In the prior article in this volume, Robert Sampson and colleagues (2018) take theoretical and empirical stock of a framework they presented twenty years ago. They find broad empirical support for its core tenets. Differences in disadvantage explain most, if not all, observed gaps in violent crime between Black and White neighborhoods; disadvantage also operates similarly to foster crime in Black and White areas. The authors also lament the limited research on the key intervening mechanism of community social organization, particularly its cultural and political sources, that links disadvantage to crime. I have two primary goals in commenting on this article. First, in keeping with their assessment, I provide my take on their agenda for extending the framework beyond the Black-White divide, giving greater attention to the political sources of community social organization, and considering reciprocal relationships between crime, race, and disadvantage. Second, I elaborate on how my views differ from Sampson and colleagues’ regarding strategies to empirically validate the racial invariance thesis, the breadth of support for the thesis beyond its core tenets, and the role of culture. I provide these critiques to encourage further work exploring the explanatory power of Sampson and colleagues’ thesis, and, to thereby foster a better understanding of enduring inequities in violent crime between racialized minority populations and Whites. Without their ecologically-based approach, we run the risk of essentializing minorities as criminogenic, like recent work espousing cultural (devoid of structural) and biological (devoid of social) explanations for the race-crime link.

The foreign-born population in the United States has reached new heights, and experts predict that the country will be “majority minority” by 2042, possibly earlier. Despite its growing ethnic, racial, national, and other forms of diversity, the fundamental location of Blackness at the bottom of the pyramid of structural racism endures. In attempts to overcome the real and perceived tensions that characterize relationships between immigrants and African Americans, efforts to create space for interpersonal connection and shared structural analysis have proliferated in organizations across the country. Drawing from seventy-five interviews with individuals leading these initiatives and the review of over fifty different pedagogical resources they have developed and used, this article presents a classification and assessment of these programs. We consider these programs using an anti-racist, African Americanist framework reflected in Steinberg’s “standpoint of [the] black figure, crouched on the ground as others pluck fruit off the tree of opportunity” (2005, p. 43), and analyze their successes and shortcomings. Successes include the creation of spaces for interaction across difference and the building of a shared analysis. We find evidence of transformative effects at the intra- and interpersonal levels. The greatest limitations include immigrant-centricity in relationship-building efforts and a reluctance to engage immigrants in conversation about their relationships to Whiteness, Blackness, and racial hierarchies in the United States and in their countries of origin.

This issue of the Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race is dedicated to the living memory and many contributions of distinguished historian John Hope Franklin. Writing in his autobiography Mirror to America, Franklin said that:

In 1973, on the heels of the hard-fought gains of the Civil Rights Movement, sociologist and civil rights activist Joyce A. Ladner edited a collection titled The Death of White Sociology: Essays on Race and Culture. Bringing together an impressive set of Black writers and academics, the essays sought to make “an early statement on the development of Black sociology […and] to examine some of the historical forces which have acted upon Black sociologists, and to explicate some of the issues which are central to this new discipline” (Ladner [1973] 1998, p. xxvii). For Ladner, as she wrote in her introduction, Black sociology must be distinct from mainstream (White) sociology in its expressly normative commitment to using social science to “eliminat[e] racism and systematic class oppression from the society [and…to] promot[e] the interests of the Black masses” (Ladner [1973] 1998, p. xxvii). Whereas mainstream sociological theories had long been used to justify the subordination of Black people, Black sociology was an emergent discipline that sought Black liberation.

This paper examines the role of racial ideology in shaping U.S. colonial policy in the Philippines during the early years of American rule in the islands c. 1898–1905. The first section of the essay focuses on congressional debates between pro- and anti-imperialist lawmakers regarding the annexation and governance of the Philippines. The imperialist lobby advocated a paternalistic racial ideology to advance their case for American annexation, citing “the White man's burden” to civilize Filipinos as their rationale for colonizing the islands. The anti-imperialists, on the other hand, employed an ideology of aversive racism to oppose the incorporation of the Philippines, suggesting that annexation would unleash a flood of Filipino immigrants into the United States, thus creating a “race problem” for White citizens. Frequent unfavorable comparisons with Blacks, Chinese, and “Indians” were employed to produce racial knowledge about Filipinos who were unfamiliar to most Americans. This knowledge served as the basis for excluding Filipinos from American citizenship on racial grounds. The second section of the article traces the implementation of an institutionalized racial order in the Philippines, examining a series of population surveys conducted by colonial officials during the first years of American rule. These surveys employed American-style racial classifications that ranked and evaluated the various races and “tribes” that were identified in the islands. This project culminated in the first official census of the islands in 1905, which formally institutionalized racial categories as an organizing principle of Philippine society.

