Environmental Racial Inequality in Detroit

This study uses industrial pollution data from the Environmental Protection Agency's Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) and tract-level demographic data from the 2000 U.S. census to determine whether environmental racial inequality existed in the Detroit metropolitan area in the year 2000. This study differs from prior environmental inequality research in two important ways. First, it offers a positive rationale for using hazard proximity indicators. Second, it uses a distance decay modeling technique to estimate hazard proximity. This technique weights each hazard's estimated negative effect by distance such that the estimated negative effect declines continuously as distance from the hazard increases, thus providing more accurate estimates of proximity-based environmental risk than can be obtained using other variable construction techniques currently found in the literature. Using this technique, I find that Detroit's black neighborhoods were disproportionately burdened by TRI facility activity in 2000 and that neighborhood racial composition had a strong independent effect on neighborhood proximity to TRI activity.     

A Dynamic Model of Racial Competition, Racial Inequality, and Interracial Violence

Race relations and stratification literatures offer explicit expectations concerning interracial conflict. Causal arguments derived from these perspectives are examined in this study to explore their ability to explain interracial violence above and beyond criminological perspectives of economic deprivation and racial inequality. The vast majority of previous aggregate-level studies on violence are cross-sectional, ignoring the importance of a dynamic model that incorporates the influence of changing structural conditions in urban areas on interracial violence. We explore theories that incorporate dynamic explanations for the influence of structural factors related to crime as well as racial conflict and employ a methodological approach that models the change in structural conditions for rare events such as interracial homicide. We find that changes between 1980 and 1990 in urban Black and Hispanic population composition, racial competition and racial inequality differentially explain the variation in White and Black interracial homicide offending.     

Democracy's Dilemma: Explaining Racial Inequality in Egalitarian Societies

While contemporary criticisms of Gunnar Myrdal's liberal reformism provide an important perspective on racial ideology (G. Myrdal (1944) An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Democracy. New York: Harper & Row), most people miss Myrdal's most provocative point. Rather than assuming that egalitarianism could only oppose racial inequality, Myrdal argued that commitment to egalitarianism led Euro-Americans to avoid the dilemma presented by racial inequality in an egalitarian society. Rather than predicting the disappearance of racism, this analysis can be used to predict an increasing demand for racism in the wake of de jure attempts to eliminate racial inequality.     

Covering the Dawsons: Racial Variation in Newspaper Framing of Urban Crime

This article uses newspaper coverage of a case from Baltimore, Maryland, to explore racial variation in the rhetorical framing of urban crime. In October 2002, seven members of the Dawson family were murdered in a house fire. The murders became an expression of Baltimore’s character and the lives of its residents. After analyzing 206 newspaper articles about the case, we find stark differences in the way the case, its causes, and its consequences are presented to readers. Newspapers with primarily white audiences—both “mainstream” and “alternative” papers—present the case as a horrific, singular instance, placing responsibility on the perpetrator. In contrast, articles in African American newspapers offer a complex web of explanation, calling attention to the structural inequalities and disparate access to state resources. Whereas white newspaper portray the Dawson family as martyrs in the drug war, black newspapers position the family as part of a wider of community of African Americans who are victims of slack policing, racial discrimination, and negligent social policy. We argue that these rhetorical differences are more than cosmetic. Rather, they provide a framework for better understanding the relationship between the press and policy makers. Differences in coverage of the case also contribute to our understanding of why blacks and whites have fundamentally different understandings of race in the United States.     

The Unintended Significance of Race: Environmental Racial Inequality in Detroit

This article addresses shortcomings in the literature on environmental inequality by (a) setting forth and testing four models of environmental inequality and (b) explicitly linking environmental inequality research to spatial mismatch theory and to the debate on the declining significance of race. The explanatory models ask whether the distribution of blacks and whites around environmental hazards is the result of black/white income inequality, racist siting practices, or residential segregation. The models are tested using manufacturing facility and census data from the Detroit metropolitan area. It turns out that the distribution of blacks and whites around this region's polluting manufacturing facilities is largely the product of residential segregation which, paradoxically, has reduced black proximity to manufacturing facility pollution.     

