Abstract
Diverse organizations focus on appearing progressive but, in practice, may reproduce internal and external racial inequalities. Previous research has focused on how organizations with superficial levels of diversity may be detrimental to racial equity; are organizations with deep and sustained, cross-racial relationships any better? Drawing on in-depth interviews, field notes, and surveys of 121 head clergy of multiracial churches, we examine the strategies of leaders of multiracial churches to raise funds for their organizations. Our systematic analysis reveals how these, mostly White, religious leaders act as brokers by leveraging embeddedness with congregants of color, social and cultural capital within institutions valuing diversity, and the racial status of their organizations to gain access to social and organizational benefits. We develop a theoretical concept called “racialized social commodification” (RSC) to explore how leaders convert the racial capital of people of color into social and economic resources in contexts of substantive diversity. Through RSC, even organizations boasting strong, cross-racial relationships continue to reproduce racial inequality by protecting power and resource hierarchies that benefit White Americans.
Introduction
Racial and ethnic diversity is a valuable commodity that can be used to bring additional legitimacy, reputation, and market value to organizations (Ahmed 2007; Thomas 2020). However, what does diversity mean for racial inequality? Despite a growing emphasis on organizational diversity, there remain significant gaps in resources across racial lines in most areas of American life (Reskin 2012). This leads scholars to argue that the actions and ideologies of diversity continue to reproduce inequality by protecting power and resource hierarchies that benefit White Americans (Bonilla-Silva 2010; DiTomaso 2013; Mayorga-Gallo 2019).
Building on work that examines the implications of diversity for organizations and the people who are a part of them, we propose a specific means by which leaders use diversity to gain social and economic resources for their organizations. More specifically, we analyze how leaders of multiracial church congregations convert their embeddedness with congregants of color into financial benefits for their churches. We call this racialized social commodification (RSC)—the process of converting relational embeddedness with people of color into goods or organizational benefits.
This process reveals how activities in diverse organizations can be both socially innovative and subversive. Despite seemingly good intentions, RSC further calcifies racial inequality by transferring the racial capital of people of color, that is “the social and economic value derived from [their] racial identity” (Leong 2013:2190), to diverse not-for-profit organizations that are largely White led. In addition, because social commodification is actually enabled by relationships, this process reveals that substantive or thick versions of diversity, in which cross-racial relationships are central and which are thought to be more desirable, may perpetuate racial inequality. Multiracial churches are spaces that engender trust and reduce social distance across racial lines (Yancey 1999). They are also spaces where ethnicity can be enacted for organizational ends (Martí 2012; Ramos, Martí, and Mulder 2020). These characteristics make them particularly appropriate sites for understanding how leaders engage in RSC.
Theoretical Background
Diversity and Racial Capital
Organizational diversity does not guarantee racial progress (Berrey 2015; Edwards 2008; Munn 2019; Oyakawa 2019; Roscigno 2011). This is in part because benefits of diversity, such as increased market value and reputation, accrue to organizations, not necessarily to the people in them (Ray 2019; Roberson and Park 2007). Diversity policies often reinforce existing power hierarchies where “diverse” groups are symbolically valued, but the accumulated and ongoing effects of historical oppression are ignored (Roscigno 2011). In fact, diverse organizations quite often recreate inequalities because people of color feel pressure to consent to racially hierarchical structures and receive little, if any, social benefit from their compliance (Bonilla-Silva 2010; Edwards 2008). In addition, diverse organizations may reinforce racial inequality because they separate actual organizational behavior and policies from the material realities of racial and ethnic minorities (DiTomaso 2013; Kalev, Dobbin, and Kelly 2006).
The detachment of organizational gains for diversity from benefits for people of color comes from diversity’s value as a commodity. Diversity as commodity is one of the four tenets of diversity ideology as formulated by David G. Embrick (2011) and elaborated by Sarah Mayorga-Gallo (2014). Sarah Mayorga-Gallo (2019:1789) defines commodity, in the case of diversity, as “the treatment of Asian, Black, Latinx, and Native peoples as objects rather than humans for the benefit and satisfaction of others, namely white people.” That diversity is used as commodity aligns with Derrick A. Bell’s (1980) interest convergence principle. The idea here is that policies ostensibly promoting advancement for people of color will only be enacted when they benefit middle- and upper-class Whites, diversity policies included.
Mayorga-Gallo (2019) draws upon Nancy Leong’s (2013) conceptualization of racial capital to develop diversity as commodity. Leong (2013) argues that the racial identity of people of color is seen as a form of capital to be accessed primarily for the benefit of White people and organizations. She defines racial capitalism as “the process of gaining social or economic value from the racial identity of another person” (Leong 2013:2152). This process is inseparably linked to diversity as commodity because both center around objectifying people of color. What is particularly pernicious about racial capital is that racial capital can be more valuable for White people who can make some kind of claim on a person of color’s racial identity than it is for those who are in fact are people of color.
Matthew W. Hughey (2012), for example, shows how White people, both those affiliated with a progressive organization and those affiliated with White nationalists, draw upon relationships with Black people to insulate themselves and their organizations from charges of racism. Jennifer C. Mueller (2017) highlights how White parents expose their children to people of color to cultivate in them a particular White identity, one they see as enlightened and desirable. The transfer of value from those who possess the racial capital to those who do not differentiates racial capital from the idea of whiteness as property (Harris 1993). Whiteness can be deployed by Whites for their gain; however, people of color are disadvantaged in monetizing their own racial capital because of their relative lack of power in White institutions valuing diversity. To put it another way, White people and organizations, by virtue of their racial status, are advantaged in benefiting from their racial identity as well the identities of others.
