Interracial Communication

Interracial communication is a genre of communication study that embraces the interactions between people representing different historical races. As such it encompasses the encounters between people in a practical sense—the ordinary engagement of human beings from various racial, cultural, linguistic, and ethnic backgrounds with each other in the quite human activity of social interaction. It also entails the researching of the phenomenon of racial engagement, seeking to determine the problems and prospects of such discursive engagement with people of different racial backgrounds.

One might say that interracial communication is a variety of communication inasmuch as mass communication, interpersonal communication, intercultural communication, cyber communication, and institutional communication are all parts of the same overarching field. What distinguishes each of these discrete subdisciplines from the other represents the defining coin of that particular area. For example, in the case of interracial communication, the defining coin is racial biography itself. This does not mean that race is the only factor that enters the picture in an interpersonal interaction situation; it simply means that a major—perhaps the major—factor involved in a communication experience that is defined as interracial is race itself.

While almost all scientists agree that there is no singular racial worldview and that race itself as a concept has been hierarchically constructed by ruling classes for control and power, it remains a salient, although waning, idea in contemporary society. The old notion of discrete biotic entities was never based on objective variations in language, culture, or social groupings. Rather the race idea eclipsed language and culture and included superficial assessments and judgments based on phenotypes and behaviors. Interracial communication has sought to provide a canvas for themes, issues, and ideas in spite of the lingering presence of antiquated ideas of race. In the United States of America, race has played a fundamental role in shaping policy, behavior, and attitudes despite the lack of science to support race as a valid concept.

In voting for the Democratic presidential candidates during the 2008 presidential primary contests, nearly one in every five individuals who voted in the Appalachian region of the United States claimed that their vote was based on the race of the candidate. Thus, race remains socially [Page 563]and politically salient in some communities although its biological basis has been in doubt scientifically since the latter part of the 20th century. The election of Barack Obama as President of the United States fueled a new discourse on race because he was biologically Black and White, according to the science of his origin, but defined socially in the United States as African American.

The practice of interracial communication emerged before the study of interracial communication in the same way that humans began to speak much earlier than anyone thought about examining the meaning of human speech. When we consider the fact that interracial communication, as a variety of the field of communication, emerged as a legitimate division of study only in the 1970s and 1980s, we are confronted with the youthfulness of this area of study.

Most of the work done in communication prior to the 1970s could be classified as either work in rhetorical communication or cybernetics, and neither of these fields imagined interracial work. One could look to the cross-cultural work done by the anthropologists and some of the early research on African and Asian cultures advanced by Edward Hall, Margaret Mead, and others.

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