RaceWorks Toolkit – Culture Cycle Concept Guide

Doing Race Through the Culture Cycle

(from “Doing Race: An Introduction,” Doing Race: 21 Essays for the 21st Century, Moya & Markus, 2010 and Clash!: How to Thrive in a Multicultural World, Markus & Conner, 2014)

Race operates across different levels of society: the individual level, the interactional level, the institutional level, and the ideological level. These levels can be represented in a useful tool called the “culture cycle.” The culture cycle represents how individuals, interactions, institutions, and ideas work together dynamically in society. Below is an example of how the culture cycle can be used to map how race is done across each level of society.

Ideas: Cultural and historical ideas about race and racial differences.
- Examples: Racial difference = biological difference, black = criminal, Latinx =illegal
Institutions: Current and past social structures, laws, and policies that institutionalize race and racism.
- Examples: Slavery, Jim Crow laws, Chinese Exclusion, Indian Removal Act, Japanese Internment, Mexican Repatriation
Interactions: Everyday interactions with people and cultural products and artifacts that reinforce race and racism.
- Examples: Microaggressions, macroaggressions, stereotypical representations in TV, film, or other media
Individuals: People’s thoughts, feelings, behaviors, biases, and stereotypes about race and racial differences.
- Examples: Racial stereotypes, biases, and implicit associations.