The value of racial capital through diversity as a commodity does not neatly divide people into White and non-White, leaving people of color undifferentiated. There is evidence that being commodified by diversity affects Black people more than other non-White groups (Barron 2016; Pippert, Essenburg, and Matchett 2013; Ray et al. 2017). Because Black people, in particular, signal an appropriately multicultural environment, the value that diversity initiatives give to the racial capital of Black people may be elevated above that of Asian or Latino/a people. This differential value may incentivize the commodification of Black people over other people of color.
Racialized Social Commodification
Organizational leaders play a crucial role in managing diversity, which includes developing strategies to adapt to the needs of new populations, supporting intergroup social relations, and managing sustainable growth (Burt 2004; Herring 2009). However, optimizing the gains from diversity requires more than internal management. Because the benefits of diversity are more for what diversity signals externally than for what it changes internally, it must be marketed effectively (Meyer and Rowan 1977; Okuwobi, Faulk, and Roscigno 2021). As a result, organizational leaders are increasingly tasked to leverage diversity in their connections with broader institutions to gain valuable resources for their organizations (Leong 2013). Hence, our focus is on leaders.
Examining the role of leaders in commodifying organizational diversity, we propose RSC—the process of using relational embeddedness with people of color to convert organizational diversity into goods for the benefit of the organization. These goods are primarily financial resources but may also include improvement in reputation, increased legitimacy, and expanded social networks. RSC depends upon leaders who can act as brokers between at least two disparate parties, one that is diverse and one that values diversity. Diversity in this case is signaled by the presence of people of color in an organization that is viewed as racially diverse rather than majority-minority. The diversity of the leader’s organization is offered in a form considered desirable by the receiving party in exchange for resources.
The designation diverse, as opposed to minority-minority, signals the presence of at least some people of color but allows organizational racialization as White. Diversity tends to be built around inviting people of color into White organizations rather than the other way around (Wolfe 2015). This expectation frames Whites as the hosts and people of color as the guests. Majority-minority organizations, by contrast, are those in which people of color are in the majority, hold leadership positions, and are perceived to structure how the organization is run. An example of this distinction can be found in Jessica M. Barron’s (2016) ethnography of a Chicago church. The leaders of the church were insistent that they were neither a “Black church” nor an “inner-city” church (Barron 2016:23). Instead, they were a “downtown” church. Pastors carefully managed the appearance of diversity within the church so that they could remain a diverse, downtown church, instead of a stigmatized, Black one. Church leadership decided the best way to strike that balance was to place attractive, Black ushers at the door, but deny Black congregants’ leadership positions within the congregation.
In contrast to cultural appropriation or overt racism, RSC works with the consent, by which we mean the active participation, of members of color within the organization. RSC emphasizes the social. This concept builds upon other work among race scholars that argues that structural forms of racism are becoming increasingly covert (Bonilla-Silva 2010) and that racial hegemony requires the consent of oppressed groups (Edwards 2008).
Brokers are situated between different networks in the social structure and have social capital that allows them to “trade[s] on gaps in social structure” (Stovel and Shaw 2012:141). They can act as gatekeepers to resources (Burt 2004) and they have a diverse portfolio of cultural capital that grants them access to the resources of different groups (e.g., Padgett and Ansell 1993; Stovel and Shaw 2012). While brokers facilitate exchange by bridging social, economic, and political relations, they can also increase inequality. This is because brokers’ unique position allows them to accumulate power (Stovel and Shaw 2012). As such, a key risk is that brokers may not be seen as part of the group and engender the suspicion of the parties they are brokering between. Brokers’ greater control over information and resources creates a power imbalance that may cause them to lose trust with the other actors in the transaction. This is particularly a problem for middleman brokers, whose brokerage does not create more dense social networks by connections of their connections (Obstfeld 2005).
As mentioned, social capital is intrinsic to brokerage. Here, we examine how it is essential to the process of commodification. There is growing consensus about what comprises social capital (Li 2007). We use Pierre Bourdieu’s (1983) definition, meaning social capital to signify “the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition.” Without ties to institutions where diversity can be converted to economic or reputational resources, it has limited value. Yet, while having ties to networks where diversity is valued appears to be necessary, it is still insufficient for RSC to take place. That is because different forms of capital interact and are reinforcing (Bourdieu 1983; Portes 2000). To gain the resources within groups, brokers need to also possess the right cultural capital, that is, knowledge of values, beliefs, and behavior embodied by the group (Bourdieu 1983). The distribution of power within social groups and societies depends upon whether one can leverage and shape dominant group norms, preferences, and beliefs to gain control over shared resources. In Bourdieu’s formulation, capitals are valuable because they are convertible to economic capital. In the case of brokers, cultural capital may boost existing social capital as evidenced by increased resources.
The cultural capital of diversity is linked to a middle-class White habitus (Mayorga-Gallo 2019). Because diversity sets the market for racial capital, RSC relies on ties to networks and institutions where diversity is of value. Leaders who engage in RSC have to embody middle-class White habitus and they have to be able to meet the normative standard of diversity, which consists of bringing people of color into majority-White organizations. We, therefore, suggest that leaders of organizations that are racialized as non-White have limited ability to engage in RSC. While it is possible for a leader of color to engage in RSC, it is less likely than for Whites.
