious language, by attributing ethnic identity to God, ethnic identity itself was “redeemed” as valuable, rather than something to be completely subsumed by a more salient religious identity. By seeing ethnicity through the lens of faith, IVCF members affirmed ethnic identity instead of muting it and thus found a common language with which to understand and value difference.7

Rejecting Colorblindness Numerous scholars believe that colorblindness (the tendency to assert that race is irrelevant and that people are better served by downplaying its significance) is the dominant perspective on race in a post-­civil rights era (Bonilla-­Silva 2003; Brown et al. 2003). Linguists and critical race theorists have identified colorblind language as a strong rhetorical device because it resonates with American ideals of equality and meritocracy (Bonilla-­Silva 2002; Hasian and Delgado 1998); and evangelical Christians in particular have been singled out for strongly embracing it (Emerson and Smith 2000). Given this trend, IVCF’s refutation of the outlook is noteworthy. Many of the white students with whom I spoke raised the issue of colorblindness, saying that they had come to IVCF and college with the goal



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of downplaying racial differences. The night after a Race Matters forum in spring 2008, Jeannie, a white senior, commented on how many first-­year students were still coming to IVCF with this attitude: “I think I saw it in the freshmen last night, that you’re trained your whole life to just be colorblind and that’s actually seen as a good thing and it’s like you’re not calling out the differences, you’re trying to be equal.” Melinda, who is white and a recent IVCF alumna, explained why whites are especially drawn to colorblindness: “I think it’s hard for white kids because families don’t talk about [race]. Like I said before, if you talk about race in a white culture, it feels like you are racist. Because being colorblind has been seen as such a good thing for so many generations among white folks, and maybe other cultures. Like it’s been such a positive thing for my parents to be colorblind because that was a step in a better direction at that time.” Considering this inclination, how and why did IVCF encourage students to avoid a colorblind lens? I observed both students and staff overtly reject colorblindness on multiple occasions. One rationale was that members saw race consciousness as important to their understanding of God and society, similar to the way in which they framed ethnic identity as positive and God-­given. Zack, a senior of Korean, Filipino, and Chinese heritage, noted that this approach to race made IVCF distinctive among the campus fellowships at CU: I’ve noticed that when I talk to people before they really take a critical look at the Bible, what it says about race and culture, they sort of think like “Oh, racism is bad, but I’m not racist. I think if everyone just had a colorblind attitude then we would all be happy. We’d just treat everyone the same, we don’t discriminate.” I think part of that’s really good, but then I think part of it ignores the beauty of culture. Like one of IVCF’s things about racial reconciliation is not that everyone is one and the same. We’re all one under God, but there are so many beautiful things about every culture. . . . It’s the energy and the passion of what a gospel choir will bring. It’s the intensity of what prayer in the Korean church will be. It’s the quiet and still worship music that other groups have, and I think what a lot of Christian fellowships might emphasize is just like “Oh, just be colorblind. Just treat everyone equally,” and I think IVCF just wants

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to value ethnic culture more so than just “everyone’s one and the same, everyone’s Christian.”

Despite stating that everyone is “all one under God,” Zack asserted that the differences between various populations were relevant to Christianity.8 By explicitly valuing ethnic culture and diverse worship practices, IVCF sent a message to students that colorblindness was incompatible with its conception of racial reconciliation. The most public rejection of colorblindness that I witnessed took place during a sermon at an IVCF large group meeting in spring 2006. Erick, a staff member, preached on a biblical passage that denounced favoritism toward the rich (James 2:1–­12). Although the passage focused on not dishonoring the poor or giving unmerited favor to the rich, he chose to use it as a platform to talk about racial discrimination and the importance of treating all people with dignity. Giving examples from his own life, he talked about negative feelings that he had harbored toward another racial group before he’d gone to college. Encouraging students to look beyond stereotypes, he made it clear that he was not advocating colorblindness: “This is not a call to embrace people by being colorblind, the idea of seeing someone as all the same, functioning as the same, relating to the same things. One, it’s ethnocentric, and, two, it’s going to get you in a lot of trouble, and I think it is something that is completely not of God. It completely ignores God’s unique design of people. Instead we need to realize that no one is better than another person or another ethnicity.” Erick’s comments included three succinct explanations for rejecting colorblindness. First, by choosing the term ethnocentric, he associated colorblindness with prejudice. Second, he pragmatically asserted, “It’s going to get you in a lot of trouble,” although he did not offer a specific explanation for why. Finally, he dissociated colorblindness from God, casting it as something contradictory to “God’s unique design of people.” IVCF large group talks were the organization’s primary public forum for expressing its beliefs and values; they were attended by the broadest spectrum of the organization’s membership, including students not active in IVCF small groups or social community. Explicitly refuting colorblindness and colorblind rhetoric during a large group meeting sent a clear message about where IVCF as an organization stood on the matter.



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By framing colorblindness as negative and even “completely not of God,” Erick showed that IVCF’s pursuit of faith did not happen by downplaying race through colorblind rhetoric. Robert, a white senior, told the story of moving from colorblindness to race consciousness during his college years: The summer between my sophomore and junior year, I went to MCUP, Metro City Urban Project, an InterVarsity-­sponsored inner-­ city project, and there was one talk given at the orientation time on white privilege and white guilt. I would say that my view before that talk and before MCUP, even that whole summer experience, was that anytime someone pulled the race card or brought racism into any sort of political issue, my heart would always jump to the conclusion that they’re being too racially sensitive, like racism really isn’t that present in the world anymore; they’re just whining in a sense. And after that talk at MCUP about white privilege and white guilt and the fact that because I am a man and because I am white, I have had more opportunities and more advantages given to me, I did start to see the truth that the playing field is not level . . . even here at CU. As hard as it is for me to look back on what I did believe before that, thinking that racism didn’t exist, and now I just see so clearly that it does, I guess it’s a little embarrassing, but that’s just where I was. Now I look at CU and I see the black student population and how CU has not done a good job welcoming black students here at CU, historically and especially in the last few years, and sort of putting myself in their shoes. . . . Maybe God has built compassion in my heart to understand, “No, these people, their skin color does affect their life significantly and that’s not right and, Robert, you need to realize that that is true.”

Not explicitly mentioned is the role of community and relationships in Robert’s journey. He attended IVCF for two full years before shifting his perspective on race, which suggests that becoming invested in the IVCF community made him stay in the group even when he did not see eye to eye with its stance on race. As his story shows, the tools that fostered congruency between race and faith worked in tandem, enabling IVCF to

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pursue its goal of supporting students’ spiritual development by building their consciousness of race.9

Distancing Racial Reconciliation from Secular Diversity Initiatives IVCF worked to distinguish its emphases on race and racial reconciliation from secular diversity initiatives. Although staff members did not completely reject secular diversity initiatives and expressed appreciation for them at times, they sometimes portrayed them negatively or at least saw them as secondary to the faith-­based vision of racial reconciliation. Whether it was intentional or not, the disparagement of secular diversity initiatives was an interesting pattern of discourse that IVCF staff used to justify their emphasis on race. When members described how bringing race into their framework of faith had strengthened their understanding of God, they were setting themselves apart from the majority of white evangelical Christians who bifurcate race and spirituality. However, by also distinguishing themselves from the secular diversity movement, they could assuage the fears of evangelicals who were suspicious of “worldly” racial issues. Rejecting secular diversity initiatives was critical to establishing congruency between race and faith because IVCF had to reframe race as relevant to Christians versus being a secular issue. The most obvious way in which IVCF staff downplayed secular diversity initiatives was to discount the “politically correct,” or PC, label.10 PC served as a catch-­all term for anything negatively associated with dealing with race. According to IVCF staff, students’ negative impressions of the PC movement risked being translated into an aversion toward racial reconciliation. Staff members believed that PC and secular diversity initiatives were insufficient remedies for racial conflict and that the PC mindset made students simply settle for awareness of issues instead of seeking true reconciliation. For instance, Catherine claimed that previous exposure to the PC agenda made students close-­minded to talking about race before they even started college: When we teach on racial reconciliation, the students’ preexisting frustration with the PC agenda can often cause them to have a knee-­ jerk reaction against our call to them to love those different from themselves. . . . The majority (about 80%) of frosh who join the CU



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chapters speak the PC jargon (“We should all be able to get along here at CU”), but are inwardly closed and apathetic to growing in cross-­racial relationships. They just want to keep things safe and comfortable. (Harper et al. 2001, 47)

IVCF asserted that the PC agenda’s greatest flaw was that it did not go far enough in pushing true racial reconciliation. Moreover, it lacked a greater biblical rationale for existing.11 I encountered numerous instances of this distinction in interviews, documents, and IVCF events. For instance, Stanley, a white staff intern, distinguished the value of racial reconciliation from the concepts of diversity and tolerance: “If the value is not based biblically and in God’s heart, then it just becomes another wish, ‘We want to be diverse and tolerant,’ and I think it goes way beyond that.” Like other IVCF staff members with whom I spoke, Stanley felt that the PC movement, diversity, and tolerance were insufficient.12 When attending an IVCF conference at a nearby college, I observed an example of how IVCF staff used strong anti-­PC, anti-­secular discourse to establish congruency between race and faith. Tina, an Asian American staff member at a neighboring campus, gave the closing talk that night. Her tone was energetic as she spoke passionately about the distinction between how “the world” versus “the kingdom of God” pursue racial reconciliation: All right, so the first thing I’m going to talk about tonight is how pursuing racial reconciliation, how pursuing racial issues in the kingdom of God differs from the way we pursue it in the world. I’m going to use the phrase “the world” a lot, okay, and I’m going to use it for a lot of things. I’m going to use the phrase “the world” to mean a secular approach to these issues. I’m going to use the phrase “the world” to refer to how your school approaches these issues. I’m going to use “the world” to describe the mainstream media’s approach to these issues, a multicultural agenda approach to these issues, the PC agenda, and even how a lot of the churches approach these issues. I’m just going to throw that all together and call it “the world” and contrast that with “the kingdom of God.” The world and the kingdom of God, right? Now there’s a secular way you could approach this, and there’s a kingdom way of approaching

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this, and what’s the difference? We had to ask, “How do we pursue this differently than the world tells us to pursue it?” . . . Let me just tell you what you should take away from my talk. Yes, the kingdom approach is different than the approach of the world. . . . We have a God who hears our cries, who sees our tears, who comes to our rescue and defends us. We have a Lord who tells us to forgive seven times seventy times. . . . The world says there’s nothing worse than being called a racist. Every day on TV, they always reach a point where someone’s fighting and they’re like “You are a racist.” And then it ends up crazy, “I’m not a racist! I’m not a racist!” You know what, if you are a Christian, you should be like “I’m a jacked-­up sinner. I’m so messed up that I’m going to frickin’ die. . . . The foundation of my religion is that I can’t save myself; I’m not a good person in my heart. Am I a racist? Probably, probably more than I know.” The world says, “No, no, I’m not,” but in the kingdom of God, that’s where we start. Jesus said, “I will. I’d die for you.” He was, like, on the cross and like “Man, I’m dying for these people. I’m going to die for people.”

Evangelical Christians commonly use the phrase “the world” to describe the earthly realm that has been damaged by sin, in contrast to the kingdom of God (Bramadat 2000).13 While I doubt that Tina intended to label secular efforts to address diversity and race as inherently evil, she borrowed the familiar phrase “the world” to describe how a Christian’s approach to race ought to differ markedly. Presumably there are millions of Christians who are not eager to label themselves as racist or admit to any traces of racism, but for Tina the Christian framework of admitting sin and shortcomings extended to the realm of racism. As she bluntly asked, “Am I a racist? Probably, probably more than I know.” Such anti-­PC and anti-­secular discourse not only packed a strong rhetorical punch, but it also helped make IVCF’s commitment to racial reconciliation palatable to other Christians, including students who were trying to reconcile IVCF’s emphasis on race with their religious beliefs. Tina’s strong rejection of secular approaches to diversity set IVCF apart from both mainstream evangelicals and secular diversity initiatives. To justify why addressing race should be embraced by Christians instead of being seen as



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“the devil” (to quote Sandy), IVCF staff purposely disassociated themselves from the PC movement, a label that both Christians and non-­Christians were already treating with disdain.14 By casting their vision of racial reconciliation as one that went beyond tolerance and diversity thanks to God’s ability to bring healing and forgiveness, IVCF staff members were subverting the PC agenda, outdoing what “the world” had to offer in terms of fostering positive race relations. If anything, they seemed to have the whole package. Unlike the majority of the evangelical population, they hinted that they had a fuller understanding of the character of God due to their grasp of God’s unique creation of ethnic identity and desire for racial reconciliation. Members never asserted that they were superior in any way to Christians who did not share their views on the issue, but they did contend that understanding the dynamics of race gave them a fuller understanding of God’s intentions for reconciliation. They also presented themselves as having a fuller, faith-­based understanding of why it was critical to make race matter, in contrast to the PC movement or secular initiatives to promote diversity. I observed an interesting tension in IVCF staff members’ tendency to critique the PC movement and other secular diversity initiatives. At times, they introduced perspectives on diversity that would not be out of place in any academic text or secular discussion on the subject. These perspectives even guided some of their frameworks for conducting ministry. For instance, in presenting reasons for having multiethnic chapters, IVCF staff explained in a position paper: So much of the world is segregated by racial and ethnic lines because of hostility or indifference. The students’ time in college is one of those rare opportunities where all kinds of different people are around. This is not to say that by co-­existing there is racial reconciliation, but there is certainly the potential. Likewise, in a multi-­ ethnic fellowship, there are many opportunities to go deeper with life issues with people of other races. It is easier to give depth and breadth to their world awareness and exposure to different racial experiences with a mixed group of people. There is a way that when you are in a greater place of contrast, that experience can increase a person’s self-­awareness. (Tomikawa and Schaupp 2001, 21)

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Such thoughts are highly congruent with writings used in the University of Michigan affirmative action cases to defend the educational benefits of diversity (Gurin et al. 2004). Some IVCF staff did pay tribute to the diversity movement. As Doug conceded, “the ‘politically correct’ movement has brought us to more sensitivity about many issues” (Harper et al. 2001, 88). Six years later, during an interview, I asked him to comment on the relationship between IVCF’s push for racial reconciliation and the context of the university. He responded: I think there is a lot of overlap. I mean not to be simplistic but I would sort of look at it two-­ dimensional[ly] and three-­ dimensional[ly]. So I think that in multiethnic diversity issues there’s the two-­dimensional, which is numerical grids, retention, population numbers, trends of students, how many students come in when they are freshman, how many students graduate when they are seniors, what are the issues that keep them in school. I think that’s sort of the two-­dimensional level, right? And then that’s all legitimate, there’s nothing wrong with that; I just say let’s just add the third dimension which is the spiritual, biblical, and ask what’s happening in people’s souls and what’s God doing in addition to just looking at the numbers. . . . So I think we take . . . the two dimensions of the campus or the secular and we also ask some deeper biblical questions. So I want to build upon it instead of reject it or something.

As Doug explained, diversity was a two-­dimensional concept while racial reconciliation’s emphasis on the spiritual component brought a third dimension to discussions on race. Diversity was a necessary but insufficient condition to advance IVCF’s agenda around “spiritual, biblical” matters. Still, IVCF’s public disparagement of secular diversity initiatives further enabled the group to promote racial reconciliation without seeming as if it were selling out to the secular diversity movement.

Conclusion IVCF’s common goal of faith influenced and facilitated its commitments to racial reconciliation and diversity. By looking to the Bible, relying on



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Christian community, embracing ethnic identity, rejecting colorblindness, and distancing themselves from secular diversity initiatives, staff members encouraged students to strive to incorporate the values of racial reconciliation, diversity, and multiethnicity while furthering their organizational commitment to diversity. Although most students had not considered race to be spiritually relevant before they entered college, no one mentioned that IVCF’s approaches had contradicted any of their religiously based beliefs. Rather, by encouraging students to adjust and expand their preexisting spiritual frameworks, leaders helped them incorporate race and racial reconciliation into their pursuit of faith. In contrast to cases where demographic diversity is fostered by overlooking or downplaying racial difference, IVCF made dealing with race palatable by presenting race consciousness and racial reconciliation as directly relevant to students’ faith. Now, instead of remaining distinct from issues of race, the goal of faith incorporated those issues. Thus, race came to influence the common goal itself by challenging staff and students’ conceptions of what it meant to live out their faith. In establishing intersections between race and faith, IVCF used these tools to build a frame of reference for their students to see race through a Christian perspective. Although IVCF’s emphasis on racial reconciliation interested some students, many stated that they had little idea about its focus on race when they joined, and some even left because of it. However, others (such as Robert) stayed, sensing that they could grow spiritually in the group. Eventually, their shared value of faith allowed them to engage with one another on issues of race and build friendships in a multiethnic community. Thus, one of IVCF’s assets was that it could attract students who were not inclined to sign up for an ethnic studies class or attend a workshop on race relations, and over time these students broadened their understanding of what it meant to live out their faith.15 Through their pursuit of the goal of faith, with its value for racial reconciliation, many of these students found themselves aligning with IVCF’s efforts to make race matter.16 For all of the ways that a shared faith made the IVCF community even possible, race still continued to challenge the IVCF community. Erica summed up the tensions between people who shared a common faith but came from different races and cultures:

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I’ve literally sat around with other students and just discussed how to make InterVarsity, how to make the large group meeting more “minority friendly.” You know, put quotes around that. But I would say that, like anything else, you take a group of people who are all just different by nature, they are used to things a certain way, and you try to get them all together. . . . I mean, we all have God in common, but we worship differently. We respond to preaching differently, we interact with each other differently, it’s just all these differences, you bring them together and you try to satisfy as many people as you can, but I had come up with a solution [for] how to make everybody feel comfortable. I don’t think that’s reality, and so we just worked on trying to mix it up, have Latin worship, have songs from the gospel choir, have black preachers, white preachers, sometimes just moments of silence where people can reflect and be introverted and just try to accommodate as many people as we could.

As Erica observed, IVCF students worshipped the same God but came from different backgrounds and church traditions that were heavily shaped by their racial/ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Was faith, even a faith that recognized race and worked for reconciliation, enough to unite a diverse community?

4 “Man, This Is Hard” The Possibilities and Perils of Interracial Friendship

I remember those moments where I’m going through something as a black man that’s really, really hard, and I want to run to my black friends. I do and it’s good. Then God’s like “You need to share with your roommate. You need to share with Hiroshi. You need to share with Matthew,” and all these men that aren’t black that God really wants me to let into my life. And I’m like “Why? They won’t understand.” The point isn’t for them to be able to understand per se, but the point is for them to be able to know me better and to support me in something that they don’t understand. Now I look back and I love those people. I wouldn’t be who I am without them. I know that God used them to show me more of who He is and that they’re an important piece of that. —­Darren, IVCF alumnus and staff member

Friendships such as the ones that Darren described are atypical on college campuses, not just because of the spiritual component but also because of the interracial dynamic. On campus, interracial contact is much more likely to happen via casual socializing rather than close friendship (Espenshade and Walton Radford 2009). By remodeling organizational culture and pursuing common goals of faith and racial reconciliation, IVCF nurtured an environment that encouraged friendships such as Darren’s. Nonetheless, being united in faith did not mean that IVCF was free from race-­related tensions and conflicts. Moreover, the advent of Prop. 209 affected both CU 69

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and the IVCF community. For some black students, IVCF’s indifference to the anti-­affirmative-­action ordinance felt like a betrayal, and their inherently unequal status at CU not only affected their IVCF experiences but also threatened the group’s ability to achieve its goals.

Positive Experiences: “My Best Friend Is Someone Who Is of a Different Background than Me” While the number of black and Latino/a students in IVCF fluctuated over the years, a key benefit of the group’s multiethnic environment was the chance it gave students to form meaningful relationships across race. Miriam, a Japanese American, summed up the effect of IVCF on her friendships: “Just the interracial friendships that I’ve had, I can honestly say that I wouldn’t be friends with them unless it was through this fellowship.” Jennifer, a black alumna who attended CU from 1999 to 2003, explained that these friendships across race were not just token relationships: “I think there was something about folks having actual depth of relationship across culture, not just ‘I know that person and we work together, we’re in class together’ but like ‘My best friend is someone who is of a different background than me, or this girl that I’m in ministry with, or someone whose home I’ve been to,’ things like that. I think there are ways that that was unique and true and I think [IVCF] drew some people just for that.” One byproduct of interracial friendships was students’ growing ability to see issues from new perspectives and to feel empathy for others. Alumni spoke about how friendships sparked interest in understanding others’ experiences regarding race. For instance, Paul, a black alumnus, talked about one of the first people to befriend him in IVCF, a white male named Robert: It started my freshman year. There was this guy named Robert. He was this older student, white guy, about six foot four, from Salinas, and I just didn’t understand why [IVCF] cared about race so much. It struck me as a little strange. I felt like they were clueless and didn’t know what the heck they were doing but . . . I was curious, so Robert wanted to know what it was like to be a part of black culture, to get to just know me as a person, but I didn’t make it easy on him at all. I



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was a complete ass, for lack of a better word, but he stuck through all the things that I put him through, and he chose to suffer with me as a black person, and that’s when things, I guess, started to shift a little bit for me. . . . I had experienced a lot of racism, and so coming into college, I was very much the angry black guy. My freshman year, IVCF did a lot to kind of help me get over that, sometimes through prayer, sometimes through going and visiting places where there were basically all these black folks and just really trying to learn the culture.

According to Paul, the turning point of their relationship was when his friend “chose to suffer with me as a black person,” and this commitment to understanding his identity as a black male was pivotal in his willingness to stay involved and build trust with people of different races. IVCF students shared not only a common faith but also a race-­conscious framing of faith that honored ethnic identity, which in turn facilitated interracial friendship. Students in IVCF also sought to identify a “Christian standpoint” when dealing with difference. Kimberly, a black alumna, spoke of her initial stereotypes about Asian Americans and the stereotypes that other students had about blacks, noting that, for “80 to 90 percent” of her friends, she was either the first or one of their first black friends: So then we have these discussions [on race] and all these [stereotypes] come out, and then it was kind of like “What do you do with that?” So I think that was kind of the first step in our fellowship to really deal with issues of race. Because I think overall people will try to deal with race like “Let’s just try to get along and just kind of brush our differences under the rug and the melting pot, yadda yadda.” Whereas we were trying to tackle it with the mindset of like “Well, how would Jesus deal with this? What’s the Christian standpoint on this? So instead of trying to brush it under the rug, let’s try to talk about our differences.”

Prop. 209: Unveiling the Limitations of Interracial Friendship Although IVCF was successful at fostering interracial friendships, Prop. 209 was a hurtful reminder to black students that these friendships did

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not automatically lead to solidarity or support from the fellowship at large. When Prop. 209 passed in November 1996, IVCF was still early in its journey of addressing race. Although the ordinance was a live issue at CU, with student protests occurring, it did not receive much of a response from IVCF. Lisa, a staff member at the time, described the scene: There were protests and marches that our fellowship largely stayed out of—­except for the black students. . . . We knew that this issue was tearing our fellowship apart beneath the surface. It was obvious that the only ones who cared at all or who even knew what was happening were the black students. They felt betrayed by people in their fellowship who called themselves their friends, but didn’t care about this important piece of legislation that passed into law and affected the lives of their friends.

Kimberly recounted the frustration of black and Latino/a students in IVCF toward the attitudes of their white and Asian American peers: We were of the mindset of like “We’re sacrificing a lot to be a part of this fellowship.” I mean, it’s about wanting to learn about Jesus and getting closer to Jesus. We were like “We’re giving up a lot to be here and you guys aren’t even trying to like hear us out and at least say, ‘Hey, explain it more to me.’ Even if you don’t agree, say, ‘Oh, I don’t necessarily agree or I don’t understand what’s going on, but I want to try to feel your pain,’ or something.” It was just like “Why are we even here?” So I think a few of us were seriously considering leaving the fellowship.

Black students felt that they were “giving up a lot” to stay in IVCF, where they were always a minority; and the lack of response and empathy from the IVCF community deeply hurt them. Despite being united by a desire to “learn about Jesus,” many white and Asian American students did not yet link racial reconciliation and racial justice. Interracial relationships had fostered a sense of individual, relational empathy within IVCF, but they had not fostered a sense of collective solidarity or action on behalf of one another.1 In later years, the organization mobilized to protest hate crimes and CU’s decreasing black student enrollment and developed a framework for racial reconciliation that specifically included advocacy as a key



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component. But at this time, the group was still learning what it meant to recognize the role of race in society. Prop. 209 fostered a negative and unwelcoming racial climate for black and Latino/a students at CU. Luis, a Latino alumnus, recalled the mood on campus: “When the campus was having the conversations around Prop. 209, there were protests on the campus, so it was a very hostile environment. So I remember just walking around campus going, ‘I don’t know if I belong here.’ Or calling up my mom and saying, ‘I don’t want to be here anymore.’ So it was pretty bad, and you can be Christian or not Christian, it doesn’t really even matter, you’re going to be feeling some of these issues.” CU was no racial utopia even before Prop. 209. At best, the campus racial climate could be called chilly, but passage of the anti-­affirmative-­ action measure greatly exacerbated the situation. Student protests broke out across the state. At the University of California, Berkeley, for instance, twenty-­three students were arrested for occupying a campus bell tower, and a campus protest attracted more than 1,000 people (Associated Press 1996). In studies on the campus racial climate at institutions affected by Prop. 209, black and Latino/a students expressed feelings of isolation, frustration, and alienation in the years following its passage (Solórzano, Ceja, and Yosso 2000; Solórzano, Allen, and Carroll 2002). As Luis explained, being Christian did not protect black and Latino/a students in IVCF from the proposition’s negative aftereffects.

The Early Years after Prop. 209: The Limits of Promoting Racial Reconciliation When There Are Fewer to Reconcile In the years that immediately followed the passage of Prop. 209, there was not an immediate drop in black student participation in IVCF. By this time IVCF had decided that racial reconciliation was its lead value, and it was continuing to dedicate substantial resources to promoting the value within the fellowship. Still, the passage of Prop. 209 and the ensuing decline in black enrollment at CU affected the fellowship, partially because there were fewer black students to recruit to the group but also because the strained campus racial climate reinforced black students’ awareness of their minority status both at CU and in IVCF, making them less likely to want to spend their spare time in multiethnic communities. Heightened

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awareness of minority status can have multiple negative ramifications. For instance, racial microaggressions that remind URM students of their subordinate status on campus can lead to significant psychological strain (Sue et al. 2007), and research on stereotype threat has found that heightening awareness of minority status can have a detrimental effect on academic performance (Charles et al. 2004; Steele, Spencer, and Aronson 2002). IVCF’s efforts to emphasize race were a double-­edged sword. Its decision to promote a race-­conscious vision of faith was what had attracted black students to the group in the first place. However, healthy interracial interaction is contingent on people’s possession of equal status as they pursue common goals (Allport 1954). Thus, IVCF’s ability to advance its goals around racial reconciliation was somewhat limited by the campus context of CU, where black students lacked equal status because of their extreme underrepresentation in the student body and the negative campus racial climate. Even with these restraints, IVCF pressed on toward its goal of racial reconciliation, and at times advancing the group’s vision came at the cost of black students in the group. One challenge was the tension between intentionality and tokenization. By deciding to be proactive about making race matter, IVCF encouraged students to be intentional about forming friendships across race. However, the imbalance between black and Latino/a students versus white and Asian American students in the group, reflecting the lack of structural diversity of CU, meant that black students could feel tokenized by such efforts. Jennifer, an alumna, explained: I think it started in my sophomore year; there was a really big push on relationships, not just “Well, I know some people of a different race,” or “We are all in the same fellowship together,” but really looking to build friendships and relationships with people of a different race or ethnic background. They made little bookmarks that had, like, an acronym that I can’t remember now, but it was basically supposed to help you enter into conversation [about race]. . . . So I ended up in a lot of conversations with people when they initiated, “What’s it like for you to be black at CU? What are classes like? What’s this like? I want to know.” So on one level I get it, right, because that’s part of the problem, people aren’t aware that “Oh, I’m having a different experience than she is having or than he is



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having.” So it’s great to talk about it and I think it’s right to talk about it, but it ended up for me feeling a little unnatural, and I had this conversation with all these people who I didn’t even know. . . . It makes me feel like you’re checking something off a list.

