Too Many Preachers? Black Participation in the Ministry in Northern U.S. Cities during the Great Migration

Past studies have claimed that during the Great Migration the church participation of southern black migrants in northern cities was weakened by the circumstances of urban life. The present study, building on theories of subculture formation and the ethnic niche, challenges this claim by examining the participation of blacks in a religious occupation: the ministry. An analysis of Census data suggests that, in those northern cities with relatively large black populations, a "critical mass" of blacks created by in-migration helped to support the entry of blacks into the ministry. The findings are consistent with the assertion that the Great Migration stimulated the church participation of blacks in these cities. They are also in agreement with the argument that the size and distinctive cultural traditions of an ethnic minority group may, together, sustain some of the group's members in a special occupational niche.     

Ethnic and class factors affecting mental health clinic service

Service delivery by a mental health clinic to clients from an older suburban catchment area containing both lower and middle class blacks and whites was studied. The epidemiologic method was employed, relating service delivery to the characteristics of the various population groups within the catchment. The findings indicate that low service rates for blacks were not related to ethnicity alone, but to the combination of black ethnicity and low social status; however, middle class blacks and middle class whites who entered treatment received similar service. Poor blacks had higher admission rates than poor whites with similar need indicators. In continued treatment, poor blacks received lowest service rates while minority status poor whites living in a predominantly black area received highest service rates. Social class mediated black service utilization. Severity of illness, interacting with social class and minority status mediated white service utilization. Outreach is suggested not only for poor blacks but also for poor whites, especially those living in areas in which they represent an ethnic minority.     

The Portrayal of Blacks in Magazine Advertisements: 1950-1982

This article compares the frequency and social characteristicsof blacks and whites in advertisements in Time and Ladies' HomeJournal during 1950 and 1980. The occupational level of blacksportrayed has risen considerably, and blacks are no longer presentedas maids or servants. However, white authority figures are stillfrequently shown aiding poor blacks or supervising black children.Furthermore, ads show friendly and informal social relationshipsbetween individual whites much more frequently than they showsuch relationships between whites and blacks. Finally, in anextended analysis the frequency of black ads in 1980, 1981,and 1982 is examined for Time, Newsweek and LHJ. Blacks arestill somewhat underrepresented, and recent fluctuations inthe use of black advertisements are considered. The articlebegins and ends with a discussion of three different modelsthat might account for the way blacks are presented in advertisementsin the United States.     

Does a helping hand put others at risk?: affirmative action,police departments,and crime

Will increasing the number of minority and women police officers make law enforcement more effective by drawing on abilities that have gone untapped and creating better contact with communities and victims? Or will standards have to be lowered too far before large numbers of minorities and women can be hired? Using cross‐sectional time‐series data for U.S. cities for 1987, 1990, and 1993, I find that hiring more black and minority police officers increases crime rates, but this apparently arises because lower hiring standards involved in recruiting more minority officers reduces the quality of both new minority and new nonminority officers. The most adverse effects of these hiring policies have occurred in the areas most heavily populated by blacks. There is no consistent evidence that crime rates rise when more women are hired, and this raises questions about whether norming tests or altering their content to create equal pass rates is preferable. The article examines how the changing composition of police departments affects such measures as the murder of and assaults against police officers.     

Racial Segregation,the Concentration of Disadvantage,and Black and White Homicide Victimization

Discriminatory housing market practices have created and reinforced patterns of racial residential segregation throughout the United States. Such segregation has racist consequences too. Residential segregation increases the concentration of disadvantage for blacks but not whites, creating African-American residential environments that heighten social problems including violence within the black population. At the same time, segregation protects white residential environments from these dire consequences. This hypothesized racially inequitable process is tested for one important type of violence—homicide. We examine race-specific models of lethal violence that distinguish residential segregation from the concentration of disadvantage within racial groups. Data are from the Censuses of Population and Federal Bureau of Investigation's homicide incidence files for U.S. large central cities for 1980 and 1990. Our perspective finds support in the empirical analyses. Segregation has an important effect on black but not white killings, with the impact of segregation on African-American homicides explained by concentrated disadvantage.     

