Not So Black and White
Brian Lowery et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article finds that, when faced with racial inequity framed as White advantage, Whites' desire to think well of their racial group increases their support for policies perceived to harm Whites. Across 4 studies, the article provides evidence that (a) relative to minority disadvantage, White advantage increases Whites' support for policies perceived to reduce their group's economic opportunities, but does not increase support for policies perceived to increase minority opportunities; and (b) the effect of White advantage on Whites' esteem for their ingroup drives the effect of inequity frame on support for policies perceived to reduce Whites' opportunities.
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"We are all Different": Statistical Discrimination and the Right to be Treated as an Individual
Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen
Journal of Ethics, June 2011, Pages 47-59
Abstract:
There are many objections to statistical discrimination in general and racial profiling in particular. One objection appeals to the idea that people have a right to be treated as individuals. Statistical discrimination violates this right because, presumably, it involves treating people simply on the basis of statistical facts about groups to which they belong while ignoring non-statistical evidence about them. While there is something to this objection - there are objectionable ways of treating others that seem aptly described as failing to treat them as individuals - it needs to be articulated carefully. First, most people accept that many forms of statistical discrimination are morally unproblematic, let alone morally justified all things considered. Second, even treating people on the basis of putative non-statistical evidence relies on generalizations. Once we construe treating someone as an individual in a way that respects this fact, it becomes apparent: (1) that statistical discrimination is compatible with treating people as individuals, and (2) that one may fail to treat people as individuals even without engaging in statistical discrimination. Finally, there are situations involving the expression of messages of inclusion where we think it is good, morally speaking, that we are not treated as individuals.
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White Support for Racial Referenda in the Deep South
Byron D'Andra Orey et al.
Politics & Policy, August 2011, Pages 539-558
Abstract:
This research examines two referenda in the Deep South, both of which can be categorized as antiblack. Specifically, we analyze a 2001 Mississippi flag referendum (in which the electorate rejected a new flag and retained the old state flag containing a Confederate insignia) and a 2004 referendum in Alabama (in which citizens voted to retain unenforceable constitutional language requiring separate educational facilities for black and white students, and a poll tax on voting). Using state election returns and census data, we employ weighted least squares regression to analyze voting patterns. The results reveal that across both states, white voters displayed significantly greater "antiblack" voting behavior in those areas with larger black populations and more urbanized environments. Our findings pose a direct challenge to both those who insist that the "racial threat" perceived by whites is diminishing and those who hold that urbanization will ultimately be corrosive of racist attitudes and behavior.
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Rhiannon Kroeger & Kristi Williams
Sociological Quarterly, Summer 2011, Pages 400-420
Abstract:
Using data from Wave 4 (2008) of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N = 7,466), we examine potential consequences of black exceptionalism in the context of interracial relationships among nonblack respondents. While increasing racial diversity and climbing rates of interracial unions have fostered the notion that racial boundaries within the United States are fading, our results add to the accumulating evidence that racial/ethnic boundaries persist in U.S. society. Results suggest that among non-Black respondents there is more stigma and disapproval attached to relationships with Blacks than there are to relationships with members of other racial/ethnic groups. Specifically, our results indicate that nonblack individuals with black partners have significantly more depressive symptoms and less relationship satisfaction than their counterparts with nonblack partners, regardless of respondent race and whether the nonblack partner is the same versus a different race from the respondent. Further, the relationship between partner race and depressive symptoms is partially and significantly mediated by relationship satisfaction.
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Quinn Keefer
Journal of Sports Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Using data from 2001 to 2009, quantile regression techniques are used to analyze the presence of discrimination in the National Football League (NFL) market for linebackers. This article uses both binary variable and decomposition approaches. An extension of the Oaxaca Blinder decomposition to quantile regression, proposed by Melly, is estimated to decompose the earnings gap across the distribution. This article concludes that discrimination is present in the linebacker market. This result is robust to approach and evident across the entire distribution. This result differs from much of the previous research on professional football.
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‘It's different for guys': Gendered narratives of racial conflict among white California youth
Mary Bucholtz
Discourse & Society, July 2011, Pages 385-402
Abstract:
As race talk has gained attention throughout the social sciences, sociocultural linguistics has become crucial in revealing how racial ideologies and identities are discursively produced. This article examines how race talk may reproduce racial binaries while perpetuating gender ideologies. Drawing on ethnographically collected narratives of conflict at an ethnoracially divided California high school, the analysis examines three discursive practices of racial reversal whereby white youth portray themselves as disadvantaged vis-a-vis their black peers: claims of ‘reverse discrimination', narratives of racialized fear, and fight stories. Whereas white girls' narratives relied on racial vagueness, white boys' narratives highlighted racial difference, contrastive strategies that indicate the different racial stakes for white girls versus white boys at the school. The article demonstrates the necessity of examining race talk not only for its content but also for its discursive structure, its ethnographic and interactional context, its co-construction by the researcher, and its ideological effects.