Beyond the Low-Hanging Fruit: Reducing Racial Inequality by Rethinking School Safety Efforts

In this essay, I examine the problem of excessive and racially disproportionate school discipline. I begin by considering how each of the four most popular Democratic candidates in the presidential primary race as of January 2020 addresses this issue. Excessive and racially disproportionate school discipline harms students, schools, and communities, and it deepens existing racial inequalities. Each candidate promises some remedy, and all represent a step in the right direction. However, all of their proposals are shallow. To fruitfully address these issues, policymakers must consider the cultural embeddedness of school discipline, how it is implemented within complex school bureaucracies, and the underlying racial inequality that shapes school discipline. Policymakers must also draw attention to the fact that schools are, overall, safe and do not require the massive investments in security personnel and technology that draw funds away from more effective supports for students.     

New Color Lines: Racial/Ethnic Inequality in Earnings among College‐Educated Men

Using the 2003 National Survey of College Graduates, this study examined four perspectives on new color lines in America—white–nonwhite, black–nonblack, tri‐racial, and blurred—among college‐educated white, black, Hispanic, and Asian men. Findings show that the color lines have not been consistently drawn but vary by nativity and migration status. Among the native born, the color line for earnings cuts mainly across white and nonwhite when field of study and Carnegie classification are controlled for in addition to other covariates. On the other hand, among members of the 1.5 generation, who obtained both their high school and highest degrees in the United States, the lines are most salient between black and nonblack. Among first‐generation immigrants, who completed all their education in a foreign country, and 1.25‐generation immigrants, who obtained their high school diploma in a foreign country but earned their highest degree in the United States, there is a gradation of the color line with whites at the top and blacks at the bottom. Despite these mixed results, blacks fall consistently at the bottom of the racial hierarchy and whites at the top, regardless of nativity and migration status. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

The Case of Cubans: Racial Inequality in U.S. Homeownership and Home Values

Prior research finds that human capital may explain racial housing inequality, whereas others note the historical role that race played in creating unequal housing conditions. This study uses the case of Cubans in the United States to examine whether human capital explains Black–White housing inequalities, or if they are a result of nativity/cohort differences—a proxy for the federal policies that supported Cubans’ economic and social incorporation. Using pooled data from the American Community Survey, I examine how human capital characteristics and nativity/migration cohorts shape odds of homeownership and predicted home values among Cubans. Extended analyses using decomposition methods find that although human capital characteristics are important, they play a smaller role in explaining Black–White differences in homeownership and home values. Indicative of the changing structure of racial stratification in the United States, results reveal substantial inequality among the oldest of Cuban immigrants and U.S.‐born Cubans, despite a trend toward declining inequality among recent arrivals. Supported by the literature of systemic racism, the case of Cubans shows how human capital explanations do not sufficiently explain racial housing inequalities and how the future of racial stratification is one of inter‐ and intra‐ethnic group inequality.     

Framing Robert W. Cox,Framing International Relations

Abstract

In the recent years, R.W. Cox has distanced himself from some genealogical connections made by his followers in regard to what he meant in his famous 1981 article. Was he mischaracterized, framed? This paper focuses on how Cox has been ‘framed’, a concept elaborated and used across social sciences in different contexts. Here, it is used to look at different mechanisms by which ideas, such as those of Cox, can be connected, ‘framed’ to other ideas, not only to advance knowledge but to strengthen individual careers, to strengthen and construct approaches and disciplines. Framing highlights and creates a space but also constrains and obscures. Cox deserves to be seen outside any frames other than the one he creates for himself, one which is changing and developing as does the real world, not captive to any approach, paradigm, discipline, or any other frame.     