Both the concepts of diversity as commodity and racial capitalism tend to emphasize organizations where diversity is “thin” (Leong 2013). Thin diversity is when diversity is superficial, really just about the appearance of diversity. Thick or substantive diversity, on the other hand, has a goal of developing cross-racial interactions to foster inclusion (Leong 2013; Roscigno and Yavorsky 2014). This is where RSC builds upon racial capital and diversity as commodity. Whereas neither of these processes rely on embeddedness with people of color to trade on race, RSC does. Social relations with racial and ethnic minorities that are based on a sense of trust and mutuality are essential. A sense of trust and mutuality not only means the leader will be supported by people of color in their endeavors to access resources for the organization, but also it authenticates the diversity being traded upon. It is not simply the appearance of diversity, displayed on Web sites or in other marketing materials. The organizations are diverse, and people of color are integrated into the organization, although the power they wield may still be relatively low compared to Whites.
RSC and Multiracial Churches
RSC manifests in contexts where there is thick diversity. And so, for this investigation, we turn to multiracial churches. While RSC is theoretically possible in a variety of organizations, diverse, not-for-profit organizations are the place where RSC is most likely to proceed because of the emphasis on fundraising and relationships.
Churches are also an ideal context because of the links between fundraising, racial status, and social capital. Samuel L. Perry (2013) revealed that evangelical outreach ministry workers who lacked social capital were unable to raise their own salaries, as is expected in those contexts. Fundraisers of color had significantly fewer connections and their connections had significantly less money to donate. Fundraisers of color also faced a cultural gap, having to learn how to reach out to predominantly White churches to ask for funds. RSC echoes those inequalities as well-positioned, White pastors of diverse churches are advantaged in their fundraising through their social and cultural capital.
Church congregations have become increasingly diverse over the past two decades. The number of churches that are considered multiracial, as measured by no racial group encompassing more than 80 percent of the congregation, has more than doubled over the past 20 years from 6 to 16 percent (Dougherty, Chaves, and Emerson 2020). The voluntary nature of churches helps foster trusting and mutual relationships. They are places people go to find and build community.
During the late 1990s, scholars and religious practitioners began to look to multiracial churches as places that would help disrupt racial inequality by decreasing social distance between congregants of different races (Emerson and Smith 2000; Yancey 1999). As churches diversified, however, most research showed that they do not challenge but reinforce racial hierarchies (e.g., Bracey and Moore 2017; Cobb, Perry, and Dougherty 2015; Edwards, Christerson, and Emerson 2013). That multiracial churches have not been more effective at disrupting structures of racial inequality is somewhat surprising as many of them go beyond thin diversity to focus on feelings of belonging or inclusion and regular intergroup contact that characterize thick diversity.
This raises the question as to whether there are inequality-producing mechanisms hidden within these thick, cross-racial relationships? Here Mark Granovetter’s (1985) theory of embeddedness is instructive. Embeddedness helps clarify the degree to which social relationships are necessary in exchange. These relationships are often a double-edged sword. For example, personal knowledge can establish a great deal of trust that facilitates exchange. This same trust, however, can allow one party in the exchange to harm the other. “Trust engendered by personal relations presents, by its very existence, enhanced opportunity for malfeasance” (Granovetter 1985:491). We are more willing to accept actions that are detrimental for ourselves from those we are in relationship with than from outsiders. Potentially, then, as cross-racial relationships deepen, so does the opportunity for commodification.
The possibility of harm within relational embeddedness increases because relationships built within multiracial churches may not always be symmetrical. Christopher W. Munn (2018) finds that Black congregants may view their relationships with White congregants as initiate and reciprocal. White congregants, however, discuss their close Black friends as church friends and do not engage in the same activities with them as they do with White friends. This asymmetry opens Black congregants to relational obligations not equally experienced by White congregants.
With the process of RSC, leaders extract value from trusted social ties within diverse organizations for organizational or personal benefit. Consequently, RSC can be even more pernicious than racial capital and diversity as commodity because people of color implicated in this process may believe that the leaders or representatives trading on their relationships and the organizations’ diversity are doing it for their benefit.
Scholars have shown that among members of diverse communities, schools, and churches that network mobilization requires particular cultural knowledge and ability to build trust across racial groups (Christerson, Edwards, and Flory 2010; Smith 2000). Few studies systematically address how leaders of diverse organizations navigate such intergroup differences. Like the center of a wheel with many spokes, leaders connect to broader institutions and communities, professional peers, and members of their organizations (Balkundi and Kilduff 2006; Pfeffer and Salancik 2003). We show how leaders are able to use those connections to extract value via their ties to diverse “others,” ultimately strengthening their position as leaders.
The Case, Data, and Methods
Leaders of multiracial churches are an important theoretical case because they receive funding from multiple institutions and informal networks, regularly solicit financial gifts from their members, and maintain an influential position within one of the few voluntary but racially diverse organizations. Fundraising is important to these churches; data from the National Congregations Study show that multiracial churches have lower budgets per number of participating adults when compared to majority White or majority Black churches (Chaves et al. 2020). Leaders of churches increasingly face social pressure to appear progressive with regard to diversity and inclusion within their organizations (Martí and Emerson 2013; Okuwobi 2019). This analysis expands theoretical understandings about the ways broader racial structures influence how and why leaders develop diversity management strategies.
