Intergroup Resources

From 2010 to 2012 I directed a national research project to identify and analyze programs that engage communities of color in intergroup dialogue and critical analysis of globalization, immigration, race, and power, with the goal of finding common ground and intentionally building relationships across difference.

Guided by an advisory committee of experts in intergroup relations from across the country, our nine-person research team (including 5 students) conducted interviews with 75 community organizations, worker centers, unions, and independent activists across the United States, gaining experience in methodologies of collaborative research. Supported by the Kirwan Institute and the University of South Florida's Department of Anthropology and Institute for the Study of Latin America and the Caribbean, this work revealed that Latino immigrants’ reluctance to engage with their complicated positioning vis-à-vis structures of white supremacy remains a major hurdle for intergroup efforts (forthcoming in the Du Bois Review).

The principal product of this research was the creation of Intergroup Resources, an online resource center that seeks to strengthen intergroup relations for social justice by sharing materials, tools, and lessons learned from organizers around the United States. Intergroup Resources also aspires to nurture a national network of organizations and individuals experienced in intergroup dialogue, political education, and curriculum creation to provide “offline” support that can supplement and enrich the online resource center.

Supported and maintained by SPACEs, the online and offline components of Intergroup Resources:

  • Provide support to communities, organizations, and campaigns doing intergroup work
  • Guide the adaptation of existing tools and materials to locally-specific contexts
  • Create online and offline “learning spaces” where we practice, provide feedback and refine the tools available for intergroup work
  • Link the four dimensions of intergroup work—Dialogue, Education, Action and Reflection—and deepen our understandings of their interconnections within the DEAR framework

scholarly products

Stuesse, Angela, Cheryl Staats, and Andrew Grant-Thomas. 2017.  As Others Pluck Fruit Off the Tree of Opportunity: Immigration, Racial Hierarchies, and Intergroup Relations Efforts in the United States. Du Bois Review 14(1):245-271. 

Stuesse, Angela, N. Kidane, G. Lenoir, S. Pitts, M. Poblet, and L. Rivas. 2012. “Intergroup Coalition-Building and Social Justice: A Conversation with Bay Area Activists.” Roundtable selected as an Executive Session at American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, San Francisco.

Stuesse, Angela and Dushaw Hockett. 2012.  “A New Place on Race: Thinking, Talking, and Acting on Race and Immigration.”  5th Annual National Immigrant Integration Conference, Baltimore.

Hockett, Dushaw, C. Staats, and A. Stuesse. 2012. “A New Place on Race: A Resource Center for Intergroup Relations.” Transforming Race 2012: Visions of Change. Kiran Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, The Ohio State University, Columbus.