Jennifer’s story illuminates how the uneven racial composition of the group complicated IVCF’s efforts to pursue the goal of racial reconciliation. Black students were also aware that they had to sacrifice in order to make the IVCF vision of racial reconciliation possible, as Kimberly recounted: There’s this one [Bible] passage that talks about being a slave to all.2 I probably read that growing up but reading it in like a Bible study when you’re really aware that you’re the only African American person in a room of like white, Asian, some Latino folks in there. I mean, I understood the point of the passage, but . . . it was just one of those moments where I just felt really aware: “Wow! I am the only black person in this room and there’s probably like maybe at best ten black people in this whole fellowship.” You just realize, the more I choose to be with this group, I’m taking myself away from my cultural group, the group I’m more comfortable with, my ethnic group. Because obviously we are united by Christ, this is like the strongest bond, but at the same time there’s certain things that, you know, I felt like I had to explain because people just didn’t get it.

By staying involved with IVCF, Kimberly realized that she was not only sacrificing her comfort but also her ability to spend time in predominantly black settings on campus, which could heighten the isolation that she already felt as a minority student at CU. She also noted a tension between her religious and ethnic identities during her IVCF days: she was united with other students in her Christian identity, but they were unable to fully grasp her ethnic identity and how it adversely affected her ability to feel completely at ease in the fellowship, despite IVCF’s efforts to honor ethnic identity.

When Race Explodes: “Man, This Is Hard” Pursuing racial reconciliation could turn explosive in IVCF. Multiple alumni told me about an incident that occurred at a Race Matters forum at

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the spring retreat in 2001. John was an Asian American student, and Paul, an older black student, had served as his grief counselor during the past year, mentoring him and supporting him through his mother’s death. Paul recounted the incident: Basically I had mentored two [Asian American] students for a year, John and David. They were having a Race Matters, and the question [prompt] at this Race Matters was “Which group are you least welcoming to and why?” And so every group went around, and eventually it became like a “blame black people” fest, like “We’re the least welcoming to white . . . or black people and that’s because we don’t really trust them, blah, blah, blah, blah,” and so it was just like “All right, this kind of sucks.” And then there came the time where people had a chance to confess their sin, their sins that they felt toward black people, and so then John stands up and he shares like “Paul, you know I love you, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know how I much I love you, but when I see Paul, I see nigger.”

Jennifer described Paul’s reaction: “Paul felt very hurt, and he was like ‘I’ve been carrying a lot of the load of particularly this sin of our fellowship for a long time, and I feel kind of like a scapegoat and I’m tired.’ He was graduating, he was a senior or something at that point, and he’s like ‘I’m really tired and I just can’t do it anymore.’ And so then he breaks down crying.” Summarizing the incident, Paul added: “They had messed with dynamite, and it blew up in their faces.” Jennifer recounted the fellowship’s reaction to the incident: It was a very emotional time for all the black students in the fellowship, and it was kind of this moment where we’re all sort of standing in the middle of the room with this older brother to us. . . . It ended up being a good time, I think, for the group at large in terms of recognition of some of the underlying racial tensions and stuff in the group and some of tensions on our part as a whole body. It was a good experience of people really coming along beside us. It was a very emotional time, right, so some people cry, “Oh, forgive me,” and “Oh, I’m with you,” or whatever. In that way, I think it was really, really good, but I remember leaving that time and just feeling



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like “Man, this is hard.” It’s hard to feel like I always need to be continually forgiving and open and willing for people to practice their interracial relating with me and sort of stumble over the newness of that with me and with us.

Like a hate crime that invidiously affects an entire community, not just an individual, the racial slur was incredibly painful to all of the black students present and not just Paul. Jennifer, who saw some positive outcomes emerge, felt that it was good for people to cut to the underlying tension around race. At the same time, the psychological cost of being “willing for people to practice their interracial relating with me” was deep. She explained how the lack of a critical mass of black students in the fellowship put a disproportionate load on black members: I think because there were so few of us, it felt weighty. I think if there had been fifty or a hundred black students or something, it would feel a little different. I think there was that point where I started to feel like “Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know if I want to do this.” But I remember my thought as part of that process was like “Well, where else would I go?” Like I have found it to be helpful for me in my growth with God to be in a community of believers, to study the scripture and have some of these relationships to be in ministry with other people. I found that to be good for me, and so I wanted that, but there’s not another . . . I didn’t feel at that time that there was another place on campus where I would be welcome really. So I don’t know if that’s overstating on my part, like maybe it would have been fine for me to be a part of other groups, but I just felt like I just can’t walk into the Asian American Christian Fellowship or the Korean Student Christian Movement or . . . because I’m like . . . I don’t know, it just felt like “Well, they’re not really looking for me exactly.”

Jennifer’s question “where else would I go?” reflected the lack of options that black students at CU had for spiritual community. She could not walk into just any fellowship and feel welcome. For all of the talk of being open to people of all backgrounds, the Christian community at CU was drawn along racial lines. Nonetheless, even though IVCF welcomed

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and recruited black students, they paid a heavy emotional cost to stay involved in the group. Paul and John eventually reconciled and remained friends. Still, the incident left a raw spot on IVCF, as Paul recounted: “I mean, Race Matters was dead for a year. All the black people who were left hated John. The entire campus, the fellowship at this time was really angry with him and they were angry with themselves.” Paul’s story had an impact on the legacy of the fellowship. It came up in multiple interviews with alumni, and even current students referred to it, although the incident had happened before most of them started attending CU.

Conclusion While pursuing the goal of racial reconciliation led to positive experiences like meaningful interracial friendships, it also opened the door for black students to experience misunderstanding, tokenization, and deep hurt. The latter experiences were exacerbated by Prop. 209 and the lack of equal status for black students both at CU and in IVCF. As I have mentioned, relative equal status is a precondition for healthy interracial interactions (Allport 1954), and some studies applying Allport’s work to the college setting argue that students do share equal status (see, for example, Aries 2008). Antonio (2001b) suggests that, while the alienation and marginalization that students of color experience may preclude the fulfillment of equal status, interracial interaction outside of the classroom occurs on a voluntary basis; thus, such interactions occur under in a context of relative equal status. Yet while it is true that college students share a more equitable status than, say, a student and a professor do, the IVCF story shows that unequal status can still exist in a voluntary context, particularly on campuses with a strained racial climate.3 Jennifer recalled feeling tokenized because there were so few other black students in IVCF for everyone else to “practice their interracial relating”; she described how the incident at Race Matters felt even worse because of the lack of a critical mass of black students in IVCF: These accounts point to a climate of unequal status not only in IVCF, but more generally at CU, especially in the years following Prop. 209. While structural diversity does not itself ensure equal status (Hurtado, Griffin,



“ M an , T his I s H ard ” 7 9

Arellano, and Cuellar 1998; Yun and Marin 2010), its absence exacerbates unequal status by heightening the likelihood that minority students will experience tokenization and marginalization (Kanter 1977). It is difficult to disentangle the effects of black students’ minority status at CU from their minority status in IVCF, perhaps because the two reinforced each other. Correspondingly, interracial contact in voluntary contexts does not necessarily fulfill Allport’s condition of equal status because the lack of equal status in the broader student body affects interpersonal and intergroup relations even when students leave the classroom. Relative equal status may exist in some form, but equal status is more complex than simply sharing the status of students. IVCF’s pursuit of racial reconciliation and its race-­conscious framing of faith made interracial friendships possible, and biblical concepts such as forgiveness facilitated reconciliation between students when conflict erupted. However, black students paid a high psychological cost for staying involved in the group. Unlike white and Asian American students who came to IVCF to have their spiritual needs met and enjoy the relative diversity of the fellowship, black students had to be willing to experience some marginalization in order for IVCF to retain its diversity. Added to this strain was the marginalization they already felt at CU. Perhaps most stressful was feeling as if they had to be “willing for people to practice their interracial relating with me,” as Jennifer noted. Her comment reflects the concept of “racial battle fatigue,” the cumulative stress that students of color can experience due to isolation and marginalization (Smith, Allen, and Danley 2007). Other scholars have highlighted the “cost of diversity”—­ the disproportionate burden that minorities assume in diversifying an environment (Christerson and Emerson 2003; Garces-­Foley 2007). In IVCF, interracial relating could sometimes feel unnatural, particularly when students tried to be overly intentional about forming interracial friendships. At other times it could be extremely hurtful, as it was during the incident at Race Matters.4 Some efforts to facilitate interracial interaction work to mute or downplay the significance of race (Gaertner and Dovidio 2000; Marti 2005), but IVCF specifically took a race-­conscious approach by encouraging students to recognize their ethnic identities and promoting dialogue on race through Race Matters. This ethnic reinforcement strategy (Garces-­Foley

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2007; Marti 2010) was critical to its ability to attract and retain black students. Jennifer noted that she did not see a place for her in the Asian American Christian Fellowship or (majority white) Campus Crusade for Christ chapter, and students such as Paul and Kimberly spoke enthusiastically about how their lives had been changed through not only interracial friendships but also meaningful discussions on race. Still, ethnic reinforcement also opened the door for conflict and misunderstanding around race, and the common goals that brought IVCF together in the first place were somewhat limited in their ability to ameliorate conflict and tension. I do not wish to diminish the importance of pursuing common goals as a means of facilitating interracial interaction. Although these efforts did not always go smoothly, affirming both students’ religious and racial identities was critical to retaining black students in IVCF. Still, the lack of equal status between black students and other students in IVCF, especially following the passage of Prop. 209, compounded the marginalization that black students experienced in the organization. The events described in the first two chapters of this book are mainly examples of religious values mediating racial dynamics within an organization. IVCF staff and students felt strongly that pursuing racial reconciliation was not only complementary but critical to their faith, causing them to make major changes to the group’s organizational culture. Furthermore, this religious conviction affected how they brought race into their community, not just as an add-­on but as fundamentally linked to how they understood and conceptualized their faith. In this chapter, we begin to see how racial politics can mediate religious practice. Despite IVCF’s best intentions, certain external factors—­the outside tensions related to Prop. 209 and the minority status of black students both at CU and within IVCF—­ began to weigh more heavily on IVCF’s efforts to promote racial reconciliation. As we will see, these external pressures became weightier as minority enrollment dropped further following Prop. 209.

5 Shifting Strategies Going Ethnic-­Specific

After the passage of Prop. 209, black and Latino/a students were an extreme minority at CU and experienced much isolation, especially in the classroom. Numerous studies describe the constant tensions that such students experience on campuses where they are a minority and how “racial battle fatigue” wears them down over time (Feagin, Vera, and Imani 1996; Smith, Allen, and Danley 2007). At CU they understandably often wanted to spend their out-­of-­class time in environments in which they constituted the majority, such as ethnic student organizations or social clubs, rather than in groups that reinforced their minority status. As Lisa, a former IVCF staff member at CU, explained, “the pattern at CU is that [black students] will usually rub up against racism in their relationships with non-­Blacks by November of their first quarter. This is typically when Black students will want to retreat into all-­Black friendship networks. . . . This is typically when the CU fellowship used to lose contact with any Black students who were involved” (Harper 2000, 59). Two intersecting forces—­CU’s increasingly homogeneous demography and minority students’ desire to spend free time with peers of the same race—­ explained why black and Latino/a students remained a minority in IVCF, despite the organization’s intentional pursuit of multiethnicity and racial reconciliation. Furthermore, even when these students did join IVCF, they paid a disproportionate cost to stay involved in the group: not only did they sacrifice their time in black or Latino/a havens, but they bore the burden of constantly educating the rest of the fellowship about race. In 81

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response, IVCF decided to develop ethnic-­specific small groups as a way to support and retain URM students. Since the mid-­1990s, when Doug’s staff team had begun to make race a central focus, the chapter had stressed its identity as multiethnic fellowship in contrast to the ethnic-­specific IVCF chapters that existed around the country. The decision was a significant shift from the group’s previous hesitation about such communities.

A Structural Evolution: CU’s Shift in Ethnic-­Specific versus Multiethnic Debate Ethnic-­specific ministry was nothing new for InterVarsity as a national organization. Black Campus Ministries (BCM), a network supporting predominantly black chapters and staff members, had existed in IVCF since 1975. Its Asian equivalent, Asian Staff Fellowship, the precursor of Asian American Ministries, started in 1979 (Rendall and Hammond 2007); and the first Asian American–­specific chapters emerged in Chicago in the late 1980s. By the early 2000s, when IVCF at CU decided to begin developing ethnic-­ specific small groups, campus chapters all around the country were dedicated to serving specific ethnic groups. In numerous locations, multiple ethnic-­specific chapters coexisted with one another at the same university.1 During the 1990s, Doug and Sandy, among others, were vocal defenders of a multiethnic ministry model in which a campus had a single IVCF chapter comprised of students of different race/ethnicities. In contrast, many of their eastern and midwestern colleagues argued that ethnic-­specific chapters were more effective at attracting new members and fostering students’ development of ethnic identity. As with debates on whether multiethnic or ethnic-­specific churches are more or less practically and theologically sound (Garces-­Foley 2007), camps of IVCF staff members around the country argued that their own ministry models were most appropriate. Sandy, who was prominently involved in these debates, co-­wrote a position paper in which she presented a theological argument in favor of a multiethnic model while a staff member from Harvard’s Asian American chapter made the case for ethnic-­specific chapters. Although she recognized that ethnic-­specific chapters might be an effective way to meet students’ needs during the short span of college,



S hifting S trategies 8 3

Sandy asserted that separation was not a desired outcome. She cited the ethnically diverse early church in the New Testament book of Acts as a desirable model. Because of her belief in the “depravity of the human heart,” reflecting the belief of many evangelical Christians that humans are innately sinful, she professed that it was humankind’s tendency to avoid opportunities to reconcile or cross racial/ethnic lines. A multiethnic community could help counteract that tendency by making such interaction an integral component of the fellowship experience rather than a side option. While recognizing a need to serve the unique concerns of different ethnic groups, she ended by asserting her own personal commitment to trying to do so within a multiethnic community (Tomikawa and Schaupp 2001, 14–­15). Lisa, a former CU staff member and regional director for racial reconciliation, described the CU chapter’s multiethnic model as “an anomaly” because so many IVCF chapters around the country had either been created to specifically reach a demographic group or were dominated by the majority racial/ethnic group on campus. When I asked her about the multiethnic versus ethnic-­specific debates, she emphasized the intensity of the disagreement: “Oh, God, yes. This was huge. I mean, there was actually a really big conflict within IVCF nationally because of these issues of how to engage . . . [and] most of the [CU] staff and leadership were against single-­ethnic anything.” CU IVCF’s stance was well known around the country.2 So after years of advocating strongly for a multiethnic model, what propelled its leadership to incorporate ethnic-­specific small groups into the organization? One likely influence was that Doug and Sandy, strong proponents of the multiethnic model, were no longer campus staff but now held regional leadership roles in IVCF. However, the bigger motivation seemed to be the strain that black and Latino/a students were increasingly feeling in the chapter, as Lisa explained: I think what happened for us was that we at CU just realized that we were only reaching a very, very small amount of black and Latino students and also the black and Latino students we were reaching, they wanted a time to have just to themselves. They needed a place to exhale and not have to be like everybody else but actually to be

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able to be black and Christian, you know what I mean? Latino and Christian and find out “what does that mean?” . . . Our students were just begging for time apart to breathe and exhale and fellowship in a way that they didn’t have to blend into the majority culture but they could actually just be their own culture.

As Lisa noted, the number of black and Latino/a students who were willing to experience such displacement limited the success of the multiethnic model. Further, as multiethnic as IVCF was, it still reflected the culture of its majority groups: Asian American and white students. Only a unique subset of ethnic minority students was willing to cross these racial boundaries, and even those who stayed in IVCF could feel isolated. Additionally, black and Latino/a students wanted to explore how their racial/ ethnic identities were influencing their faith identities and vice versa.

Going Ethnic Specific: Promising Beginnings Jennifer, a black alumna, described the start of Black Student Ministries: There was a black small group, which was made up of the black students in the fellowship, so there was like seven of us of the two hundred or whatever. . . . It moved from the black small group into BSM. Then it was more like “Oh, let’s invite our friends campus-­ wide to be involved in this,” and then there was one point where that was flourishing quite a bit. Maybe there were thirty students or so that were part of it, and it was folks that perhaps would not come to the large group because the worship time in the large group is like this rock music and it’s like one hundred Asian people. Already the black students on campus felt very isolated, and so there was something real homey about that study.

While most small groups in IVCF drew from students’ residence halls, BSM attracted black students from around campus. As Jennifer noted, the small group also attracted black students who did not care to attend IVCF’s weekly multiethnic large group meetings, which were filled with “rock music” and “one hundred Asian people.” Black students repeatedly mentioned music as something that deterred them from attending these large



S hifting S trategies 8 5

group meetings; the music tended to be acoustic or rock styles common in white and Asian American churches rather than those associated with the black church tradition. Thus, at a point when black students were feeling “very isolated” at CU, BSM created a safe space for them to explore their faith and ethnic identity. By giving black students time to gather with peers of the same race, BSM also slowed black student attrition in IVCF. Most of the black students whom I encountered during my observations had been involved in BSM at some point, even if they eventually shifted over to small groups based in the residence halls or spent more of their time in multiethnic peer groups. Many expressed that just the existence of BSM was important to them, even if they did not remain in the group during their entire time in college. Ethnic-­specific groups also nurtured ethnic identity by helping students explore the intersections between their race/ethnicity and faith. As Luis explained, the Bible study that became LaFe, IVCF’s small group for Latino/a students, originated from his desire to draw his ethnic identity and faith together: “I felt like I was living in two worlds. When I go home, my family understands what it means for me to be Honduran American, but there is not a lot of faith in my family, so they don’t understand what it means for me to be a Christian. I go to the fellowship, they understand what it means for me to be a Christian, but they have no idea what it means for me to be affected as Latino on campus, and I had a yearning my fifth year for these two worlds to come together.” Luis was initially hesitant to start the Latino/a student Bible study, but one day he reached a turning point: At the time, Jiyun was discipling me and she was telling me, “Luis, I think you should pursue this.” I’m like “I don’t know if I want to.” I remember we took a day off to go and just hang out. There was this coffee shop, and I was journaling about some of these things, and I heard the Lord tell me, “I’ve given you so much knowledge on who you are and who your people are. You know how to talk to people. You know what they’re struggling with. Why would you expect anybody else to lead this Bible study when I’ve given you what you need?” At that point, I decided that I needed to do that, so I began to talk about what it would mean to start LaFe Bible study. It wasn’t

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called LaFe at the time. It was just a Latino Bible study, and it was a gathering of eight to fifteen students every week.

Luis’s vision paid off for later generations of Latino/a students, as a recent alumnus, TJ, told me: I came in [to CU] not really wanting to identify as Latino because I could pass as Caucasian. . . . I grew up with a hard experience of being Latino, and I thought if people knew that I was Latino I would have a disadvantage. So I really tried to avoid that, but then they got me to come out to [LaFe], and I realized that I had a lot more in common with the Latino students than I did with everyone else, and so little by little . . . I kept coming out to LaFe, and I think that really helped me feel comfortable in a place where I didn’t really feel very comfortable, being at CU. The high school I went to was majority Latino and black, and just the culture here at CU is very different, like people coming from suburbs, people talking about life just in a very different way than I did. Realizing that there’s a group of Latino students who identified with at least some things that I had in common with them is really what kept me coming out.

One factor that contributed early on to the success of these ethnic-­ specific small groups was support from people with different ethnic backgrounds. For instance, the mentor who urged Luis to start the Latino/a Bible study was Asian American. After Luis graduated, a white staff member helped keep LaFe going and invested heavily in Latino/a students. An alumna, Jennifer, described how important it was to her that BSM was led by two staff members, an Asian American male and a black woman. Even though a key intent of ethnic-­specific ministries was to provide a space for students to grow alongside peers of the same race/ethnicity, interracial relationships were also a critical component of ensuring their success and development.

Mixed Feelings While the alumni and students whom I interviewed generally reported positive memories of their involvement in LaFe and BSM, some white



S hifting S trategies 8 7

and Asian American students were eventually more critical of the ethnic-­ specific groups, although they also affirmed their support of them. They were conscious that fewer students from BSM and LaFe became involved with the broader IVCF community over the years, especially as black and Latino/a student enrollment continued to drop at CU. In interviews that I conducted with students in 2006, I identified two distinct reactions to the groups: mixed feelings about the lack of students from the ethnic-­specific groups who became involved with the broader IVCF group and the “impossible task” of creating a perfectly integrated group.

Where Are They? Troy, who was Asian American and a recent alumnus, recalled confusion in the fellowship when members noticed that black and Latino/a students were attending ethnic-­specific small groups but not the large group meetings: I think most people were cool about it in the beginning. I guess some of the tension came when we didn’t see these people in the larger group. I remember an Asian friend, he was like “I want to see like so-­and-­so black person in the group.” But then it’s like a lot of times, they’d only go to the ethnic-­specific group but not the big group, so the rest of the fellowship, we didn’t get to really interact with them. We didn’t get to, like, do stuff with them, and so some people felt cheated. That’s cool that they’re having a good time with their own ethnic-­specific group, that’s cool that they’re feeling comfortable, like, you know, God’s speaking to them, they’re being healed and that they’re making good friendships, but I want a part of that too.

Carrie, an Asian American senior, observed, “I think that’s one of our major struggles right now, trying to form that bridge between the ethnic-­ specific ministries to the larger group as a whole. In forming all of the ethnic-­specific ministries, there has been race tension because it almost feels like the larger group is the Asian American group, and then there’s, like, ethnic-­specific ministries coming out of it.” She commented on the difficulty of encouraging minority students to become integrated into the larger fellowship: “I know a lot of people who go just to the [ethnic-­specific]

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small group and don’t come to large group and don’t really interact with the rest of the fellowship. I’ve heard they’re trying to remedy it, but it’s hard to get people to understand that that’s the intention without forcing them to be a part of this group that they don’t really understand or don’t really feel like they’re a part of.” As she noted, no one could force black or Latino/a students to become involved with IVCF, especially if they did not feel welcome in the larger group. As minority enrollment—­in particular, black enrollment—­dipped over the years, URM students may have felt less inclined to spend their free time in a multiethnic group that reinforced their minority status.

An Impossible Task The students who actually coordinated the ethnic-­specific groups were aware of the mixed feelings surrounding them. Erica was a fifth-­year student who had been involved in both BSM and IVCF throughout college, and she was one of the coordinators who found herself in the position of having to answer the questions that people such as Troy had. When I asked her about how the greater IVCF group responded to BSM, she stated: I just felt a little hostility toward BSM thriving and then [other IVCF members] not seeing [BSM members] in large group. IVCF members were like “Oh, why doesn’t so and so come out?” They just didn’t understand why people in BSM didn’t come to large group, and I would try to explain it to them. They just didn’t get it. So I don’t know if it was ignorance or if it was a genuine desire to see everybody come to InterVarsity meetings, but there were a couple of instances where I was like “You know, people have to make their own decisions. People don’t show up, what do you expect me to do?”

Courtney, a white student, observed that the leaders of the ethnic-­ specific small groups faced the “impossible task” of trying to please both the members of their small group and the greater IVCF group: “I sympathize with the leaders of the ethnic-­specific ministries because no one’s really happy. It’s almost like they have this pretty impossible task of, like, making these students at home with each other and at home within the larger diverse community.” As Courtney also observed, BSM leaders felt



S hifting S trategies 8 9

torn in another way: when they became more involved in the IVCF large group, they sometimes felt as if they had to give up some of their black identity to be part of the larger multiethnic community, and certain BSM peers who did not participate in the broader IVCF community resented this. At the same time, the BSM leaders felt a responsibility to represent the black community in IVCF. Summing up the situation, Courtney reiterated that such pressures “add this element of, like, having to make everyone happy and feel comfortable. I just feel like they’ve been given a pretty impossible task.” I asked Erica what it was like having to juggle the demands of both IVCF and BSM. She responded: I can’t lie; it was a lot of pressure actually. Ooh, sorry people, the truth comes out. At one point I had to refocus, like “Why am I doing Bible study? Why am I doing InterVarsity stuff?” And it’s not about who’s coming to what, it’s about genuine interest in what God has for us. So I had to step away from how many people are going to what and why aren’t the black people doing what they’re doing and just focus on God, the reason why we’re having Bible study and the reason why I’m going to large group. There wasn’t one person saying, “Oh, Erica, we need to have this, we need people to show up to that,” but indirect stuff. It was a little overwhelming at one point in my third year.

When Erica described the load as “overwhelming,” I thought of the many times I had heard IVCF student leaders of all races say that being a student leader could be stressful. At the beginning of the year these leaders were responsible for facilitating the spiritual development of the students in their small groups, encouraging them to get plugged into IVCF and organizing numerous events. All of this was in addition to schoolwork and other responsibilities. On top of the normal responsibility of nurturing a community of students, Erica dealt with the additional pressure of being a de facto representative of the black student community and having to explain why black students who were happy to join BSM were not so eager to come to large group. The core purpose for gathering could be easily lost in the midst of these pressures.

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Conclusion Deciding that it needed to change its organizational structure to better support black and Latino/a students, IVCF adapted ethnic-­specific small groups. One benefit was that the groups attracted more black and Latino/a students, and not just those who already felt comfortable in multiethnic environments. Still, as one student observed, the groups created an “impossible task” for their leaders as they juggled demands from both their own members and the broader IVCF community. Simmering the background was the CU campus after the passage of Prop. 209, where black student enrollment had shrunk and URM students often felt isolated in an environment dominated by white and Asian American students. This made BSM an attractive safe space for black students to seek refuge among their own—­a necessary intervention given the demographic changes at CU but a complication in the vision of racial unity that IVCF had pursued in earlier years.

6 When Race Goes on the Backburner IVCF Loses Diversity

I feel like we’ve either dropped the ball or lost a vision that was originally there. I think that we’ve lost a lot of diversity and that’s disturbing, something to try and fix. —­Danny, white IVCF senior

Racial reconciliation was IVCF’s lead value from 1999 to 2004, but in 2005 the chapter adapted evangelism as its core focus for the year.1 The shift reflected the group’s desire to focus on other core values while still emphasizing racial reconciliation. When I conducted student interviews in 2005 and 2006, I heard murmurs that IVCF was not focusing on race as much as it had in previous years, although the chapter continued to hold Race Matters, sponsor several large group discussions about racial reconciliation, and arrange campus-­wide outreach events for black and Latino/a students. I did not conduct sustained fieldwork during the 2006–­2007 academic year but attended several IVCF events when I heard of them through students or the group’s listserv. In fall 2007 I resumed fieldwork but, to my surprise, noticed few references to race during IVCF public events throughout the year. In addition, BSM had gone on hiatus that year due to a staff shortage. This public silence around race continued until mid-­February, and I struggled to make sense of it. Just because IVCF was publicly silent on race during this time period does not mean that it was privately silent. In interviews many students and 91

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staff members observed that the organization had become less diverse over the years—­that it had somehow “dropped the ball” on race, as Danny put it. In this chapter, I share their reflections on the changes in IVCF and show that, in tandem with CU’s demographic shifts, black students were becoming increasingly marginalized in the fellowship while the Asian American presence became more prominent. The stories I heard testify to the way in which a lack of structural diversity on campus collided with shifts in organizational culture, making IVCF’s commitment to diversity difficult to sustain.