Data Sample and Collection
Data for this study come from the Religious Leadership Diversity Project (RLDP)—a systematic, mixed-methods study of the head clergy of multiracial Christian churches in the United States. To execute this project, a racially diverse team of researchers collected data from head clergy, denomination/association leaders, and members of racially and ethnically diverse churches from 2014 to 2016. During Phase I of the study, the RLDP team conducted in-depth interviews with 121 head clergy of multiracial religious organizations, wrote field notes describing the interview and location, and administered brief surveys to participating head clergy or knowledge informants about their congregations.
The head clergy interviewed were located in 12 metro areas split about equally across all four major U.S. Census Regions. Within those metro areas, clergy were recruited from a search of Web sites for churches touting themselves as multiracial and stratified snowball sampling. Prior to interviews, respondents or key informants established that their churches contained fewer than 80 percent of congregants from any one racial or ethnic group. Key informants may overestimate congregants of color and underestimate White congregants (Dougherty and Emerson 2018). Through the comparison of interview, field note, and survey data, every effort was made to ensure each congregation contained fewer than 80 percent of congregants from any one racial or ethnic group. Still, we note the imprecision of key informant data as a limitation of the study. The sample included Catholic, Mainline Protestant, and Conservative Protestant head clergy. The strength of this broad-based collection strategy allows us to examine processes common to multiracial congregations across lines of denominational affiliations and region (Edwards 2019). We oversampled leaders of color; the final sample was nearly 40 percent clergy of color as compared to 24 percent of head clergy leading multiracial churches who are people of color nationally (Dougherty et al. 2020). Despite efforts to reach additional female clergy, the sample is overwhelmingly male at 90 percent.
The analyses here draw upon in-depth interviews, field notes, and surveys of leaders. The RLDP team conducted in-depth, face-to-face interviews with leaders that lasted between one and two hours, on average. Each interview was audio-recorded, transcribed, and de-identified before analysis. Participants were asked questions about their personal experiences, leadership strategies, and access to resources. We supplement these data with field notes that described the context of the interview. Finally, surveys were collected from the leaders and their associates to provide demographic information about the organization. Pseudonyms are used to protect the identity of leaders we interviewed.
Interview transcripts were manually coded in NVivo. Initial coding was done using a codebook created from the interview guide. Relevant codes for this study include: Race and Ethnicity—any mention of matters related to race and ethnicity, Diversity—any mention of diversity, and Resources—any assets that respondents can draw upon. In the case of resources, secondary codes for human, cultural, economic, and social capital were captured, with tertiary codes marking the relationships making up the social capital. Coding was done by members of the RLDP project team, primarily at the paragraph level. Two members of the team coded each full interview to confirm intercoder reliability.
Using these interviews, we investigate how head clergy report gaining economic resources to operate their congregations and which social ties they value in that process. In particular, we examine the conditions under which their social capital, cultural capital, or deep relationships enable those gains. We also attend to the leader’s discourse on diversity. We evaluate whether diversity is commodified as a valuable asset and how the diversity of their congregations is represented to others. Finally, we examine how leaders discuss their points of difference versus other organizations that either lack their diversity or have a less marketable form of diversity.
Findings: Elements of RSC
Relational Embeddedness with Congregants of Color
Multiracial churches provide an environment of mutual respect and relationships between congregants and clergy that may enable commodification. Father Aaron Hall, a Catholic priest of a large urban church in the northeast, has been leading Sacred Heart Catholic Church for 22 years. Entering the priesthood during the Civil Rights Movement and with the intention to serve in Black parishes, he took graduate-level seminary courses in Black-style preaching and history. In his first couple of years as a priest, he admits that “in my naiveté, in those days, I came to help those people. The truth is those people probably saved my soul.”
Pastor Hall’s dedication to his diverse congregation was reciprocated with sentiments of belonging. Although the congregation became diverse via gentrification, it is situated inside a Black community. On three separate occasions during the two-hour interview, Father Hall assured the interviewer that he is accepted as an unofficial member of that community. On one occasion he said,
I’ve been in a Black community long enough that among my Black folks, they say to me, “Father, you just look white. We know you really aren’t.” I say, “Yeah, but I still can’t play basketball or clap too well in time. I can’t dance very well.” They say, “Yeah, but your heart’s Black.” I think that’s true.
Relational embeddedness is characterized by high trust as well as the sort of overlapping identities and closeness seen here (Nahapiet and Ghoshal 1998).
Derisive stereotypes in the statement above notwithstanding, Father Hall is a pastor who has won the approval of his congregation, as shown by his decades of leadership, and is enacting the thick or substantive form of diversity. His relationships and affiliations with people of color in his congregation are not just for show. Yet, against this backdrop, Father Hall spoke pragmatically about how he used his gospel choir. He activated his embeddedness with Black leaders in his congregation to gain resources from wealthy suburban churches. Working as a bridge between these highly resourced connections and his church, he discusses that the gospel choir is a vital fundraising tool used in the suburban churches of his colleagues and that religious representatives wanted to see how the diverse church was actively helping the poor. After discussing how a recent Christmas celebration brought the poor and wealthy of the community together, Father Hall launched into a discussion of a fundraising strategy that leveraged his gospel choir to create resources in the organization.
