Historical Shadows: The Links between Sundown Towns and Contemporary Black–White InequalityO’Connell, Heather A.
2019 Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
doi: 10.1177/2332649218761979
I contribute to our understanding of black–white inequality in the United States by assessing the legacy of “sundown towns.” Sundown towns are places that restricted who could live there based on ideas about race. The often-violent tactics employed to create and maintain all-white spaces reshaped dramatically the demographic and social landscape of the non-South. I extend previous research on sundown towns by examining their association with contemporary black–white economic inequality. In addition, I advance a new theoretical perspective to explain how the history associated with sundown towns contributes to contemporary inequality, namely large-scale segregation. To assess the contemporary impact of sundown history, I employ a dataset on places connected to sundown towns in the eastern Midwest and county data from the 2008–2012 American Community Survey (ACS) period estimates. In addition, I use standard ordinary least squares (OLS) and spatial data analysis techniques to provide a multifaceted assessment of the contribution of sundown towns to contemporary black–white inequality. This analysis extends our understanding of the social impact of historical legacies and emphasizes the importance of the protection of white advantage and large-scale segregation when explaining the (re)production of black–white inequality in the United States.
Royall Must Fall: Old and New Battles on the Memory of Slavery in New EnglandBeeman, Angie
2019 Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
doi: 10.1177/2332649218784731
There is much scholarly and public debate over how slavery should be remembered, especially in the southern United States. We have seen this recently with the case of Charlottesville, Virginia, where protest ensued over a statue of Robert E. Lee. However, attention should also be paid to the history of slavery in the northern United States, particularly in places such as New England, where attempts were made to silence this history. The author analyzes the archives of the Royall House Association to study the historic preservation and presentation of the Isaac Royall House and slave quarters in Medford, Massachusetts. Royall and his connections to Harvard University have recently gained more attention with nationwide protests against racism on college campuses. Drawing on critical race theory, research on racism denial, and scholarship on history and memory, the author analyzes public narratives on how the Royall House should be remembered. The author teases out the various purposes battles over public memory serve and what their outcomes are and addresses whether these contests are largely symbolic or if they play an important role in dismantling racism. The author finds three main outcomes of these memory projects: to make invisible a racist past and uphold white supremacy, to serve as an illusion of progress with an attempt to assuage guilt, and to make an impact against racism.
Learning about Race: The Lived Experiences of Interracially Married U.S.-born White and European Immigrant Women in the 1930sAdeyinka-Skold, Sarah; Roberts, Dorothy E.
2019 Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
doi: 10.1177/2332649218791260
How did intermarriage between African Americans and European immigrants influence how European immigrants learned about race in the United States? In this study, the authors compare the lived experiences of European-born and U.S.-born white women married to U.S.-born black men in Chicago in the late 1930s. The authors find that both groups of women characterized their lives as marked by material, social, and institutional costs, and they experienced these costs as racial boundary policing, racial border patrolling, and rebound racism. The authors argue that through these experiences, European immigrant women learned about the racial hierarchy and the importance of whiteness in the United States. The authors also find that European immigrant women had differing reactions to their race learning. Younger European immigrant women strengthened their ties to white racial community, while older European wives strengthened their ties to black racial community. These findings add to immigration literature that explores how immigrants discover the significance of race, racism, and racial hierarchy in the United States and come to understand and respond to the impact of the racial order on their life outcomes.
Access to Higher Education of Afro-Peruvians: Disentangling the Influence of Skin Color and Social Origins in the Peruvian Stratification SystemBenavides, Martin; León, Juan; Galindo, Claudia; Herring, Cedric
2019 Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
doi: 10.1177/2332649218788884
Despite recent efforts by the Peruvian government to rectify centuries of injustice against Afro-Peruvians, not much is known about the relative influence of discrimination and social origins on Afro-Peruvians’ access to higher education. Using data from the 2014 Specialized Study of Afro-Peruvian Population and logistic regression, the authors examine the influence of skin color and social origins on access to higher education for Afro-Peruvians. The results suggest that after controlling for individual and contextual indicators, the darkest Afro-Peruvians had significantly lower odds of accessing higher education than the lightest Afro-Peruvians. In addition, Afro-Peruvians whose mothers enrolled in secondary education or beyond had higher odds of accessing higher education than those whose mothers only attained primary education or less. More important, there was an interaction effect between skin color and social origins such that differences in access to higher education between darkest and the lightest Afro-Peruvians were observed only for those whose mothers had obtained secondary or a higher degrees and not for those whose mothers completed primary school or less. The effects of colorism persisted mainly in higher social status contexts.
Light Privilege? Skin Tone Stratification in Health among African AmericansHargrove, Taylor W.
