Kids Talking About Race: Tween‐agers in a Post‐Civil Rights Era

Our research examines how American children understand and talk about how race matters in their everyday lives. We draw on interviews with 44 middle school children who attend schools in an integrated county‐wide system and find that while some use color‐blind rhetoric, most children in our study know that race matters, while they offer alternative accounts for why and how. Some explain race as social inequality, while others offer cultural accounts of racial differences. Our analysis suggests that for white children, gender matters; more girls describe racial inequality than boys. For children of color, class seems to be key, with middle‐class children giving cultural explanations, including negative evaluations of others in their own racial group. We use an intersectionality framework to analyze the alternative and complex narratives children give for their own experiences of race and race relations between peers.     

Marriage,Work, and Racial Inequalities in Poverty: Evidence From the United States

This article explores recent racial and ethnic inequalities in poverty, estimating the share of racial poverty differentials that can be explained by variation in family structure and workforce participation. The authors use logistic regression to estimate the association between poverty and race, family structure, and workforce participation. They then decompose between‐race differences in poverty risk to quantify how racial disparities in marriage and work explain observed inequalities in the log odds of poverty. They estimate that 47.7% to 48.9% of Black–White differences in poverty risk can be explained by between‐group variance in these two factors, while only 4.3% to 4.5% of the Hispanic–White differential in poverty risk can be explained by these variables. The findings underscore the continued but varied association between racial disparities in poverty and labor and marriage markets. Clear racial differences in the origin of poverty suggest that policy interventions will not have uniformly effective impacts on poverty reduction.     

The role of race in the Out-of-school suspensions of black students: The perspectives of students with suspensions,their parents and educators

The disproportionate out-of-school suspension of Black students is a persistent racial and social justice issue nationwide. We approached this issue sensitized by social construction and critical race theories. Thirty-one youth, 28 caregivers and 19 educators participated in in-depth, semi-structured audio recorded interviews. Most participants viewed racial bias and cultural differences as responsible for the disproportionate suspension of Black youth. Many highlighted educators' negative attitudes toward Black students. Students and caregivers argued that Black students are treated more harshly than White students and are targeted as disciplinary problems. These perspectives suggest that racial bias results in a school culture that pathologizes Black students and their families. Educators also described challenges to responding to student misbehavior including the cultural diversity of the Black student population and their disproportionate exposure to social problems such as poverty that impact school engagement. We discuss implications for how social workers may support the partnering of caregivers, educators and community members to reduce racial bias in schools.     

Race,Gender, and Social Support: A Study of Networks in a Financial Services Organization

A wealth of research indicates that social support improves employees' well-being and job performance. What is not well understood is how employees' race and gender influence the receipt of this type of support. I analyze qualitative and quantitative data to understand how race and gender influence the social support that workers receive. The results suggest that neither structural nor relational factors explain why blacks receive social support from fewer network members than whites. There is some evidence that relational factors contribute to gender differences in the receipt of social support, however. Interviews with workers suggest that gender schemata, the sex-typing of networks, reactions to racial discrimination, and differences in the value placed on social support contribute to race and gender differences in social support.     

Helping Hands: Race,Neighborhood Context,and Reluctance in Providing Job‐Finding Assistance

In order to explain persistent racial inequality, researchers have posited that black Americans receive fewer job benefits from their social networks because of their reluctance to provide assistance to others who are looking for work. We test this idea on a national scale using geo‐coded data from the General Social Survey. Our results show that, on average, blacks offer more frequent job‐finding assistance to their friends than do whites. However, additional analyses reveal that race‐based job‐finding assistance is context dependent, as blacks living in areas characterized by concentrated black poverty have lower odds of helping others search for jobs than members of other races and in other community contexts.     

Neighborhoods, Family, and Substance Use: Comparisons of the Relations across Racial and Ethnic Groups

This study examines how substance use among adolescents is related to several risk and protective factors derived from two ecological contexts: the neighborhood and the family. It explicitly investigates how the relationships between substance use and the factors vary across different racial and ethnic groups. Findings suggest many common correlates and processes of substance use for adolescents, regardless of race or ethnicity, including that neighborhood safety is associated with substance use. There are also some racial and ethnic group differences in relationships, including that low attachment to and lack of social opportunities in neighborhoods more strongly predict substance use among whites than among other racial and ethnic groups and that family management decreases the relationship between neighborhood safety and substance use among African Americans. A better understanding of the associations among factors that influence substance use across racial and ethnic subgroups can help effectively target preventive interventions for different groups.     