We go to other Catholic Parishes with the gospel choir and raise funds for our outreach. So, we usually make 4 or 5 trips a year that average about $4,000.00 a trip because the goal is you find places that have money. So, I go to the rich parishes. [Laughter]
So, do you talk to your fellow priests out there?
Yeah—and say—you have a relationship with them. So, we’ll go out and bring the gospel choir. Actually, I have two gospel choirs—the piano, drums, saxophone, trumpet, keyboards, and all that stuff. And so, we’ll go out to raise money.
Father Hall, like other Catholic priests, was very frank about the church’s finances. He recognized that he could generate resources through his personal and institutional connections by promoting diversity and the gospel choir. Father Hall targets churches that have money with the hopes of generating up to $20,000 per year. Later in the interview, Father Hall emphasized his uniqueness in being able to redistribute funds from rich to poor:
I basically get the money from most of the rich folks, mostly white, to give out to mostly the poor Black folk. I feel like a Robin Hood some days, and a lot of guys don’t want to do that.
Father Hall felt like the fictional character Robin Hood. He characterized the fundraising strategies as taking money from the rich to give to the poor. The Robin Hood metaphor reveals the perceptions of the social context in which resources are embedded. “The rich” are wealthy White people, and “the poor” in this case are African American. Father Hall bridged the two and posed this fundraising tactic as a resolution between the tension between ethics and pragmatism. He needed to raise money for the organization but also keep White benefactors happy.
These efforts required a certain level of embeddedness to use the gospel choirs to bring in money. Leaders who commodify race risk being seen as exploitative by people of color. Father Hall avoids this backlash through his relationships. In this way, Father Hall avoids the key problem of middleman brokers—that is engendering suspicion on either side of the structural hole that makes brokerage short-lived. In this way, Father Hall gains the consent of the choir to be Merry Men to Hall’s Robin Hood. Lacking data from the congregant’s perspective, this study cannot reveal whether their consent was in the form of full endorsement of Father Hall’s actions or uneasy compliance (Edwards 2008). What we can say is that the congregants agreed to put on a show for the benefit of the church’s outreach with limited control over how the funds would be spent. Father Hall was given that consent because of his long-term investments in the community and the needs of African Americans therein.
Social Capital, Cultural Capital, and Racialized Organizations
External institutions and networks are critical to funding multiracial churches. In our study, three-fourths of the clergy received financial support from external networks including religious and government institutions and professional peers. The need for external funders elevates relationships that can be economically profitable. In over half of the sample, leaders described that their most important relationships were professional peers at large, typically suburban, and well-resourced churches or religious denominations. Continuing to appeal to Whites for finances reinforces the existing racial hierarchies by exaggerating the importance of White, suburban perspectives.
Given the importance of diversity to a White, middle-class habitus, church leaders were also able to gain funds from their denominations if their church’s diversity reflected well on the denomination as a whole. Pastor Donna Miller is a White woman in her mid-thirties with several years of experience within her religious denomination. She spoke candidly about her pragmatic approach to diversity that was necessary to activate resources from her ties to a predominantly White, mainline religious denomination. She described that she needed only to highlight the diversity of her church to activate institutional ties, resulting in grants to fund her church:
We’re one of the few multiracial churches. So, they’re not stupid. Like, even though our numbers may not be climbing as fast as they want, our numbers are going in the direction of more racial diversity, and they are appreciative of that because it does help. [It’s] part of the reason they’ve continued to be supportive of us. Like, we get a Campus Ministry Grant for some of our work with students. It’s $36,000. So, it pretty much pays for our associate minister’s salary. And, we get a Revitalization Grant, which we just got awarded for next year. This year we had $17,000 from that. And so, they’re largely supportive. I mean, we make them look good a lot of times.
Pastor Miller’s church received grant funds from the denomination, in part, because the diversity of church was important for the overall image of the denomination. Pastor Miller felt justified in taking large amounts of support because, in her words, “we make them look good.” For the predominantly White denomination, having a few churches like Pastor Miller’s provided a veneer of diversity covering their broader homogeneity.
To gain funds from appeals to diversity, social capital alone is not sufficient. Translating social capital into economic capital requires cultural capital, which Pastor Miller gained from her years in the denomination. Cultural capital provides the insight to know how valuable appeals to diversity will be to potential funders. To further illustrate this point, we compare Pastor John Olsen and Pastor Robert Scott. They are tied to the same denomination, and while both represent diverse churches, they have very different results in their ability to acquire external resources. This tale of two pastors, one White and one Black, takes place within a 15-minute radius in a Midwestern city.
Pastor Olsen leads a mainline church with roughly 50 members situated in a gentrifying urban neighborhood. A White man in his late forties describes his pastoral style as, “interactive, engaging, personal, down to earth.” Like Father Hall, he is able to cultivate an atmosphere of support and trust with his congregation, enabling them to share openly with him. He explains, “the honesty level, they put it out there. They wear their thoughts on their sleeve. There’s no secrets.” While he worked in the business world prior to pastoring, by the time we talked, Pastor Olsen had been part of his denomination for over 15 years.