INNUMERACY ABOUT MINORITY POPULATIONS

We use a small but nationally representative sample to investigatethe sources of innumeracy regarding the proportion of blacks,Hispanics, and Jews in the U.S. population. In addition to anumber of standard demographic differences, we find that overestimatesare closely related to region as well as to the density of thelocal black/Hispanic population. The extent to which minoritypopulations are perceived as a kind of threat is also relatedto perceived proportions, though the direction of causalitycannot be determined. We discuss the meaningfulness of thesepopulation estimates and speculate on whether trying to improvethem would alter attitudes toward minorities.     

Black Mayors/White Mayors: Explaining Their Approval

Performance models have been the norm in research on nationaland state executives, but oddly this model has rarely been extendedto the next level of executive office, mayors. The increasingnumber of African American mayors suggests that race may complicatethe performance model of approval at the local level. This researchtests a performance model of mayoral approval that takes racialfactors into account. The model is tested in two white citieswith white mayors and two black cities with black mayors. Performanceis measured by citizen evaluations of a variety of urban conditions,some of which citizens can observe firsthand. Findings indicatethat (1) performance matters in evaluating black and white mayors,and its influence does not seem to be related to the race ofthe mayor; (2) performance has more explanatory power over mayoralapproval than race, a pattern that holds for both black andwhite mayors; (3) race has more impact on the approval of blackmayors than on white mayors; and (4) blacks in black citieshave lower evaluations of local government performance in theircities than blacks in white cities. We conclude that the performancemodel is generalizable to the local level, even with the complicationsof race.     

“Taking Back Our Country”: Tea Party Membership and Support for Punitive Crime Control Policies

The Tea Party Movement (TPM) emerged shortly after the 2008 election, with members rallying behind the call to “take back our country.” Many observers suggest that the movement represents, in part, a racialized backlash against the election of Barack Obama, the nation's first black president, motivated by perceived threats to the racial hierarchy. Racial threat theory predicts that if the TPM is motivated by and reinforces racial concerns, racialized support for punitive crime policies that disproportionately impact blacks should be higher among Tea Partiers. Drawing on recent national survey data, this study tests this prediction. The results show that TPM membership is positively associated with punitiveness and that this relationship is mediated, in part, by Tea Partiers’ animus toward blacks. We discuss the import of these findings for competing accounts of the TPM, racial threat theory, and the argument that the United States has become a “post‐racial society.”     

Municipal Underbounding: Annexation and Racial Exclusion in Small Southern Towns*

Abstract This paper examines patterns of annexation, including municipal “underbounding,” in nonmetropolitan towns in the South; that is, whether blacks living adjacent to municipalities are systematically excluded from incorporation. Annexation‐or the lack of annexation‐can be a political tool used by municipal leaders to exclude disadvantaged or low‐income populations, including minorities, from voting in local elections and from receiving access to public utilities and other community services. To address this question, we use Tiger files, GIS, and other geographically disaggregated data from the Summary Files of the 1990 and 2000 decennial censuses. Overall, 22.6 percent of the fringe areas “at risk” of annexation in our study communities was African American, while 20.7 percent of the areas that were actually annexed during the 1990s was African American. However, communities with large black populations at the fringe were significantly less likely than other communities to annex at all‐either black or white population. Largely white communities that faced a “black threat”‐which we defined in instances where the county “percent black” was higher than the place “percent black”‐were also less likely to annex black populations during the 1990s. Finally, predominately white communities were much less likely to annex black populations, even when we controlled for the size of the black fringe population at risk of annexation. Such results provide evidence of racial exclusion in small southern towns.     