The COVID-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter movement have brought ethnic and racial inequalities to the forefront of public conversation on both sides of the Atlantic. However, research shows that people routinely overestimate the progress made towards equality and underestimate disparities between racial and ethnic majority and minority groups. Common among the American public is a naive belief in equal opportunity that stands in sharp contrast to the reality of structural racial inequity. Across the Atlantic, Dutch people’s self-perception of a tolerant, progressive, and egalitarian society means that racism and discrimination are topics often avoided, rendering invisible the stigmatization of ethnic and racial minorities. The result is racism of omission: ethnic and racial disparities are minimized and attributed to factors other than discrimination, which leads to legitimize inequities and justify non-intervention. Against this background, we field an internationally comparative randomized survey experiment to study whether (willful) ignorance about racial and ethnic inequality can be addressed through the provision of information. We find that facts about ethnic and racial inequality, on the whole, (1) have the greatest impact on people’s perceptions of inequality as compared to their explanations of inequality and policy attitudes, (2) register most strongly with majority-group White participants as compared to participants from minority groups, (3) cut across partisan lines, and (4) effect belief change most consistently in the Netherlands, as compared to the United States. We make sense of these findings through the lens of how ‘shocking’ the information provided was to different groups of participants.

Intersectionality has contributed to the ongoing deconstruction of dichotomous and essentializing categories of identity and oppression. As some scholars have noted, however, intersectionality has debunked a sociobiological, single-node paradigm and unintentionally codified a deterministic form of social cognition. I suggest one mechanism for understanding how to untangle this intersectional dilemma: disclosure practices. Disclosure of stigmatized statuses can illuminate how macro level inequalities manifest in individual thought processes. This study adds to emerging research by showing how social actors rely on intersectional experiences to understand, think about, and frame complex social problems. I examine this topic via 197 interviews with 102 Black participants who identify as LGBT about their views on same-sex marriage as a civil rights issue before and after same-sex marriage was nationally legalized. Specifically, I argue that the Black LGBT participants’ experience with intersectional discrimination and their levels of sexual and gender identity disclosure account for their personal views on same-sex marriage and Black civil rights. Further, the majority of Black participants across disclosure practices viewed marriage equality as primarily benefitting the property interests of White gays and lesbians. Last, I discuss the implications of my findings for LGBT politics and the connections between self-interest and political perspectives.

The U.S. Census Bureau projects that by 2060, Latinx, African Americans, Asians, and other “minority” groups will together comprise the majority of the country’s population. Past research has found that non-Hispanic Whites, hereafter Whites, find such projections disquieting or threatening. Yet, recent surveys reveal that when given more than binary good/bad choices, most Whites opt for the middle-point response that this development will be “neither good nor bad for the country.” How can we account for this seemingly ambiguous evaluation of projected ethnoracial demographic futures? Using eight waves of nationally representative U.S. survey data collected between 2015 and 2018, this article begins to unpack the “neither” response among Whites, exploring what it might mean and what factors are associated with it, relative to seemingly optimistic and pessimistic stances. Multinomial Logistic Regression analyses and additional descriptive analyses indicate that “neither good nor bad” in this context is a substantive response: White “Neithers” are socio-demographically and attitudinally distinct from their counterparts. Our study demonstrates the value of moving beyond an exclusive focus on expressions of demographic threat and pessimism. Moreover, it invites further investigation into factors that inform and shape how Whites and other ethnoracial populations in the U.S. understand and assess projected population shifts.