When class is colorblind: A race‐conscious model for cultural capital research in education

Sociologists of education frequently draw on the cultural capital framework to explore the ways in which educational institutions perpetuate inequality in schools and the larger society. However, these studies adhere to a white centered “class‐based master‐narrative,” to legitimize and perpetuate the assumption that racial differences are secondary manifestations of class‐based structures. The class‐based master‐narrative elevates a one‐dimensional view of inequality as rooted primarily in class‐based stratification and downplays the fact that the economic elites who inhabit these dominant social positions are predominantly white. In this essay, I propose a race‐conscious framework to challenge the colorblind assumptions and deficit perspectives inherent to the cultural capital framework. The race‐conscious model (a) focuses on how racial stratification impacts the cultivation, transmission, and activation of cultural capital on the individual and institutional levels and (b) highlights the harmful impact of the lack of racial literacy that is inherent to the white habitus.     

If all you have is a hammer,everything looks like a nail: Operationalization matters

Operationalization has been the focus of less research than many other methodological topics. In this article, we argue that considering operational decisions is particularly critical for those who study stratification, because measures of inequality often involve multiple layers of operationalization: researchers first decide how to assign individuals to social groups (e.g., race), which are then themselves used to construct measures of group‐level differences and inequality (e.g., racial segregation). We provide examples of this by drawing on contemporary debates about how to operationalize social groups based on class, race, gender, and religion. Then we discuss three examples (religion, racial segregation, and family type) of second layer operationalization decisions, focusing on the consequences of operational decisions for research findings. We conclude by discussing the broader implications of operational decisions, focusing particularly on issues of power and applications for policy makers.     

“There are Two People at Work that I'm Fairly Certain are Black”: Uncertainty and Deliberative Thinking in Blind Race Attribution

Geneticists, biologists, social scientists, and humanist scholars have powerfully critiqued race as a stable set of biological categories. Despite this, in everyday life, race is consistently assumed to be visually available in physical features. Racial categories also continue to be used in scientific and social scientific research as if they were self‐evident and real. In this study, I examine the role of visual perception in the construction of racial categories and their recalcitrance in everyday thought and interaction. My observations are based on in‐depth interviews with 25 blind people, which highlight the unique features of their nonvisual, non‐appearance‐based experiences of race.     

Kenya's tourist industry and global production networks: gender,race and inequality

In this article, I consider the position of gender and race in the tourism global production network in Kenya. To address a gap in scholarship on global production networks, I explore the racial and gender characteristics evident in functionally upgraded national tour operators and socially upgraded workers and community members around the Maasai Mara National Reserve. The main findings address the relation of race and gender to disarticulation practices identified in ‘societal’, ‘network’ and ‘territorial’ forms of embeddedness supported by racial and gender representations of skill capabilities and tourist desires. These practices and representations support a production network symbolized by whites, Kenyan‐Asians and expatriates in the highest value segments and jobs, and indigenous African, Maasai and female workers in the lowest value positions. The findings highlight how disarticulation in economic and social upgrading is a gendered and racial process that perpetuates social difference and hierarchy.     

Current Manifestations of Racism: An Exploratory Study of Social Distance and White Racial Identity

Abstract

White racial identity theory postulates that White individuals differ in their psychological orientation to race. However, the racial attitudes research has not examined how these differences impact the degree of social contact an individual is likely to have with members from other racial groups. The authors assessed participants' White racial identity and social distance towards White, Asian, Black, Native, and Latino Americans. The nature of the relationship was examined with a canonical correlation analysis. The analysis revealed a significant canonical variate, which indicated that more developed White racial identity status attitudes were related to less social distance towards members of other racial groups, while less developed racial identity status attitudes were related to greater social distance preference. The authors discuss the results in terms of the implications for psychology and offer recommendations for future research     

STRESS EXPOSURE, RACE, AND YOUNG ADULT MALE CRIME

A recent revision of strain theory, Robert Agnew's (1992) general strain theory (GST), has stimulated research testing its principles, central of which is the notion that exposure to stressors is positively associated with criminal behavior. The present research extends prior scholarship in three important ways: (1) assessing the role that race and ethnicity play in understanding the stress-crime relationship, (2) testing GST principles on an underexamined group of crime prone individuals (i.e., young adults), and (3) examining the stress-crime association with a substantially more comprehensive set of measures of stressors than prior evaluations. Central to our findings is the result that racial differences in criminal involvement are largely reducible to exposure differences, with blacks typically exposed to significantly more stressful events over their lifetimes than members of other racial/ethnic groups.     

