Detecting Discrimination: Analyzing Racial Disparities in Public Contracting

InCity of Richmond v. J. A. Croson Co.(1989), the Supreme Court established strict scrutiny as the standard applicable to affirmative action programs which set aside quotas of public contracts for minority-owned businesses, andAderand v. Pena(1995) extended the strict scrutiny standard to federal programs. Although the requirements of these decisions clearly require multivariate statistical analysis, most “disparity studies” have used a univariate comparison between the expected and the observed shares of contracts going to minority-owned firms. We examine four statistical methods—ordinary least square multiple regression, logit and tobit models, and a multivariate procedure for comparing expected and observed outcomes. Because no data are presently available at the level of specificity required byCroson,we constructed synthetic data sets to represent typical variations among large U.S. cities. Applying the statistical methods to each data set allows evaluation of the extent to which each method is able to both remove spurious and detect valid estimates of racial disparity when relevant control variables are added. Findings: (a) All four models removed apparent disparities which, although significant in univariate analysis, were known to be spurious. (b) Tobit and logit models, whose underlying assumptions better fit the nature of public contracting data, provided more accurate and more sensitive estimates than OLS regression. (c) Comparison of expected and observed outcomes within categories of control variables yielded results very similar to logit and tobit models and, because of the nature of the comparison specified inCroson,produced slightly more sensitive probability estimates.     

The roles of social housing providers in creating ‘integrated’ communities

ABSTRACT

Cohesion and integration agendas in Britain can be characterised by localisation of ‘race relations’ responsibilities and the importance of local institutions in shaping neighbourhoods has been acknowledged. However, little is understood about the roles of housing providers in integration initiatives. Indeed, research on housing and race has experienced a lull in the 2000s. Thus, this paper aims to examine how social housing providers negotiate their positions and are complicit in constructing a certain vision of community. It draws on interviews from the ESRC Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE)’s work in the ethnically diverse neighbourhoods of Cheetham Hill (Manchester), Newham (London), Butetown (Cardiff) and Pollokshields and Govanhill (Glasgow). The paper makes three arguments: first, that race and ethnicity as facets of ‘integration’ have been subsumed into broader agendas, yet remain implicit in community building; second, that housing organisation practices are often detached from local meanings of community and prioritise exclusionary activities focusing on behaviour change and, third, that the roles of housing organisations in constructing ‘integrated’ communities are highly variable and localised, influenced by the history and contemporary dynamics of place.     

The rise and fall of the ‘inner city’: race,space and urban policy in postwar England

ABSTRACT

In postwar England, the ‘inner city’ has loomed large in urban discourse and policy, serving as an important site through which ‘race’ has been rendered socially and spatially meaningful. Drawing on insights from history, geography and sociology, this paper traces the material and symbolic processes through which the ‘inner city’ has been the subject and object of socio-political knowledge and action. The article examines what shifting understandings of the ‘inner city’ and related policy responses reveal about the racialisation of space and bodies, and the role of the state in rationalising and enacting specific urban imaginings and interventions. In historicising dominant conceptions of the ‘inner city’, we identify three periods revealing key transformations within this formation: firstly, we consider how the idea operated as a spectre, in which the American ‘ghetto’ was seen as a predictor of ‘race relations’; secondly, we contend that during the 1970s and 1980s, the ‘inner city’ came to be ‘territorialised’ as a pathological, racialised space subject to particular modes of institutional regulation; finally, we examine the relative fragmentation of the ‘inner city’ in recent decades, through urban regeneration and changes in the spatialisation of ‘race’ and ethnicity.     

Unforeseen Implications of Regulation to Authenticity in Clinical Practice

The authors, both long-time LCSWs, utilize an existential framework and postmodern lens to explore the implications of increased professional regulation in clinical practice. Specifically emphasized, are the themes of litigation-fear and the threat of license revocation that are prevalent in the field of clinical social work at this time. The authors argue that this “climate of fear” can lead to a slippery slope for a profession that has long valued the individual’s right (both client’s and practitioner’s) to self-determination, authenticity, and creativity and call for an increased conversation among practitioners about the desired role of regulation in the profession with the overall goal of protecting a true understanding of ethics in social work.     

Sensitivity to “Bad Genes” and the Anomalous Face Overgeneralization Effect: Cue Validity, Cue Utilization, and Accuracy in Judging Intelligence and Health

The bad genes and anomalous face overgeneralization accounts of facial preferences were tested by examining cue validity, cue utilization, and accuracy in judging health and intelligence from faces in the upper and lower halves of the distributions of attractiveness and its components: averageness, symmetry, and masculinity. Consistent with the bad genes hypothesis, facial attractiveness, averageness, symmetry, and male face masculinity each provided valid cues to intelligence and/or health for faces in the lower but not the upper halves of the distributions of these facial qualities. Consistent with the anomalous face overgeneralization hypothesis, attractiveness and its components were utilized as cues not only for faces in the lower halves of the distributions, but also for those in the upper halves. Intelligence and health were judged accurately for faces in the lower but not the upper half of the attractiveness distribution, and attractiveness mediated this accuracy at all ages except adolescence. Since adolescence is the prime mating age, the latter finding raises questions about the utility of attractiveness as an evolved mechanism to ensure the selection of high quality mates.     

Mainstreaming Intellectual Disability into the History of Family Therapy

Family therapy prides itself on working with marginalised populations but its interest in intellectual disability has been relatively limited. Since their development in the late 1970s and early 1980s, specialised behavioural models have dominated clinical practice with this population. The aim of this paper is to tell a story of exceptions to this rule and to invite generic family therapists to include this population in the mainstream of their work.     

The Ties That Divide: Bonding Social Capital,Religious Friendship Networks,and Political Tolerance among Evangelicals*

Previous research has overwhelmingly found that Evangelical Protestants are generally less tolerant of outsiders than those of other religious traditions such as Catholics or Mainline Protestants. Using data from the 2005 Baylor Religion Survey, I examine the extent to which political tolerance is related to a bonding type of social capital that is typical of Evangelical Protestantism. Findings support most of the previous research into the relationship between religion and political tolerance, and support the hypothesis that social embeddedness within one’s congregation predicts intolerance among Evangelical Protestants, but not among those of other religious traditions. Implications for research into religious friendship networks and their potential dysfunctions are discussed.     

Vocal and Physiological Changes in Response to the Physical Attractiveness of Conversational Partners

We examined how individuals may change their voices when speaking to attractive versus unattractive individuals, and if it were possible for others to perceive these vocal changes. In addition, we examined if any concurrent physiological effects occurred when speaking with individuals who varied in physical attractiveness. We found that both sexes used a lower-pitched voice and showed a higher level of physiological arousal when speaking to the more attractive, opposite-sex target. Furthermore, independent raters evaluated the voice samples directed toward the attractive target (versus the unattractive target) as sounding more pleasant when the two voice samples from the same person presented had a reasonably perceptually noticeable difference in pitch. These findings may have implications for the role voice plays in mate selection and attraction.