Putting Race on the Backburner Stanley, a staff intern, spoke about the transition that he saw between his first year of college in 2000 and the time of our interview in 2006: “Our focus or lead value or vision has been less about justice or racial reconciliation. I think that value has taken a backburner, and you have to find it [in] other places.”2 Logan, an Asian American junior, mentioned that race had come up more frequently during his first two years of college. Speaking in 2007, he stated, “I’m not really sure now where people stand [on race] just because there seems to be less talk about it and focus.” According to some people, one problem was that IVCF’s focus on race had not been effectively transmitted to new students. A staff member from a neighboring campus commented that racial reconciliation has a “high vision leak. . . . [It] needs to be poured into all the time” (Harper 2004, 50). With students cycling in and out of the fellowship every four or five years, IVCF constantly had to educate and reeducate students about its core values. In 2006 students and staff were somewhat aware that IVCF had shifted its focus and attention, but those I interviewed during the 2007–­2008 academic year identified a widening gap between IVCF’s past and present. Younger students often expressed how much they appreciated the diversity of IVCF, only to have older students woefully tell them how much the group had changed over the years. Leena, a Korean American senior, described her memories of an earlier IVCF: Not only was it the fact that there were black students and South Asian students and Latino students along with Asian students and white students. I’m a psych major! I watch people, that’s what I do



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for fun [laughs], and I came into [a large group meeting] and I sat down, and a couple rows in front of me were a white woman like totally just close friends with a black woman, next to her, close friends with a South Asian woman, and it wasn’t just . . . superficial; these women were there for each other and it was beautiful! And I saw that and I said, “I want to be here, I want to be in a place where race doesn’t divide Christians.” And . . . things have changed.

Robert, a white senior, commented, “Our ethnic makeup now is not as diverse as it was when I was a first year and has slowly become more homogenized, Asian American and white. . . . When you walk into a Bible study, it’s not like you are forced to interact with somebody that is not like you because chances are it could be mainly Asian, it could be mainly white.”3 Earlier in the interview, Robert recalled that, in earlier years, whenever he would walk into an IVCF small group or activity, he would inevitably interact and befriend people of different races As previous chapters have shown, when IVCF began to address race in an intentional manner, more black and Latino/a students gravitated toward the group. At the same time, members began to recruit them by holding special outreach events and engaging in cross-­cultural relationships. So what happened to the demography of the organization? All IVCF groups file an annual report in which they report the racial/ ethnic demography of the organization, and I obtained these numbers from the director of CU’s region.4 The absolute number of black students grew starting in 1998, with the largest number attending during 2002 and 2003. According to interviews with alumni, BSM thrived during these years. In 2004 the number of black students began to drop and continued to decline; by 2007–­2008, a year that BSM went on hiatus, only four black students were active in IVCF. In contrast, the number of Asian American students increased over the years, reaching a high of 104 in 2003. Percentage-­wise, Asian Americans made up at least half of the group every year starting in 2004. The percentage of white students dipped between 2001 and 2005 but grew in later years. Table 6.1 shows the absolute numbers of students from each racial/ethnic group who attended IVCF between 1998 and 2007, while table 6.2 shows the percentages of each group for that particular year.

Black

9

0

31

120

White

Total

168

47

0

17

14

Multiracial

Native American

0

13

0

6

International

82

7

62

Latino/a

Asian American

1999

1998

TABLE 6.1.

150

29

0

8

15

0

83

15

2001

178

39

0

12

10

0

87

30

2002

215

36

1

13

20

0

104

41

2003

Source: IVCF Southern California Region.

144

41

0

11

9

0

70

13

2000

in Absolute Numbers, 1998–­2007

IVCF Participation by Racial/Ethnic Group

170

27

0

12

14

1

100

14

2004

172

27

1

11

15

3

102

13

2005

172

53

0

12

11

2

86

8

2006

172

42

0

10

15

0

101

4

2007

0

25.8

10.1

11.7

Multiracial

Native American

White

7.7

0

5

International

Latino/a

5.3

28

0

0

48.8

5.8

51.7

Black

Asian American

1999

1998

TABLE 6.2.

19.3

0

5.3

10

0

55.3

10

2001

21.9

0

6.7

5.6

0

48.9

16.9

2002

16.7

0.5

6

9.3

0

48.3

19

2003

Source: IVCF Southern California Region.

28.5

0

7.6

6.3

0

48.6

9

2000

by Percentage, 1998–­2007

IVCF Participation by Racial/Ethnic Group

16

0

7.1

8.3

1

59.5

8.3

2004

15.7

0.5

6.3

8.7

1.7

59.3

7.7

2005

30.8

0

7

6.4

1

50

4.6

2006

24.4

0

5.8

8.7

0

58.7

2.3

2007

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The percentages from 2007, which was the year I most closely followed IVCF, provide a glimpse of what the room typically looked like at IVCF’s weekly meeting. Asian Americans were the dominant group, outnumbering white students by more than two to one. There was just a handful of black students present, usually no more than three or four at any gathering. The Latino/a students from LaFe usually sat together, although as the year progressed I observed them sitting with students of other races more often. The IVCF staff team was entirely made up of people of color, and no one was East Asian American or white, a stark contrast to the composition of the IVCF student community. All were IVCF alumni, and all but one were alumni of the CU chapter. As one student noted, in the past, leaders had identified potential in students of color and encouraged them to become IVCF staff, cultivating a diverse leadership by bringing them through “the leadership pipeline.”5 Thomas, the current staff team leader, noted the contrast: I would say the value for racial reconciliation is probably one of the things that I’m most concerned [about] right now as I feel like it’s dwindled over the years. The staff team right now reflects the value of years past. I mean, you’ve probably noticed this. The staff team does not reflect our fellowship. I’m Indian, Erick’s Egyptian, Darren is black, and another Indian, a Latino guy. Last year we had another black Indian woman, another Indian woman, and that doesn’t reflect the fellowship at all. We’re a majority [East] Asian fellowship. We have, like, a little under 50 to 60 percent Asian Americans. So I think the staff team reflects sort of the efforts of people who valued racial reconciliation in the past, but it’s dwindled.

BSM: A Focus on Race Undone by a Lack of a Community-­wide Commitment During an interview in May 2007, my head shot up in surprise when a student mentioned that BSM was going on break due to a lack of available leaders. Even though many BSM members already did not attend any other IVCF events, there were noticeably fewer black students present at



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large group meetings once BSM went on hiatus. Staff members occasionally announced activities aimed at black students, such as a regional conference for black students that several CU students did attend. Still, BSM’s absence left a noticeable hole in the demography and everyday life of the fellowship. The end of BSM and a lack of black students in the fellowship had a mutually reinforcing, chicken-­and-­egg relationship. It was true that there weren’t enough black students left in IVCF to attend the group, let alone lead it. Exacerbating matters, CU’s first-­year black enrollment had dropped notably in 2006, and black student enrollment had already been low due to Prop. 209 and other barriers to access. This reduced the number of black students in the student body available to potentially join IVCF. At the same time, the demise of BSM led to a further decline in black student participation because IVCF no longer had a small group support structure that could help retain them. As Lisa said, before the formation of BSM, most black students had stopped coming to IVCF because they chose to spend discretionary time with peers of the same race. BSM had helped slow that attrition, but without BSM, there were no other interventions to draw them back. The demise of BSM also reflected how the emphasis on racial reconciliation in IVCF had declined over the years, resulting in a disconnect between IVCF’s commitment to racial reconciliation and the structures the group had created to promote the value. According to Thomas: [O]ne of the major mistakes we made in the past few years has been relegating ethnic minority outreach to the other minorities. [and] . . . what happened was the fellowship began to see those ministries as the work of that ethnic group, when that was not the intention of that ministry. The intention of that ministry was that we wanted to give space for ethnic minorities who may not feel comfortable coming to [large group meetings] an on-­ramp into our fellowship, but we still wanted the fellowship to understand that crossing ethnic lines is part of the gospel. We set up for failure essentially. . . . [O]ur Asian and white students were over here on the other side. I feel like they were glad that we were doing those small groups, but they had no real investment in them, and it was

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easy to be Asian American and white in our fellowship and not have any cross-­ethnic relationships, outside of Asian and white.

Increasingly, Asian American and white students focused on reaching students in the residence halls, who were primarily Asian American and white. Without relational ties to black and Latino/a students in IVCF, the commitment to racial reconciliation among the majority groups in the fellowship began to dwindle. Jeannie, a white senior, highlighted the decline of intentionality in building relationships across race: The last couple of years, it’s kind of been ignored or just not addressed. I think we assumed that, okay, we have BSM, we have Vishwasa [for South Asian American students], we have LaFe, we have KORE [for Korean American students], so therefore everything’s great. But there was kind of a negative effect in that we just stopped being intentional about building those relationships and we just assumed that it was taken care of through other people. So when the leaders of those groups left, then it was like “Well, one, we don’t have anyone to lead these groups, and, two, nobody knows the people in the groups to even build up those relationships.”

When BSM went on hiatus, the fellowship had a rude awakening regarding its commitment to racial reconciliation and multiethnicity. Although members still wanted and valued it, and IVCF’s relative diversity attracted students who did not want to attend an all-­white or all-­Asian American group, these students stopped intentionally attracting more diversity, thinking that was the job of the ethnic-­specific groups. Yet on its own, BSM struggled to attract and sustain a critical mass of black students; it needed the rest of the fellowship to draw in students who could become involved in IVCF. According to a number of black students I interviewed, while BSM played a key role in supporting them in IVCF, part of why they stayed in the fellowship was because a student of another race had actively invested in their well-­being. Without these interracial friendships, BSM became more isolated within IVCF, especially given the structural limitations of CU combined with the lack of an organization-­wide commitment to multiethnicity.



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In contrast, despite the fellowship’s reduced commitment to pursuing racial reconciliation, LaFe was still active, with a growing presence of Latino/a students and a cadre of new leaders who were being trained to take over from the graduating seniors. The differing fates of BSM and LaFe reflect the partial role that structural diversity plays in the survival of multiethnic communities. While black students made up only 3.3 percent of students at CU in fall 2007, Latino/a students made up 14.7 percent of undergraduates, meaning that they remained underrepresented on campus and in the fellowship but not to the extent that black students were. These numbers also influenced each group’s willingness to invest in a multiracial community such as IVCF; for as studies document, students are less likely to socialize across race when structural diversity is low (Sáenz 2010). LaFe’s leaders were adamant that IVCF still had far to go in terms of recruiting and retaining Latino/a students, but they also expressed pride that LaFe had developed new leaders over the years. The small group’s survival also testifies to the importance of interracial relationships in supporting multiethnic communities. For instance, one of the main leaders in LaFe that year was a white senior with a strong commitment to racial reconciliation; she played a critical role in supporting the group and encouraging its students to become involved in the broader IVCF community. Some non-­Latino/a students also became involved in LaFe; for instance, two Asian American students joined the group for their spring break trip to learn more about immigration issues at the U.S.-­Mexican border. Thus, while LaFe still provided a safe space for Latino/a students, interracial friendships strengthened members’ ties to the broader IVCF community and prevented LaFe from becoming ethnically isolated. In contrast, BSM had a harder time sustaining its membership and linkages to the broader fellowship. With the announcement that BSM was going on hiatus, IVCF had a wake-­up call regarding its commitment to diversity and racial reconciliation. Flawed as the implementation of ethnic-­specific small groups may have been, the groups still represented a great potential that did not exist in their absence. Shortly after I heard that BSM had gone on hiatus, IVCF held a Race Matters forum to discuss this development. Almost a year later, I interviewed Robin, a black senior, who recalled the positive discussions from the forum: “People are talking about like ‘Well, you know, I feel convicted. I haven’t really outreached because

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I felt like that’s not really my jurisdiction because I’m not that ethnicity, and I really want to do more.’” Robin went abroad the following year and then returned to the fellowship. When I asked her if she thought IVCF had made progress since her departure, she voiced her disappointment, calling the period “a year of nothing” in terms of racial reconciliation: “This was supposed to be the best Race Matters during my college career, and then it’s just gone. Like you guys haven’t done anything? I thought I was missing out for the six months. I was like ‘Man, I’m going to miss it. People are going to be racially reconciling and all this stuff.’ I get back and it’s, like, all of these first years and they’re just, like [in a sarcastic tone] ‘Well, you know, I never really saw race as a problem.’” Though BSM’s hiatus had shocked students, the matter’s urgency had faded as the new school year arrived. Meanwhile, without BSM, the number of black students active in IVCF continued to drop.

A Snowballing Asian American Presence: Interacting Forces of Organizational Culture and Campus Demography What else accounted for the decrease in diversity in IVCF? As I have discussed, the CU campus had become less heterogeneous during the same period, with the black student population falling precipitously after Prop. 209. However, IVCF’s makeup did not completely mirror campus demography. As figure 6.1 shows, the growing percentage of Asian American students in IVCF did more than parallel the growth at CU; it exceeded it. In 2007, the Asian American population was 38.4 percent, significantly lower than the Asian American presence of 58.7 percent in IVCF. Just as the end of BSM was the result of a lessened organizational commitment to diversity combined with low black enrollment at CU, the increase in Asian American participation was related to interactions between structural diversity and organizational culture. Asian Americans have been the largest undergraduate racial group at CU since 1994. IVCF was a predominantly white campus organization in the 1980s and early 1990s, but Asian Americans began to outnumber white students as the years passed, paralleling and then exceeding their growth in the student body. The growing Asian American presence at CU made a majority Asian American presence in IVCF structurally feasible.6 However,



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70 60 50 Percentage

Asian American IVCF 40

Asian American CU Black IVCF

30

Black CU 20 10 0

1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

FIGURE 6.1.  Black and Asian American Percentages at CU and IVCF, 1998–­2007

the fellowship’s increasing homogeneity was also linked to its dwindling focus on race. As a result, IVCF members found themselves fostering an environment that was comfortable for Asian American and some white students but less so for black and Latino/a students.

A Culture of Comfort The people I interviewed expressed that IVCF cultivated an atmosphere in its ministry and worship style that was appealing to Asian Americans. As Thomas observed, “InterVarsity is largely a white evangelical organization. We do things in a white evangelical way, but we have a value for multiethnicity, and I think those two put together is something that Asian Americans like.” For instance, the worship songs used at CU’s IVCF were usually written by white Christian artists, and the music was heavily driven by the acoustic guitar, a style often found in white and Asian American churches.7 Although the worship team made an effort to incorporate culturally diverse worship styles such as gospel and singing in Spanish, the majority of music was from artists popular among white and Asian American evangelical Christians: Chris Tomlin, David Crowder Band, Hillsongs, and the like. Despite IVCF’s generally white worship style, its recognition of racial reconciliation and affirmation of ethnic identity attracted many Asian American students who had experienced or witnessed racism in their own

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or their parents’ lives. As IVCF transitioned from being a predominantly white group to a more diverse organization, its emphasis on racial reconciliation attracted not only black and Latino/a students, but a greater number of Asian Americans. Familiar as they were with white worship styles, some of these students mentioned that they felt uncomfortable in campus fellowships that were majority white in composition.8 In IVCF, however, they could worship with peers of the same race and with those of different backgrounds. In other words, in contrast to black and Latino/a students, Asian American students in IVCF were able to have their cake and eat it too, experiencing some diversity but in a setting that resonated with their experiences as Asian Americans, and more specifically, Asian American Christians. Yet ironically, as greater numbers of Asian American students joined IVCF, the fellowship became less diverse. Cara, a Chinese American junior who was part of the worship team, described the effect of their increased presence in IVCF and the comfort zone that it created for her, even though she valued and desired diversity: Okay, I definitely feel the Asian American culture in IVCF, like especially we’re in [our residence hall] and, yeah, we feel it [laughs]. For me, part of why I came into IV is to not be in that. Because I grew up in a Chinese American church, surrounded by Chinese people, all my friends were Chinese—­you know, it’s just like I love, that’s something I loved about IVCF, like the way it wasn’t, you know, Asian? I feel like it’s more and more Asian. For me it’s hard because as it’s becoming more and more Asian, I feel like I’m not on the outside. So it’s easy for me to fit into that mold with little things; . . . it’s easy for me when I’m around a lot of Asian people to act that way.

As Cara stated, students felt linked to Asian American culture in IVCF generally and in the IVCF residence hall community specifically. Students mentioned going out to eat dim sum or Korean barbeque, occasionally speaking to each other in Asian languages, and playing Korean games at events. As Cara noted, as the fellowship came to feel more and more Asian to her, it was easy to “fit into that mold.” Yet she also said that she initially joined IVCF because it was not, “you know, Asian.” Many of the Asian American students with whom



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I talked specifically stated that they did not want to be in an exclusively Asian American organization. Otherwise, they would have joined the Asian American Christian Fellowship or one of the many other Asian American, Korean American, or Chinese American fellowships on campus. IVCF appealed to students who wanted to experience some diversity but still feel comfortable in a ministry in which they were part of the majority group and whose worship style and activities felt culturally familiar. Mina, a Korean American first-­year student, explained IVCF’s appeal: I am in my comfort zone. It’s weird to say this but when I came to CU, I tried going to IVCF and I tried going to Korean Campus Ministries. Those were the only two groups I went to. I went to KCM, and I was so overwhelmed by all the Koreans, I didn’t know what to do with myself. It was so frustrating. I came to IVCF, and that’s where I felt my comfort level. So that’s why I chose IVCF because I felt that the diversity was, like, natural and it felt right. So in a sense I guess there’s no reason for me to step out of my comfort zone because I’m sort of in a more diverse group than an all-­Korean group.

Students in years past had not necessarily disliked comfort, but IVCF’s organizational culture had at that time encouraged them to see the value in displacement, a trend that had lagged in recent times.

Homophily: A Replicating Force Without the intentional organizational focus on crossing racial lines, there was no major push for Asian American students to reach out to students of other races, unlike in earlier years. Instead, Asian American stu­ dents tended to reproduce themselves, drawing other Asian American students who were attracted to the culture of IVCF: A group that was not completely Asian American, but had a sizeable Asian American presence that helped students feel at home. The phenomena of homophily (likes attract likes) was the dominant trend. In the fellowship, outreach did not mean just casually giving someone a flier. Rather, recruitment was based on a relational model in which students intentionally nurtured friendships with peers, encouraging them to attend IVCF events. Students lived in certain residence halls in order to reach out to students, and some upperclassmen

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continued to stay in the residence halls for four or five years specifically for this purpose. Building relationships was the foundation of IVCF’s ability to attract and retain new members. Many Asian American students, especially women, told me that it was easiest to reach out to students who were most like themselves. Although Christina said she made it a priority to get to know people of other races, “I think I’m definitely one to gravitate toward Asians because I grew up in an Asian town and all my friends were Asian, and if I weren’t in InterVarsity, that would be my tendency, to just hang out with Asians and not engage with other cultures. I think part of it comes out of fear of judgment or the unknown.” Later in the interview, she joked that, if she could, she would just engage with other Chinese American females “all day long” because it came so easily to her. While Christina felt that being in IVCF counteracted her tendency to seek out the familiar, most students were open about the difficulty of putting their ideals about diversity into practice. Some noted that, even with people of the same race, evangelizing or just making new friends could be uncomfortable; to take part in those activities across race was even more daunting. Jonathan, a Korean American junior, spoke for many when he said, “I felt that I was friendly enough to have cross-­cultural relationships. I felt open enough to have them, but in practice it was very hard to do.” While some students like Christina reached out across race, most of the Asian American students I encountered were like Jonathan. They expressed ideals around wanting to have interracial friendships but had difficulty putting them into practice.

Every Action Causes a Reaction: The Push and Pull of Diversity The decrease in black student participation and the increase in the Asian American student population created a push-­ and-­ pull dynamic that affected how other racial/ethnic groups experienced and perceived IVCF. Although Asian Americans were by no means solely responsible for the fellowship’s increased homogeneity, IVCF nonetheless became more homogeneous and in turn less attractive to black students and some Latinos/as. Soomie, a Korean American senior, commented on how these trends intersected to change the dynamic of the group:



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I mean, there are people who are seniors now who used to be part of InterVarsity who aren’t anymore because of how Asian it has become. And I think Asians were drawn to this community because it was multiethnic or wasn’t as intimidating as KCM or Asian American Christian Fellowship or something else. But because so many Asians gravitated toward us, it changed the percentages, and that has affected how other people gravitate toward IV. You know what I mean? It used to be really different. I’m disappointed.

Two examples illustrate how the growing Asian American presence affected the experiences of non–­Asian Americans in the fellowship. The first involved the worship team. Every IVCF large group meeting began with a time of worship led by the team, which stood at the front of the lecture hall. After the speaker, worship was the most time-­consuming activity of the weekly large group meetings. Thus, even when the fellowship’s public focus on race was lessening, the worship team remained a highly visible symbol of IVCF. The worship team changed every spring quarter, and in spring 2006 everyone who auditioned for it was Asian American, so the resulting team was made up of all Asian Americans. When a black student in the fellowship raised questions about its composition, Darren, the staff member who had coordinated the auditions, was put into the difficult position of having to decide how to respond. Although the worship team had ended up as all Asian American simply because the fellowship was less diverse than it used to be, IVCF had also made no intentional effort to recruit non–­Asian Americans at the audition phase. Thus, some members saw an all–­Asian American worship team as counterproductive to IVCF’s supposed commitment to being a welcoming community for students of all races. When I interviewed the student who had raised the issue, she summed up her reasoning in a single sentence: “The other black people aren’t going to want to come and stay if this is the first thing that they see when they walk in.” Over time, Darren did recruit several non–­Asian American students and reshuffled the students into two new teams that alternated playing time. Yet the solution was unsatisfying to most parties involved. Black

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students remained upset that IVCF had lost a significant amount of diversity and was not actively working to remedy the problem. Harry, an Asian American student who was part of the team, expressed uneasiness over how the situation had been handled: Staff had to walk a fine line between saying, “We want to have a multiethnic worship team,” and “It’s not bad that it’s all Asian at the same time.” So I think during that sequence of events, they realized there was a problem, but the way they went about trying to fix it was I didn’t think necessarily the best way. They just started introducing new members to the band that were not Asian, and I didn’t really feel like that would have been the best way to do it. . . . It was like they were trying to fix the temporary problem opposed to the bigger issue.

The bigger issue was IVCF’s lack of diversity: the growing Asian American student presence, the drop in black student participation, and how both dynamics influenced the fellowship. Harry’s comments show that IVCF needed to deal with the growing homogenization without making it seem as if being Asian was “bad” in some way. Still, as Soomie recounted, the growing Asian American presence had a direct impact on how people perceived the fellowship. A second example also demonstrates how the growing Asian American presence affected the experiences of others in the fellowship: certain activities that were sometimes culturally unfamiliar to non–­Asian Americans had become the norm in IVCF. TJ, a Latino staff intern and CU alumnus, reflected on this issue: I think the reason it’s majority Asian is because the white students don’t feel like they have a culture. So when we plan outings that are based on any kind of culture, it’s usually to Koreatown to get Korean barbecue, to go get boba, to go get dim sum, to go to things that the Asian students feel very connected to. Whenever there’s an opportunity to just [have] fellowship, the things that we do tend to be appealing to Asian students, and so as a Latino student I’m like “Well, I’m not really interested in going to that, but that’s just me.” Or “I don’t want to steer everybody away from what’s fun.” I think



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over the years I’ve noticed a trend of, like, . . . it’s almost standard: after a big conference, people are either going to go to the dorms to eat or go to Korean barbeque, it kind of happens. Or when there’s a free night, people almost always go to get boba or Pinkberry. . . . A lot of Latino students don’t have the money to just go out and do that kind of stuff sometimes. It’s just culturally not familiar, so to go with a group that treats it as “Oh, it’s just a familiar thing,” it feels very isolating for anybody who’s not in that.

TJ’s remarks show how non–­ Asian American students in the minority might hesitate to challenge the majority group’s desire. Once Asian American students fostered a culture in IVCF that catered largely to their comfort, a snowball effect occurred in which they attracted other Asian Americans who were familiar and comfortable with activities such as going out for Korean barbeque or drinking boba.9 There also appeared to be little effort to engage in cultural exchange—­for instance, by going to restaurants that were more culturally familiar to black or Latino/a students. These informal interactions were critical. Though large group meetings were IVCF’s official public face, many students reported not feeling truly connected to the fellowship until they started hanging out with peers outside of large group meetings. Thus, informal social activities perpetuated a sense of who felt like an insider or an outsider in the group. With the dynamic of homophily in play, Asian American students drew new members, most of whom were Asian American, through social networks such as home churches and high schools. The Asian American majority in IVCF continued to expand but somewhat at the expense of other minority groups. As TJ stated, white people do not have an identifiable culture. Their majority presence is interpreted as being the norm, even when many of the activities and actions that occur in majority white groups are not culturally universal (McIntosh 1988). In this way it may be harder to identify or challenge the creation of a culture of comfort that privileges whites (Edwards 2008b). A normative culture exists; but because it is not linked to a distinctive ethnic culture, its presence is largely invisible until outsiders question the inclusiveness of the community. In contrast, Asian Americans in IVCF brought in a culture and a set of norms that were different

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from the old way of doing things; thus, the ramifications of having a certain racial/ethnic group in the majority were more apparent.

Conclusion The ability to create a culture that sets a group’s values and behaviors as normative is obviously not limited to Asian Americans, even when a community has a commitment to multiethnicity (Edwards 2008b). But just as IVCF’s decision to make race matter led to organizational change, the fellowship’s lessened commitment to racial reconciliation resulted in tangible shifts: the phasing out of BSM and decreased diversity. Without the fellowship encouraging students to intentionally cross racial lines, it was easy for Asian American students to foster a culture of comfort that appealed to and attracted other Asian Americans. As the largest racial group both at CU and in IVCF, Asian Americans were the group positioned to grow the most within IVCF. As this racial/ethnic group increasingly set the social norms of IVCF, students from other groups expressed discomfort. With IVCF in years past, intentionality was the intervention that pulled the group from the status quo of homogenization. Without intentionality in crossing racial lines and an organizational culture that prioritized multiethnicity, the momentum of forces such as homophily were difficult for to resist. Michael Emerson and Rodney Woo (2006) note that diversification tends to occur slowly at first but then grows exponentially as new members tend to encourage groups to enact policies that lead to more diversity. The IVCF story shows that homogenization also grows exponentially, especially when reinforced and made possible by the demography of the environment. Demography alone does not explain why IVCF at CU developed into a majority Asian American group; but without such a large number of Asian Americans at the university, it is unlikely that IVCF would have attracted so many of them, considering that more than a dozen predominantly or completely Asian American campus fellowships already existed at CU.10 As I worked to untangle the relationship between demography and organizational culture, I revisited tables 6.1 and 6.2 to see if I could locate a tipping point that explained the effect of the Asian American presence in IVCF on the group’s organizational culture and demography. While it is



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difficult to compare years because of various fluctuations in student participation, it is tempting to target 50 to 60 percent as the point at which one group becomes dominant. Yet between 2004 and 2007, other factors influenced IVCF’s composition, including but not limited to IVCF’s decreasing public emphasis on race (beginning in 2005) and a dip in black student enrollment at CU. When any one group exceeds 60 percent, this in and of itself has a distinct effect on the organization (for instance, on whether a student of a different race feels welcome when he or she walks into the room). However, part of the IVCF story is that throughout its history, demography intersected with organizational culture to foster a climate that opened the door for further homogenization or diversification. The IVCF that Asian Americans came to dominate both numerically and culturally in 2007 differed markedly from the IVCF that Doug recalled in the late 1990s: And I remember one Race Matters where we said to everybody, “Who’s the majority in this community?” Or we said, “Who feels like a minority?” and everybody raised their hands. The black students felt like a minority, the Latino students felt like a minority, the white students felt like a minority, the Asian students felt like a minority, and the biracial students felt like a minority. And we said, “We are, like, 52 percent Asian; Asian folks, you are the majority,” and everyone was shocked.

