Racial Homophily in Context: Tie Types and Organizational Composition in Teacher Networks

Purpose: Racial homophily—the tendency to form ties with same-race colleagues—is common in workplace networks, including schools. But we know less about how it varies across relationship types and organizational racial composition. We examine racial homophily in teachers’ instructional advice, disciplinary advice, and friendship networks, comparing Black and White teachers in majority-White and majority-Black schools. Research Methods/Approach: Using pooled network models across four schools, we find that homophily patterns vary systematically by tie type and context. Findings: In instructional advice networks, White teachers show same-race homophily in both majority-White and majority-Black faculty contexts, whereas Black teachers do not show a clear same-race pattern in either context. In disciplinary advice networks, both groups show context-sensitive homophily: Black teachers show homophily in both contexts but more strongly in majority-White schools, whereas White teachers show homophily only in majority-Black schools. In friendship networks, Black and White teachers show homophily in both contexts, and for both groups, it is stronger when they are in the numerical minority. Implications: These findings show that racial boundary-making in schools is not uniform; it depends on the social content of ties and the organizational composition in which those ties form.