Cultural Contracts: Negotiating a Ubiquitous U.S. Dominant Worldview on Race and Ethnicity

Within this study, we explore the U.S. dominant worldview of race—one that traditionally uses a rigid classification of distinct racial categories and multiple ethnic groupings—and how diverse groups of individuals come to understand and adapt to the labels that are associated with that particular worldview. Drawing from focus group discussions involving 100 persons from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, we describe how individuals in the Southeastern United States negotiate their identities through the use of cultural contracts that are accepted, altered, and/or co-created. The manuscript concludes by discussing the study's implications for theorizing and future research.