The IVCF of the late 1990s showed that an organizational culture could exist in which no single group dominated, even if a group was technically a numerical majority. More than a decade later, it was hard to imagine Asian Americans raising their hands to say that they felt like a minority in IVCF.11 Demography made a difference in another way: IVCF’s attempts to sustain its multiethnic vision were limited by the extremely low number of black students at CU. This point hit home for me one day when I was having lunch with Darren. As we ate our burgers, he waved to another black man who was walking by and said nonchalantly, “He was one of the couple of black men in my class that wasn’t an athlete.” Given the low percentage of black students at CU after the passage of Prop. 209 and the ensuing chilly racial climate on campus, it was remarkable that IVCF attracted any black students at all. As Peter Blau and Joseph Schwartz (1984) astutely remarked,

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“We are obviously not free to become friends if there are no opportunities for such friendships in our surroundings” (13). After Prop. 209, there were technically a few “opportunities for such friendships” at CU, but the odds had shrunk notably. The 2.3 percent of black students in IVCF during the 2007–­2008 academic year mirrored the 3.3 percent of black students in the greater CU student body. Without intentionally encouraging black students to join IVCF, the most that the fellowship could hope for was a percentage of black students similar to that in the student body. Demography alone is not organizational destiny; and the fact that the percentage of black students in IVCF met or exceeded the percentage of black students at CU from 1999 to 2006 (see table 6.1) says something about IVCF’s past organizational commitment to pursuing diversity, even if not every black student recorded on the tally was involved with both IVCF and BSM. Back in 1991, before that push began, 6 percent of CU undergraduates were black, yet Tammy was IVCF’s only black member. The fellowship’s transformation from a predominantly white group with almost no black students to one that was fairly heterogeneous—­and during a time period when there were actually fewer black students on the CU campus than there had been in the early 1990s—­speaks to the power of intentionality when bolstered by action. The black students who came to IVCF during these years did not just accidentally show up to large group meetings. They were recruited to the group, mainly through friendships, many of which crossed racial lines. However, if IVCF had challenges attracting black students prior to Prop 209, it was even harder in later years. During much of the 2007–­2008 academic year, I could count the number of black students who were coming to IVCF on one hand. I often heard during my interviews that even though students were grateful for their experiences with multiethnicity in IVCF, they believed that “we’ve lost the value” and that “IVCF has changed.” Shifts in group demography were a key manifestation of the group’s lessened emphasis on race. What was going to happen to its value of racial reconciliation? I asked Thomas, the staff team leader, about the time that followed the five-­year period when racial reconciliation was IVCF’s top value. Was the group just burned out on race? I wouldn’t describe it as burnout. I would say we were entering into a new realm of multiethnic ministry, and we were still developing



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our philosophies of ministry and we made some mistakes. As a former student and now the team leader of the fellowship, I haven’t felt burnout from racial reconciliation. If anything, it’s the one value that’s on the top of my mind in everything that I do right now. It’s the biggest concern that I see right now in the fellowship. I feel like it’s our greatest fault or our greatest failure right now in IVCF. So I don’t feel burned out; I feel motivated to move forward in it.

7 When a Minority Is the Majority Asian Americans in IVCF

Numerous works provide insight into what it is like for students of color to be a minority group at traditionally white colleges and universities (see, for example, Feagin, Vera, and Imani 1996; Fries-­Britt and Turner 2001; Winkle-­Wagner 2009). However, we rarely hear students of color reflect on what it is like to be part of the numerical majority in a traditionally white institution. This issue is particularly complex for Asian Americans, who have a majority/minority status at a growing number of institutions. They may make up a substantial percentage of the student body at some campuses, but they are persistently underserved and marginalized both there and in broader society (Poon 2010; Teranishi 2010). As a microcosm of the broader university, IVCF gave me the rare chance to eavesdrop on how a community of Asian American students wrestled with their role as part of the new majority in a post-­Prop. 209 institution; and this chapter chronicles how IVCF students and staff began to address race in an open, intentional manner following a period of public silence around race.

Asian Americans: A Racial Wild Card Historically, Asian Americans have held an inconsistent position as a racial group (Inkelas 2003; Kim 1999; Park and Teranishi 2008), leading one scholar to refer them as a “racial wild card” (Takagi 1993, 11). Seen as “honorary whites” in certain arenas, they are persistently underserved and misunderstood as a population. Even at institutions with high percentages 112



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of Asian Americans, Asian American students, faculty, and administrators have reported feelings of widespread marginalization and invisibility (Campus Advisory Committee for Asian American Affairs 2001). The large percentage of Asian Americans at certain elite institutions conceals the vast diversity within the population and the persistent underrepresentation of Southeast Asian Americans in higher education. It also obfuscates the wide range of institutions that Asian American college students attend. Beyond Harvard and Berkeley, almost half of Asian American undergraduates attend community colleges (Chronicle of Higher Education 2009). Asian American intergroup relations are complex. The model-­minority myth, which exaggerates Asian Americans’ achievement and attributes it to their status as a quiet, submissive, and hardworking group, has exacerbated stereotypes and increased tensions between Asian Americans and other communities of color (Takaki 1989). Despite the continuing pervasiveness of the model-­minority myth, historians have documented numerous instances of Asian American involvement in interracial coalitions that worked to improve housing conditions, advocate for civil rights, and fight for ethnic studies programs. This history is particularly rich in California, home to CU and to multiple generations of Asian American activists (Kurashige 2008; Louie and Omatsu 2001). Given this multifaceted racial landscape, how do Asian Americans fit into the racial reconciliation dialogue? In early years, racial reconciliation was mainly framed around historic tensions between white and black Christians, but conversations have expanded over the years to include other racial/ethnic groups. The publication of books such as The Wolf Shall Dwell with the Lamb: A Spirituality for Leadership in a Multicultural Community (Law 1993), Racial Conflict and Healing: An Asian American Theological Perspective (Park 1996), and others has fostered a space for Asian American voices in the racial reconciliation dialogue, with some authors arguing that Asian Americans offer unique perspectives and experiences that can inform discussions of race, racism, and Christianity (Rah 2009). Still, there is no one-­size-­fits-­all approach to addressing race in Asian American Christian communities. In his analysis of Asian American congregations in northern California, Russell Jeung (2005) captured the diverse approaches that Asian American churches take to addressing race: some dealing with it explicitly; others rarely, if ever, discussing it

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head on. In some contexts, Asian American Christians argue that their racial/ethnic identity is essential to their understanding of what it means to be a follower of Christ in a multiethnic, multiracial world; one does not supersede the other (Jeung 2005). However, researchers have also observed that some Asian Americans make little connection between their racial and religious identities, resorting to hierarchical rankings such as “my identity in Christ supercedes my identity as an Asian” (quoted in Alumkal 2003, 83; see also Park 2004). For many Asian Americans who are religious, both before and in some cases during college, their identity is not ethnic or religious, but ethno-­ religious, with church being a site to be among co-­ethnics and also to be socialized into a set of norms and expectations concerning what it means to be ___________ (Korean, Hmong, Japanese American, and so on) (Chong 1998; Ecklund 2006; Park 2011). Ironically, even when second-­generation Asian Americans grow up attending immigrant congregations, such communities do not necessarily provide youth with intentional opportunities to reflect on their racial/ethnic identities. Thus, the scene at IVCF was a complicated one in which Asian American students had a range of experiences with what it meant to connect race and faith as well as develop their own roles in the racial reconciliation dialogue. It is important to remember that the experiences discussed in this chapter are not necessarily representative of most Asian American students in higher education; those I interviewed were mostly East Asian American students, and they were attending a fairly selective institution.

The Asian American Question One sign that IVCF wanted to address race in a more intentional way occurred on Valentine’s Day of 2008. As I sat down in the lecture hall for yet another weekly meeting, I felt confused about the progress of my fieldwork. I had set out to study how IVCF had made race matter; but except for individual accounts that students had shared during interviews, to date I had heard barely any references to race in the public life of IVCF during the 2007–­2008 year. If anything, race was the elephant in the room: it was on people’s minds but was rarely a formal agenda item during gatherings. But on Valentine’s Day, the situation unexpectedly changed. The



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evening began when Cindy announced next week’s large group meeting and encouraged attendees to invite friends. “There’s a meeting for students living in residence halls and apartments on Wednesday,” she said. “Interested in evangelism training? Sign up in the back.” She rattled off a few more announcements before introducing Dave, an Asian American student. Students called out and cheered his name as he walked toward the front: “Woohoo, Dave!” I did not recognize him, yet the widespread cheering suggested that he was a well-­known member. He struck me as unassuming as he shuffled toward the microphone. “As you know, racial reconciliation is one of the core values in IVCF,” he began. I scrambled for my recorder while scribbling his words. Asian Americans are a majority in the fellowship. How does that play into how we live out that value? So we want to have an open discussion on race and how it plays out, the role that it plays in how we interact with each other in this fellowship. So if you’re Asian, we’d like to invite you to come [students laugh, perhaps uneasily] to openly discuss this, but we’d also like to invite non-­Asians; we do want to invite you and hear your perspective on this. So we’ll be at [an IVCF student’s] apartment from 9 to around 10:30.

He paused for a moment. “That’s it.” The students around me laughed at his abrupt ending, and Dave sat down. Three student leaders walked up and down the aisles passing out white half-­sheets of paper, which read: What? One of the core values of IVCF is a commitment to multi-­ ethnicity and racial reconciliation. Racial reconciliation is a biblical value (See church of Antioch, Acts 11) that we want to strive for in this community. At CU there are a lot of different ethnic groups, but often times there is a dividing wall (Ephesians 2) that separates us. As a community we realize that it is not enough to be merely diverse, or to simply coexist, but that true racial reconciliation involves pursuing deep relationships with one another. Within the past five years, Asian Americans have become the majority in our fellowship. What does this mean for the value of racial reconciliation in our community? How is God calling us as Asian Americans to respond?

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Who? Asian Americans, whether you are interested in learning how to live out racial reconciliation in your relationships, or if you have even a small curiosity as to what your call is as an Asian American in a multi-­ ethnic community. If you are not Asian American, but feel as if you have something to add to the discussion, we invite you to come as well. When? Thursday, February 21, 2008, 9 p.m. Where? IVCF staff apartment. Ask a leader if you need directions.

The next week I walked to the apartment where the discussion was scheduled to occur after large group. It was pouring rain, and student after student entered the room drenched. Eventually a total of thirty-­two students had shown up; and I was surprised that so many had come out on a rainy night during midterms. Everyone present was Asian American except for one Latino student, Jorge. As students piled in, I heard a male voice ask, “Are we taking our shoes off because this is an Asian thing?” There was a small mountain of shoes accumulating in the entrance. Joanne, the IVCF worship leader, responded, “No, it’s because you guys are wet.” Cookies and a barbeque chicken pizza from the dining hall circulated, and finally Joanne called the meeting to order: Okay, guys, thanks for coming out even though you probably don’t know what’s really going on during this meeting, even though it’s raining outside, even though you’re spending, I don’t know, one and a half or two hours with people you don’t really know. I really think that God is going to honor what’s going to go on tonight. For some of us who are leading, God has put on our hearts that there’s kind of a unique role that we as Asian Americans have to play in this fellowship with the value of racial reconciliation. So especially if you’re new you might not know exactly what that is, racial reconciliation, but we’re going to talk about that in a little bit. And we’re going to share our experiences and possibly talk about what we can do coming out of this meeting, kind of be agents of change and advocate for some of the minorities in our fellowship.

I thought it was interesting that she referred to “the minorities” in the fellowship as a group distinct from themselves, Asian Americans, but after all



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we had congregated today to discuss the issue of Asian Americans as the majority population in IVCF. Joanne opened the meeting with prayer; and when she finished, another cluster of students arrived. The exchange that followed exemplified some of the dynamics of the Asian American insider culture in IVCF. Cara, a Chinese American student, was one of the new arrivals, and she was soaking wet. Someone yelled, “Shoes off!” although she had already begun to remove them. Leena, one of the women who lived at the apartment, commented, “Shoes are for the dry apartment.” Joanne concurred, “Yes, shoes have nothing to do with being Asian.” Leena said, “Yeah, it has to do with that I live here, and I want the floor to be dry.” Cara responded in a deadpan, sarcastically funny voice, “Thank you for clarifying that. I was a little bit worried but, uh, now I know.” Everyone silently watched her peel off her jacket. “We started five minutes ago,” Joanne explained. “Oh-­h, sorry,” responded Cara as she climbed over people to find a seat. “Why, we’re running on Asian time,” joked Vince, a Chinese American senior.1 “Oh, no!” Cara groaned in response, and some students started clapping and laughing. Joanne stood up. “I, from now on, am going to veto all Asian jokes.” Some other students started clapping and chortling in support. Vince retorted confidently, “You can’t stop me.” Joanne turned to him. “Maybe because you are an Asian joke?” Students burst out laughing, and someone yelled, “Oh, no-­o-­o-­o, you didn’t!” from across the room. Observing the fracas, I found it fascinating how well this short interplay among Cara, Vince, and Joanne reflected the Asian American culture of IVCF—­ironically, the same issue that the students intended to deconstruct this evening. While Leena and Joanne facetiously distanced the act of taking off shoes from being Asian, the students quickly jumped into a set of retorts that reflected their status as insiders in the Asian American community. During interviews with students, some made it clear that

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they recognized that such jokes created cultural boundaries within IVCF, positioning the group that was in on the joke as the insiders and leaving everyone else on the outside.2 Now Marcia, a student leader, gathered the group’s attention by giving a short lecture on the biblical foundation for the concept of racial reconciliation. In explaining a passage about foreigners serving God (Exodus 23:9), she commented on how Asian Americans, too, could be viewed as outsiders or foreigners: “Repeatedly the Israelites are punished by God because they’re not looking out for the foreigner, and I just thought that foreigner was an interesting word to use because some of us have parents or grandparents who are foreigners in this land, and we know what it’s like to be viewed as a foreigner and we kind of have an understanding of their plight. But here at CU we are in the majority, so that’s just something to think about; we’ll probably come back to that later.” This dual identity of Asian Americans as a group that experiences both marginalization and inclusion was a constant theme of the night. Students shared experiences of what it was like to be in the majority and then the minority. As Marcia said, they could identify with what it meant to be a foreigner; but as the majority group in IVCF, they also needed to think about what it meant to look out for the foreigners in their own context: the black and Latino/a students in the fellowship and at CU. Marcia offered a short history of IVCF’s commitment to racial reconciliation as well as a summary of how the group’s demography had shifted over the years. After she wrapped up her comments, Joanne showed a PowerPoint presentation, kicking off what I call the “rude awakening” portion of the night: when Asian American students were exposed to others’ viewpoints on diversity in the fellowship. Joanne explained that she had sent a request to non–­Asian American students in the fellowship to submit their comments about what it was like to be a minority in IVCF, and she read their anonymous remarks from the slides. This was one of those anonymous comments: Okay. I would say that the most difficult part about being Latino in this fellowship is the amount of ignorance about my culture. From being the majority culture in Los Angeles and most places in my life, to be a minority in this fellowship was a rough transition. I



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remember hearing one Latino song, but I felt like that was about it. Another thing that has been very hard is not feeling known. In this community I have felt very lonely. Also with financial differences, what people do with their money is very different from me. I tend to enjoy things that cost very little to nothing. I always felt like I couldn’t partake, and thus didn’t have the memories that everybody else did. Snowboarding and trips to Vegas. To summarize, I felt like being Latino was something people did not want to deal with; it was easy to ignore and look over. I usually struggled to believe that God cared about immigration, poverty, and other issues in the Latino culture. However, I later realized that God cares deeply about these things, and I feel that also as a fellowship IVCF has yet to be the place that it needs to be.

Another anonymous member wrote, “I feel like a novelty. I feel like that toy in the toy store that everyone plays with. Being a black student on campus is lonely and tiring. It’s tiring because I’m tired of waiting to feel like I belong. No one wants to be your friend because everyone assumes that you only want to be friends with your own ethnic group, because everyone wants to feel comfortable. The dynamics are even more drastic in IVCF; there’s an inner group of people, so you feel much more lonely.” After reading these comments, Joanne said: I feel the majority culture of the fellowship is Asian, and thus the culture of the fellowship itself caters to that. For example, people will do activities that cater a lot to do with Asian American culture such as going to Asian American food restaurants to eat, doing activities and games that have some Asian American origin. I feel that the Asian American presence sometimes overshadows the non–­Asian Americans and I feel sometimes that people will make comments about other cultures without realizing that someone representing that culture is present; they just ignore them because they’re not the dominant presence. I myself have experienced that.

The room was silent, and Joanne hastily added, “There are also a lot of good testimonies I got; I don’t want to make you think that everyone non-­ Asian hates all the Asians in this fellowship. It’s definitely not like that

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at all.” But inwardly I thought that the anonymous comments, especially the second one, echoed TJ’s earlier remark about how Asian Americans in IVCF had fostered an environment that was culturally comfortable for their peers and themselves but alienating to non-­Asian students. Joanne then asked attendees to form small groups to share reactions to the quotations. Turning my attention back to students’ reactions, I heard snippets of conversation from the different groups. Jill, a Korean American junior, noted, “We take it for granted that we are in the majority, and if we’re okay, then they’re okay.” Another woman said, “One time I visited Campus Crusade, and it was seriously like one of the most uncomfortable things. No, seriously, it was like everyone was white and nobody talked to me! And, I don’t know, it was really hurtful.” The room hummed with conversation. Joanne reassembled the group, and students reported mixed reactions to the status of diversity in the fellowship. “What did it feel like to see those quotes?” she asked. I counted fourteen seconds of silence before Christina, a Chinese American female, responded, “Well, it definitely broke my heart. Like Joanne is saying, we have a culture of being very, at least outwardly, hospitable to other people, and I definitely try to look out for other people and make sure everyone is okay. So to see that need to reconcile other people to the point where we’re not even aware that it’s not being done, it’s kind of like ‘oh, that’s not okay.’” Tony, a first-­year student who recently gave a testimony at large group meeting about how he was exploring the Christian faith, said, “I felt pretty shocked because I think what attracted me the most about IV was its embracement of other cultures and ethnicities, and so reading that, it kind of makes me reconsider. . . . Maybe our foundation isn’t as stable as what I thought it was.” An Asian American woman whose name I did not know spoke about the role of values: I definitely know, like me and Leena were talking about our freshman year when we came in, man, it was so much more diverse. [Students nod around the room as she speaks.] Black Student Ministries, which first years don’t even know about because it doesn’t exist



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anymore, was strong, there were five senior leaders and like twenty people, and LaFe was going strong, there was Vishwasa with South Asian ministries and, yeah, I mean that’s one of the things I loved about IVCF was that [racial reconciliation] was a value and it was a value that I didn’t see anywhere else. And seeing those quotes, I’m like “If it’s a value, how are we acting on it?”

Dave, who made the announcement about the forum at last week’s large group, stepped in and asked students if they knew what it was like to be a minority. Although most had grown up in areas with high concentrations of Asian Americans, a number had stories about experiencing marginalization or discrimination. Thomas then asked students to share stories of being in the majority, so they talked about growing up in predominantly Asian American high schools and churches as well as having friendship groups in high school that were primarily Asian American. Once again, the dual identity of Asian Americans as both insiders and outsiders emerged. Someone asked Jorge, the one non–­Asian American student present, to share. He was one of two Latino students in IVCF who was involved in a residence hall–­based small group rather than LaFe. While Jorge said he enjoyed learning about Asian American culture through IVCF, he also felt increasingly isolated from his home community: I’m the kind of person who’s very curious, and I just want to learn. I was surprised Leena could speak Spanish; like, I had stereotypes of my own—­her being Asian and speaking Spanish, I just couldn’t see that back then. But I couldn’t realize how difficult it was trying to fit in sometimes because I didn’t really have a clue of how to contribute to the group. Because I was curious, I would ask questions. I remember going to visit my friend’s family, and the first thing I was taught was how to say, “Jao jo” and “Jao ju.” [Joanne called out, “That’s Vietnamese!”] I guess what I realize is that I slowly get isolated from my own community because, really, who do I have to share with? Like I go back home and I’m reminded of how much I’ve forgotten, just about my culture. And I mean, that’s my fault too because I haven’t shared yet; I haven’t shared because no one has asked or has shown curiosity. So as far as community goes, it would

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be easier if people would show more curiosity. And I know it’s easy to forget because as somebody said it’s just natural, it’s not like you do it on purpose, it just happens.

Jorge’s comments reminded me of my interviews with the IVCF alumni who told me that they had distanced themselves from their home cultures by being involved in IVCF. After Jorge had finished speaking, Tony, the first-­year student who was exploring Christianity, clapped, but the rest of the students were silent. I wondered what was going through their heads. Regret? Guilt? Then Dave began speaking, and the conversation shifted toward a call to responsibility: How many of you come from a predominantly Asian church or still go to one? [Two-­thirds of the people in the room raise their hands.] Thanks. So we’ve seen that some of us have experiences of being a minority; some of us have the experience of being a majority. Right now we want to go into a time where we can talk about how we can do something about that. We all have the opportunity here to get past these barriers that we mentioned before. Our generation right now, opposed to our parents, we don’t have the same language barriers; we don’t have the same culture barriers. We have an opportunity right now, our generation, to unite and create a more multiethnic community, and we can start that right here. I went to a private high school that was half-­white and I lived in Monterey Park, which, if you don’t know, it’s still the city with the highest percentage of Asians, but we’ve all been in places where we felt uncomfortable. Someone shared in our group how she visited Campus Crusade and that’s an all-­white fellowship. She walked in and she just immediately felt unwelcome. It’s something that everyone feels, and people feel that way when they come to IV sometimes. And we can do something about that, if we’re willing to, if we’re called to; we should be willing to step outside of our comfort zone and step out of our ignorance sometimes.

On the surface, Dave’s optimistic comment—­that IVCF members had “the opportunity here to get past these barriers”—­might be taken as a colorblind outlook: that people can unite across race if they can just get



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over seeing race. However, Dave preceded his challenge with an acknowledgment of students’ unique identities as Asian Americans, both marginalized and included, thus communicating that race did matter, not only to the Asian American woman who had felt unwelcome in a different campus fellowship but also to understanding why some people felt unwelcome in IVCF. Now Christina shared a short PowerPoint presentation on how Asian American students could help foster a more multiethnic community in IVCF. First, she said, they should be aware that too much “Asian American culture” might make feel others feel unwelcome: for instance, turning boba and Korean barbeque into default IVCF social activities or making jokes that were funny only to a certain ethnic group. Next she mentioned “the reciprocation of culture, being intentional”: that is, purposely making cross-­cultural friendships and asking others to bring their culture into IVCF. Finally, she felt that it was important to ask people about their culture, but she was careful to differentiate this step from tokenizing cross-­ cultural friendships: “They’re not a project. They’re not someone you’re trying to figure out or someone you’re trying to mold into chameleons; they’re not someone who will fit into a peg. They’re your friends; they’re relationships that you value, and I think the more you pursue that, the more natural it becomes. So especially it may be awkward at first but I think the more you do it, the easier it becomes.” It struck me as funny that we were watching a PowerPoint presentation on how to make relationships feel “more natural,” yet the scene itself summed up a basic concept behind the emphasis on intentionality that had been integral to IVCF’s transformation in earlier years: to encourage shifts in organizational culture, values had to be explicitly communicated before people could enact and adapt them as normative behaviors. Joanne wound down the night with a final commentary: It doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re called to ignore our racial and ethnic, cultural identities because I think there’s a lot of good things. God created you Chinese, Korean, whatever ethnicity, for a specific purpose. The purpose was not [laughs] to become a dominant culture, but the purpose was for us to build relationships with one another because I think every culture has a different experience

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of God. Our God is creative; he has created people separately and equally. He has also shown himself to that group in a unique and special way.

Her comments reflected certain nuances in IVCF’s ideal approach to fostering multiethnicity: that different students’ cultures and ethnic identities should be recognized, celebrated, and reciprocated without the creation of a dominant culture. I say ideal because IVCF had found itself in a situation that deviated substantially from its vision. However, even when the fellowship departed from the ideal, that vision was ingrained in the organizational memory of the group’s leaders, which sensitized them to the growing Asian American dominance in IVCF and enabled them to critique it.3

Reflections on the Asian American Forum The Asian American forum was the first major event to break IVCF’s public silence on race. Other events followed, but the forum was notable because it directly addressed one of IVCF’s key dilemmas: how Asian Americans as the majority group had fostered a culture that was comfortable for themselves but less welcoming to students of other races. This problem had reinforced IVCF’s failure to maintain its organizational commitment to racial reconciliation, and that loss of intentionality had opened the door to the status quo forces of homophily and comfort. The idea of disrupting IVCF’s Asian American friendly–­culture made some Asian American student leaders uneasy. They agreed that the group needed to be more inclusive but felt that a certain amount of blame or stigma had been assigned to Asian Americans for becoming the dominant group in the fellowship. In an interview with an Asian American student leader, I asked her share her reflections on the Asian American forum. She spoke slowly and seemed to choose her words carefully: “Well, I understand that we are, but is it really our fault that we’re the majority in the fellowship? I can understand where it affects inviting people [to IVCF events] or the kind of people we’re inviting, but I feel like sometimes they kind of point the finger at us, saying, like, ‘Oh, why are there so many of you guys, and why do you guys have to be like this?’ Because it kind of hurts when they say, like, ‘Oh, yeah, everything we do is Asian.’”



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This student was not on the fringes of IVCF but held a prominent leadership role. She had spoken passionately during the forum about how she had joined IVCF because it was not a group only for Asian Americans. Still, she expressed discomfort with the way in which the fellowship had singled out Asian Americans for becoming the majority group. It was difficult to bring the decreasing diversity of the fellowship to the attention of the community that had become the majority without assigning some blame or at least an onus of responsibility.4 In an interview following the forum, Christina, one of the students who had led the event, also expressed hesitation about how to address IVCF’s demographic conundrum: At first I was like “Why do we need this?” because I was surprised that they would host an event like this. But I think it was important to realize that, as a majority, we do have a large role to play in recruiting other minorities. I think in the beginning, there was that tension of “Why are minorities more important than other races? Why should I reach out to minorities as opposed to everyone else? Shouldn’t everyone have a fair chance of being invested in things like that?” I think I have come realize that God does care for the marginalized. I feel like if we didn’t focus on them, they would be left out as opposed to other races like the white students and the Asian students.

Christina’s question “Why are minorities more important than other races?” recalls the situation of the all–­Asian American worship team. Why was that problematic? After all, only Asian Americans had shown up to audition. Moreover, was there something inherently wrong with having too many Asian Americans in IVCF? What constitutes “too many”? These questions are legitimate, given the broader history of anti-­Asian quotas in college admissions and accusations that “Asian invasions” are “taking over” elite colleges (Takagi 1993). An all-­white community or student body is easily taken for granted; but when Asian Americans become the majority, people notice. Was the discussion in IVCF an extension of this troubling historical trend, or was there another explanation? Was it fair to make Asian American students responsible for self-­regulating their presence in IVCF?

