Race relations are notoriously intricate in the United States, and they can be challenging enough for those who have spent their entire lives in the country to fully grasp. For newly-arrived refugees, it can be even harder.

A recent paper from Tufts highlights how refugees struggle to grasp the dynamics of race in the US and how these challenges affect their efforts to integrate into their new homes.

Understanding racial relations

The researchers worked with Hello Neighbor, a refugee resettlement agency that provides a range of services to refugees and immigrants, with the aim of understanding how refugees learn about race relations, with a particular focus on racism.

“We want to learn more about how new immigrants and refugees experience racism themselves and then sometimes perpetrate the stereotypes and prejudices,” the researchers explain. “We also want to work with refugee communities to help them—and us—learn about race in America. And we want to interrupt the process where new immigrants themselves pick up racist attitudes through not understanding the nuances; the hope is to then redirect the learning.”

The results show that what people learned, and indeed how they learned it, would often depend on their age, their country of origin, and their education level. For instance, those with higher education would often have a higher awareness of racism in the US.

“Most Pittsburgh participants said they had not known about U.S. racism before their arrival,” the authors explain. “Only three Afghans said they had known about it; one said he knew because he is an academic. One participant from Congo said she had learned about the slave trade in school, but had not known about modern U.S. racism.”

Younger refugees were also often more aware of racism in the US because of their exposure to social media, which gave them a heightened understanding of international affairs.

The circumstances in which people lived prior to arriving in the United States also influenced the level of racial prejudice they had towards others.

“A lot of refugees who had negative perceptions of the Black community in the United States were in refugee camps before coming to the U.S.,” the researchers explain. “On the other hand, refugees who had been in cities—in, for example, Jordan and Turkey—did not seem to have the same degree of bias when they came in.”

The report notes that “Afghan participants…stated that in refugee camps they heard Black Americans were dangerous,” and some Congolese men reported that “they were scared of Black Americans due to their media portrayals in the refugee camps where they had spent time.”

Antiracist programming

The researchers hope that their findings will help in the creation of programming to help refugees to adjust more successfully to their new environment.

The researchers are currently conducting additional research with the hope of eventually formulating such programming and helping to advance matters, potentially with the help of partners, such as the Hello Neighbor Network.

“We’re looking to go back to these communities to determine how we can create interventions guided by the communities themselves to help refugees better navigate and understand racial contexts,” the researchers conclude. “The goal is to scale up and see if we can help develop services and programming that will be applicable around the U.S.—and also in other countries. We’d love to try this out elsewhere too.”