Affinity Groups, Enclave Deliberation, and Equity

Introduction

This study is about the usefulness of enclaves or affinity groups, in public forums and political processes. Specifically, the authors focus on the value of enclaves of people with “similarly marginalized perspectives or social locations” as opposed to shared racial or ethnic identities. While the authors acknowledge these categorizations can often overlap, they believe that shared preferences/social locations affinity groupings can develop more productive, diverse, and actionable discussions compared to affinity groups based on shared racial or ethnic identity.  The goal of affinity groups, according to the authors, is to help participants understand their values and beliefs and translate them into policy preferences via public engagement settings. When conducted correctly, this paper asserts that disempowered groups could be better served by the integration of affinity groups in political decision-making. Furthermore, the study delves deeply into a specific case: Facing Racism in a Diverse Nation, a guide for public dialogue created by the organization Everyday Democracy for facilitation across the United States. 

Author Carolyn Abdullah is a writer of Facing Racism and a Senior Director at Everyday Democracy. Christopher F. Karpowitz is the Co-Director of the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy and Professor of Political Science at Brigham Young University. Finally, Chad Raphael is a Professor at Santa Clara University and a scholar of political and environmental communication. Together, the three authors approach the issue of enclave formation and implementation from a multifaceted lens, acknowledging both the strengths and weaknesses of this approach for policy making. 

Methods and Findings

The authors offer concrete ways that organizers can implement enclaves in political processes, such as forums like Deliberative Polls, Consensus Conferences, and Citizens Assemblies by reviewing existing literature and multiple cases from domestic and international contexts. The study centers three types of disempowered groups as most likely to benefit from affinity groups. (1) Politically disempowered groups – or individuals who have been formally excluded from political systems (e.g., denied voting rights), (2) situationally disempowered groups – or individuals who are broadly disadvantaged due to their current environment and resources (e.g., youth), and (3) deliberately disempowered groups – or individuals who are less likely to engage in dialogue due to the structures that make debate inaccessible to them (e.g., people with less education or income, immigrants conversing in their second tongue). To make claims about affinity groups, the authors begin by reviewing existing literature on how affinity groups of politically, situationally, and deliberately disempowered individuals can improve public discourse and decision-making.   

• First, affinity groups have been shown to help increase inclusive recruiting practices. If more like-minded and similarly situated individuals are attending an event, there is a snowball effect, increasing the chances that other like-minded individuals will feel more encouraged to attend and address their needs.
• Similarly, affinity groups address fears of being tokenized, since attendees are aware there will be other individuals at an event with their shared interests and perspectives.
• Finally, integrating affinity groups into a public forum can raise the quality of discourse and the legitimacy of an event overall. Multiple studies show that affinity groups can help fight the ‘false consensus effect,’ the idea that all members of a group agree on a key issue. Participants in affinity groups are more likely to accept arguments for- or against- a particular issue if presented by an individual with whom they share some sort of kinship or allegiance. 

In the study, the authors focus on one specific effective example of how affinity groups can be organized and implemented: Facing Racism in a Diverse Nation and Dialogue for Affinity Groups, two guides created by the organization, Everyday Democracy. The guides detail how to administer small group decisions, over several two-hour sessions, to foster discussions about racism and inequities. The authors identified several key findings to inform enclave group facilitation: 

• The affinity sessions encouraged self-reflection about social location and identity. Facilitators made sure to allow individuals to attend groups in which they felt they belonged. This created an environment that allowed for multiple different framings of an identity or issue. For example, groups may not have agreed on the definition of racism or discrimination, but were still encouraged to talk about both topics as well as  their personal experiences. 
• The affinity sessions contained broad questions that provided flexibility in how individuals wanted to respond to each prompt. This strategy helped participants to engage with the commonalities and differences within their affinity group and allowed space to discuss current and historical  issues related to racism in society.
• The affinity sessions helped prepare individuals for the larger group discussions that followed. The initial affinity sessions dealt with diverse topics in a friendly environment; therefore, when participants rejoined the broader group, they were armed with strategies to more effectively discuss racism and an appreciation for the value of different viewpoints.

Finally, the authors highlight how the nuanced and innovative ideas that are developed in affinity groups make them a unique solution to public problems. The importance of affinity groups, when discussing relational issues like racism, cannot be understated. Affinity groups have a special role to play, especially when other alternatives fail.

Conclusions

The study concludes by addressing the goals of affinity groups and offering key recommendations for practitioners that are considering conducting groups for the purposes of public engagement. The authors demonstrate that affinity groups within broader democratic processes are crucial to enhance the participation of minoritized individuals in public spaces. If well-executed, individuals that have been disempowered can engage in a process that will empower them, help them view political spaces as welcoming, and encourage them to have a voice in policy making. Lastly, they encourage practitioners to consider how the deliberation process is administered, the types of actions the group may undertake, and the audience for the affinity group when developing the process for affinity group creation. Furthermore, when and how the inclusion and integration of the affinity group into a larger democratic process occurs is crucial to the success of the affinity group. 

For further research, the authors encourage more review of successful affinity group facilitation and creative research designs that can further tease out what makes affinity groups effective in fostering dialogue.