One skill Pastor Olsen carried over from the business world was knowing how to present products. “That’s what I’ve done before, so that crosses the retail-management experience. I know about advertising and marketing and market response.” In that vein, Pastor Olsen outlined an upcoming meeting where he planned to make a pitch to potential supporters. He made the case that, in the eyes of suburban funders, a message about diversity will attract investment. Pastor Olsen planned to describe his church as “this is the place that diverse people can come and be safe, build relationships and break down the barriers.” He chooses this description based on his intimate knowledge of those making the funding decisions:
And, I know the questions in their heads. The big one here is, “why should we keep sending money to you?” That’s what’s great about coming from the suburban congregation. I know exactly where they’re coming from because I’ve been in the situation where these urban congregations have been, you know, doing the appeals.
Pastor Olsen knows exactly what to present to a group of potential community funders because of his experience leading in suburban congregations. He has been on the other side of similar funding meetings and, consequently, has cultural capital concerning the structure of the meeting and how to prepare. Such cultural capital confers an advantage to White leaders who can address the unspoken expectations of potential funders. In doing so, Pastor Olsen contrasted his approach with that of Pastor Robert Scott, an African American pastor in the same denomination with whom he would be competing for funding. Both pastors know the formal rules for the meeting, but Pastor Olsen understands the structure of the informal section of the meeting and what questions the funders will have in their heads. Pastor Olsen was strongly convinced that his diversity-based approach would be more sustainable than Pastor Scott’s social activist approach.
“So, there’s two different worlds. We’re bringing worship together and bringing these people together in diversity. But now, let’s think about public leadership and community organizing. They’re just two different ways of going about that.”
Calling the two approaches “different worlds,” Pastor Olsen places the internal diversity strategy on one end of a continuum and community organizing on another. The diversity approach, he suspects, will garner the most support. Pastor Olsen presents diversity in a way that will appeal to a White middle-class habitus. He is selling the gentrification of the community, combined with the racial diversity of his church as what will keep his church sustainable. He reasons,
the person who wants to move into that $100,000 450 square foot studio, they could take that money and buy something in the suburbs, but they don’t want that. They want to be down here in this. They want their neighbor, or the guy they pass on the street, to be from Nigeria or Uganda.
Pastor Olsen continues by mentioning congregants and their desire to consume diversity by being part of the church. “One guy in particular he says, you know, I can go to a suburban congregation and drive my nice car and look nice and blend in, but it wouldn’t be authentic.” Because of the value “authentic” diversity holds, Pastor Olsen can use it to convince congregants and donors alike that his church will be successful. Although offering simple proximity to diversity may not be as obviously entertaining as a gospel choir, it still holds a value for those wanting to consume it.
When comparing his own diversity-driven congregation to that of Pastor Scott, Pastor Olsen did not pull punches in his assessment. Hunching over the table and letting out a deep sigh, he said of his local colleague, “If you haven’t been in the neighborhood, it’s just not a hope-filled situation. But they’re doing some neat social ministries.” Pastor Olsen interprets the social activist approach through the lens of White suburban funders calling his activities “neat social ministries,” suggesting that community-based work will be seen as trivial in comparison to developing a plan to fund internal activities for a diverse church. This insight into how different forms of ministry will be interpreted represents the cultural capital he developed from being part of White professional peer networks whom he calls “my colleagues.” Pastor Olsen’s social and cultural capital with the group controlling the resources gives him confidence that they will be more willing to fund his approach.
The other important element to Pastor Olsen’s confidence is the racialization of Pastor Scott’s church as compared to his. Although both churches meet the definition of being multiracial or diverse, Pastor Olsen is unwilling to extend that designation to Pastor Scott’s church. “That’s an African American congregation. More-mostly that’s probably, I would say—I was there for the installation—he had in July, and I would say that 60 percent African American, 40 percent white.” For the record, Pastor Olsen reports that his church is 60 percent White and 35 percent Black. Given that Pastor Scott’s church was slightly larger, this would give both pastors an equivalent number of White congregants. Although the churches were not that far away in terms of demographics, they were a world apart in terms of perception. Adding to this racialization is the fact that Pastor Scott is Black and pastors within a Black neighborhood. The combination of these elements hinders Pastor Scott’s ability to use diversity to appeal to constituencies who value it. As a result, Pastor Olsen does his best to separate himself from his fellow pastor:
He’s in a context that doesn’t have the gentrification going on. He’s in, just a poor urban area. I don’t sense a connection with him . . . I have hope in the sense that there is development going on, and there’s more resources available, and I can say, you know, we could actually, you know—I have hope that I could find that million bucks to put in the building. Where if he needed a million dollars, he’s not going to get it.
One of the reasons that Pastor Olsen is so intent on being a successful fundraiser is that he sees it as a key part of his job. This becomes a temptation to the point that it threatens the time to do ministry with his own church:
Coming into this context, part of the job is you have to be fundraiser in chief, and-and you have to go out and where’s the funding, friends of the church and ministry partners, congregation, and so those funds are coming from white, suburban places and volunteers from white suburban congregation to come down here. And so, it’s very tempting to, you know, devote my time, spend a lot of time with those individuals.
In addition to suburban pastors, Pastor Olsen also sought funds from the denomination itself. Pastor Olsen was well aware that there were funds available, called “mission dollars,” for congregations that made the denomination look good in terms of diversity. This became another place to exert his social and cultural capital to fund the church’s expenses:
What they [the denomination] do with those mission dollars is telling because they take the mission dollars and they’re putting lots of it into multicultural ministry development. They’re trying to develop and make us diverse—you know. Here is the stories of faith in action, and if you can look on the cover, you’re gonna think that we’re really diverse, right.