Black–White Earnings Gap among Restaurant Servers: A Replication,Extension, and Exploration of Consumer Racial Discrimination in Tipping

There is a rich history of social science research centering on racial inequalities that continue to be observed across various markets (e.g., labor, housing, and credit markets) and social milieus. Existing research on racial discrimination in consumer markets is, however, relatively scarce and that which has been done has disproportionately focused on consumers as the victims of race‐based mistreatment. As such, we know relatively little about how consumers contribute to inequalities in their roles as perpetrators of racial discrimination. In response, in this article, we elaborate on a line of research that is only in its infancy stages of development and yet is ripe with opportunities to advance the literature on consumer racial discrimination and racial earnings inequities among tip‐dependent employees in the United States. Specifically, we analyze data derived from an exit survey of restaurant consumers (N = 394) in an attempt to replicate, extend, and further explore the recently documented effect of service providers’ race on restaurant consumers’ tipping decisions. Our results indicate that both white and black restaurant customers discriminate against black servers by tipping them less than their white co‐workers. Importantly, we find no evidence that this black tip penalty is the result of inter‐racial differences in service skills possessed by black and white servers. We conclude by delineating directions for future research in this neglected but salient area of study.     

Ontological Insecurity,Racial Tension,and Confidence in the Police in the Shadow of Urban Unrest

According to the theory of “ontological insecurity,” people who worry that society is in a state of decline or upheaval will also support punitive social control of deviants. I test the relationship between several measures of people's anxiety about the state of society, their perception of racial tension, and their confidence in the police (as enforcers of social control) during the period of social unrest following the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. I use ordinary least squares regression to analyze data from a nationally representative public opinion poll gathered for the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press during August, 2014. I find that pessimism about the state of the economy, pessimism about race relations, and the experience of personal hardship are related to decreased confidence in the police, while pessimism about the state of morals in society is related to increased confidence. I conclude that public confidence in the police is intertwined with public confidence in the stability of the country, more generally. This study supports a “neo‐Durkheimian” model of policing. The opposite findings of economic versus moral insecurity also call for refinement of the ontological insecurity theory.     

Ties That Bind? Comparing Kin Support Availability for Mothers of Mixed‐Race and Monoracial Infants

Although interracial partnerships are increasingly common, social distance between racial groups may impact participants' ties with extended kin. One persistent yet untested premise is that mothers with a biracial baby are “cut off” from extended family members. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 4,147), we explore perceptions of kin support availability for mothers of infants and whether perceptions differ if the father is a different race or ethnicity than the mother. We uncover stark differences in the likelihood of perceiving support as unavailable between mothers in same‐race and interracial parenting unions. Multivariate logistic regressions reveal that interracial partnering is positively associated with mothers perceiving support as unavailable, but this pattern is moderated by race and ethnicity of the mother, with the greatest difference emerging for White mothers. Ultimately, interracial partnering and childbearing may produce social isolation from kin, reflecting the enduring White‐non‐White divide.     

Critical standpoint: Leaders of color advancing racial equality in predominantly white organizations

Organizations are often core sites for the production and perpetuation of social inequality. Although the United States is becoming more racially diverse, organizational elites remain disproportionately white, and this mismatch contributes to increasing racial inequality. This article examines whether and how leaders of color within predominantly white organizations can help their organizations address racial inequality. Our analysis uses data from a national study of politically oriented civic organizations and ethnographic fieldwork within one predominantly white organization. We draw on institutional work research, the outsider‐within concept, and insights from critical whiteness theory to explain how leaders of color can use their position and “critical standpoint” to help guide their organization toward advancing racial equality. The qualitative analysis shows how such leaders, when empowered, help their organization address race internally by (a) providing alternatives to white‐dominated perspectives, (b) developing tools to educate white members about racial inequality, and (c) identifying and addressing barriers to becoming a more racially diverse organization. The qualitative analysis also shows how leaders of color help their organization address race externally by (a) sharing personal narratives about living in a white‐dominated society and (b) brokering collaborations with organizations led by people of color. This research has implications for organizations seeking to promote social equality: Organizational leaders from marginalized status groups can help their organizations address social inequality, if those leaders possess a critical standpoint and sufficient organizational authority.     

