Despite the rhetoric of American equality, the school experiences of African American and other “minority” students in the United States continue to be substantially separate and unequal. Dramatically different learning opportunities—especially disparities in access to well-qualified teachers, high quality curriculum, and small schools and classes—are strongly related to differences in student achievement. Standards-based reforms have been launched throughout the United States with promises of greater equity, but, while students are held to common standards—and increasingly experience serious sanctions if they fail to achieve them—few states have equalized funding and access to the key educational resources needed for learning. The result of this collision of new standards with old inequities is less access to education for many students of color, rather than more. This article outlines current disparities in educational access, illustrates the relationships among race, educational resources, and student achievement, and proposes reforms needed to equalize opportunities to learn.

This article reviews evidence linking incarceration and health, with a particular focus on African Americans, who are disproportionately affected by the incarceration system. Although inmates generally suffer from worse health than comparable, non-institutionalized adults, this comparison is not uniformly the case, and some of the strongest negative effects of incarceration emerge after release, suggesting that the struggles of reintegration into society are as important as the conditions of incarceration. We review evidence for the basic relationship between incarceration and health from individual-level and aggregate-level studies, as well as from evidence and speculation regarding potential mediating mechanisms. Many questions remain regarding these mechanisms and, by extension, which policies are most promising for reducing incarceration's impact on health. Among other issues, the incarceration-health connection also raises fundamental questions regarding the level of harm society is willing to accept as part of routine punishment for criminal behavior.

In this paper we emphasize W. E. B. Du Bois’s relevance as a sociological theorist, an aspect of his work that has not received the attention it deserves. We focus specifically on the significance of Du Bois’s theory of Double Consciousness. This theory argues that in a racialized society there is no true communication or recognition between the racializing and the racialized. Furthermore, Du Bois’s theory of Double Consciousness puts racialization at the center of the analysis of self-formation, linking the macro structure of the racialized world with the lived experiences of racialized subjects. We develop our argument in two stages: The first section locates the theory of Double Consciousness within the field of classical sociological theories of the self. We show how the theory addresses gaps in the theorizing of self-formation of James, Mead, and Cooley. The second section presents an analysis of how Du Bois deploys this theory in his phenomenological analysis of the African American experience. The conclusions point out how the theory of Double Consciousness is relevant to contemporary debates in sociological theory.

A basic tenet of public health is that there is a robust relationship between socioeconomic status and health. Researchers widely accept that persons at average or median levels of socioeconomic status have better health compared to those at lower levels—with a detectable, if diminishing, gradient at even higher levels of socioeconomic status. The research on which this tenet is based, however, focuses largely on Whites, especially on White men. Yet according to the full range of extant findings, the magnitude and in some cases the direction of this relationship vary considerably for other demographic groups.

I argue that the failure to clearly qualify study conclusions when they are restricted to the study of Whites impedes our understanding of the varying relationship between socioeconomic status and health for different demographic groups. Such an impediment is particularly harmful when considering health inequalities among populations defined by race and ethnicity. Frameworks and models based on traditional socioeconomic measures may mask heterogeneity, overestimate the benefits of material resources, underestimate psychosocial and physical health costs of resource acquisition for some groups, and overlook the value of alternative sociocultural orientations. These missed opportunities have grave consequences: large racial/ethnic health disparities persist while the health disadvantages of Black Americans continue to grow in key aspects. A new knowledge base is needed if racial/ethnic health disparities are to be eliminated, including new guiding theoretical frameworks, reinterpretations of existing research, and new empirical research. This article aims to initiate discussion on all three dimensions.

Are the predictors of anti-immigration attitudes consistent across countries with diverse immigration histories and policies? We hypothesize that the key predictors of opposition to immigration are indeed relatively consistent across industrial nations. We test this hypothesis with two surveys using probability samples of German citizens. We then compare our findings with those obtained in recent studies of immigration opinions in Europe generally, and in two of the world's leading immigration-receiving nations: Canada and the United States. Striking similarities emerge in the findings across structural, demographic, contact, economic, political, personality, and threat predictors. Opposition to immigration is routinely found strongest among the older and less-educated segments of the population who live in areas with anti-immigration norms and little contact with immigrants. Anti-immigration attitudes also correlate with political conservatism and alienation, economic deprivation, and especially with authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, and perceived collective threat.