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The landscape of recombination in African Americans
Anjali Hinch et al.
Nature, 11 August 2011, Pages 170-175
Abstract:
Recombination, together with mutation, gives rise to genetic variation in populations. Here we leverage the recent mixture of people of African and European ancestry in the Americas to build a genetic map measuring the probability of crossing over at each position in the genome, based on about 2.1 million crossovers in 30,000 unrelated African Americans. At intervals of more than three megabases it is nearly identical to a map built in Europeans. At finer scales it differs significantly, and we identify about 2,500 recombination hotspots that are active in people of West African ancestry but nearly inactive in Europeans. The probability of a crossover at these hotspots is almost fully controlled by the alleles an individual carries at PRDM9 (P value < 10-245). We identify a 17-base-pair DNA sequence motif that is enriched in these hotspots, and is an excellent match to the predicted binding target of PRDM9 alleles common in West Africans and rare in Europeans. Sites of this motif are predicted to be risk loci for disease-causing genomic rearrangements in individuals carrying these alleles. More generally, this map provides a resource for research in human genetic variation and evolution.
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Racial Resentment and Vote Choice in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election
Jonathan Knuckey
Politics & Policy, August 2011, Pages 559-582
Abstract:
The victory of Barack Obama over John McCain in the 2008 presidential election marked a historic and pivotal moment in American politics. Many observers interpreted the election as heralding a new "post racial" politics. However, others noted that even though short-term forces were overwhelmingly pro-Democratic in 2008, Obama's overall vote among white voters barely increased on the share received by John Kerry in 2004. This study uses data from the American National Election Study to examine the effect of the racial attitudes - specifically racial resentment - of whites on vote choice in the 2008 presidential election. Findings show that racial resentment exerted a large influence on vote choice, one that was only exceeded by party identification. Furthermore, the effect of racial resentment was greater than in any prior election for which data on racial resentment is available.
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Paola Sessa et al.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, forthcoming
Abstract:
We tested the ability of white participants to encode and retain over a brief period of time information about the identity of white and black people, using faces as stimuli in a standard change detection task and tracking neural activity using electroencephalography. Neural responses recorded over the posterior parietal cortex reflecting visual working memory activity increased in amplitude as a function of the number of faces that had to be maintained in memory. Critically, these memory-related neural responses varied as a function of participants' implicit racial prejudice toward black people. High-prejudiced participants encoded black people faces with a lower degree of precision compared to low-prejudiced participants, suggesting that the class of mental operations affected by implicit racial prejudice includes basic cognitive mechanisms underpinning the encoding and maintenance of faces' visual representations in visual working memory.
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Social Energy and Racial Segregation in the University Context
Valerie Lewis
Social Science Quarterly, forthcoming
Objective: Universities often promote their diversity as a selling point, but are students of different races at these universities integrated socially? Using theories on social energy, I examine racial segregation among university students.
Methods: Quantitative data were collected on student residence patterns and social groupings formed at lunch tables at a case study university. In addition, interviews were conducted with 25 students.
Results: Students are substantially more segregated than chance predicts. Blacks and Hispanics are particularly segregated. Interviews reveal that these students spend large amounts of social energy coping with prejudice and discrimination as well as functioning in a student culture they find unwelcoming and foreign.
Conclusions: Social energy drains on minority students from discrimination and an unwelcoming campus culture reduce energy left for interracial interaction, making these racial groups more segregated. The study highlights the need for understanding segregation as a function of the interaction of out-group preferences, in-group preferences, and the larger social context.
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Francisco Sánchez et al.
Psychology of Men & Masculinity, forthcoming
Abstract:
We used consensual qualitative research methodology to analyze responses from 14 African American men (Mdnage = 25 years) in graduate school at a predominantly White university in the midwestern region of the United States regarding how they acquired awareness of their social class status, how social class was related to their sense of masculinity, how social class was related to race and skin tone, and the role that education and a romantic partner could play in upward mobility. School peers were the main source for their early awareness of social class. Many believed that discrimination maintains social class stratification that disadvantages racial minorities and that one's race will always trump any personal characteristics - including having light-complected skin and an advanced degree. Finally many overcame several obstacles during their educational career, and most believed that a romantic relationship with a woman from a privileged background could facilitate upward mobility. Psychological scientists and practitioners are encouraged to consider the role that social class plays when examining men's well-being.