The denomination had an interest in diversity displays disconnected from the demographic reality. Because Pastor Olsen was able to market himself as a provider of this diversity, his church received more from the denomination than it paid in dues through these mission dollars. This made his relationship with the denomination a net positive in terms of income, whereas most churches would be at a net negative. Pastor Scott’s church reported no such luck in receiving mission dollars.
Pastor Scott did not share Pastor Olsen’s dim assessment of his own church. He excitedly ratted off the scope of his “neat” social ministries:
Now, let me talk about the involvement of the community. This, our outreach program, we have a dental clinic, an eye clinic, a food pantry, computer classes, summer program which is on Wednesday. Wednesdays out of the month, we turn this into a playground and the kids come and play.
Pastor Scott had only recently become a pastor within the denomination. He has been a member of the local community for several decades and rose to leadership organically after establishing connections between community organizations at the church’s food pantry. These networks did not provide funding for the operations of the church.
The interviewer had the opportunity to speak to Pastor Scott after the meeting Pastor Olsen had mentioned. Unlike Pastor Olsen, who drew distinctions between the two churches, Pastor Scott readily connects their ministries together when describing the meeting:
There’s two parishes in the city that are “Urban Ministries.” There’s one downtown, that church is 170-years-old and we are 70-years-old. And yesterday was Thursday. We had a group of pastors getting together, discussing where the new challenges are with these two Urban Ministries. The National Body has figured out that’s the new way to go. Inner city and urban ministries are top of the list because that’s where the need is.
Pastor Scott’s network among African American community leaders, and resulting cultural capital, shapes his ideas about how race and inequality are central to the organizational mission. Pastor Scott believes that the National Body wants to invest where “the need” is, while Pastor Olsen appeals to a desire for diversity. These are very different marketing strategies despite the fact that both churches were demographically diverse. The differences in cultural capital between Pastors Olsen and Scott were apparent and had the potential to create differences in the ability to develop capital for their organization.
As it turns out, both pastors were able to gain support at the meeting we learned about from Pastor Olsen. Pastor Scott reported, “I went to the meeting yesterday and I made a presentation, walked away, both of us did, we both walked away with $6,000.00, $3,000.00 a piece from one of the pastors in there.”
This one-time success, however, was surprising for Pastor Scott rather than expected. Pastor Scott concurred with Pastor Olsen’s statement about his long-term prospects in fundraising. “That’s not one of my strong points,” Pastor Scott conceded. Pastor Scott contrasted his ability to raise funds with the former pastor of his church, who was White and had been within the denomination for a longer time. “But, if it comes to how to ask for money, how the politics work, then he would probably be the person.” Unlike Pastor Scott, this former pastor had the cultural capital—“how to ask for money” and “how the politics work”—to raise funds. When this former pastor heard of Pastor Scott’s success at the meeting, he praised him saying, “Oh, you learned how to work the room.” Being in the room is not enough without knowing how to work it or present yourself and your ministry in a way that leads to economic capital.
While Pastor Scott found some support in the denomination, Pastor Olsen’s long-term experience and social formation in seminary meant that he was more structurally, relationally, and culturally integrated into the broader institution. Pastor Olsen’s social and cultural capital made fundraising a given for him, whereas for Pastor Scott it remained a surprise win.
The epilogue to the stories of these clergy reveals the success of their approaches. Within two years of the interviews, Pastor Scott’s church was permanently closed while Pastor Olsen’s church remained open. Although Pastor Olsen did not report receiving the million dollars he sought, he had managed to raise nearly $400,000, enough to keep the church sustainable and do some of the needed repairs to the façade. Certainly, other factors may have played a role besides their ability to use diversity for funding purposes; however, given that both churches had near-identical internal budgets from congregant giving at $150,000 each annually, the ability to raise external funds surely played a role in these disparate results.
While the story above contrasted a White and a Black pastor, the ability to participate in RSC is not simply based on the race or ethnicity of the leader. Leaders of color could effectively participate in RSC, as long as they had social capital within networks valuing diversity, they had the cultural capital to package diversity appropriately for White donors, and their organization was identifiably diverse instead of being stigmatized as majority-minority. These requirements are easier for White leaders to fulfill but are not impossible for leaders of other races.
An example of RSC by a pastor of color comes from Pastor Sean Taylor, an African American pastor in his early forties. After discussing other activities that celebrated diversity, he described a year-end fundraiser hosted at a local restaurant:
We have about twelve or fifteen different ethnic restaurants provide food to that event. And then, during the night, we have our Kenyan dancers, our Nigerian dancers, our Jamaican dancers, our Filipino dancers do some show type of thing during the night to entertain people. And, it’s a fundraiser for us and we have a raffle or a silent auction.
Pastor Taylor has the cultural capital to recognize that the symbolism tied to ethnic diversity (i.e., food, celebrations) is valuable and can generate operating funds by entertaining community members. He bought food from ethnic restaurants and also brought in dancing groups from multiple ethnic groups in his organization to entertain community partners. Like other clergy in the data, he touted the ethnic diversity as a symbol of how religion, but specifically his church, can resolve the social tensions created by racial and ethnic differences and, simultaneously, commodified ethnicity for its economic value. While this process included diverse members of the congregation, the organizational leader controlled how the resources would be ultimately used.