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In some ways, it did make sense to ask Asian Americans to be sensitive of their role as the fellowship’s majority group. The all–­Asian American worship team had sent a message that was inconsistent with IVCF’s commitment to multiethnicity. Likewise, the sizable Asian American majority challenged the fellowship’s ability to create a community that was welcoming to students of all races, especially when Asian Americans fostered a normative culture that was less accessible to non-­Asians.5 Further, Asian American growth in and of itself was not the problem; the trouble was that it was accompanied by a dwindling commitment to reach out across race. IVCF knew that the large Asian American presence had consequences on the dynamics and demography of the fellowship, especially its ability to be an inclusive, multiethnic community. The intent was not to ask Asian American students to leave or feel guilty about their majority status but to challenge them to take responsibility for promoting racial reconciliation within the fellowship. As Thomas, IVCF’s staff team leader, told me: I would love to see the value [of racial reconciliation] become a central part of every IVCFer, or particularly I would like to see, first and foremost, Asian Americans have the value. I’d love for Asian Americans to be able to see how much we have been blessed by other ethnic minorities in this country and to sort of carry the torch in our fellowship of empowerment and really pursue other ethnic minorities on the campus. For me, that feels like the hugest growth need right now, is the empowerment of Asian Americans to have the value and move forward in that direction. I feel like if Asian Americans get onboard, anything can happen. In years past, it was like “Oh, what about our white students? How are they going to feel?” I feel like our white students, they’ll do it. The white students that are in our fellowship have chosen to be part of a largely Asian American fellowship, and they’re a unique group of people because if they didn’t like us, they would have gone to Campus Crusade.6

Demographic Realities: The Limitations of Ideals At first, Thomas’s remarks struck me as inspirational and challenging, but after a while I felt more ambivalent about them. Even if Asian Americans



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were able to “carry the torch,” they were constrained by a drastically unequal university environment in which they now outnumbered black students almost 13 to 1. In the words of one of the forum’s anonymous commenters, “being a black student on campus is lonely and tiring. It’s tiring because I’m tired of waiting to feel like I belong.” While Asian American students undoubtedly had a role to play in helping IVCF regain its organizational commitments to diversity and racial reconciliation, they were also limited by the lack of structural diversity at CU. Thus, by singling out Asian American students, IVCF overestimated or perhaps overemphasized the ability of its membership to pursue diversification. Nonetheless, throughout my fieldwork I was inspired time and time again by IVCF students’ can-­do attitudes, willingness to take risks, and passion for community. Dave’s stirring exhortation to his peers captured that spirit: “We all have the opportunity here to get past these barriers that we mentioned before. Our generation right now, opposed to our parents, we don’t have the same language barriers; we don’t have the same culture barriers. We have an opportunity right now, our generation, to unite and create a more multiethnic community, and we can start that right here.” His optimism reminded me of why IVCF was an educator’s dream in so many ways. Not only did the organization provide a venue for students to converse about race outside of the classroom, but, at its best, it challenged students to dream big, to envision the potential of a diverse democracy. And Dave was right: IVCF did have the chance to build a multiethnic, multiracial community that was radically different from the types of communities that his immigrant parents’ generation frequented. Still, there was a limit to what kind of multiethnic, multiracial community was possible, even when language, cultural, and even organizational barriers became less of an obstacle. Due to CU’s demographic constraints, that community was almost inevitably going to be largely white and Asian American—­more diverse than previous generations’ communities of worship as well as other campus fellowships but falling short of reflecting the diversity of the region and the state, let alone the country.

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Conclusion Individuals often assume that they have a great deal of control over whom they associate with and why. However, patterns of social relations are deeply shaped by demography and the availability of diverse peers (Blau and Schwartz 1984). For instance, consider the pictures of happy and glowingly diverse groups of students that adorn the covers of many college admissions brochures. Somehow a photographer manages to catch an Asian American student sitting next to a black student sitting next to a white student sitting next to a Native American student. A Latina student stands nearby, book bag slung over her shoulder, and all are captured in a lovely moment of spontaneous laughter. Let us imagine that this institution has 15,000 students, but only 3 percent (450 students) are black, similar to the demographic breakdown of CU. If someone were to randomly select five students from the student body for a photo, in the best-­case scenario there would be an 86 percent chance of not drawing a single black student. Basically, the promotional photo I’ve just described is demographically impossible 86 percent of the time, if students are being randomly selected from the student body.7 This scenario is just an illustration, but it demonstrates how losing structural diversity in a student body limits students’ potential to build and sustain the types of racially diverse communities that colleges see as pertinent to student life.8 Through images such as purposefully diverse admissions photos, colleges project an ideal liberal university dream of multiculturalism, yet they often fail to provide students with the minimum demographic conditions to achieve this vision of diversity (Abelmann 2009). Demographic conditions do not automatically produce a healthy campus racial climate, but they are a necessary precondition for such an environment to exist. Yet even though IVCF students had only limited agency in controlling their community, they were determined to use it.

8 Renewing a Commitment Realigning Values, Structures, and Practice

On the first Thursday of the new term, we piled into the auditorium for the weekly IVCF meeting. The new worship team was visibly more diverse than it had been in the past, with a mixture of black, white, and Asian American students. The worship leader led the singing: “You alone are worthy. . . . You alone are righteous. . . .” Then we sang the same song in Spanish: “Solo tu eres digno. . . . Solo tu eres justo. . . .” A group of students moved to the front of the room—­a Latino male, two white females, a black female, a Filipino male, and a South Asian male. The group struck me as deliberately diverse. Each person read a Bible verse that had something to do with race, nationality, or unity (“all nations,” “every tribe and tongue”), and the passages flashed on the screen, with the portion alluding to ethnicity or background highlighted. The tone was dramatic and powerful, and we sang the opening song again. This time a line, “Let every nation sing, to the father of everything,” popped out at me. We closed with a particularly jubilant worship song. Cindy, the night’s emcee, greeted everyone, joking that it felt as if there was something fresh in the air with springtime approaching. Then she introduced Thomas, IVCF’s staff team leader, who walked to the stage, shuffled some notes on a music stand, and began to speak. After bringing up that night’s topic, racial reconciliation, and mentioning that race had been an issue in the news surrounding the 2008 presidential election, he began to talk about how it had emerged as an issue at CU. He asked, “Have you ever noticed how people divide along racial lines here at CU?” There 129

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were some soft yeses from the audience. He repeated the question, and they responded more loudly in the affirmative. Thomas continued: Here at CU, I think it’s easy to think that race is not that much of an issue, especially since we live in such a diverse city. We have so many people from all over world here, but consider these facts for a minute. The freshman class here at CU, 43 percent are Asian American, 33 percent are white or Caucasian, 14 percent are Latinos, and 3 percent are African American. In this city, 13 percent are Asian American, 29 percent are white/Caucasian, 27 percent are Latino, and 10 percent are African American. And so we cannot walk into our campus and ignore the racial division because it sort of automatically happens simply because of the admissions process. Then on top of that, when we consider our Christian fellowships on campus, none of us are trying in any really significant way to offer a worshipping community to the ethnic minorities on our campus. The black students who come to our campus and are looking to grow spiritually will find plenty of fellowships catering to the needs of Asian American and white students, but there is no place to welcome them. In my opinion, that is one of the greatest injustices on our campus and one that the Christian community needs to respond to. A friend of mine is in the dorms and she commented to me that one of the things that she noticed was the way that friendships formed on her dorm floor. So people go into the dorm floor and they [don’t] know each other. . . . It’s sort of like a Petri dish experiment, and over the course of fall quarter, friendships form. What happened on this particular floor was that friendships formed amongst the white people. Then the Asian American students tended to hang out together, and then the other, everybody else who is not Asian or white, tended to hang out together. There have become these little cliques on the floor, and my guess is that if you ask any of them, very few of them probably notice that. I mean, none of them planned to do that, right? None of them probably planned “I’m just going to hang out with this group of people right now.” But it’s just the way that things work; people get sort of drawn into dividing along racial



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lines. Just walk around campus and look at how we divide along racial lines here at CU. It happens everywhere. And so even though race may be a difficult subject to talk about, the reality is that we subconsciously deal with it every day in our lives. So what does the Bible have to teach us about race and ethnicity? Because now we’ve heard twelve different passages about race and ethnicity from the Bible, and I think you’ll realize that the Bible has a lot to say about this topic. So tonight, as we consider this topic and look at what God is saying in scripture, the question that I want us to reflect on is “What and how does race affect me as a person? How does race affect me as a person in this fellowship and how does race affect me as a person on this campus?” And maybe the freshmen, you never really wrestled with it. You maybe never thought about your race, period, but I want you to think about that tonight.

As I listened, I wondered how the first years were reacting to Thomas’s proposition: that not only do people think about race on a subconscious level every day but that the Bible has something to say about it. Now Thomas launched into the Bible passage for the night, one that described the early church, which was initially all Jewish and did not reach out across ethnic lines. Later, however, Jews from Cyprus and Cyrene began to mix with Gentiles at the church of Antioch, where members of the early church were first called Christians (Acts 11:19–­26). The event was radical, given the historically stark separation between the groups. Thomas used the passage to argue for why Christians today were called to reach out across racial/ethnic lines and share their faith with people from all backgrounds. He asked, “The question that we need to ask ourselves tonight is what does this church in Antioch have to say to our community, the IVCF at CU?” A PowerPoint slide with pictures of the CU IVCF staff appeared on the screen, and Thomas listed each staff member’s racial/ethnic background. None was East Asian American or white, by far the two largest groups represented in the fellowship. He commented dryly, “We don’t really represent the ethnic makeup of this fellowship.” The audience burst out laughing; some of the students started clapping and hooting. He went on to explain that the diverse makeup of the staff represented past efforts within IVCF to cross racial/ethnic boundaries:

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We here at IVCF have a spiritual legacy that over the years has sort of dipped a little bit. Fifteen years ago, our fellowship was made up of a majority of white students, and one of the areas that students and staff began to be convicted about was the lack of connection with the rest of the ethnic groups on campus, and then through a series of events . . . IVCF started to cross ethnic barriers. I would say that in some sense, our staff team represents the value of racial reconciliation that gave IVCF many years ago. Each one of us, each one of us staff can point to specific people in our lives who were like these Jews from Cyprus and Cyrene, who crossed ethnic barriers for the sake of God, and because of this, we were given an opportunity to be part of the spiritual community on this campus. The best way that I can kind of describe it is this: racial reconciliation is the prophet in which Jesus demonstrates the power of the cross by crushing the dividing walls of personal and systemic racial hostilities through intentional cross-­ racial relationships. That is what I feel like is the fullness of racial reconciliation. The men of Cyprus and Cyrene are the ones that God blessed because they were in line with God’s great plan to reach all nations.

Thomas’s sentences were filled with biblical allusions. First, he called racial reconciliation a “prophet,” and throughout the Bible prophets proclaim truth and the word of God, usually to groups who have strayed from God. “The power of the cross” referred to the Christian belief that, by dying on the cross, Jesus brought forgiveness for sins and hope for a broken world. To Christians, the symbol of the cross is what makes everything possible. IVCF staff members often used “the dividing walls” to explain how the power of the cross extended to bridging racial divides. As Ephesians 2:14 reads, “for he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups [Jews and Gentiles] into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.” Earlier verses in the chapter show that Gentiles were once seen as excluded from the promises of God because the Jews were the chosen people, but the death of Jesus brought them into God’s favor.1 In other words, according to Thomas, the process of racial reconciliation was a testimony to, or proclamation of, the power of the cross and Christ to break down racial barriers. By crossing the racial/ethnic divides



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that were so deeply carved into their culture, members of the early church displayed the hope they felt that Jesus had to offer the world. By framing racial reconciliation as a biblical concept that was in fact only possible by the “power of the cross,” Thomas also cast the issue of racial reconciliation as something that demonstrated God’s power. In this light, racial reconciliation was not a hard sell, but something exciting and appealing to any Christian student who wanted to live out his or her faith and “the power of the cross.” Thomas asked the students, “I just think we need to ask ourselves who we want to be more like, who do we want to resemble more, the Jews who choose to hang around people like themselves or the Jews from Cyprus and Cyrene?” Naturally the more favorable option was to be like the Jews from Cyprus and Cyrene, the ones whom Thomas had called “blessed by God” a few minutes earlier. His question struck me as being akin to another no-­brainer question, “do you want to have friends of other races?,” which in the twenty-­ first-­ century university has only one socially acceptable answer. Still, meaningful interracial friendships are less common than one might think in a society in which almost everyone supposedly wants to have friends of other races.2 Moving on, Thomas offered his viewpoint on why Christians at CU and elsewhere were not crossing racial boundaries: “As I see it, the major block that the majority of us Christians face when trying and wanting to be a racially reconciled community is our tendency towards comfort. Comfort is our great barrier. Comfort leads us to hang around people like ourselves, right? Comfort leads us to be unaware about the experiences of other people around us. Comfort leads us to take the kingdom of God and apply it primarily around our own.” As a remedy, he called for displacement, noting that at first the Jews of the early church did not cross ethnic lines but, after facing persecution, intentionally left their comfort zones and crossed ethnic lines to spread Christianity. Thomas urged students to choose both displacement and intentionality over comfort: One issue that has come up as I’ve been talking to different people in IVCF has been just this sort of barrier: “I feel hesitant to try cross-­ ethnic relationships because I don’t have a sense of my own ethnic identity.” I think that is an issue, and my challenge to all of you who

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feel that is to continue to choose displacement that God has offered, because I believe that one of the great ways of beginning to embrace our own ethnic identity is when we interact with people of other races. Sometimes through interaction and displacing ourselves, we see more of who we are. And I believe that this is awesome. . . . But I think we need to remember that the emphasis is on the word intentional. If we are left to ourselves, we will not choose to displace ourselves. In fact, we will choose comfort, right? If we’re left to ourselves, that’s what we’ll do.

By highlighting intentionality and displacement, IVCF was coming full circle, back to its first efforts to make race matter in the mid-­1990s. Thomas invited two alumni, a Chinese American female and a Mexican American male who were a married couple, to offer their testimonies about engaging in cross-­cultural relationships during college. The woman had co-­led a Bible study for black students while the man had been ministered to by an Asian American. Both were now a part of a multiethnic, multiclass church founded by IVCF alumni. After they had wrapped up their story, Thomas came back to the microphone. His voice took on an almost wistful tone as he referred to how things were “back in the day.” Still, he addressed the future: “That’s where our community is going; that’s where the kingdom of God is going. . . . Here at CU, ignoring racial dynamics is just sort of ridiculous because, whether you like it or not, it’s in our face every day. We just have the choice of whether or not we want to engage with it or not. There need to be more places in our lives where we can engage and have dialogues about race.” He noted that the Asian American forum was one example of such a dialogue and also referred to a group of white students who had gathered the year before to study a book on whiteness. Then he announced that the first Race Matters of the year would be held on the following Tuesday and that all small groups would be canceled so that everyone could attend. He closed his talk with this remark: I believe that racial reconciliation and multiethnicity are at the heart of our identity as Christians. We have to look back at our history as people of God and look at the fact that [the reason] we are even called Christians is rooted in the fact that we are people who are called to cross ethnic lines. It is rooted in our identities. I



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feel like there’s some folks here feeling the hand of God Almighty. Maybe you’re feeling that this is the word for me tonight, and if that’s you, I just want to pray a blessing on you. Because this is not something that is easy and this is not something that just comes naturally. Because if we’re left to ourselves, we will choose comfort, so we need the grace of God.

He asked students to stand if they wanted to receive special prayer to move forward in racial reconciliation. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that Rosa, a Latina student, was one of the first to stand. A few others followed, a mix of white and Latino/a students as well as Kevin, a multiracial Asian American student. Most were IVCF leaders, although Kevin and a few others were first-­year students. I took a quick scan of the room: other than Kevin, it appeared that none of the Asian American students was standing, even though they made up almost two-­thirds of the students in attendance. I wondered what that meant.

Linking Values, Practice, and Structures Bringing Back Race Matters Thomas’s talk was critical because it broadcast IVCF’s values in a public space, but the two Race Matters forums that IVCF held in the following weeks provided a space for students to wrestle with the values of racial reconciliation and diversity in a more intimate setting. Unlike Thomas’s powerful but somewhat abstract challenge, the Race Matters dialogues gave students an opportunity to listen to each other’s stories and understand how race had affected IVCF members on a personal level. In the first Race Matters, staff asked students to give themselves a number from 1 to 10 that rated how much race affected them on a day-­ to-­day basis at CU. Students split into small groups to discuss their experiences and then regathered in a large room, sitting in order of their number. As the 8s, 9s, and 10s (students who felt that race strongly affected their CU experience) shared their stories, I saw those on the other end of the spectrum crane their necks to listen. Thinking back to the tools that IVCF had used to foster its pursuit of a race-­conscious framing of faith, I considered the way in which the students had spent the

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first two quarters of the year building friendships and community with one another. Now when some of them were speaking up about how race affected them at CU, they were able to use the foundation of community in order to share their feelings openly. Two powerful incidents during these Race Matters dialogues stayed in my mind, reminding me that IVCF’s community was a powerful organizational space in which to nurture student engagement around diversity issues. One involved the personal development of a first-­year Asian American student, Tony. During the first Race Matters forum he espoused a sort of colorblind “I believe all people are members of the human race” rhetoric. Some older students in the room winced, but they proceeded to engage in thoughtful dialogue, challenging him to think of the matter from a different perspective. Several weeks later, during the second Race Matters session, Tony said, “It’s just encouraging to see that this many people came out to talk about race. Because I think being in our society race is like, well, people don’t really talk about it, and to see this many people here, you know that people are willing to talk about race. And I think that’s really encouraging.” I was caught completely off guard. Was this the student who had said a few weeks earlier that he would feel offended if anyone labeled him as Chinese American? A few weeks later IVCF distributed an end-­of-­the-­year newsletter. In a section where students listed things that they were thankful for, Tony wrote that he had a conversation about race with a black staff member in IVCF. He was on a journey. The other incident happened at the second Race Matters forum of the year. I joined a cluster of students that included Tom, a Chinese American junior, and Nelly, a white sophomore. Both said that they were feeling somewhat out of place during all of these discussions about race. Tom explained, “I’m fourth-­generation Chinese American and, yeah, my parents don’t speak Chinese or anything. I grew up pretty much white in San Jose and so . . . I don’t really think about race, like it just doesn’t come up for me much. Like we don’t even celebrate Chinese New Year.” His tone sounded almost disdainful; and to say the least, he seemed to feel that race had little relevance in his life. Wondering what he was doing at an optional event about race. I decided to probe further, asking, “Just out of curiosity, if you both say that you’re not sure how race matters . . . ?” My intent was to end the question



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with “So what brings you here today to talk about it?” but Tom jumped in before I could finish. “I know it matters,” he said. “I mean, it just doesn’t affect me that much because I’m in the majority, but I know it matters for people. I guess I feel it most when I hear girls in our class, like Latinas, talk about how they’ve been hurt or it’s been hard for them and I know that it matters, that it’s important to them. So, yeah, even if it doesn’t affect me directly, I know it’s really important.” Nelly nodded, and our group was quiet for a few seconds before we picked a Bible passage to discuss. Still, I was struck by the moment. As an Asian American male at CU coming from a predominantly Asian American hometown, Tom did not have to think about race as a member of the majority. Yet he was here today, and I remembered that he had also been present at the Asian American forum a few months back. His comments about the Latinas in his class reminded me of an aspect of community valued by Christians: if one person suffers or is hurt, others should share in that experience. In the New Testament, the apostle Paul compares the church to a body with many interdependent parts: “If one part suffers, every part suffers with it . . .” (1 Corinthians 12:26). Maybe Tom did not directly suffer with his peers, but he seemed to have developed a sense of empathy and recognized the legitimacy of their experiences. Interestingly, the next year he experienced issues of race head on when he started dating a black woman in IVCF. He, too, was on a journey; yet as an Asian American male at CU, it is unlikely that he would have been meaningfully challenged on the issue of race if not for his involvement in IVCF. The two sessions I observed differed remarkably from alumni’s accounts of Race Matters in earlier years, which they had characterized as high-­ intensity, conflict-­ ridden, and emotional. As I mentioned earlier in the book, “Did you ever cry at Race Matters?” was even listed as a quintessential IVCF experience on the group’s Facebook page. But even though there were a few disagreements during the sessions I attended, I saw no tears and nothing that I would describe as particularly explosive or conflict-­ridden. What explains this shift in dynamics? First, as an IVCF staff worker noted in one of the group’s regional reports on racial reconciliation, “the new generation of students deals differently: Interpersonal vulnerability as

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a start doesn’t work anymore. Systemic justice as the catalyst has become a more workable approach” (Harper 2004, 44). In line with her comments, I saw little of the confessional style of sharing that alumni mentioned; there were no admissions of the sin of racism and little mention of personal fault. Possibly such activity occurred in some of the small group discussions that I was not privy to, but it was not mentioned in any interviews when students shared observations of the sessions. I did, however, see them rally around issues of injustice as they organized events on issues such as human trafficking and children orphaned by AIDS. Second, in conversations with Doug, the former CU IVCF staff worker who pioneered Race Matters, I learned that he had doubts about its effectiveness among the current generation of students: “Thomas has inherited my model, and my model doesn’t work very well today. [It] worked pretty well ten years ago. I don’t think they do Race Matters any more. If they do it’s seldom. . . . I think it had a profound impact for a decade, and I think that they need a new model because it can’t handle some of the new dynamics, some of the new growth.” When I asked Thomas if Race Matters worked for the current generation of students, he responded: I mean, the way it was done in the past was, it was focused on an issue of tension, and at times it got pretty chaotic and I think that sort of deterred people away. But again, it’s that whole thing of you have an idea and then you have a theory and then you have a practice. I think it’s a great idea and the theory behind it is excellent. The practice of it has changed over the years, and at CU it’s changed because we realize that it was becoming unnecessarily volatile; that’s not the purpose of this thing. The purpose of it is to have space to talk about race. So I’m not going to ditch the theory or the idea just because the practice didn’t work out.3

The first Race Matters that I observed, when students self-­rated how race affected their experience at CU and IVCF, had the potential to develop into a volatile environment, but for the most part the tone was calm. While some of the younger students seemed to be a little confused about why IVCF was suddenly addressing race so directly, I also noted a sense of relief, especially among older students, that IVCF had opened up this forum, The



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second Race Matters had an even calmer tone; students discussed how lessons from Bible passages could be applied to racial issues and also talked about cultural traditions. Race Matters was still a productive exercise in the fellowship, but the manner of execution had evolved for a different generation of students, many of whom took diversity for granted or already expected it. IVCF students were attending college in a different context. Forget the culture wars; the value of diversity was mostly a given. Students just needed a space to have the conversations. Race Matters and the Asian American forum were part of what Peter Magolda and Kelsey Ebben Gross (2009) refer to as the “evangelical co-­ curriculum”—­powerful, outside-­of-­the-­classroom learning experiences that campus fellowships can foster. Granted, compared to most university-­ initiated programs, where dialogues are held more frequently throughout the course of a semester or a year, they are an informal approach to intergroup dialogue. However, a unique contribution of IVCF’s programming around race was that it attracted many students (evangelical Christians and students not enrolled in majors with much diversity-­related content) who probably would not otherwise participate in a university-­sponsored intergroup dialogue class or program. Race Matters gave students space to process issues related to race, encouraging them to be proactive about addressing its relevance and not just respond to crises. As I have shown throughout this book, without such intentionality, race can easily fade to the backburner. Another issue that might have affected the contemporary dynamics of Race Matters was the increased racial homogeneity within IVCF. People who share the same racial/ethnic background may still disagree on issues related to race, but I imagine that more potential for active disagreement and even conflict would exist in a more racially heterogeneous group. Thus, the relative absence of conflict in the sessions that I attended may have not been an entirely welcome development. With the guidance of skilled facilitators, constructive conflict can result in rich learning moments (Johnson and Johnson 2009). Considering that IVCF was a unique opportunity for Christian students who might not ordinarily engage in conversations about race, I wondered what students might have been missing out on during the discussions, although the dialogue was still constructive.

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The Return of BSM The last part of the second Race Matters session involved dividing attendees into a final set of discussion groups, this time based on where students would be living the next year. The discussion topic was “how will you work to promote racial reconciliation in your residence halls and small group communities?” I joined the group of students who would be living in Locke Hall. Earlier I had learned that BSM would return to IVCF the next school year, but with a twist. For the first time, CU would have ethnic theme halls in two residence buildings: one for black students and students interested in African American studies, the other catering to Latino/a students. IVCF leaders saw a unique opportunity. They decided that these residence halls would still have general IVCF small groups made up of students who lived on the other floors of the building, but they would also be the home bases for BSM and LaFe. Some of the BSM and LaFe leaders secured housing assignments in the halls, and they planned to hold their small group activities in those buildings with hopes of attracting the black and Latino/a students who lived there. Thus, each residence hall would be home to two IVCF small groups: one ethnic-­specific ministry and one general IVCF small group. Each residence hall would have one IVCF staff intern who would work both with both groups. The small groups planned to work as partners so that students would form friendships across the groups. The hope was that increasing interaction between the groups would help black and Latino/a students feel more comfortable in IVCF large group activities because their friendships wouldn’t be limited to just BSM or just LaFe. Locke Hall would house one general IVCF small group and LaFe, and the students in my Race Matters group spoke energetically and excitedly about their plans for the next year. This new structure for the ethnic-­specific small groups represented an effort to reconnect structures, values, and practice in IVCF. In earlier years IVCF had created the ethnic-­specific group structure to support black and Latino/a students’ well-­being in CU’s difficult campus racial climate. But over time the structure had become disconnected from the value of racial reconciliation as the small groups because more isolated and IVCF’s organizational commitment dwindled. The hope was that the new structure would encourage students to befriend each other across race, which in



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turn would foster the value of racial reconciliation. In other words, the new plan realigned IVCF’s organizational structure with its values.

Conclusion A few weeks after the second Race Matters took place, the school year ended. Looking back, I felt as if the year had been divided into two parts. During the first two-­thirds of the year, race had rarely been mentioned during IVCF programming. Then the first major discussion of race happened in a venue that was both public and private: although the Asian American discussion was announced to the entire fellowship, it was held in a more intimate setting. Because only one non–­Asian American student attended, the discussion felt like an in-­house conversation. The events that followed were more public, with Thomas’s talk reaching the broadest spectrum of the fellowship and publicly asserting IVCF’s values around race. By drawing on the Bible, a source of authority and truth to this Christian audience, he challenged students to step outside of their comfort zones, portraying racial reconciliation as an almost non-­negotiable part of Christian faith. Following his talk were two Race Matters, which combined small and large group discussions to help students process the issue of race within the life of the fellowship and CU. In these four events IVCF leaders worked to address race after a substantial period of public silence on the matter. As Thomas stated during his talk, “I think we need to remember that the emphasis is on the word intentional. If we are left to ourselves, we will not choose to displace ourselves. In fact, we will choose comfort, right? If we’re left to ourselves, that’s what we’ll do.” Without students who actively and intentionally reached out across racial lines, the result was a fellowship that was increasingly Asian American and white. In previous chapters I have used the terms organizational transformation and changes in organizational culture to describe what happened to IVCF in the decade following its efforts to make race matter. How did such efforts unravel so quickly? Had there really been a change in the group’s organizational culture? Was that change fundamental or more superficial? Revisiting Edgar Schein’s (1990, 2004) concept of organizational culture, which he sees as having three layers—­ artifacts/structures, values, and underlying assumptions—­ I contend that, for IVCF, slippage mostly

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occurred in artifacts, defined as visible organizational structures and practices, and values, defined as espoused strategies, goals, and philosophies. I do not mean to suggest that IVCF had turned its back on the actual values of racial reconciliation and multiethnicity. Rather, it had lagged in espousing its strategies, goals, and philosophies around those values. However, the deepest level of organizational culture—­the underlying assumption that racial reconciliation, diversity, and race consciousness were important and relevant to faith—­was still intact. Furthermore, that assumption was deeply ingrained in the students, staff, and general culture of IVCF. Otherwise, individuals would have challenged the relevance of events such as the Asian American forum and Race Matters. Race consciousness, not colorblindness, was the norm in IVCF, although new members still needed time to understand and adapt to it. In the early and mid-­1990s, IVCF had still been questioning whether or not racial reconciliation was really a biblical value, but now the legitimacy of racial reconciliation was a given. The question was just about how to implement it. Thus, the IVCF events that directly addressed race sought to re-­create congruency between organizational structures, espoused values, and practice. First, the Asian American discussion drew attention to how the fellowship cultivated a culture of comfort for Asian American students rather than a culture of inclusion. Second, Thomas’s talk asserted the values of IVCF around racial reconciliation and provided a biblical rationale for why Christian students needed to recognize the relevance of race on campus and in society. Finally, the Race Matters events encouraged students to talk to each other openly about race. As the residence hall plans show, IVCF chose not to abandon the ethnic small group structure but to redesign it in a way that would encourage opportunities for interracial friendship. These changes did not mean that IVCF’s issues around race were over. If anything, by bringing them out into the open and communicating the fellowship’s commitment to pursuing racial reconciliation, IVCF was now responsible for putting its values into practice, which would require a greater amount of time, effort, and intentionality. However, by taking steps to link organizational structure, espoused values, and practice, it was on its way to once again making race a pivotal issue within the life of the fellowship and students. Whether CU would be able to recoup the diversity lost over the past decade was yet to be seen.