#BlackLivesMatter: Innovative Black Resistance

Since 2013, extrajudicial police killings of black people have captured the attention of U.S. and international media, substantially because of the work of leaders in the Black Lives Matter (#BLM) movement. #BLM is simultaneously a group of localized organizations and a broad online social movement. In this article, we examine the #BLM movement in detail, with particular emphasis on the following aspects of the movement: (1) its innovative organizational practices and social media use; (2) its accent on black perspectives (counterframing) of systemic racial oppression, heteronormativity, and capitalism; and (3) its broad emphasis on oppressed Americans, including black women and LGBTQ people. We also situate the #BLM movement within the surrounding system of racial oppression, including the historical role of racialized policing in maintaining social control of blacks. We detail the long tradition of black social movements, especially black feminist organizing, against systemic racial oppression. In doing so, we intend to contribute social movement theorizing that more fully considers powerful counterframed perspectives of black activists in U.S. social movements. Although the #BLM movement reflects black feminism and past civil rights movement struggles, it is a uniquely twenty‐first‐century social movement that uses new technologies for innovative social protest.     

The Social Participation of Blacks: A Proposed Synthesis of Two Competing Theories

Discrepant findings have typified the research concerning the social participation of blacks in America. The bulk of the findings would seem to posit three competing theories, one emphasizing low participation levels on the part of blacks, and the later two emphasizing high levels of social participation. These theories are examined and a synthesis of the "isolation" and "compensation" models is proposed. By examining both formal and informal types of social participation on the part of blacks, it is argued that both theories are viable toward explaining variation within black participation levels in particular and toward mediating the discrepant findings as they have been previously offered in general. Some support is found for such a proposed synthesis.     

Formal and Informal Social Controls of Employee Deviance*

Using the phenomenon of deviance by employees against the rules of the formal work organization as the behavior of interest, the differential saliences of both formal (i.e., management) and informal (i.e., co-worker) sanction severity are empirically compared. As hypothesized, the perceived threat of informal sanctions by one's fellow co-workers explains both property deviance and production deviance far better than the perceived severity of the more formal responses initiated by management. Further, if the two forms of social control are causally ordered, we find that management actions to constrain deviant employees do have an effect, albeit indirect, in that formal sanctions operate on deviance indirectly by shaping the informal sanctions.     

RACIAL DIFFERENCES IN ACCESS TO HIERARCHICAL AUTHORITY

Using national data from the General Social Surveys, I examined race differences in the magnitude of the black-white gap among men in the odds of gaining access to positions of hierarchical authority at work and possible changes in this gap over the period 1972–1994. A test of William Julius Wilson's (1978) thesis of "the declining significance of race'and human capital/structural explanations for racial differences in access to hierarchical authority show that (1) blacks are less likely to be in the highest levels of job authority net of human capital, occupational location, family status, and region of residence, but there are fewer racial differences in access to lower positions of authority, and (2) blacks receive a lower authority return to their levels of education compared to whites. However, separate analyses based on subsamples of men living and working in large and small cities suggest that the racial gap in access to high authority and in the amount of authority returns to education is present more so among men living in large cities than small cities; but the racial gap in men's access to positions of high authority in small cities increased over the twenty-two-year period covered by the data. I discuss the implications of these findings for the persistent role of race in determining the life chances of black and white men.     

Media variants,situation awareness,and protective public-health behaviors

This study investigates the effect of exposure to traditional and social media on protective behaviors during a public health emergency, mediated by situation awareness composed of perceived knowledge and perceived threat. Under the context of the worldwide spread of Ebola in 2014, a survey conducted in Hong Kong showed that, compared to exposure to social media regarding the emergency, exposure to traditional media produced a higher level of situation awareness, which further affected protective behaviors in a public health emergency. In addition, the effect of traditional media exposure on protective behaviors was significantly mediated by both perceived knowledge and perceived threat. However, the effect of social media exposure on protective behavior was only significantly mediated by perceived knowledge, but not by perceived threat.     

Race and imprisonments: vigilante violence, minority threat, and racial politics

The effects of lynchings on criminal justice outcomes have seldom been examined. Recent findings also are inconsistent about the effects of race on imprisonments. This study uses a pooled time-series design to assess lynching and racial threat effects on state imprisonments from 1972 to 2000. After controlling for Republican strength, conservatism, and other factors, lynch rates explain the growth in admission rates. The findings also show that increases in black residents produce subsequent expansions in imprisonments that likely are attributable to white reactions to this purported menace. But after the percentage of blacks reaches a substantial threshold—and the potential black vote becomes large enough to begin to reduce these harsh punishments—reductions in prison admissions occur. These results also confirm a political version of racial threat theory by indicating that increased Republican political strength produces additional imprisonments.     