Discussion and Conclusions
Analyses of data from 121 leaders in diverse organizations reveal a process we call RSC. In this process, leaders deeply connected to predominantly White networks, and simultaneously embedded with people of color in their organizations, act as brokers between these groups for economic gain. Most leaders who met the requirements to engage in RSC are White, but some leaders of color qualify as well.
This process reveals how the racial capital of people of color elevates the organizations they belong to. “Diverse” others in multiracial churches are marketed to external funders for their ability to entertain or cook unique foods or for their sheer presence. These experiences were considered valuable because they signaled the presence of diversity to White consumers. While the leaders in this study commodified their relationships with congregants, fellow staff members or even pastors of color themselves, when in a White denominational context, could also become representatives of diversity under RSC. Most examples of RSC here feature the commodification of Black congregants, adding evidence that perhaps Black people are commodified most often because they are seen as the strongest representation of diversity. In the process of RSC, people of color were not able to market their own racial capital. Instead, head clergy, using their social and cultural capital within White networks, offered access to diversity with the support and participation of members of color in their congregations.
Critical to effective RSC is the ability to identify the target market and then translate the value of a social group (i.e., immigrants, African Americans) into something funders will pay for (i.e., potluck fundraisers, gospel music). Those in suburban churches were provided cultural experiences (i.e., gospel choirs). White visitors to multiracial churches received the opportunity to worship in an “authentically” diverse environment. Denominations were given photo ops of diverse congregants to prove they too embraced diversity. Through each of these offerings, leaders of churches translated the racial capital of congregants into cultural experiences or consumable images that were legible and valuable to a White audience.
Are these methods socially innovative or do they merely reproduce inequality? The answer is complex. One could argue that church leaders empowered people of color to represent their cultural backgrounds. That the alternative to these musical, food, and dance celebrations would be White normativity. Another argument is that without these diversity displays congregants may lose their churches and so they inherently benefit from their own commodification. Still a third argument is that these transfers offer some form of redistribution from predominantly White entities to diverse ones.
Our analysis lends itself to a less optimistic view by pointing out two primary ways in which RSC reinforces racial hierarchies. First, RSC elevates White people, networks, and institutions. Because White audiences have funding to provide, they become the most important customers for leaders of diverse churches. The experiences on offer, then, are not of the church’s own choosing but consist of what will be appreciated by Whites with money. As seen with Pastors Olsen and Scott, an appeal to social justice is not valued, but diversity is.
Second, organizational leaders are given the power to define and to value people of color. Following the needs of their donors, leaders instantiate the meanings assigned to people of color, that they are different, other, and dependent upon Whites. As we note, in Father Hall’s case, he is the Robin Hood character. His funding drives are not something that the congregants had an equal role in deciding to pursue. When these clergy talk about their commodification efforts, they are the agents, and the congregants of color are the objects. Leaders sell the value of “diverse” people as a cultural exhibition (i.e., ethnic performances) or as “needy” to generate social and economic capital. Through these actions, leaders send subtle signals to White funders of their organizations that colorblind racism and other forms of symbolic power hierarchies will be maintained (Bourdieu 1977; Dobbin, Kim, and Kalev 2011; Embrick 2011).
RSC proceeds more effectively in the presence of substantive or thick diversity. Churches are a space where trusting relationships develop between congregants and clergy. These relationships provide authentic ties with the defined “other” to leverage and trust to gain the consent of the other to be commodified. Our findings suggest that even substantive diversity thereby leaves equity out of grasp. No form of organizational integration will achieve equity without removing the power dynamics that subvert it.
RSC may be so effective in contexts of thick diversity because it solves the problem of middleman brokers. The relationship of trust between a religious leader and their congregation facilitates commodification without engendering suspicion that would truncate the exchange. This condition can potentially be created wherever relational embeddedness marks the ties between actor and broker. The brokers in RSC may also be more effective because race makes their new connections less likely to close into new, denser networks, thus foreclosing the need for brokers (Munn 2018). When structural gaps remain, brokers remain relevant. This lack of closure may allow high trust in exchange to coexist with open networks. This area is a topic for future study.
Leaders of multiracial churches and other diverse organizations who engage in RSC are well-intended. Diverse churches may operate with limited financial and social support as differences in wealth disadvantage them relative to their White peers who head White organizations. This makes external fundraising more important to maintain budgets. Thus, many are perhaps doing what they feel they must do to keep their organizations afloat. The process of RSC cannot therefore be decontextualized. It can exist because of the White supremacist system in which it operates. Still, actors have agency. Leaders must choose to be aware of their agency and how their actions are contributing to reproducing racial oppression and inequality.
We suggest several avenues for future work. One is to modernize our measures of racial progress. Social scientists need to move beyond mapping the changes in diversity to identifying the institutional configurations that support Whites in maintaining control over resources. Another avenue for future work is to extend the concept of social commodification to understand how other forms of diversity are used for instrumental purposes. How might this process manifest in organizations that are diverse by sexuality or gender? The limitation of these data is that the leaders worked within a religious structure and culture that differ from other organizational types. While some will suggest that these differences reduce the applicability of the findings, we contend that scholars from a broad set of sociological backgrounds can learn from how diversity is commodified within a social context governed by few regulations but, in some cases, operate within some of the oldest and most durable institutions that exist in society today.
Footnotes
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The last author gratefully acknowledges support from the Lilly Foundation for this work.
