It's the Message,Not the Messenger: The Declining Significance of Black–White Contact in a “Colorblind” Society*

We argue that due to the modern‐day prevalence of colorblind racism, the impact of interracial contact on whites’ racial consciousness is limited. By comparing two qualitative data sets of white antiracists and whites who have a close black friend, we find there are a good number of whites for whom relationships with people of color are not the prime impetus for becoming antiracist. Whites often bracket out their black friends from their limited understandings of racism, and white antiracists often adopt progressive ideologies from other whites. Even when interracial contact is part of white antiracists’ experiences, it often is but one small step in a process of sensitization to an antiracist counterideology. The bearers of this antiracist ideology (the “message”) may or may not be persons of color (the assumed “messengers”) so we explore a variety of ways that this “message” takes hold (or not) among whites. While not discounting contact theory altogether, we make plain that colorblindness is a major factor limiting its explanatory power. We conclude by discussing the methodological and theoretical implications of our findings for sociological race relations research.