Differential Status Evaluations and Racial Bias in the Chilean Segregated School System

Although there is growing interest in studying the long‐ignored relationship between stratification and race in Chile, racial bias in person perception remains unknown. We hypothesize that the segregation of the Chilean school system generated a prestige order in which pupils are differentiated by status characteristics according to the type of school they attend, and that these evaluations are based on racial traits. To test this hypothesis, we study whether facial appearance is sufficient to impute the type of school a pupil is attending, and whether these categorizations evoke different status evaluations of wealth and morality based on race. Results confirm that participants’ perceptions of facial appearance allow them to situate pupils in the Chilean social structure. Faces categorized as studying at different types of schools varied in their perceived wealth. However, the relationship between moral traits and types of schools was weak. We also found evidence of racial bias in the participants’ perceptions of pupils’ faces: faces categorized as enrolled in municipal schools (low status) were judged with Amerindian or mestizo racial traits, while faces categorized as attending private fee‐paying schools (high status) were judged with white racial traits. We did not find a relationship between race and morality.     

Whose Best Friend? Dogs and Racial Boundary Maintenance in a Multiracial Neighborhood

In human–animal studies, dogs are often framed as promoters of interactions among strangers. Yet very few of these studies discuss how racial structure shapes human‐to‐human engagement. Similarly, race scholarship and urban studies have failed to incorporate human–animal studies fully to better understand racial dynamics and inequality in U.S. cities. I use in‐depth interview data from an 18‐month study of Creekridge Park, an urban, multiracial, and mixed‐income neighborhood in Durham, North Carolina, to explore the role of dogs for white residents. I focus on identifying if dogs helped bridge social differences between white residents and their Black and Latinx neighbors in a racially and economically diverse neighborhood. I find that while my white respondents shared many examples of dogs facilitating neighborly relationships and friendship, these relationships were largely between same‐race individuals. By reinforcing a white, urban, middle‐class habitus, white residents used dogs to maintain interracial boundaries and feelings of safety, as well as navigate racial‐ethnic differences between themselves and their Black and Latinx neighbors. These findings point to the necessity of more research that addresses racial structure and human–animal studies to better understand contemporary urban spaces.     

Same‐Race Friendships and School Attachment: Demonstrating the Interaction Between Personal Network and School Composition1

Previous research has demonstrated that students are strongly attached to school when many same‐race peers are present. This study extends the literature by considering students’ immediate social environment at school—egocentric friendship networks. I hypothesized that same‐race friendships contribute to school attachment by increasing the amount of support that students receive for their racial backgrounds in direct interactions. Further, the association between same‐race friendships and school attachment should be stronger when the school includes many same‐race peers because the organizational condition increases the ability of same‐race friendships to connect students to the major components of school‐wide networks and reduces perceived racial contrast between friends and nonfriend peers. Statistical analysis of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) provided some support for these hypotheses, but white, black, Hispanic, and Asian students showed somewhat different patterns, suggesting group differences in how students develop and view same‐race friendships. The study highlights the importance of individual agency in navigating the multileveled social environment as well as the ability of organizational contexts to shift emotional consequences of personal relationships.     

The Impact of Comedy on Racial and Ethnic Discourse

An overwhelming facet of race literature suggests that American society has entered an era of colorblindness; where instead of perpetuating racist ideology through blatant discriminatory legislation, racial differences are either understated or ignored entirely. These new racial processes are reflected in the policies of major social institutions, but also within popular culture. Yet, as made evident by the success of comedians such as Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle, stand‐up comedy challenges acceptable racial discourse, placing race in the forefront. Comedy persists as a facet of popular culture where racial difference is made apparent, yet ironically the art of comedy is usually overlooked by sociologists. What is lacking in the humor research is an understanding of how comedy creates an environment where race can be spoken about directly, and often times harshly. Through the analysis of focus groups, this study finds evidence to suggest that racial and ethnic comedy serves to both reinforce and wane racial and ethnic stereotypes, similarities, and differences. After watching stand‐up comedy clips of popular comedians, black and white respondents show both agreement and disagreement on the following: (1) the offensiveness of ethnic comedy, (2) stereotypes and perceived truths, and (3) the utility of ethnic comedy in everyday interactions. These findings are helpful in understanding how comedy serves as one of the few openly racialized facets of popular culture as well as uncovering some of the ways in which race works within the culture of a self‐proclaimed colorblind society.