The spatial configuration of minorities relative to Whites in a metropolitan area, or residential segregation, has been identified as a significant barrier to access to employment opportunities for racial/ethnic minorities, including Latinos, in metropolitan labor markets. Dominating the research are tests of place stratification models that focus on segregated ethnic enclaves or the mismatch between minority communities and employment opportunities. Both approaches focus on predominantly Latino neighborhoods and communities, but overlook their structural location and isolation in the broader metropolitan labor market. This study examines whether and to what extent structural characteristics of metropolitan labor markets in which Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans live and work shape their employment opportunities and whether or not these relationships vary across the three Latino native-origin groups. We utilize a unique dataset of the demographic, employment, educational, occupational, and industrial characteristics of the 95 largest US cities. The analyses feature both OLS regression to ascertain if varying levels of segregation across metropolitan areas in 2000 is associated with different levels of employment for Latinos, and a fixed-effects analysis to determine if changes in these structural factors between 1980 and 2000 within the same labor market affect the employment rates of Latinos in that metropolitan area. We find that segregation has a deleterious effect on Latino men's employment; in cities where segregation is worse, their employment rates are lower, and as the cities that they live in became more segregated over the 20 year period of study, their employment rates decreased.

Commentary on the Following Publications

McWhorter, John H.,Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America. New York: Free Press, 2000, 285 pages, ISBN 0 684 83669 6, $24.00.

McWhorter, John H.,Authentically Black: Essays for the Black Silent Majority. New York: Gotham Books, 2003, 264 pages, ISBN 1 59240 001 9, $25.00.

Despite the increased use of dating technology for finding and forming romantic relationships, location remains relevant for relationship formation. While current research on relationship formation attends to the ratio of marriageable men to women, marital attitudes, and gendered racial exclusion, this research does not always consider a nuanced look at how location can also constrain opportunities to make short- or long-term romantic connections. Drawing on interviews with 111 Asian, White, Black, and Latina heterosexual college-educated women between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-three, I find that regardless of race/ethnicity, women observe that some places provide limited opportunities to meet men and that the mismatch between their dating norms, beliefs, and/or expectations for relationships and the location where they reside make their search more difficult. Women of color additionally note that some locations provide fewer opportunities for same-race and/or interracial dating than others. I also find that women of color are more likely to employ strategies to address their locational barriers than White women.

Therefore, I argue that not only does location continue to matter for forming romantic connections in the digital age, but that location and race also intersect to create unique locational barriers for women of color. This intersection, consequently, demonstrates that the opportunities for relationship formation remain stratified despite the rise of dating technology.

Discussions of complexity and change in matters of ethnoracial relations often obscure as much as they describe and illuminate. In part, this is so because such distinctions, racial ones in particular, are not now nor have they ever been fixed, static, and natural categories. They are instead malleable social constructions. In part, it is so because expressly ideological projects are typically embedded within the claims scholars make about ethnoracial patterns. Consider the assertion that hybridity and mixture are ending the relevance of race, or that global population flows, massive immigration, and “super-diversity” will, likewise, render notions of race passé. The trouble here is that the crossing of socially imposed lines of race and ethnicity, as well as contact among diverse peoples, has long characterized the human experience.

This research aims to enhance our understanding of the relationship between racial prejudice and White Americans’ views on cannabis legalization. The recent legalization of recreational cannabis in a handful of states, along with many other states legalizing medical cannabis in recent years, has catapulted the flowering plant back into the spotlight and nightly news cycles. Given the historically racist propaganda used to criminalize the plant, it follows that Whites’ support for legalization may be associated with racial prejudice. Using data from the General Social Survey data from 1972–2018, we find that different forms of racial prejudice have a negative effect on Whites’ support for cannabis legalization generally. Additionally, as the negative effect of overt, old-fashioned racism diminishes over time and across birth cohorts it is supplanted by the more subtle laissez-faire racism. In conclusion, we discuss the implication of the relationship between racial prejudice and views on marijuana for the increasingly complicated racial dynamics surrounding cannabis legalization.

Although this essay appears very close to the most consequential presidential election since 1980, it was written months before during the week that former President Ronald Reagan died. The great majority of the U.S. media praised Reagan without any critical reflection—calling him the greatest president of the twentieth century, the man who brought hope and optimism back to America, the president who united the people. As one commentator mentioned, it was as if the nation itself had a case of collective Alzheimer's. Reagan deeply divided the nation and particularly on matters of race this division is very much still with us.

