The Costs of Diversity: How Pastors of Color Experience Diversity Programs and Policies within Multiracial Churches

“By illuminating the experiences of pastors of color in multiracial churches, my research helps the American Church diversify while maintaining healthy pastors and churches. ”

Team Members/Contributors

Oneya Fennell Okuwobi The Ohio State University Contact Me

About this dissertation fellowship

Organizations, including churches, that embrace racial diversity receive various benefits. Because many advantages from diversity derive more from deploying symbols than creating effective programs, however, the benefits of diversity can be focused on the institutions rather than the people inhabiting them. To better understand this balance, I conduct 40 semi-structured interviews with associate pastors of color on their experiences within multiracial churches. These interviews reveal the effects of organizational diversity policies on the people who are the object of them. As diversity and related discourses have become the primary way by which we talk about race in organizations, it is imperative that we fully understand what diversity does, its effects on people, and ultimately how this impacts racial structure. Furthermore, as American churches are quickly diversifying, understanding how to best support clergy of color within these churches is important to the persistence of healthy pastors and congregations. I also conduct interviews with assistant professors and entry-level managers of color to enable comparisons across organization types (n=120). Through these interviews, I analyze the effects of diversity as an ideology operating within organizations, determine variation in experience across racial groups, and add to a growing body of literature elucidating what diversity does within the racial structure.