At base, Churn is a practical book. It focuses less on the nature or politics of identity and more on what it takes to build trust between people of different identities— even oppositional identities— in the real-life settings of our lives. It spotlights a dimension of human relations— trust-building— that may be even more powerful than we thought.

Things like: How are people like me seen and treated here? Will I be supported here? Will it be a fair place for people like me? Diversity puts us in a state of mind in which identity is top of mind. Stressful emotions can arise. Thoughts scramble as we work to decipher and make meaning. To capture the anxious, ruminative nature of this state, my term for it is “churn,” a term whose utility I suspect will increase as the diversity of our life settings increases.

There is poignancy to stereotype threat: It’s felt most by those in the stereotyped group who are most identified with achieving in the area where the stereotype applies, and who are trying to do challenging or frustrating things in that area. It affects most the vanguard of the group— as in Mirna wanting to succeed as an ultrarunner; as in women trying to break glass ceilings in finance; as in highly invested African American law students taking challenging state bar exams; as in white American males trying to succeed in elite basketball. That’s when, in the heat of frustration, the stereotype’s dark message— “everybody knows that, because of who you are, you probably can't do well at this, and that you probably don’t belong”— becomes personally relevant. That’s when it can cause enough churn to interfere with performance.

Identity threat can be life-shaping, pushing people in and out of settings, even in and out of whole walks of life.

2. Where Does Churn Come From?

This, I would suggest, is the social tension at the heart of the American experiment. It’s what makes us churn. In diverse settings we have questions: “Given my identity and the stereotypes about it, can I trust this situation?” “Will I be valued here?” “Treated fairly?” “Will I be heard here?” The struggle to answer these questions—to figure out how one’s identity will play out in a situation— is what churn is.