We examined the influence of racial and ethnic identity of residents and housing market economic conditions on redlining. Data were extracted from archival area description forms from the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation for 568 Ohio neighborhoods from 1934–1940. Logistic regression analysis was used to analyze the relationships between neighborhood characteristics and redlining. Bivariate results indicated a strong association between the presence of African American residents and neighborhood redlining (OR = 40.9, 95% CI 22.9-72.8). Multivariable analysis demonstrated that some neighborhood characteristics were contributors to the decision to redline, including homes in poor condition (OR = 4.3, 95% CI 1.2-15.1), home vacancy (OR = 1.4, 95% CI 1.1-1.6), and housing prices (per thousand dollars) (OR = 0.7, 95% CI 0.4-1.2). Adjusting for these and other factors, the presence of African American residents remained a powerful predictor of redlining (OR = 13.8, 95% CI 4.4-42.8). Racial discrimination was the overriding factor in decisions to redline neighborhoods.

Various research has demonstrated that rapid racial demographic change may aid in triggering various forms of backlash under certain conditions. This has led scholars to speak of Whites “defending” their local environment in the face of eroding racial dominance. However, little research has addressed how perceptions of racism among minorities may be triggered under conditions of demographic change. This study attempts to fill this gap in the literature by examining the relationship between racial demographic change for Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians and perceptions of racial problems among these groups in the United States. Using standard OLS regressions, ordered logistic regressions, multinomial logistic regressions, and techniques accounting for selection into treatment, I find that Blacks and Hispanics living in counties undergoing rapid growth of Black and Hispanic populations, respectively, have higher perceptions of racial problems. Asians show no evidence of increased perceptions of racial problems in counties undergoing rapid Asian growth. For Blacks, this relationship is concentrated among those without at least a four-year degree and residents of counties with lower initial White populations (and higher initial Black populations). For Hispanics, it is similarly concentrated among those without at least a four-year degree, but also is likely stronger among residents of counties with higher initial White populations (and lower initial Hispanic populations), highlighting unique racial dynamics. This research adds to a growing body of work showing the importance of examining demographic change at the local level in order to understand some of today’s most pressing political and social issues.

The Great Migration fundamentally reshaped Northern electorates. Millions of Black voters, who had been unable to vote in the South, became eligible to vote through their resettlement in the North. In many instances, parties and politicians believed that Black voters were the balance of power in elections. This belief led them to change their approaches and make specific appeals to Black voters in an effort to win their support. Although scholars of American politics have revised the dominant narrative about the development of the Democratic Party on issues related to race, they fail to account for the role of Black voters in contributing to the Party’s change. The goal of this work is to describe how the Great Migration influenced Democratic Party interactions with Black voters in presidential elections from 1948–1960. I argue that increasing competition between the Democratic and Republican Parties, coupled with Black migrants’ location in electorally important states, made Black voters an important target of presidential campaign strategy in the post-war era.

In 2004, the United States elaborately “celebrated” the fiftieth anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education. The country's mass media acclaimed May 17 as the date of a great national achievement while paying scant attention to the present racial scene in education. Yet those who believed in and fought for the racial desegregation of the nation's public schools found the widespread “celebration” grossly overstated and at best premature. With effective opposition to school desegregation unrelenting during the entire past half century, with the U.S. Supreme Court continually narrowing Brown's scope, and with African American and Hispanic American children still largely attending segregated schools, the nation's unmitigated self-congratulatory stance seemed unwarranted.

Research on interracial marriage and relationships uses the incidence of interracial romantic relationships to measure immigrant assimilation. Little attention, however, has been paid to the implications of interracial relationships for racial group politics. Are those who practice exogamy politically distinct from those who do not? We develop testable hypotheses from existing theories of and literature on interracial marriages/relationships. We test these hypotheses on several outcomes using the 2008 National Asian American Survey of Asian Americans, as this group has one of the highest rates of interracial marriage with Whites. We find that those with interracial partners are more likely to be concerned about racial issues, less likely to favor co-ethnic candidates and belong to ethnically concentrated civic groups, but are no more likely to be concerned about immigration or to favor a pathway to citizenship. We offer some theoretical reasons for these findings and discuss the implications of these findings for immigrant assimilation, interracial marriage, and the American racial order.