2019 Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
doi: 10.1177/2332649218793670pmid: 32123694
Skin tone is a status characteristic used in society to evaluate and rank the social position of minorities. Although skin color represents a particularly salient dimension of race, its consequences for health remains unclear. The author uses four waves of panel data from the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults study and random-intercept multilevel models to address three research questions critical to understanding the skin color–health relationship among African American adults (n = 1,680): What is the relationship between skin color and two global measures of health (cumulative biological risk and self-rated health)? To what extent are these relationships gendered? Do socioeconomic characteristics, stressors, and discrimination help explain the skin color–health relationship? The findings indicate that dark-skinned women experience more physiological deterioration and self-report worse health than lighter skinned women. These associations are not evident among men, and socioeconomic factors, stressors, and discrimination do not explain the dark-light disparity in physiological deterioration among women. Differences in self-ratings of health among women, however, are generally explained by education and income. The results of this study highlight heterogeneity in determinants of health among African Americans. They also provide a more nuanced understanding of health inequality by identifying particularly disadvantaged members of racial groups that are often assumed to have monolithic experiences.
Coloring Weight Stigma: On Race, Colorism, Weight Stigma, and the Failure of Additive IntersectionalityReece, Robert L.
2019 Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
doi: 10.1177/2332649218795185
America’s obsession with obesity has spawned increasing amounts of research examining how body size shapes social outcomes. Generally, body size negatively correlates with these outcomes, with larger people suffering lower self-esteem, marriage rates, and wages. However, these outcomes are unevenly distributed among racial groups, as black people counterintuitively seem robust to many of the ravages of weight discrimination. Understanding why black people do not suffer a “double burden” where weight is concerned has baffled social scientists using basic models of intersectionality to explain outcomes. The author attempts to deepen understanding of intersectionality and the structure of race in the United States by examining the combined effect of body size and skin tone or color on individual income for black Americans. The author finds that light-skinned black Americans suffer an obesity income penalty similar to white Americans, whereas medium- and dark-skinned black Americans seem to suffer no obesity income penalty.
Racing to Serve or Race-ing for Money? Hispanic-serving Institutions and the Colorblind Allocation of Racialized Federal FundingVargas, Nicholas; Villa-Palomino, Julio
2019 Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
doi: 10.1177/2332649218769409
It is often presumed that minority-serving institutions (MSIs)—colleges and universities with the mission or capacity to serve underrepresented students—operate with a mission to alleviate broad inequalities by race. Yet the degree to which this remains true for Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs), the fastest growing subset of MSIs, is contested and unexplored systematically. In this study the authors briefly detail the founding of HSI as a racialized status and consider how colleges and universities designated as HSIs today are serving Latinx students with racialized federal funding. The historical process and criteria by which HSI was established as a racialized designation, the authors argue, continues to shape their racial logics. Through a content analysis of the population of successful Title V “Developing Hispanic-serving Institution” grant abstracts to the U.S. Department of Education (2009–2016), the authors find great consistency in how HSIs conceptualize their Latinx student populations but substantial variation in how they seek to “serve” Latinx students. In the large majority of cases (85 percent), Latinx students are not centered in HSIs’ Title V programmatic efforts, which are instead organized to serve their entire student bodies. Because HSI status was conferred primarily by Latinx student enrollments, and not a mission to serve Latinx students, dominant colorblind White logics frequently persist at HSIs. Consequently, Latinx educational inequalities are rarely explicitly addressed. In their quests to secure funding as minority serving institutions, we find that HSIs often fail to center the Latinx students who permit their very eligibility.
Racial and Other Sociodemographic Disparities in Terrorism Sting OperationsNorris, Jesse J.; Grol-Prokopczyk, Hanna
2019 Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
doi: 10.1177/2332649218756136
Previous research suggests a high prevalence of entrapment in post-9/11 terrorism sting operations, but it is unknown whether entrapment abuses are disproportionately targeted at specific racial/ethnic, religious, or socioeconomic groups. Drawing on Black’s theory of law, symbolic threat theory, and research on stereotypes, cognitive biases, and institutional incentives, the authors hypothesize that government agents and informants will use problematic tactics disproportionately against certain marginalized groups. This study empirically tests for such disparities using detailed data on post-9/11 terrorism prosecutions. Specifically, the authors code the sociodemographic characteristics of the 316 domestic terrorism defendants in cases occurring in the 13 years after 9/11 and involving informants. These data are integrated with an existing database of indicators of entrapment for each defendant. Using multivariable models, the authors test whether sociodemographic characteristics predict four key entrapment-related outcomes. Results indicate that minority racial and religious groups, undocumented immigrants, and individuals with low socioeconomic status all have elevated risk for at least one entrapment-related outcome. Strikingly, the most consistent predictor of entrapment is black Muslim identity. In contrast, white Muslims show no increased risk for entrapment vis-à-vis white non-Muslims for all but one outcome. This study thus documents apparent discrimination against African Americans (and white privilege) in yet another area of the criminal justice system. It also demonstrates that deeply ingrained forms of discrimination may become dominant even in policy fields characterized by intense discrimination against other groups.