Conclusion

In February 2010 the University of California, San Diego, received substantial national media attention, not because one of its renowned faculty members had won another Nobel Prize but because a group of students had thrown a seriously offensive ghetto-­themed party. The hosts of “the Compton Cookout” invited women to dress in a manner emulating “ghetto chicks,” who, in the words of the invitation, “usually have gold teeth, start fights and drama, and wear cheap clothes.” In so-­called honor of Black History Month, the menu for the night was “40’s, Kegs of Natty, dat Purple Drank—­which consists of sugar, water, and the color purple, chicken, coolade, and of course Watermelon” (“UCSD’s Racist Event ‘in Honor of Black History Month’” 2010). When the invitation leaked out to the public, the campus community, the NAACP, and even members of the California state assembly condemned the event; and other troubling incidents, such as a noose found in a campus library, added fuel to the fire. Being black at UCSD was already hard enough: black enrollment had been dropping steadily in the years following Prop. 209, and in 2010 it was now at a dismal 2 percent.1 Campus conditions were such that a white or an Asian American student had very little chance of even sitting in class with a black student, let alone one from Compton. In the following weeks, a number of student organizations mobilized to protest the Compton Cookout, and one event featured a sizable group of students and staff members from UCSD’s IVCF chapter. Dora Yiu, the staff 143

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team leader, documented the gathering in the 2010 annual report for IVCF national: “Our 170 leaders came together and decided to pray during the protests that were planned by groups on campus. We walked to the protest together, wearing armbands with the word ‘PRAY’ written on them. At the protest, we sat in solidarity with those who were hurting on our campus. We spent the day in prayer and offering prayer to those around us. We have been intensively studying what it means to have an ethnic identity and be on a multi-­ethnic journey together.” When I read her description, I felt impressed by IVCF’s ability to mobilize so many students to address issues of race and diversity as well as offer spiritual support to students in the aftermath of the incidents. Given spirituality’s role as a source of resilience for many students of color, these contributions were sorely needed (Constantine, Wilton, Gainor, and Lewis 2002). Still, part of me also regretted that, no matter how much time, energy, and resources students dedicated to issues of race and equity, Prop. 209 and other barriers to equitable access seriously limited the ability of IVCF groups at both UCSD and CU to cultivate racially diverse memberships. What the IVCF chapters at these campuses did with their students is no small feat.2 But what kind of multiethnic, multiracial community is really possible at institutions in where black enrollment is limited to 2 to 3 percent of the student body? Racial diversity in an institution, when accompanied by a positive racial climate, is associated with numerous educational benefits such as enhanced critical thinking, respect for diverse viewpoints, empathy, and prejudice reduction (Antonio et al. 2004; Chang, Denson, Sáenz, and Misa 2006; Gurin et al. 2004; Tanaka 2003; Villalpando 2002). In an amicus brief filed in Fisher v. Texas, Attorney General Kamala Harris and colleagues emphasized the social relevance of such benefits: “The honing of critical-­ thinking skills with respect to the issue of diversity can contribute to a more sophisticated and nuanced interpretation of cultural differences and conflicts, which in turn may help to identify the root sources of racial, ethnic, and cultural conflicts. . . . The successful development of such critical thinking skills, however, is improbable if culturally diverse voices are absent from the college classroom” (Brief of the State of California 2012, 11). Through U.S. Supreme Court affirmative action cases and beyond, universities have articulated that a racially diverse student body is linked to

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important educational and civic goals for students both during college and as citizens in a diverse democracy. Such an environment is virtually impossible for institutions to achieve without racial diversity, and the potential of the university goes unrealized when students cling to what is familiar rather than meaningfully engaging with difference or challenge. The colorblind society that Ward Connerly, who initiated the policy, and others felt that Prop. 209 would nurture is far from a reality. CU failed IVCF when it did not (or could not) nurture the structural conditions that allow racially diverse student subcultures to exist and flourish. Yet on an organizational level, the IVCF story is an optimistic one: the fellowship transformed itself from a predominantly white organization that rarely addressed issues of race to a racially diverse group that bridged the worlds of race and faith. The odds were dauntingly stacked against it, given that religion is the most segregated arena of American life. At its best, IVCF is an example of how a university’s potential can be realized, as students from diverse backgrounds, many of whom had never before engaged on issues of race, became part of a community that tackled diversity and difference. Although, for a time, IVCF neglected to continue addressing these issues, students and staff rallied to once again make racial reconciliation a core priority. Recognizing race and fostering diversity had become core parts of IVCF’s organizational identity, an outlier on a campus where other Christian organizations were racially homogeneous and did little to address such topics of race. On a structural level, however, the IVCF story is far less optimistic. While IVCF’s diversity was dependent on its organizational commitment to pursuing racial reconciliation, it was also contingent on the literal availability of a racially diverse population at CU. As Peter Blau and Joseph Schwartz (1984) have said, “we are obviously not free to become friends if there are no opportunities for such friendships in our surroundings” (13). Even with the best of intentions and efforts, IVCF was severely limited in its ability to attract a racially diverse group of students when there were so few “opportunities for such friendships” in the surroundings of CU. This heterogeneity was even harder to achieve when black student enrollment dropped so precipitously after the passage of Prop. 209. As a numerical minority, black students became more vulnerable to marginalization, and the chilly campus racial climate reinforced their minority status. Both

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dynamics made it more difficult for them to stay in a community such as IVCF. As the fellowship pursued its goal of promoting a race-­conscious vision of faith, black students had to shoulder a disproportionate amount of responsibility to make that vision come to fruition. As black enrollment continued to dip, there were fewer and fewer black students at CU who could potentially join IVCF. Even though the fellowship renewed its organizational commitment to pursuing racial reconciliation and supporting BSM, the group’s best efforts will most likely continue to be limited by CU’s structural failure to recruit and retain a racially diverse student body. Student subcultures such as IVCF work as filters between the broader structural diversity of the university and the micro interpersonal relations that students have or do not have across race. Not only is structural diversity a necessary precondition for interracial contact and friendship, but it is a necessary precondition for creating and sustaining racially diverse subcultures in which students will have a greater likelihood of crossing racial divides.

Resisting Homophily: The Importance of Race-­Conscious Intentionality within Organizational Culture The goals of racial reconciliation—­both the secular university’s project of promoting positive race relations and Christianity’s vision of racial harmony—­are laudable, but they are also inevitably affected by the inequities that shape the landscape of the United States. Pessimistic as this outlook may be, the IVCF story shows that there is still much that universities can do to nurture and attract diversity. Clearly, they should foster racially diverse student subcultures through campus organizations, majors, residential life communities, and other venues, thus creating environments in which students will have a greater chance of interacting and befriending one another across racial lines. But how how can such organizations best use common goals to bridge racial divides (Allport 1954)? And which model is more useful: colorblind, ethnic transcendence or race-­conscious, ethnic reinforcement? Questions about effectiveness are best addressed by understanding the aim of diversification. If racial diversity is a primary desired outcome in and of itself, the ethnic transcendence approach can work effectively

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in certain contexts. Such efforts still require intentionality; just changing symbolic markers is a necessary but usually insufficient remedy.3 However, if the goal is racial reconciliation and racial justice, in addition to diversification, the story of IVCF testifies to the essentialness of race-­conscious intentionality. For the deep wounds of past racial conflict are a fundamental part of the American legacy. Aptly, President Barack Obama (2008), on the campaign trail in Philadelphia, referred to slavery as “this nation’s original sin” during his historic speech on race. His presidency itself is a testimony to the continuing significance of race: while much of America claimed to hope for a post-­racial president, people on both sides of the political spectrum have treated him as anything but.4 Truly, navigating race in today’s diverse democracy requires a certain amount of intercultural competence. Efforts to pursue racial reconciliation or its secular equivalents are highly limited without an intentional effort to understand why and how race matters, which requires bringing the topic of race into the open. Regardless of which method or combination of methods that organizations employ, intentionality is critical to constructing an organizational culture that attracts and sustains diversity. Human beings do not form relationships on a random, neutral basis; the default trend for voluntary associations is homophily, where likes attract likes based on perceptions of shared attributes. Intentionality around race both diagnoses and counteracts this pattern. Without an intentional focus on race, not only did the percentage of Asian Americans at IVCF come to parallel the percentage at CU, but it exceeded that percentage when the fellowship’s Asian American population snowballed. Throughout my fieldwork, IVCF alumni and staff kept bringing up the importance of intentionality. For a while I dutifully noted that the word kept popping up but did not think too much about it. The concept felt too amorphous and abstract to be relevant. Eventually, however, I realized that intentionality was the intervention that prevented IVCF from cycling into racial homogeneity. In the realm of organizational culture, values and ideals have to be communicated explicitly until they are internalized as unspoken, normative behaviors. Yet intentionality may strike some as an awkward measure. In the United States, openly and intentionally addressing race can feel contrary to the ideal of treating everyone equally. Still, fair

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and equitable treatment does not preclude awareness of how race shapes social environments. In IVCF’s case, the group decided to be intentional about asking the Asian American students to address their majority status in the group; it decided to be intentional about trying to stem the attrition of black and Latino/a students. While intentionality occasionally did make students feel tokenized, its absence led to a less diverse IVCF.

Structural Diversity: Insufficient but Still Necessary Higher education articulates lofty goals for student engagement with diversity, but without racially diverse student bodies it is ill-­equipped to meet them. Although structural diversity alone cannot reap these outcomes (Chang et al., 2006; Hurtado, Milem, Clayton-­Pedersen, and Allen 1998), the IVCF story underscores the institutional need to recruit and retain diverse student bodies in order to create and sustain environments that are conducive to interracial interaction and friendship, dialogue across difference, and a sense of community. Following Prop. 209, CU became an increasingly homogeneous campus. Not only did the system lack the tools of affirmative action, but outreach programs meant to broaden access to the university were constantly under threat. As stated in the amicus brief filed by the State of California in Fisher v. Texas: In the wake of Proposition 209 . . . this State’s public institutions of higher education have endeavored to achieve a suitable level of student body diversity without reliance on race-­conscious admissions standards. They have not been successful in achieving a level of diversity that will adequately educate and prepare students for social and civic life following graduation. If California, with the broad diversity in its population, cannot achieve a suitable level of diversity at its universities, other states, with more homogeneous overall populations, will face even greater challenges. (Brief of the State of California 2012, 2)

Restoring affirmative action to California public institutions will be no panacea, for the state’s educational opportunity continues to be stratified by both race and class (Teranishi and Parker 2010). Still, race-­conscious

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admissions policies are an indispensible aid, and institutional experimentation with other strategies such as race-­conscious policies in combination with class-­based affirmative action is critical. Just as race-­conscious intentionality is needed to foster organizational cultures that promote diversity, intentionality is needed to craft more equitable admissions systems. Institutions should continue to use holistic, comprehensive admissions policies that consider the multidimensionality of students and their potential for success. Diminishing reliance on the SAT, restricting legacy admissions, embarking on proactive outreach, and increasing financial aid will all support equity, excellence, and diversity in institutions. The societal inequities that affect the K–­12 educational system are staggering, and they dramatically affect who is able to afford and attend college, let alone participate in multiethnic communities on campus. Would IVCF at CU be able to regain its racial diversity if structural diversity at the institution increased? Such projections are difficult to make; but if the group successfully maintained its organizational commitment to diversity and the structural conditions of CU were optimum, diversification would be quite likely. As of now, racially diverse IVCF chapters exist at institutions such as the University of Illinois, Chicago; the University of California, Riverside; and Amherst College.5 At all of these institutions, the diversity of the organizations is enabled by the structural diversity of the student body, among other factors. Group leaders work hard to nurture organizational commitments to multiethnicity and racial reconciliation; such diversity is not accidental but has been cultivated through intentional effort. Through their investment, generations of students have crossed racial boundaries to laugh, pray, and share life together. These communities show that diversity in voluntary student subcultures—­the very groups that tend to be racially homogeneous due to their tight-­knit nature—­is possible when universities provide students with the necessary structural conditions to help make them a reality.

Understanding the Complexities of Choice: Connecting the Macro and the Micro Too often discussions of campus race relations do not acknowledge the policies that affect structural diversity, or the lack thereof. This disconnect

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results in a false aura of choice—­for instance, the assumption that students of color who supposedly self-­segregate do so solely on their own initiative (Abelmann 2009). While all students have a certain amount of agency and make choices about how and where to spend their time, a broader context influences their patterns of social relations. When noting that black students at CU were more likely to spend their time with peers of the same race rather than join IVCF, an observer might have tagged these students as separatist, interested only in associating with their own. But if we shift the focus to the broader racial climate, we realize that, on a campus where black students formed only 3 percent of the population, nearly all of them were already spending most of their day interacting across race in the classroom and needed time to recharge with peers who could identify with their experiences. As this case study as well as numerous broad-­scale analyses of national data sets show, the interpersonal relationships that students have or do not have across race are embedded in multiple layers, including the contexts of organizational culture and the structural diversity of institutions.6 In turn, structural diversity is embedded in contexts that include but are not limited to admissions policies, high school quality, and educational opportunity, all of which are shaped by many other policies and structures.7 It is easy to feel overwhelmed by the complexity of social forces that influence a seemingly simple scenario: the existence of a multiethnic campus fellowship and its struggle to sustain its diversity. While it may be unnecessary to explicitly acknowledge every layer that affects interpersonal and intergroup relations on campus, I believe that the IVCF story is a powerful reminder of the way in which microlevel relationships and macrolevel structural conditions intersect to shape opportunities for students to cross racial divides and learn from one another. People often struggle to articulate how race matters (Pollock 2004), and educators need to be aware of how these multiple layers of context—­political realities and structural inequality—­both subtly and overtly shape the social lives of students. At the end of the day, a focus on the micro dominates our interpretation of American life. Individuals come together in schools, places of worship, and neighborhoods to live out the daily challenges and joys of life. Still, life trajectories are undoubtedly shaped by the macro social forces of stratification and segregation; and even in the twenty-­ first century,

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race and racialization influence where people go to school and with what resources, where people are willing to worship, and who can afford to live in what neighborhood. The university is uniquely positioned to disrupt the tides of stratification and segregation. In the micro view, the history of IVCF at CU is largely a success story, especially given the demographic limitations of the student body. Fellowship alumni have gone on to found multiracial, multiclass congregations, relocate to racially and socioeconomically diverse neighborhoods, marry across racial lines, and undertake occupations that advance the common good—­life changes that many alumni attribute to their involvement in IVCF during college. At the same time, IVCF’s goals were both enabled and inhibited by macro social forces that transformed CU from an almost completely white campus a century ago to a more diverse institution and then limited racial diversity in the student body in more recent years. At the end of my study, IVCF renewed its organizational commitment to addressing race and working towards racial reconciliation. The question remains whether universities will be able to attract the diverse student bodies that groups such as IVCF need to help students understand that race matters, both inside and outside the ivory tower.

APPENDIX

To date, the vast majority of the research on cross-­racial interaction and the benefits of diversity has been quantitative (see, for example, Chang 1999; Denson 2009; Gurin, Dey, Hurtado, and Gurin 2002; Pike and Kuh 2006). Consequently, we have less documentation of the nuances of student experiences in multiethnic environments. Benjamin Baez (2004) argues that one drawback to an extensive reliance on quantitative research to understand and defend diversity is that categorizing individuals by racial/ethnic groupings can lead to “essentialist and foundational claims about racial differences” (289). He also notes that such studies limit the benefits of diversity to those that can be quantified versus more “immeasurable . . . norms, values, and practices that make up what one means by ‘education’” (289). I am conscious that in qualitative research we, too, run the risk of racially reducing our participants: “a black male student,” “a Latina sophomore.” However, at a minimum, qualitative methodology and methods allow us to delve into the complexities of students’ lives and their experiences with diversity.

Methods: Why Ethnography? I used ethnographic methods to study IVCF from January to May 2006 and again from October 2007 to June 2008. Why ethnography? A rich body of qualitative research exists on the experiences of students of color in the university, including the challenges that they face in accessing higher education (Fann 2002; Freeman 1997; Lee 1997; Yosso 2005) and the difficult campus climate that they often encounter (Harper et al. 2011; Martinez Alemán 2000; Solórzano, Allen, and Carroll 2002; Winkle-­Wagner

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2009). However, the element of time is often missing from these studies because sustained participant observation is generally impractical and highly time-­consuming (Duster 1991). Still, ethnographic methods, particularly sustained participant observation, in-­depth interviewing, and thick description, add an unparalleled richness to the research process, which itself becomes part of the finished project as the researcher is forced to reflect upon the experience of research, challenge his or her own assumptions, and look for disconfirming evidence (Erickson 1986; Hammersley and Atkinson 1995). Engaging with the research environment over time is critical for establishing relationships and rapport with study participants as well as examining how they change, or do not change, during the course of the study.

Participant Observation and Negotiating Entry Participant observation occurred in several venues. During the year I attended weekly large group gatherings of IVCF. These meetings were the central gathering hub for IVCF students; they were the primary public face that IVCF showed to the larger campus. Students of all involvement levels attended these meetings. I also attended many, many IVCF events throughout the year, including a weekly morning prayer meeting, two sessions of Race Matters, weekly Bible studies held by the Korean American small group, and miscellaneous events. Finally, I simply hung out in a variety of informal settings—­eating meals with students, lingering after events, and walking with students across campus. I had to negotiate relationships with two primary gatekeepers. During the 2006 pilot study, I obtained permission from the CU IVCF staff team leader at the time to shadow the group. During this time I mainly attended large group events and interviewed students. Toward the end of the year, I encountered an unexpected obstacle when the staff team leader said that had she known the extent of my research, she probably would have not granted my original request. It was clear that we had some misunderstandings about the parameters of my research and I wondered if I would be able to return to IVCF for my dissertation. At this time I felt an array of mixed emotions. Kelly Chong (2008) notes that while there are often uneven power dynamics between the

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researcher and the researched, with the researcher traditionally holding more power, power dynamics can also make the researcher feel vulnerable and subordinate. Unlike Chong, I did not have to deal with the tension of not sharing the general religious beliefs of my participants. However, throughout the fieldwork process, I often felt the tensions and emotions she described, especially when my entry into a specific event was contingent on obtaining permission from someone else. Perhaps because I shared a religious identity with my participants, I was eager in some way to have them like me and validate the worth of my research; thus, I was particularly sensitive to any negative reactions. At the same time, I understood their hesitation to let me into their space. In an unexpected turn of circumstances, the original staff team leader was promoted to another position and left CU. She told me that I was welcome to resubmit my request to the new staff team leader, and I was relieved to have a second chance. About a year later, I approached the new leader, explained my project, and asked for permission to shadow IVCF and conduct interviews with students during the 2007–­2008 year. He granted permission, and I resumed observations at the start of the new school year. When possible, I spoke to the leader who was coordinating a particular event before attending. Therefore, early in fall 2007, I contacted the leaders of LaFe and asked if I could shadow their small group during the year. After some consideration, they turned down my request, explaining that they felt it was better for the group to develop community without the presence of an outsider. Although I understood their reasoning and later was able to interview some individual members of LaFe, I was unsure what to do about my research plans. I wanted to study one of the ethnic-­specific small groups, but LaFe was no longer an option and BSM and Vishawasa were on hiatus during the year. This left me with KORE, the Korean American small group. At first I resisted the idea of going to KORE because I felt there was already enough existing research on Korean Americans and campus fellowships. However, my options were limited, so I emailed the KORE leaders, who very kindly granted my request. The time spent with them ended up being a rich resource for understanding students’ tensions about interacting across race (documented in Park 2011). Moreover, KORE and LaFe held several activities together, which gave me a chance to observe dynamics between them.

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For the most part, I had relatively unrestrained access to IVCF activities. I attempted to integrate myself as extensively as possible into the everyday life of IVCF students: going out to eat, attending social events, and just hanging out. I was happy to receive invitations from members via text message or Facebook (at the time, both were recent developments for researchers who were studying college students) but felt limited in my ability to join the fun because I was firm in my desire to leave campus by 11 p.m. At these times, I readily acknowledged the differences between myself and the study participants, most of whom followed nocturnal schedules. I just could not be everywhere at all times, which is one of the inevitable limitations of ethnographic research. I also held myself back from participating at times when I felt it was appropriate, sometimes because I was overwhelmed by the amount of data I had already collected, sometimes because of my own introversion or wariness about overintruding. However, the insights that I received from more informal interactions with students were advantages of participant observation. After each round of participant observation I wrote field notes documenting my observations of and reactions toward the events I had witnessed. I also wrote analytic memos that captured thoughts, observations, and insights throughout the course of fieldwork. These all become part of the data corpus that I analyzed periodically during the course of the study as well as at its conclusion.

Sample, Recruitment, and Interviewing I supplemented participant observation with individual in-­depth interviews with sixty IVCF associates, including thirty-­four current students, eight former and current staff members, eleven alumni, and seven regional or national staff members. The racial/ethnic breakdown was twenty-­five Asian Americans (41.6 percent), one Armenian (1.6 percent), twelve people who were black (20.0 percent), eight Latinos/as (13.3 percent), three South Asian American (5.0 percent), and eleven people who were white (18.3 percent). Twenty-­nine were men, and thirty-­one were women. Looking back, I note that the higher number of Asian Americans reflected both the group’s racial/ethnic composition and my relative ease about approaching them for interviews.

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Interviews were semi-­structured (Merriam 1998), meaning that I arrived with a list of possible topics and questions to ask the participant but was flexible enough to allow the interview to go in other directions. Interviews were audio-­recorded, kept on a secure server, and destroyed after transcription. I told each person that participation was completely voluntary and that he or she could withdraw from the study or abstain from answering particular questions at any time. All research protocols and the research design were approved by the CU Institutional Review Board. I recruited students through a variety of means. At the broadest level, I sent emails at the beginning of each quarter through the IVCF student listserv asking for volunteer participants. I also recruited through word of mouth and snowball sampling (Babbie 2004). Sometimes when I met students through IVCF events, I explained the study and asked them if they were interested in sitting down for an interview. To interview alumni as well as current and former IVCF staff members, I relied primarily on snowball sampling and directly contacting individuals. I offered a ten-­dollar gift card to interview participants, and funding for these incentives was generously provided by the UCLA Institute for American Cultures. Interviews lasted for approximately forty-­five minutes to an hour and took place at a location chosen by the participant. I wrote analytic memos after each interview documenting the content and tone as well as my own reactions. As part of the participant observation process, I collected documents such as leaflets and Bible study materials passed out at IVCF large group meetings or during small group activities. I joined the IVCF email listserv, which students often used to advertise events, look for roommates, and pass on articles of interest. I also joined IVCF national’s email listserv, which offered insight on the larger organization’s perspectives and positions.

Data Analysis I began preliminary data analysis in June 2008. Throughout the study, I had transcribed all interviews and recorded material, such as talks given at IVCF large group meetings; and I gave all study participants a pseudonym to conceal their identity. The data corpus consisted of these transcribed materials, analytical memos, field notes, any email communications from

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the IVCF listserv or personal communication with IVCF members, and fliers or documents passed out at IVCF events. I developed a set of preliminary codes based on common themes and trends identified through open coding. After I finished collecting data, I reread all components of the data corpus and, by hand, coded fifteen “resources for data” in order to identify themes or patterns.1 I developed sets of codes for four groups of participants: current students, alumni, former and current staff members, and individuals affiliated with IVCF national or other IVCF chapters. I then coded the rest of the interviews manually in ATLAS.ti, a qualitative software program used to assign and organize codes and quotations. While coding, I was particularly conscious about looking for cases of disconfirming evidence or variations within codes and themes (Erickson 1986).

Data Triangulation, Reliability, and Validity Although ethnographic and qualitative research does not claim to find and present a singular, ultimate truth (Freeman et al. 2007; Peshkin 1988), there are ways to strengthen validity and trustworthiness. To verify consistency, I triangulated data from three sources: participant observation, in-­depth interviews, and document collection (Lincoln and Guba 1985). I also conducted member checks; that is, I allowed participants to examine parts of the draft manuscript that featured their narratives so that they could confirm or challenge my interpretation of their remarks (Lincoln and Guba 1985). Some participants sent back comments, minor edits, or clarifications, and I incorporated their feedback into the manuscript.

My Identity As a Researcher: Assets and Limitations The role and identity of the researcher are particularly relevant in ethnographic studies because the researcher herself is the instrument for data collection. Further, as I noted in the preface, my own experiences led me to choose IVCF as a way to study the complexities of racial diversity. Regarding my identity, I am a second-­generation Korean American, and religion plays a significant role in my understanding of my ethnic identity (and vice versa). I grew up in Korean immigrant churches and attended a

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predominantly Asian American church throughout fieldwork. My religious experiences have also included two summers in predominantly black churches and seven years in predominantly white churches. Growing up in the midwest with few Asian Americans, I was sensitive from an early age to the role of ethnic identity in faith development and community life. Years later, a friend and I joked that we never socialized with the (predominantly white) fellow United Methodist congregation just a few miles away from our church. Instead, we got into a van and drove four hours to hang out with Korean American Presbyterians on the other side of the state. Denominational differences were moot, but the sense of belonging associated with being with fellow Korean Americans, and later Asian Americans, was powerful.2 While attending a college in which Asian Americans made up only affiliated 6 percent of the population, I sporadically attended an IVCF-­ campus group for Asian American students. Thus, it is possible that, as I undertook my research, my experiences as a beneficiary of IVCF-­affiliated programs may have biased me to focus on the “good” in the fellowship. However, it was impossible to ignore student critiques of IVCF, no matter how much they felt that they had benefited from it; and I did my best to feature their varying reactions to their experiences. In general, I felt that my identity was more of an asset than a liability. Introducing myself as a researcher who was also an alumna of IVCF at another campus was helpful in establishing rapport with participants. As an Asian American female who looked more or less the same age as student participants (I was often asked what year I was or what residence hall I lived in), I could easily blend in at IVCF events—­or so I liked to think at the time. In reality, I know that I always stuck out a bit, being rarely without my small notebook and audio recorder. As an insider to evangelical Christian culture, I had no problem participating in elements of IVCF activities, such as clapping my hands and singing along during worship. My past experiences also gave me some familiarity with the national IVCF organization, and I have friends who are IVCF staff workers on other campuses who sometimes gave me insight into the organization. However, I categorize myself as a semi-­insider rather than complete insider because my previous IVCF experiences differed markedly from the site that I studied. Even though I was a partial insider, I almost always felt self-­conscious about my presence. I got to know many

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students, but they always recognized that I was a graduate student and not truly a peer. As a semi-­insider doing ethnography, I did have certain disadvantages, mainly because I had my own assumptions about what students meant when they said certain things, particularly in regard to religious and spiritual experiences. Given my lifelong familiarity with Christian jargon and culture, I found it easy not to question what someone meant when he reported that he was “born again,” “touched by the spirit,” or “felt convicted by God.” I was conscious of my hesitation to probe these taken-­for-­granted phrases during the pilot study. Students would usually not volunteer to explain their everyday vocabulary, and at times I did not ask for an explanation, both because the phrases were part of my lexicon and because probing felt unnecessary or even intrusive. Unlike other ethnographers who have studied Christian culture but are not Christian themselves (Bramadat 2000; Peshkin 1986), it was easy for me not to problematize what I view as normal. Thus, because part of ethnography’s task is to disrupt the everyday, question the ordinary, and probe assumptions, this aspect of my identity was somewhat of a limitation (Hammersley and Atkinson 1995). Accordingly, I sometimes made an extra effort to question my assumptions and ask students to spell out what they meant when they said something that we both believed I already knew. I also asked colleagues who reviewed the manuscript to take note of assumptions or ungrounded inferences and revised the manuscript with these considerations in mind. Another way my identity played out during the research process was in the complexities of conducting research in a multiracial setting. This was one of the dynamics to which I was most sensitive during research: the quandary between wanting to study ethnic-­specific communities within IVCF but also to be sensitive to their need for safe space. For example, I wanted to observe a citywide IVCF worship night for Latino/a students, so I emailed the organizer for permission to observe. I vividly remember sitting in my graduate school cubicle hoping for an email to come in, watching the clock, and eventually realizing that no message was likely to arrive in time. I debated about just showing up: I knew that the organizer probably hadn’t checked her email and didn’t have any strong feelings against my attending the event. But because I felt that I needed to respect the boundaries of the event, I decided not to attend.