The Impact of Intersecting Dimensions of Inequality and Identity on the Racial Status of Eastern African Immigrants1

In this article, we examine how immigrants from eastern Africa to the Minneapolis and St. Paul metropolitan area understand and navigate the U.S. color line and its implications for nonwhites. Although these immigrants are subject to constraints based on their racial status as black, they mobilize other intersecting aspects of their identities to manipulate racial classifications in the hopes of attaining upward mobility in the United States, even when doing so creates other social costs for them. Eastern African immigrants draw on their ethnicity and, among Muslim immigrants, their religion to differentiate themselves from African Americans, who occupy the lowest position in the U.S. racial hierarchy. In challenging their categorization as racially black and seeking to move up the racial hierarchy, Eastern African immigrants refine the color line to distinguish between African‐American blacks and non‐African‐American blacks.     

Framing the Self

The meaning of a photograph depends on the story we tell about it. In the case of portraits, these narrative frames shape the self we impute to the sitter. The interiority of the portrait subject, the inner character we imagine is revealed in the photograph, is a result of what we know about photographic portraits, about the sitter, about the photographer, and about the context in which the image was made. Likewise in everyday life, the selves we impute to others are infected by similar processes of narrative framing. Who we are known to be depends not only on self‐presentations but on the stories within which those self‐presentations are placed.     

The Effect of Question Framing and Response Options on the Relationship between Racial Attitudes and Beliefs about Genes as Causes of Behavior

Prior research suggests that the attribution of individual and group differences to genetic causes is correlated with prejudiced attitudes toward minority groups. Our study suggests that these findings may be due to the wording of the questions and to the choice of response options. Using a series of vignettes in an online survey, we find a relationship between racial attitudes and genetic attributions when respondents are asked to make causal attributions of differences between racial groups. However, when they are asked to make causal attributions for characteristics shown by individuals, no such relationship is found. The response scale used appears to make less, if any, difference in the results. These findings indicate that the way questions about genetic causation of behavior are framed makes a significant contribution to the answers obtained because it significantly changes the meaning of the questions. We argue that such framing needs to be carefully attended to, not only in posing research questions but also in discourse about genetics more generally.     

Media Framing of Trafficking

This article explores meaning-making processes around human trafficking, using the empirical example of the Slovene press. The analysis pinpoints how the topic appears in the media, what content emphases it receives in reporting, which aspects are dealt with and which are absent, and the implications of such framing. My reading of newspaper articles shows how trafficking appears within ‘frames’ that I label ‘criminalization’, ‘nationalization’, ‘victimization’ and ‘regularization’; together, these help to shape a specific anti-trafficking paradigm, one that depicts trafficking as a criminal issue and calls for stricter policing, saving victims and tightening borders. The frames as they appear in the Slovene press are unpacked here with the purpose of opening up space for understandings of trafficking that go beyond predominant representations.     

The Distribution of Air Lead Levels Across U.S. Counties: Implications for the Production of Racial Inequality

This work draws upon previous studies of environmental inequity to investigate the distribution of estimated air lead concentrations across 3,111 U.S. counties. Data for this research come from the U.S. Census Bureau's 1990 Census of Population and Housing: Summary Tape File 3A and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's 1990 Cumulative Exposure Project . Findings from OLS and WLS regression suggest that air lead concentrations are associated with county racial composition. Counties with the largest proportion of Black youth under 16 years of age (10th decile=0.09) have nearly 7.9 percent more lead in the air than counties with no Black youth (1st decile=0.00). Counties with the largest proportion of White youth under 16 years of age (10th decile=0.25) have nearly 10.0 percent less lead in the air than counties with the smallest proportion of White youth (1st decile=0.13). These findings persist despite adjustments for urbanization, income, and housing values. This work proposes that the distribution of air lead levels has important implications for the field of sociology and the study of racial inequality.     

Racial capitalism

Theory and Society - “Racial capitalism” has surfaced during the past few decades in projects that highlight the production of difference in tandem with the production of...