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Nancy Krieger et al.
American Journal of Public Health, forthcoming
Objectives: We investigated associations among racial discrimination, psychological distress, and self-rated health among US-born and immigrant Black Americans.
Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional analysis of a cohort of employed working-class Black Americans (193 US-born, 275 foreign-born).
Results: Both US-born and foreign-born Black participants had high levels of exposure to poverty (51% and 57%, respectively) and racial discrimination (76% and 60%) and reported high levels of severe psychological distress (14% and 16% had a Kessler 6 [K6] score of 13 or greater); 17% and 7% reported fair or poor health. After controlling for relevant covariates, their risk parameters for racial discrimination (high vs no exposure) were 4.0 (95% confidence interval [CI]=2.3, 5.6) and 3.3 (95% CI=2.1, 4.5), respectively, for continuous K6 score; corresponding odds ratios for severe psychological distress were 6.9 (95% CI=1.4, 35.7) and 6.8 (95% CI=2.5, 18.3). No associations existed between racial discrimination and self-reported health, suggesting that an underlying propensity to report adversity does not account for our psychological distress findings.
Conclusions: Our results attest to the salience of racial discrimination, nativity, and socioeconomic position in understanding the experiences and psychological health of Black Americans.
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Eva Derous, Ann Marie Ryan & Hannah-Hanh Nguyen
Journal of Organizational Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Debate exists as to what the more appropriate prediction is regarding the effects of multiple stigmatized group memberships on employment discrimination. The ethnic prominence (EP), multiple minority status (MMS), and subordinate male target hypotheses were assessed for the combined effects of ethnic group membership (Arabic), sex, social status, and job type on hiring evaluations. Two correspondence tests in the field (Study 1) and two experimental studies in the lab (Study 2) and in the field (Study 3) were conducted. Studies 1 and 2 showed evidence for the EP hypothesis when low-status jobs were tested. The odds for rejection were four times higher for Arab than for Dutch applicants. Applicants' sex, socio-economic status, and external client contact did not moderate findings (Study 1). The effect of applicants' ethnic group membership was further moderated by raters' motivation to control prejudice (Study 2). Study 3 showed evidence for the MMS hypothesis. We found double jeopardy against Arab women who applied for high-status jobs when recruiters' prejudice was controlled. Study findings show that discrimination in resume screening may depend upon the particular intersection of applicant, job, and recruiter characteristics. We discussed implications for anonymous resume screening and research on evaluation of applicants possessing multiple stigmatizing characteristics.
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Katrin Kriz & Marit Skivenes
Children and Youth Services Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study builds on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 93 child welfare workers employed in public child welfare agencies in the United States, Norway and England, and examines their perceptions of working with racial and ethnic minority families in contrast to White service users. Almost all workers reported on differences. In the United States, workers regarded cultural pluralism as a given and considered it an inherent feature of their work, regardless of the racial and/or ethnic background of the family. Further, they identified poverty, racism, and lack of feelings of entitlement as dimensions to practicing with minority families. A few mentioned language as an issue. The views of workers in the U.S. stand in stark contrast to the perceptions of workers in both England and Norway. They thought that communication challenges constituted a major problem, and that minority clients' lack of language proficiency and knowledge about society and social systems made it difficult for workers to understand families' meaning and intent (Križ & Skivenes, 2009; 2010b). We discuss how caseworkers' perceptions may influence their decisions and affect minority disproportionality in the child protection system and analyze what factors may account for the cross-country differences we found. We also relate our findings to the broader question of citizenship and social rights in American society.
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Elizabeth Tuminello & Denise Davidson
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, October 2011, Pages 258-274
Abstract:
This study examined whether 3- to 7-year-old African American and European American children's assessment of emotion in face-only, face + body, and body-only photographic stimuli was affected by in-group emotion recognition effects and racial or gender stereotyping of emotion. Evidence for racial in-group effects was found, with European American children being more accurate when assessing emotion in European American photographs than African American photographs for some emotions. African American children were either equally proficient in recognizing emotion in African American and European American photographs or were more accurate with European American photographs for some emotions. Stereotyping of emotion was also found, with boys being more often labeled with "masculine" emotions (e.g., mad) and at least some girls being more often labeled with "feminine" emotions (e.g., happy). However, stereotyping effects were found only when the face was present in the stimuli and were not found with body-only stimuli. In-group effects, however, were not affected by type of photograph (face-only, body-only, or face + body), with children being unable to recognize at least some emotions from just the body postures alone (mad). These results have important implications for how future studies assess emotion recognition in children, particularly in terms of how emotion stimuli are constructed, the diversity of the stimuli, and who judges the stimuli.