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Koreans, and to some extent Korean Americans, value a trait called nun-­chi, an unspoken sensitivity or intuition about knowing how to handle a situation. Nun-­chi can include knowing when to ask or not ask a question, sizing up a situation without saying a word, or having a special awareness of indirect communication. (For those unfamiliar with our species, Koreans and Korean Americans can also be an incredibly blunt group of people.) Nun-­chi can be a useful trait for an ethnographer, and I felt that I was continually drawing upon it during fieldwork as I noticed who was absent or present or decided whether or not to probe a participant further. But it was also a bit of a burden, and there are times when I wish I had been bolder and more direct. Still, in fieldwork it may be better to err on the side of caution. I also attribute some of my hesitation to my identity as an Asian American. I don’t mean to ascribe indirectness as an immutable characteristic of Asian American identity, but it is difficult to separate how I read a situation from my racialized socialization. Growing up as one of few people of color in a predominantly white suburb, I learned from an early age to continuously read other people, knowing that how I acted or interpreted things might change depending on the context and environment. This could have been either an observed trait picked up from my immigrant parents, who certainly did the same, a byproduct of racialization, or both. Regardless, my racial and ethnic identities have shaped my level of self-­ monitoring. One result was that I felt relatively more comfortable asking what I would consider more invasive or probing questions to other Asian Americans, especially Korean Americans, perhaps because I assumed that we had more of a shared understanding and common vocabulary. Naturally there were exceptions, and I remember feeling somewhat jarred about a less than ideal rapport with several Asian American participants in the study—­yet another helpful reminder that the purpose of ethnography is to disrupt assumptions about everyday life.3 Another result was that at times I held back when I felt as if I was encroaching on an ethnic safe space within IVCF, partially out of respect and understanding but also out of hesitation, of not wanting my intentions to be misunderstood. Other traits of my identity, personality, and disposition—­ being an introvert, being female, being a graduate student at the time of fieldwork—­ undoubtedly shaped my fieldwork experience, for better and for worse.

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Yet despite all of my faults and hesitations as a researcher, I do not think that the quality of the study or the trustworthiness of results was seriously eroded or compromised. Certainly the IVCF story and other narratives of diversity in higher education could be told from many different perspectives; and I encourage the white Buddhist phenomenologist, the agnostic Jewish feminist, and the Pentecostal Latina to bring theirs to the table because the field can only benefit from a multiplicity of understandings and interpretations of the complex dynamics of race in higher education.

Post-­Fieldwork Reflections Since the conclusion of my fieldwork, I have reflected continuously on the roles of multiracial and more homogeneous religious organizations. Much of this continued interest is due to my own changing circumstances: between 2008 and 2011, I moved several times; and my various religious homes have included a primarily Korean American church plant with multiethnic aspirations, an almost completely white congregation in rural Ohio, and a predominantly white but multiracial congregation in Washington, D.C. Needless to say, all of these experiences have brought to life my understanding of the research on race and religion in a deeply personal way. During the two years I attended church in rural Ohio, I experienced major displacement and discomfort but also rich community and meaningful exchanges around what it means to recognize ethnicity but also to be united in faith. After moving to the Washington, D.C., area, I considered returning to a Korean/Asian American congregation and visited several, only to be drawn back to a multiracial congregation, in part because of the value of multiethnicity but also because I wanted to attend church within walking distance of my home and be in a community with people who were in my general age bracket. Thus far, I have observed that multiracial congregations (especially those that recognize the significance of race) are difficult to create and maintain. Nor are they for everyone, and there certainly remains a place for ethnic-­specific congregations or those with a majority culture. Still, there is something powerful and special about being among people who seek to embrace discomfort and bridge racial lines as a testimony to the dividing wall that has been broken.4

A ppendix 1 6 3

On more than one occasion I have been asked, “Which is better, attending a multiracial or a more ethnically homogeneous church?” Usually the questioner is surprised to hear me say that both have value and drawbacks. Ethnic-­specific churches can facilitate social capital networks that support social mobility and general well-­being for people of color (Park 2012), which is no small thing in a society that is often indifferent to their needs. There are few places where people of color can be among their own; I am thankful for being able to grow up and see my parents comfortable in their own skin among co-­ethnics in the Korean American church. There are ethnic-­specific churches that form rich partnerships with churches of a different ethnicity or other spheres of the community, and ethnic-­specific churches that are more insular. Similarly, multiracial churches are not unequivocally positive or negative. I have seen multiracial churches in which congregants are truly invested in one another’s lives, and churches where diversity seems more like shallow co-­existence. Multiracial churches can be a powerful testament to breaking down “the dividing wall” or they can (unintentionally or not) trumpet a sort of post-­ racial discourse, as if there were no more walls that need breaking. The IVCF story continues to affect me, for I find myself wanting to choose comfort over challenge more often than I like to admit; and the words of Thomas, IVCF’s staff team leader, remind me of how neatly I fit into the general pattern of society: “If we are left to ourselves, we will not choose to displace ourselves. In fact, we will choose comfort, right? If we’re left to ourselves, that’s what we’ll do.” In rereading the IVCF students’ narratives, I often feel rebuked for not wanting to choose displacement over comfort yet inspired to work for a world that, as the students I interviewed said, can be “here on earth as it is in heaven.” We still may be on “this side of heaven” (Priest and Nieves 2007),but the dream is worth fighting for.

NOTES

INTRODUCTION

1. In this book I consistently use the terms white, Asian American, black, Latino/a, and so on to refer to various racial/ethnic groups within the United States. I recognize that categories used to describe race/ethnicity, and the concepts of race/ ethnicity themselves, are social constructs and that characteristics commonly associated with racial/ethnic groups are not a matter of biological determinism (Omi and Winant 1994). That said, the idea that race is a social construct does not negate its vast significance within society. It would be my personal preference to capitalize white and black as White and Black, but Chicago style dictates that they be lowercased when used in a sentence. 2. I primarily use the term multiethnic to refer to IVCF’s composition, mainly because it was the term that group members themselves most frequently used. Also, many campus fellowships at CU were not just racially homogeneous but ethnically homogeneous, so multiethnic indicates that IVCF’s student population included representation from multiple ethnic backgrounds. 3. For quantitative examples, see Chang and DeAngelo (2002) or Park and Kim (2011). 4. Since its founding, IVCF has had eight people serve as its national president or general secretary/chair, in contrast to its fellow parachurch organization Campus Crusade for Christ, which has only had one national president since the death of founder Bill Bright (Turner 2008). CHAPTER 1  THE CULTURAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXTS OF RACE, RELIGION, AND HIGHER EDUCATION

1. While Asian Americans form 20 to 40 percent of the population at numerous UC campuses, low-­income Asian Americans still face many barriers to accessing higher education. In particular, Asian Americans from Southeast Asian subgroups are severely underrepresented in higher education (Teranishi 2004). Other subgroups of Asian Americans, particularly males, have low retention rates at UC institutions (Kidder 2006). 2. For an explanation of how exposure to diverse viewpoints spurs cognitive development, see Gurin et al. 2004.

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3. The term also ignores the fact that segregation is an imposed policy and not a lifestyle choice. 4. Which depiction of campus racial dynamics is more accurate: pervasive self-­ segregation or high levels of cross-­racial interaction? Oddly enough, existing research points to a both-­and rather than an either-­or situation. For instance, Antonio (2001a) found that 92.9 percent of students attending a highly diverse institution agreed that “students on campus are predominantly clustered by race/ethnicity,” lending support to the self-­segregation assessment. However, only 51.9 percent agreed that “students rarely socialize across racial lines” (90). Analyzing eight selective institutions, Espenshade and Walton Radford (2009) concluded that, overall, student interaction on college campuses with those of the same race happens much more frequently than does cross-­racial interaction, in part because white students outnumber students of color and white students tend to interact primarily with members of their own racial group. Students of color also have higher rates of interracial friendship (J. J. Park 2012). 5. A food-­based illustration of homophily provided by Eugene Kim: if left together in a bowl of milk, two Cheerios will bob toward each other. 6. Hurtado et al.’s (1998) framework on the campus racial climate posits that several interrelated components contribute to the campus climate for diversity: structural diversity, the institution’s historical legacy concerning race and diversity, intergroup relations/interracial interaction, and students’ psychological perceptions of campus diversity dynamics. The framework that I present here is one effort to outline some of the processes involved in the third component of the campus racial climate—­the behavioral dimension that encompasses interracial interaction and by implication, intergroup relations. 7. Schein’s definition draws heavily from the business and organizational development literatures. I found it to be the most coherent and specific yet flexible definition to frame the aspects of organizational culture that I was interested in highlighting. 8. Other traits commonly identified with organizational culture include norms, rituals, and mission that can be both instrumental and symbolic (Tierney 1988). I use the term organizational culture in a more micro-­sense than it is typically used in higher education settings. In this case, I use it to describe an organizational culture of a student subculture that exists within the broader organizational culture of the university. For additional insights on organizational behavior in higher education, see Berger (2000). 9. Denson and Chang (2009) show that there are widespread benefits to students who attend campuses with overall high engagement on diversity-­ related activities, even when students do not actually participate in such activities. While these students may benefit from being in an environment that promotes diversity, their participation in more homogeneous



NOTES TO PAGES 21–27 167

subcultures of the university may prevent them from reaping other benefits associated with diversity. 10. For more insight on how the demography of student subcultures is perpetuated by colorblindness, see my article on Asian American women’s views of predominantly white sororities (Park 2008). 11. While the model was developed from ethnographic work, it has since been verified in part by quantitative studies (Kim and Park 2012; J. J. Park 2012; Park and Kim 2011). 12. Another prime intersection is at Christian colleges, as documented by Yancey (2010). 13. In spite of the secularization of the academy, Seifert (2007) points out that Christian privilege often persists on nonsectarian private and public campuses through the timing of holiday breaks, availability of worship space, and ignorance of other religious traditions. 14. Parachurch organizations are faith-­ based groups that may complement the work of churches but are not actual congregations. Examples include campus fellowships such as IVCF and Campus Crusade for Christ as well as organizations such as World Vision and Compassion International. 15. Although race has played a major role in the history of Catholic churches in America, my study focuses on the experiences of Protestants and, in most cases, evangelical Christians in America. 16. Since the publication of Emerson and Woo (2006), Emerson has noted that diversification has been occurring in megachurches, which are attended by about 7 percent of U.S. churchgoers (cited in Biema 2010). The threshold for being classified as racially heterogeneous is at least an 80/20 split between two racial groups. 17. This dynamic is more common among Protestants, who are not geographically tied to any congregation, than among Catholics, who are technically assigned to a local parish. For a comparison of diversification efforts in Protestant and Catholic churches, see Garces-­Foley (2008). 18. Notably, the negative effect of being involved in a religious student group on interracial friendship is even stronger than the effect associated with being in a fraternity or sorority, which has been singled out as one of the most negative environments for diversity (Milem et al. 2005). 19. Gurin and Nagda (2006) concluded that universities intentionally or unintentionally foster recategorization by giving students a common identity as members of a residential college, major, or program. 20. A similar process, dual identity, is described by Dovidio, Gaertner, and Saguy (2009). 21. Edwards (2008b) makes an important point by showing how even interracial churches that are actively committed to racial reconciliation may inadvertently reinforce white hegemony.

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CHAPTER 2  CHANGING A CULTURE: IVCF DECIDES TO MAKE RACE MATTER

1. While I use pseudonyms for most participants, Doug Schaupp, Sandy Schaupp, and Lisa Sharon Harper agreed to be named in the book. Both Schaupps still work with InterVarsity, and Harper is the current director of mobilizing at Sojourners. 2. Duster’s (1991) Diversity Project report and D’Souza’s (1991) Illiberal Education both capture the controversies over race and multiculturalism on campus during this time. 3. IVCF remains a decentralized organization in comparison with other parachurch organizations, with chapters in different areas of the country having strong regional identities. Nevertheless, over the years there have been efforts to centralize some of the organization’s work around multiethnicity. IVCF’s current efforts around multiethnic ministry are characterized by simultaneous top-­down and bottom-­up flows of influence. Venues and resources such as national staff conferences, Urbana, orientation for new staff, the vice president for multiethnic ministry, InterVarsity Press books, and the national leadership of IVCF’s ethnic-­specific ministries (for example, Asian American Ministries, Black Campus Ministries, and LaFe) provide more centralized direction. These sources may be especially influential in initiating or guiding multiethnic ministry in areas of the country that have traditionally not seen themselves as natural venues for multiethnic outreach, such as campus chapters that have been historically white in composition. At the same time, unique programming around multiethnic ministry is still often initiated at the grassroots level of an individual chapter, area, division, or region. Depending on the success of the program and its ability to be implemented in other parts of the country, it may be adapted elsewhere. During the early 1990s, however, coordinated efforts to centralize IVCF multiethnic ministry was still in its early stages, opening the door for experimentation at the local chapter level. Interestingly, a number of staff members across the country involved in pioneering multiethnic ministry at the local level have been promoted to regional and national leadership roles over the years, influencing the future course of IVCF’s commitment to multiethnic ministry. 4. While civil unrest and uprising are often preferred terms for describing the events of April 1992, I use riots to remain consistent with how participants referred to the incidents. 5. For more information on why religious communities might see diversity as incompatible with growth, see Garces-­Foley’s (2007) explanation of C. Peter Wagner’s homogeneous unit principal: the idea that congregations will grow more quickly when they target a homogeneous population. 6. As Emerson and Woo (2006) describe, often the original members of religious groups that come to embrace diversity respond to organizational change by voting with their feet and leaving the group. Hence, these organizations tend to go through a significant time of transition within the membership and leadership as the group’s commitments and approach to ministry evolve.



NOTES TO PAGES 47–50 169

7. Other examinations of multiethnic communities have identified displacement and the act of stepping out of one’s comfort zone as mechanisms to cultivate diversity in certain settings. Garces-­Foley (2007) noted that Evergreen Baptist Church of Los Angeles nurtured a theology of displacement in which members were encouraged to view some forms of discomfort or disorientation as vital to their spiritual growth. 8. Emerson and Chai Kim’s (2003) typology of multiethnic and/or multiracial churches helps contextualize the changes that occurred in CU’s IVCF. Although parachurch organizations such as campus fellowships differ in many ways from churches, that typology still helps clarify organizational change in religious organizations. Emerson and Chai Kim first categorize various impetuses for change. In IVCF the primary impetus for change was a decision to address the organization’s mission as opposed to resource calculation or a mandate from an external authority structure. While CU’s IVCF was part of a broader national organization that prioritized racial reconciliation, the changes that occurred in the CU chapter were not dictated by the national group. To use Emerson and Chai Kim’s terminology, an organization can be either an embracing or a charter group in regard to diversity. The primary distinction is that embracing groups already exist for some time and then seek diversity, while charter groups are founded with the intent of drawing diversity. Because IVCF at CU had existed for decades before the group decided to make racial reconciliation a top value and go out of its way to seek diversity, it can be classified as an embracing organization. CHAPTER 3  PURSUING COMMON GOALS: BUILDING CONGRUENCE BETWEEN RACE AND FAITH

1. To date, no studies of predominantly white fellowships address race as a central focus. Many campus fellowships exist as oppositional subcultures, shielding students from what leaders view as negative influences of the secular university and broader society (Bramadat 2000; Bryant 2004; Magolda and Ebben Gross 2009). Thus, the silence around race in studies of predominantly white campus fellowships may echo the general evangelical tendency to see race as worldly and irrelevant to spiritual life. 2. Differing views on theological concepts such as atonement theology may also influence attitudes about racial reconciliation and other social issues (Green and Baker 2000). In short, while united on certain fronts, evangelicals and Christians in general disagree on an array of theological and social issues. For a critique of racial reconciliation movements, see Anyabwile (2005), whose commentary focuses on the construct of race as biology but expresses wariness toward race consciousness in general: “We are to be living monuments of God’s glory in Christ, bearing the renewed image and likeness of God more clearly through faith in Christ, and living in the divinely-­given culture of the church—­a culture of holiness and righteousness, justice and truth. Failure to do this, I think, is the serious limitation of so many well-­intentioned racial reconciliation

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efforts. Those efforts seem to me to major on ‘race’ and to minor on Christ and His work in too many cases. Some approaches seem to suggest that merely embracing the ‘other’s’ ethnicity and culture somehow enhances our embrace of Christ. I think the opposite is the way forward. It’s as we tightly cling to Jesus that we find ourselves embracing other people clinging to the Savior. The cross reconciles men to God and men to each other.” 3. The concept of social justice has garnered broader acceptance in evangelical circles in recent years, although it is still far from being universally embraced. 4. Such framings of ethnic identity as subordinate to Christian identity are common in narratives addressing the relationship between ethnic and Christian identity. See Alumkal (2003) and Marti (2005) for examples. For other narratives on the way in which Asian American college students view the relationship between ethnic and spiritual identity, see Park (2004). 5. For accounts of Asian Americans who see Christianity as a way to distance themselves from negative associations with ethnicity, see Abelmann (2009) and Busto (1996). 6. The first chapter of the book of Genesis contains the creation story embraced by evangelical Christians and includes the repeated refrain “And God saw that it was good” after each description of what God has made. 7. See Ecklund (2005, 2006) for an analysis of how various approaches to framing ethnic identity may influence civic engagement. Ecklund (2005) also notes examples of Korean Americans in a multiethnic congregation who proffer the idea that their ethnicity is God-­given and therefore important. 8. His comments reflect a mutual differentiation model for intergroup relations, where individuals retain their distinctive cultural and group affiliations and identities but engage in collective activities (Hewstone 1996). 9. I originally wanted to title this book I Once Was Colorblind but Now I See as a tongue-­in-­cheek (yet serious) reference to the classic hymn “Amazing Grace,” published by John Newton in 1779. While none of my participants described their journey from colorblindness to race consciousness in those exact words, the phrase aptly captures how their accounts of the way in which they came to understand and grapple with race fit into the broader Christian narrative of rebirth and renewal. Themes of regeneration are at the heart of what Christianity claims to be: the lost are found; the blind see; the dead rise. As a way to capture this sentiment, evangelical Christians often refer to themselves as “born again.” In this chapter, a number of participants talked about how recognizing and pursuing racial reconciliation added an entirely new dimension to their understanding of the Christian faith; many came to see their faith, their community, and the world in an entirely different light. Perhaps it is only fitting that Newton himself was a slave trader turned minister—­yet another meeting point between race and faith over time. 10. Generally, staff members were more likely to use this rhetoric than students were, possibly because the term PC was in vogue during the culture wars of the 1990s, when most CU IVCF staff had attended college.



NOTES TO PAGES 63–67 171

11. In her study of IVCF in greater Los Angeles, Garces-­Foley (2007) observed a similar dynamic: “Given the resistance among young evangelicals to anything perceived as part of the ‘liberal, p.c. agenda’ of multiculturalism, the challenge on college campuses is to present racial reconciliation as an entirely different, biblically-­based way of approaching racial divisions” (64). 12. Another critique of the PC movement was that it made students settle for just being aware of injustices. In a document on the Race Matters program, Catherine wrote about the change that might occur as students develop awareness of racial injustice: “Race goes from an abstract concept that other people have problems with to something that impacts their own lives. Multi-­ethnicity becomes a desirable thing at this stage. Also, these students come to the realization that, actually, they are not guilt-­free, as they had previously thought. It dawns on them ‘I’m not 100% clean in this. . . .’ However, if we are not careful, many students can become stuck at this stage. The PC agenda says that awareness is everything. [Emphasis in the original.] In other words, if I can articulate the racial problems on campus and in our country, then I have reached the goal of sensitivity. It is a tragedy to let our students merely become aware of the dynamics. Articulation does not change any of the problems, and the kingdom is not comprised of words. We have to be sure to help our students emulate Jesus in the way He loved others in tangible and costly ways. We also must help them deal with their sin” (Harper et al. 2001, 48). While Catherine recognized that it was important for students to come to desire a multiethnic community, she warned that they could get stuck in the awareness stage, which she saw as a defining trait of the PC movement. She also raised another critique of secular efforts to address diversity: they did not address sin, which she perceived to be the main root of the problem. 13. In the Bible, Christians are warned, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2). In 1 John 5:4, the author wrote about Christians triumphing over the world: “For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world—­our faith.” Later in the same chapter, the author stated, “We know that we are of God, and that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (5:19). 14. If anything, the PC movement has been largely vilified across the political spectrum by liberals and conservatives alike, making it a convenient straw man for IVCF to critique (D’Souza 1991; Kimball 1990; Kronman 2007). 15. While some students gravitated toward IVCF because of its focus on race, others really had no idea about that focus or stumbled into the group through other means. However, I encountered a number of students who did seek out coursework linked to issues of race, poverty, and other social issues as a result of their involvement in IVCF, some of who stated that they probably would not have sought out such classes if not for IVCF. 16. How might higher education help build students’ toolkits or frames of reference for understanding issues of race? Like evangelical Christians, many students

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come to the university without significant experiences with diversity and lack the critical thinking skills needed to grapple with diversity and other complex issues (Gurin, Dey, Hurtado, and Gurin 2002). While university-­initiated programs such as discussion programs about race can help guide students through rich learning processes, not all will pursue such programs. Required classes on diversity are another venue to make sure that every student receives some exposure to diversity issues, but the mandatory nature of such courses may deter some students. The example of IVCF, which attracted many students because of its focus on faith, shows how existing student subcultures within higher education can be powerful agents for nurturing intercultural growth. Such groups offer community, friendship, and a sense of belonging, incentives for students to keep coming back, even for reasons that may be largely unrelated to race, at least at first. For example, Robert attended IVCF for two years before he began to engage deeply on issues of race. CHAPTER 4  “MAN, THIS IS HARD”: THE POSSIBILITIES AND PERILS OF INTERRACIAL FRIENDSHIP

1. Emerson and Smith (2000) observed a similar dynamic among white evangelicals who embrace friendships with people of other races but oppose structural remedies to societal inequities. 2. Kimberly is referring to Mark 10:43–­45: “Jesus called them together and said, ‘Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.’” 3. Pettigrew (1998) summarizes how various researchers have conceptualized equal status differently and notes that Allport stressed equal status within a situation versus equal status in all contexts. The incident at IVCF shows that unequal status within the broader university environment can carry over into student subcultures within the same institution, hampering intergroup contact. 4. On one hand, the incident between Paul and John could be classified as extreme and unusual. Such events were definitely not the norm within IVCF. Still, its effect on the fellowship cannot be understated, and black students routinely dealt with notable strains and racial microaggressions at CU and at times in IVCF. CHAPTER 5  SHIFTING STRATEGIES: GOING ETHNIC-­S PECIFIC

1. Multichapter models currently exist at institutions such as Harvard (multiethnic and Asian American chapters); the University of California, Berkeley (Filipino, black, Latino, and multiethnic); Ohio State University (multiethnic, black, and Asian American); and the University of Texas, Austin (black, Latino/a, fraternity and sorority, multiethnic, South Asian, and Asian American). 2. Numerous IVCF staff in other parts of the country, as well as members of national leadership, confirmed that the issue had been a source of tension.



NOTES TO PAGES 91–101 173

CHAPTER 6  WHEN RACE GOES ON THE BACKBURNER: IVCF LOSES DIVERSITY

1. The relationship between social action (including, but not limited to racial reconciliation) and evangelism is complex. Evangelicals have long debated which is a greater priority. Some organizations may emphasize one or the other, while others may view both as mutually relevant and highly important. For introductory reading on the subject, see Stott (1976) and the Lausanne Covenant (1974). A focus on evangelism did not necessarily mean that racial reconciliation could not be a complimentary focus or priority in IVCF. However, at about this time that I describe (2005–­2006), IVCF at CU would select an annual core value to direct most of its programming. Being relatively young in its commitment to racial reconciliation, the community was truly grappling with the question of “How to hold onto the value of ethnic reconciliation when it’s not the number one growth priority?,” as one internal document put it (Harper 2004). By 2008, when I ended observations, IVCF students and staff were discussing how to move to a more holistic model that would emphasize the interrelation of core values such as evangelism, racial reconciliation, community, and justice instead of picking an annual theme value. 2. He clarified that by “other places” he meant IVCF conferences or other events. 3. Interestingly, Robert, a white student, did not see Asian Americans as “somebody that is not like you,” reflecting the complicated racial positioning of Asian Americans in southern California. 4. These are numbers recorded by IVCF staff, but at no time did students fill out records that reported demographic data. Student participation also fluctuated slightly over the year. Still, they are the best and most comprehensive numbers available. 5. Diverse leadership is a critical component of multiracial churches (Dougherty and Huysner 2008). 6. In the same way, the large percentages of Asian Americans at the institution that Kim (2006) studied made the high number of exclusively Asian American and Korean American campus fellowships possible. Relevantly, the increase in Asian American enrollment at CU over the years was not primarily a byproduct of Prop. 209. Instead, it has been heavily influenced by the increase in college-­going Asian Americans statewide. Asian Americans are more likely to attend well-­resourced high schools and to be tracked into Advanced Placement and honors courses than are other students of color, making them more likely to be eligible to attend institutions such as CU. However, Asian Americans are demographically complex, and there is great variation in college-­going rates among Asian American ethnic subgroups as well as by socioeconomic status (Teranishi 2010). 7. In Kim’s (2006) description of Korean American fellowships, she noted the similarity between majority white fellowships and majority Korean American fellowships in worship style. In fact, students from the majority white group observed that Korean American groups worshipped in the same way that they did but with even greater professionalism and musical skill. There has been some disagreement about whether or not an Asian American worship style and

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tradition exists that is distinct from white cultural norms. Some of the most interesting conversations on this topic emerged after the phenomenal rise of New York Knicks point guard and IVCF (by way of the Harvard-­Radcliffe Asian American Christian Fellowship) alum Jeremy Lin in 2012. See Carl Park (2012) for a rumination on the uniqueness of Asian American evangelicalism. 8. Earlier in this chapter, I quoted a white student, Robert, who grouped Asian Americans and whites as similar to each other. However, this view was not shared by all. Context may be relevant, and Asian Americans were more likely to hold relatively equal status with whites in IVCF, where they were the majority demographic group, versus groups in which they were a minority. 9. Garces-­Foley (2007) notes the symbolic role of food in the culture of the majority Asian American, multiethnic congregation of Evergreen Baptist. 10. While media reports have noted that campus fellowships have turned predominantly Asian American on some campuses where these students are not the largest demographic group (Cho 1999; Swidley 2003; Stafford 2006), typically these campuses have several predominantly Asian American groups, but not well over a dozen as CU had. 11. My intent in quoting Doug is not to suggest that the “minority” experience that Asian Americans may have felt in an IVCF where they still made up 52 percent of the group is analogous to the experience of being a black or a Latino/a student in the group. Still, something in IVCF made Asian Americans feel like a minority. Perhaps they felt displacement because it was not a completely (or almost completely) Asian American group, as were most campus fellowships at CU, or perhaps their perceived minority status in IVCF was reinforced by their minority status in general society and the media. CHAPTER 7  WHEN A MINORITY IS THE MAJORITY: ASIAN AMERICANS IN IVCF

1. “Asian time” refers to Asian Americans’ loose sense of time and propensity to be late. 2. Garces-­Foley (2007) documented the role of ethnic jokes in demarcating insider/outsider status at Evergreen Baptist Church. 3. For an example of a different dynamic in a predominantly Asian American yet multiethnic campus religious community, see Abelmann and Lan’s (2008) description of AAC, a campus church at the University of Illinois. Although AAC had a dominant Korean American culture, the church both promoted and downplayed the significance of culture and ethnicity. However, in Abelmann and Lan’s account, assimilation into the dominant Korean American culture was seen as a marker of spiritual maturity and integration into the AAC community. 4. Later she noted that linking the diversity issue in IVCF to the growing Asian American presence made it easy to lump all Asian American students together. Other students at the forum also observed the underrepresentation



NOTES TO PAGES 126–138 175

of Southeast Asian American and Filipino/a students both in IVCF and at CU in general. 5. I realize that these conclusions may seem strange to any Asian American who has not lived someplace where Asian Americans constitute a significant portion of the population. While there may be some dynamics unique to a situation in which Asian Americans hold a majority presence, the reality is that any racial group can create a majority culture that inadvertently makes other groups feel less welcome, even in an organization that purports to be multiracial. In many other settings, whiteness is the majority culture that often goes undetected and unquestioned (Edwards 2008b). 6. At CU, the Campus Crusade chapter was almost all white. White students made up about 34 percent of the student body. 7. Probability calculation is based on a binomial with n = 5 and p.03. With a sample of 15,000 students, each selection can be treated as independent from one another. P(X = 0) represents the probability of 0 black students in a random sample of 5 students, 0.97^5 = 0.858734. Thanks to Miles Chen for helping me think through these computations. 8. The example has several limitations. Friendship groups are nonexclusive and not based on random sampling. The example does not capture other social realities, such as the fact that some friendship groups would have a higher proportion of black students, meaning that a greater number of friendship groups would actually have no black students present. CHAPTER 8  RENEWING A COMMITMENT: REALIGNING VALUES, STRUCTURES, AND PRACTICE

1. I have heard sermons on this passage throughout my entire life but, amazingly, had never heard ethnicity emphasized in it until I listened to Thomas speak. It is now impossible for me to read this passage without thinking of how staggering the task of overcoming an ethnic divide was at that time and continues to be. Yet I continue to hear teaching around this passage that glosses over or ignores “the hostility between us.” 2. McPherson, Smith-­Lovin, and Brashears (2006) found that only 15 percent of U.S. adults reported having a friend of another race with whom they discussed important matters. 3. In interviews with IVCF staff and leaders outside of CU, I learned that most shared Doug’s wariness about using Race Matters with the current generation of students. Others noted that the approach had not worked well outside of the west coast context, a reflection of how IVCF’s decentralized structure allowed for local innovation that could be adapted or rejected by chapters in other parts of the country. Other regions had signature or key programs that they saw as pivotal to educating students about racial reconciliation and justice, such as spring break or summer urban projects.