The Tenant Labor Market and Lynching in the South: A Test of Split Labor Market Theory*

Split labor market theory was originally advanced as a general approach explaining ethnic antagonism as the result of class-based interests. In this investigation, the threat to “high-priced” (white) labor from “cheap” (black) labor within the farm tenancy system of the postbellum South is examined as an underlying cause of the lynching of blacks by whites. Supporting this interpretation, the ratio of black to white tenants in southern counties, a measure of the level of economic threat to high-priced labor, is shown to be a strong predictor of lynching rates in the Cotton South. Findings for the Non-Cotton South, however, are inconsistent with theoretical expectations. We conclude that racial violence linked to economic competition between working-class whites and blacks was limited to that part of the South dominated by the plantation system.     

“My God,What Am I Gonna Say?”: Class Reunions as Social Control

Autobiographical occasions are perceived as an apportunity to constitute an identity, to lay claim to one's own life, to the right to tell one's own story. Using high school class reunions as a case study, I argue that those social moments that require accounts of one's life also generate a major threat to the identities constructed, by constituting an informal process of social control. The requirement to narrate one's life story and cope with its limits is a force through which the social order is confirmed and one's identity within that order defined and assigned. While reunions create a community and an opportunity to speak up, they generate at the same time classification, hierarchy, and evaluation processes that might not otherwise appear in modern society.     

RESIDENTIAL STABILITY, NEIGHBORHOOD RACIAL COMPOSITION, AND THE SUBJECTIVE ASSESSMENT OF NEIGHBORHOOD PROBLEMS AMONG OLDER ADULTS

This study investigates the effects of neighborhood racial composition and residential stability—as measured by the percentage of individuals who have lived in the same location for the past five years—on perceived neighborhood problems. Among a sample of older black and white adults, findings indicate that the patterns are contingent upon residents' race. For whites who reside in neighborhoods with a low percentage of black residents, greater residential stability is associated with fewer perceived neighborhood problems net of individual- and neighborhood-level disadvantage. For blacks, greater residential stability is associated with fewer neighborhood problems, but the percentage of black residents is associated with more neighborhood problems. In both cases, individual- and neighborhood-level socioeconomic disadvantages contribute to those patterns. These findings have implications for theories about the personal and social effects of residential stability and neighborhood racial composition, as well as race differences in the links between neighborhood context and the subjective assessment of neighborhood problems.     

Gender,race, and the use of prayer to manage anger

ABSTRACT

Women and blacks are more likely than men and whites to use prayer to manage negative emotions such as anger. However, the pathways explaining these associations are not fully understood. Using data from the 1996 General Social Survey’s emotion module, we evaluate four potential mechanisms that might account for these associations: women’s and blacks’ relatively high levels of religious participation, relatively low socioeconomic status, extended duration of their negative emotional experiences, and relatively lower perceived control. Women’s and blacks’ higher likelihood of using prayer to manage anger is partially accounted for by their higher levels of religious participation, lower socioeconomic status, and duration of anger. Lower levels of perceived control contribute only to blacks’ use of prayer to manage anger. Our findings highlight the importance of identifying pathways that explain why particular social groups use particular emotion management strategies.     

A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE ON RACIAL RESIDENTIAL SEGREGATION:

This article takes a first step to compare the residential segregation of blacks and Asians from whites in American and Canadian cities. The analysis is based on census data from 404 American and 41 Canadian cities. African Americans in the United States experience a higher level of residential segregation than Asians in U.S. cities. On the other hand, blacks in Canada experience the same low level of segregation as Asians. To explain the different experiences of blacks in the United States and Canada, a multivariate model is proposed and tested. The results reveal several patterns. First, African Americans are consistently obstructed much more than Asian Americans by their proportion in the city. In contrast blacks in Canada are not. Second, the residential segregation patterns of African Americans are affected strongly by the labor market and strucutral changes of the economy in the city. However, the structural change of the economy in the city has a very weak effect on the level of residential segregation of Asian Americans, black Canadians, and Asian Canadians.