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NOTES TO PAGES 143–159

CONCLUSION

1. Tellingly, after the 2010 Compton Cookout, only 31.5 percent of black students at UCSD agreed with the statement “students of my race/ethnicity are respected on this campus,” by far the lowest percentage among those surveyed at any UC institution (Kidder forthcoming). Data come from the annual University of California Undergraduate Experience Survey administered to all UC undergraduates every other year. The second lowest percentage was from UC Santa Barbara, where 53.1 of black students percent agreed with the statement. 2. UCSD’s IVCF chapter is one of the country’s largest, with a membership in 2009–­2010 of 430. 3. Many organizations that are unsuccessful in implementing an ethnic transcendence-­based strategy for diversification seem to adhere to the old “if we build it, they will come” mantra: that is, if an organization has high-­quality programming, it will just naturally attract a diverse population, especially after a racially or ethnically specific name is dropped. But without a certain amount of intentionality, such efforts will likely fall short. While conducting fieldwork at CU, I found a group that had originally started as a Korean American fellowship but then decided to change its name in order to attract a more diverse population of students. Its website made overtures to diversity and welcoming all students. However, when I attended a meeting, I observed that all of the students present were Asian American. Perhaps the group had succeeded in transitioning from being all Korean American to welcoming other Asian ethnicities—­no small feat—­but it was essentially a racially homogeneous group. 4. The birther movement and multiple lynchings of Obama-­in-­effigy are sober reminders that racist vitriol has not vanished. 5. While most UC institutions have struggled to recruit and retain black students, UC Riverside has been able to attract a more racially diverse population. For additional information on Amherst’s IVCF chapter and its journey, see Sorrentino (2011). Amherst as an institution is renowned for its progressive commitment to both racial and socioeconomic diversity (Aries 2008). 6. See Antonio 1998; Chang 1999; Chang et al. 2006; Fischer 2008; Park 2010. 7. Bronfenbrenner’s person-­ process-­ context-­ time model of ecological development, as advanced by Renn and Arnold (2003), is a helpful way to grasp the multiple, embedded levels that influence an individual’s development. APPENDIX

1. Erickson (1986) argues that “the corpus of materials collected in the field are not data themselves, but resources for data. . . . All these are documentary materials from which data must be constructed through some formal means of analysis” (149). 2. When race was held constant, it felt as if we could somehow achieve a broader sense of multidimensionality among ourselves. No one had to be known as “the Asian kid” (We all were.), people could just be themselves—­popular, sensitive,



NOTES TO PAGES 161–162 177

shallow, vivacious, or nerdy (and you knew that if other Asians thought you were nerdy, you were truly, legitimately nerdy). I know that this sense of acceptance and fullness is far from a universal Asian American coming-­of-­age experience. Many friends have negative associations with their Korean American church experiences (“Korean church baggage”), feeling that environment was stifling to their sense of self. Korean American churches are also notorious for gossip, cliques, and materialism. 3. Yes, even after doing the secret Asian handshake. 4. At the time of writing, I transitioned from the predominantly white/multiracial church to a predominantly Asian American church. My reasons for transitioning were mainly “race-­neutral,” if such a thing is possible—­city life in Washington DC is fast-­paced, and I found myself desiring a simpler and smaller community. Still, in going to an Asian American church, the component of simply not having to think about race—­or at least to be able to think of it in a different context—­is admittedly more desirable to me than it has been in recent years. Church attendance for an ethnographer who studies race and religion is anything but simple. Currently a trend amongst socially progressive evangelicals is to decry comfort, and I understand the reasons for it. However, I wonder if the more specific culprit we should be condemning is complacency. The sense of psychological comfort that some (but not all) people of color experience in racially homogeneous congregations is not incompatible with challenge—­both challenge from within, and challenge from the outside world, including, but not limited to the continued currents of race, racism, and stratification.

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INDEX

Page numbers in italics refer to figures and tables. AAC (University of Illinois campus church), 174n3 admissions policies. See affirmative action affirmative action: admissions policies, x–­xi, 3–­6, 14, 66, 73, 144–­145, 148–­149; ban, x (see also Proposition 209); points-­based system, 3; restoration, 148; set-­asides, 3 agency, 5, 11, 17, 128, 150 Alaskan Native students, 9 alienation, 35, 73, 78 Allport, Gordon, 11, 18, 23, 25, 44, 49, 78 alumni, 29, 38, 40–­45, 70, 75, 78, 86, 96, 134, 137–­138, 147, 151, 156 Amherst College, 149, 176n5 Armenian students, 156 artifacts (organizational culture layer), 20, 48, 141–­142 Asian American Christian Fellowship, 7, 80, 103, 105 Asian American forum, 138 Asian American Ministries, 81, 168n3 Asian American students: attitudes toward, 52; CU enrollment, 9, 32, 90, 165n1, 173n6; discrimination against, 121; dual identity, 121; ethnic identity rejection, 57; evangelicalism, 173n7; home culture, 122; inclusion, 118, 123; invisibility, 113; IVCF membership, 31, 38, 41, 79, 93, 96, 97–­98, 100–­104, 107–­ 108, 112–­128, 156; link between racial reconciliation and racial justice, 72; marginalization, 113, 121, 123; model-­ minority myth, 113; racial reconciliation, 113; use of term, 165n1; worship styles, 101–­102. See also students of color Asian Staff Fellowship, 82. See also Asian American Ministries assumptions (organizational culture layer), 20, 50, 141 atonement theology, 169n2

Baez, Benjamin, 153 BCM. See Black Campus Ministries bias. See prejudice Bible, insights on race, 50, 51–­53, 66–­67, 79, 129, 131–­133, 137, 139, 141, 142 birther movement, 176n4 Black Campus Ministries (BCM), 82, 168n3 Black History Month, 143 Black Student Ministries (BSM), 10, 41, 84–­85, 87, 88–­89, 90, 96–­100, 120, 140–­141, 155 black students: CU enrollment, 9, 32, 73–­ 74, 87, 92, 96, 101, 109, 110; effects of Prop. 209, 73–­74, 81, 90, 100, 109, 145–­ 146; IVCF efforts to recruit, 31, 40–­41, 76–­78, 79, 84, 90, 91, 96–­100, 101, 102, 104, 146, 156; minority status, 73–­74, 80; resorting process, 15; underrepresentation at colleges, 4, 14; use of term, 165n1. See also students of color Blau, Peter, 17–­18, 109, 145 Breaking Down Walls (Kehrein and Washington), 36 BSM. See Black Student Ministries California Civil Rights Initiative. See Proposition 209 California University (CU): admissions crisis, 1; Asian American enrollment, 92, 127; black and Latino enrollment, 1–­2, 87, 92, 97, 101, 109, 110; changes in demographics, 5, 32; demography, 38, 130; diversity protest, 2; enrollment statistics, 1–­2; and Prop. 209, 69–­70, 81, 97, 144, 148; shift in ethnic-­ specific vs. multiethnic debate, 82–­84; student diversity, 1, 145; study setting, 9–­10 Calvary Baptist Church, 35 campus climate for diversity, 15, 18–­19, 22, 32, 73, 128, 153, 166n6

193

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Campus Crusade for Christ, 22, 32, 80, 122, 167n14. See also parachurch organizations campus fellowships. See higher education: campus fellowships campus racial climate. See campus climate for diversity Cara (Chinese American junior), 102–­103, 117 Carrie (Asian American senior), 87 Catherine (former staff team leader and CU IVCF alumna), 46, 51, 62, 171n11 Chang, Mitchell, 8, 14–­15, 145, 153 Check All That Apply (IVCF book), 56 Chong, Kelly, 154–­155 Christina (Chinese American student), 120, 123, 125 Cindy (Latina junior), 55–­56, 115, 129 civil rights, 23, 50 clustering by race. See self-­segregation colorblindness, 21, 24, 27, 50–­51, 58–­62, 67, 122–­123, 142, 145, 170n9 “The Commitment of InterVarsity to Biblical Multi-­ethnicity,” 32 common goals, 11, 18, 25, 49–­68, 74, 80, 146. See also Allport, Gordon Compassion International, 167n14 Compton Cookout, 143, 176n1 congruence, building, 49–­66 Connerly, Ward, 145 consolidated characteristic, 18 contact theory, 44 Courtney (white student), 88–­89 Crash (film), 43 “Creating an Acts 6 Racially Reconciling Community: How ‘Race Matters’ Works as a Campus Strategy” (IVCF paper), 52 creation, orders of, 50 critical race theory, 58 cross-­racial interaction, 8, 16–­19, 22, 27, 153, 166. See also diversity engagement; interracial friendship/interaction CU. See California University Danny (white IVCF senior), 52, 54, 91, 92 Darren (IVCF alumnus and staff member), 69, 96, 105, 109 Dave (Asian American IVCF student leader), 115, 121, 122–­123, 127 David (Asian American student mentored by Paul), 76 David Crowder Band, 101 demography, 37–­42, 81, 93, 97, 100–­104, 108–­109, 110, 128, 130, 168n6 discrimination, 16, 121 displacement, 37–­38, 46–­47, 48, 134, 169n7 diversity. See racial diversity; structural diversity

diversity engagement, 2, 3, 19–­20, 27, 148. See also cross-­racial interaction dual identity, 118, 121–­122, 167n20 Elijah (white IVCF member), 35 Emerson, Michael, 23, 44, 108 empathy, 44–­45, 137 equal status, 18–­19, 49, 50, 58, 70, 74, 78–­79, 169n2 Erica (black senior), 54, 67–­68, 88, 89 Erick (staff member), 60–­61, 96 ethnic identity, 2, 50, 56–­58, 67, 71 ethnic reinforcement, 26–­27, 79–­80, 146 ethnic-­specific ministries, 81–­90, 140. See also Black Student Ministries; LaFe ethnic-­specific strategies, 81–­90 ethnic transcendence, 26–­27, 146 ethnographic methods, 154–­154 evangelical co-­curriculum, 139 evangelical faith, 9, 21–­27, 23, 50, 51–­66, 173nn6, 7 evangelism as mainstay of Christian culture, 30, 49, 91, 173n1 Evergreen Baptist Church (Los Angeles, Calif.), 169n7, 174nn2, 9 faith. See religion Fisher, Abigail, 14 Fisher v. University of Texas, x, 4, 14, 144, 148 food, 102, 107, 119, 174n9 forgiveness, 34, 55, 79 fraterninity/sorority life, 19–­20, 25, 167 Fred (staff member), 51 Fudge Ripple dialogue program, 42 goals, 25, 49–­66, 142 Gottlieb, David, 19 Gratz v. Bollinger, 3 Grodsky, Eric, 15 Gross, Kelsey Ebben, 139 Grutter v. Bollinger, x, 3–­4 Harper, Lisa Sharon (former IVCF staff worker), 44–­45, 72, 81, 83–­84, 97, 168n1 Harris, Kamala, 144 Harry (Asian American student), 106 Harvard University, 82, 172n1 hate crimes, 72, 77 Hayner, Steve, 31 hegemony, 167n21 Hertzel, Peter, 50 heterogeneity, 8, 139, 145 higher education: barriers to, 14; behavioral dimension, 8, 166n6; campus fellowships, 13, 21–­27, 21–­22, 24–­25; demographic transformation, 14, 27; historical legacy, 8, 166n6; psychological dimension, 8, 166n6; racial climate,

I ndex 1 9 5

13, 14–­17; racial composition of student subcultures, 13 Hillsongs, 101 Hodgkins, Benjamin, 19 Hollingsworth, Jane, 31 homogeneity, 23–­24, 81, 104, 106, 108, 139, 145, 147, 148 homophily, 7, 18, 24, 103–­104, 108, 146–­148 Hopwood decision, 14 Hurtado, Sylvia, 8, 16, 78, 148 inclusion, 118, 123 individualism, 5, 52 Initiative 200, 14 intentionality, 37–­38, 46–­47, 48, 74, 108, 110, 134, 141, 146–­149, 176n3 intergroup dialogue, 139 international students, 9 interpersonal vulnerability, 137–­138 interracial friendship/interaction: conceptual model, 21, 22; described, 17–­21, 166nn4, 6; equitable, 23; fellowship involvement, 35, 37, 40–­41, 67, 69–­80, 98–­99, 110, 130, 133, 142, 145; healthy societal functions, 16–­17, 98–­99; impact of Prop. 209, 5, 71–­73; in reducing prejudice, 18; possibilities and perils, 69–­80; and structural diversity, 17, 27 InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF): building congruence between race and faith, 49–­68; campus fellowship, 2; changing culture, 28–­48; chapter differences, 10; decentralized organization, 168n3; demography, 38–­39, 48, 73–­74, 76–­78, 81, 93, 97, 108–­109; described, 9; diversity loss, 91–­111; early 1990s, 29–­30; ethnic-­specific small groups, 10, 41, 81–­90, 96–­100, 140–­141, 168n3 (see also Black Student Ministries; KORE; LaFe; Vishwasa); evangelical organization, 9; evangelism as core focus, 91; external forces, 30–­34, 48; founding, 7, 31; internal forces, 34–­37, 48; interracial friendship/interaction, 35, 37, 40–­41, 67, 69–­80, 98–­99, 110, 130, 133, 142, 145; leadership risk, 35–­36; leadership structure, 10, 131, 96, 173n5; membership diversity, 38–­40, 92–­96, 156–­157, 176n2; mission to bridge racial divides, 3; multiethnic community, 3, 32, 72, 98–­99, 101, 108, 115–­116, 136, 144, 165n2; national, 30–­32; organizational change, 3, 28–­48, 73–­75, 141; organization culture, 6, 100–­104, 108–­109, 136, 145; parachurch organization, 22, 167n14; participation by ethnic group, 93, 94, 95, 96; Prop. 209, 69–­70, 71–­73; race as developing issue, 13, 28–­48; racial reconciliation efforts, 27, 28–­48, 69, 79,

91, 92, 97, 98, 102, 115–­116, 129–­142, 145, 175n3; realigning values, structures, practice, 129–­142; sense of community, 55; staff team, 96; as subculture, 5; supporting and retaining URM students, 82–­90; sustaining racially diverse composition, 3; vision to implementation, 37–­47; white flight, 42. See also Race Matters forums “InterVarsity’s Multiethnic Journey” (IVCF document), 31 IVCF. See InterVarsity Christian Fellowship Jake (IVCF member), 28 Jeannie (white senior), 59, 98 Jennifer (black alumna), 45, 70, 74–­75, 76–­77, 78, 79, 80, 84, 86 Jeung, Russell, 113 Jill (Korean American junior), 120 Jim Crow laws, 23 Jina (Asian American IVCF member), 30 Jiyun (Asian American IVCF staff member), 85 Joanne (IVCF worship leader), 116–­117, 118, 119–­120, 123–­124 John (Asian American student), 76, 78 John (black Bible study leader), 29 Johnny (alumnus), 47 jokes and cultural boundaries, 117–­118, 174n2 Jorge (Latino student), 116, 121–­122 Joshua Generation, 40 Kat (multiracial Latina IVCF alumna), 40, 43, 46–­47 KCM (Korean Campus Ministry), 105 Kehrein, Glen, 36, 39 Kevin (multiracial Asian American student), 135 Kimberly (black alumna), 35–­36, 71, 72, 75, 80 King, Martin Luther Jr., 23 King, Rodney, 33, 34 “kingdom of God,” 63–­64, 133–­134 KORE, 10, 98, 155 Korean Americans, ix, 158, 161, 173nn6, 7, 174n3 Kurlaender, Michal, 15 LaFe, 10, 41, 85–­86, 87, 88, 98, 99, 121, 140, 155, 168n3 Latino/a students: CU enrollment, 9, 87, 101; effects of Prop. 209, 73, 81; IVCF efforts to recruit, 31, 40–­41, 84–­85, 90, 96, 98, 99, 101, 102, 104, 118–­119, 140, 156; resorting process, 15; underrepresentation at colleges, 4, 14; use of term, 165n1. See also students of color

1 9 6 I ndex

Law, Eric H. F., 113 Leena (Korean American senior), 92–­93, 117, 120, 121 Lin, Jeremy, 174n7 Logan (Asian American junior), 92 Los Angeles (Calif.) riots, 33–­34 Luis (Latino alumnus), 73, 85–­86 MacDonald, Gordon, 31 Magolda, Peter, 139 Marcia (student leader), 118 marginalization, 19, 78, 79, 92, 113, 118, 121, 122, 145–­146 Marti, Gerardo, 26 MCUP. See Metro City Urban Project Melinda (white IVCF alumna), 59 Metro City Urban Project (MCUP), 61 Michigan, affirmative action ban, 14, 66 Milem, Jeffrey, 8, 14, 167 Mina (Korean American first-­year student), 103 minority status, 73–­74, 80 Miriam (Japanese American student), 70 model minority myth, 113 More than Equals (Perkins and Rice), 33, 35, 38 Mosaic Church (Los Angeles, Calif.), 26 multiculturalism, 30, 32, 63, 128, 168, 171 music, 84–­85, 101, 173n7 NAACP, 143 Nancy (Korean American senior), 53, 57 Native American students, 9, 14. See also students of color The Nature of Prejudice (Allport), 18 Navigators, 22. See also parachurch organizations Nellie (white sophomore), 136–­137 norms (organizational), 6–­8, 11, 20, 47, 107, 108, 114, 153, 166n8, 173n7 nun-­chi, 161 Obama, Barack, 147, 176n4 Ohio State University, 172n1 organizational culture: conceptual model, 21, 22, 141; defined, 20; described, 17–­21, 166n8; intentionality in construction of, 146–­148; IVCF, 6, 100–­104, 108–­109, 136, 146–­148; layers, 20, 48, 141–­142; strategies, 142; transformation, 8, 9, 14, 28–­29, 32, 141 Pacific Islanders, 9, 14. See also students of color parachurch organizations, 22, 167n14. See also Campus Crusade for Christ; InterVarsity Christian Fellowship; Navigators Park, Andrew Sung, 113

Paul (black alumnus), 70–­71, 76, 77, 78, 80 PC. See politically correct Perkins, Spencer, 33, 35 person-­process-­context-­time model, 176n7 philosophies, 142 points-­based system, 3 politically correct (PC), 62–­66, 170n10, 171nn11, 12, 14 Powell, Lewis, 3 prayer as mainstay of Christian culture, 30 prejudice, 18, 39, 49, 144 Promise Keepers, 26 propinquity, 20 Proposition 2, 14 Proposition 209 (Prop. 209), 3–­6, 14; Asian American students’ role as new majority, 112–­128; effect on higher education demographics, 4, 143–­145, 148; impact on black/Latino enrollment, 2, 9, 80, 81, 90, 97, 100, 109, 145–­146; impact on graduate student enrollment, 15; impact on students’ everyday lives, 5; impact on underrepresented minority, 4, 15, 38, 81, 90; interracial friendship/interaction, 5, 69–­70, 71–­73, 110; limits of promoting racial reconciliation, 73–­75 Protestant Christianity, 23 pursuit of common goals. See common goals race: addressing as Christian community, 53–­56; biblical insights, 50, 51–­53, 66–­67, 129, 131–­133, 137, 139, 141, 142; complementary/contradictory views, 50–­51; congruence between, and faith, 49–­50; consciousness, 142, 148–­149, 170n9; early Christians, 131–­133, 137, 175n1; establishing congruency, 51–­66, 171n11; in evangelical faith, 50–­66; God’s reasoning for, 56–­58; microaggression, 74, 172n4; public silence, 91; religion and racial homogeneity, 7, 145; significance, 50; social constructs of terms/categories, 165n1; study of, 6–­7; understanding, 37 Race Matters forums, 91, 99; criticism of, 45; emotions displayed at, 54, 75–­78; group demography, 37; introduction, 39, 42–­46; linking values, practice, structure, 135–­139, 142, 175n3; title of, 45–­46 racial battle fatigue, 79, 81 Racial Conflict and Healing (Park), 113 racial diversity: aim of, 146–­147; cultivating, 25–­26; discussion of, 28–­48,

I ndex 1 9 7

168n5; effect on student life, 4, 15; in evangelical faith, 21–­27, 50–­51, 167n16; in higher education, 14–­17, 66; loss of, 6, 91–­111; push and pull, 104–­108; study of, 7–­8; understanding, 6–­7 racial exclusion, 23 racial heterogeneity. See heterogeneity racial homogeneity. See homogeneity racial reconciliation: Asian Americans, 113; biblical rationale, 51–­53, 129, 130–­ 134; defined, 2–­3, 29–­30; described, 26–­27; distancing from secular diversity initiatives, 62–­66; goal, 147; importance of, 146–­148; IVCF efforts, 28–­48, 69, 79, 91, 92, 96, 98, 102, 115–­ 116, 135–­141, 145, 175n3; link between racial justice and, 72; impact of Prop. 209, 73–­75; implementation, 28–­48, 49; spiritual component, 30, 132; and white hegemony, 167n21 Racial Reconciliation Risk Team, 46, 47 racial segregation, 3, 16, 23, 166n3 racial sin, 37 racial slur, 76–­77 racism, 16, 37, 39, 50, 81, 138 Rainbow Sherbet. See Race Matters forums recategorization process, 25–­26, 167n19 Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 3 religion: addressing race, 53–­56; biblical insights, 51–­53; complementary/contradictory views, 50–­51; congruence between, and race, 49–­50; establishing congruency, 51–­66; God’s reasoning for, 56–­58; multiracial congregations, 23; parachurch organization, 22, 32, 167n14, 169n8; racial homogeneity, 7; role in ethnic identity, 148; segregated arena, 145 research study, 6–­7: data analysis, 157–­158, 158; methods, 10–­12, 153–­154; participant observation, 154–­156; post-­fieldwork reflections, 162–­163; researcher identity, 158–­167; sample, recruitment, interview, 156–­157; setting, 9–­10 resorting process, 15 Rice, Chris, 33, 35 riots, 33–­34, 168n4 Robert (white senior), 61, 67, 70–­71, 93 Robin (black senior), 54–­55, 99–­100 Rock of Our Salvation Evangelical Free Church (Chicago), 36, 42 Rosa (Latina), 57–­58, 135 Schaupp, Doug (IVCF staff team leader), 168n1; black congregation pastoral team, 35, 47; demography, 38–­39; displacement, 47; homogenization

and diversification, 109; multiethnic ministry model, 82–­83; PC movement, 66; pursuit of racial reconciliation, 35–­36, 39–­40; Race Matters pioneer, 43–­44, 138, 175n3; role in organization’s transformation, 29, 33 Schaupp, Sandy (Korean American IVCF member), 29, 33, 34, 35, 36–­37, 39–­40, 49, 82–­83, 168n1 Schein, Edgar, 20, 48, 50, 141, 166n7 Schwartz, Joseph, 18, 109, 145 secularization, 22 segregation. See racial segregation self-­segregation, 17, 166n4 set-­asides, 3 sharing, confessional style, 138 Sharon (multiracial sophomore), 56–­57 slavery, 23 Smith, Christian, 44 social conservatism, 50 social justice, 51, 138, 147 Sojourners, 168n1 Soomie (Korean American senior), 55, 104–­105, 106 Southeast Asian American students, 14, 156. See also students of color spirituality, 22, 51, 62, 144 Stanley (white staff intern), 63, 92 stereotype threat, 74 structural diversity: complexities of choice, 149–­151; conceptual model, 21, 22; defined, 8; demographic conditions, 32; demography, 38–­42; described, 17–­21, 166n6; interpersonal relationships, 17, 27, 74; loss of, 128, 175n8; necessity of, 148–­149; shift in ethnic-­specific vs. multiethnic debate, 82–­84; structural conditions, 8 students of color, 14, 17, 25, 27, 34–­35. See also specific races/ethnic groups student subculture, 4–­5, 6, 8, 13, 19, 21, 27, 145 “Summer of ’83” discussions. See More than Equals systemic justice, 138 Tammy (black IVCF member), 34–­35, 38, 110 Texas, affirmative action ban, 14 Thomas (staff team leader), 96, 97–­98, 101, 110–­111, 126, 129–­135, 138, 141, 142 Tina (Asian American staff member), 63 TJ (Latino staff member), 86, 106–­107, 120 tokenization, 19, 74, 78, 123 Tom (Chinese American junior), 136–­137 Tomlin, Chris, 101 Tony (first-­year Asian American student), 55, 120, 122, 136 Troy (Asian American alumnus), 87, 88

1 9 8 I ndex

UC. See University of California underrepresented minority (URM), 4, 8, 14, 73–­74, 81–­90 University of California (UC): affirmative action policies, 14–­15, 73–­74, 143; Berkeley, 73, 172n1; Christian community, 77; minority status of students, 73–­74, 80; Riverside, 149, 176n5; San Diego, 143–­144, 176n2; structural diversity, 74; URM demographics, 14 University of Illinois, 149, 174n3 University of Michigan, 3, 16, 66 University of Texas, 14, 172n1 Urbana (IVCF conference), 9, 31, 168n3 URM. See underrepresented minority U.S. Supreme Court, x, 3–­4, 14, 16, 144 values, 20, 36, 37–­47, 48, 129–­141, 147 Vince (Chinese American senior), 117 Vishwasa, 10, 98, 121, 155 Washington, Raleigh, 36, 39 Washington State, affirmative action ban, 14

West, Cornel, 45 white racism, 50 white students: CU enrollment, 9, 90; hegemony, 167n21; interracial friendship/interaction, 17, 25; IVCF membership, 41, 79, 93, 96, 97–­98, 101, 110, 145, 156; link between racial reconciliation and racial justice, 72; race and diversity issues, 13, 52; use of term, 165n1; white flight, 42; worship styles, 101 The Wolf Shall Dwell with the Lamb (Law), 113 Woo, Rodney, 23, 108 “the world” described, 63–­64 World Vision, 167n14 worship styles, 101–­102 Yep, Jeanette, 31 Yiu, Dora, 143–­144 Yuka (Japanese American senior), 52 Zack (senior, Korean, Filipino, Chinese heritage), 59–­60

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JULIE J. PARK is an assistant professor in the College of Education at the

University of Maryland, College Park (Department of Counseling, Higher Education, and Special Education; Student Affairs Concentration). A native Ohioan, she received her Ph.D. in education from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research addresses issues of race, religion, and equity in higher education.