Intersectional analysis need not focus solely on differences within or between identity-based groups. Using intersectionality for cross movement mobilization reveals that, contrary to criticism for being divisive, attention to intersecting identities has the potential to create solidarity and cohesion. In this article, we elaborate this argument with a case study of the intersection of race, gender, and disability in genetic technologies as well as in organizing to promote a social justice approach to the use of these technologies. We show how organizing based on an intersectional analysis can help forge alliances between reproductive justice, racial justice, women's rights, and disability rights activists to develop strategies to address reproductive genetic technologies. We use the work of Generations Ahead to illuminate how intersectionality applied at the movement-building level can identify genuine common ground, create authentic alliances, and more effectively advocate for shared policy priorities.

In “Toward a Theory of Race, Crime, and Urban Inequality,” Sampson and Wilson (1995) argued that racial disparities in violent crime are attributable in large part to the persistent structural disadvantages that are disproportionately concentrated in African American communities. They also argued that the ultimate causes of crime were similar for both Whites and Blacks, leading to what has been labeled the thesis of “racial invariance.” In light of the large scale social changes of the past two decades and the renewed political salience of race and crime in the United States, this paper reassesses and updates evidence evaluating the theory. In so doing, we clarify key concepts from the original thesis, delineate the proper context of validation, and address new challenges. Overall, we find that the accumulated empirical evidence provides broad but qualified support for the theoretical claims. We conclude by charting a dual path forward: an agenda for future research on the linkages between race and crime, and policy recommendations that align with the theory’s emphasis on neighborhood level structural forces but with causal space for cultural factors.

In the past two decades, migration scholars have revised and revitalized assimilation theory to study the large and growing numbers of migrants from Latin America, Asia, and the Caribbean and their offspring in the United States. Neoclassical and segmented assimilation theories seek to make sense of the current wave of migration that differs in important ways from the last great wave at the turn of the twentieth century and to overcome the conceptual shortcomings of earlier theories of assimilation that it inspired. This article examines some of the central assumptions and arguments of the new theories. In particular, it undertakes a detailed critique of their treatment of race and finds that they variously engage in suspect comparisons to past migration from Europe; read out or misread the qualitatively different historical trajectories of European and non-European migrants; exclude native-born Blacks from the analysis; fail to conceptually account for the key changes that are purported to facilitate “assimilation”; import the dubious concept of the “underclass” to characterize poor urban Blacks and others; laud uncritically the “culture” of migrants; explicitly or implicitly advocate the “assimilation” of migrants; and discount the political potential of “oppositional culture.” Shifting the focus from difference to inequality and domination, the article concludes with a brief proposal for reorienting our theoretical approach, from assimilation to the politics of national belonging.

As a result of the increasing number of biracials and multiracials, and White reconstructions of previously non-White skin colors, the Whitening of selected immigrants and especially their children appears to be proceeding. Although there are many studies on the racial identity of biracials, too little research exists on how Whites identify them and light-skinned monoracials, which of these they Whiten, how, and why. Enough is known to suggest that if current trends continue, our picture of the country's racial hierarchy has to be revised. While Whites will likely remain on top and poor African Americans and other Blacks at the bottom, what happens in the middle cannot now even be guessed at with any hope of accuracy. For that reason alone, empirical and policy-oriented research on White identification patterns is badly needed.

Some scholars argue that Latina/os in the United States may soon become White, much like the supposed Whitening of Eastern European immigrant groups in the early twentieth century. High rates of White racial identification on surveys among Latina/os is one explanation provided for this assertion. However, personal identification is but one element of racial boundary maintenance. It is when personal identification is externally validated that it is most closely associated with group-based experiences. This article maps components of the White-Latino racial boundary that may be permeable to White expansion by examining conditions under which Latina/os self-identify as White and report that they are externally classified as White by other Americans. Employing novel data from the 2006 Portraits of American Life Study, this article shows that nearly 40% of Latina/os sometimes self-identify as White, yet a much smaller proportion—only 6%—report being externally classified as White by others. Moreover, logistic regression analyses suggest that for those with light phenotypical features and high levels of socioeconomic status, the odds of reported external Whitening are increased. Interestingly, phenotypically light Latina/os with low-socioeconomic-status levels have low probabilities of reporting external classification as White when compared to their phenotypically light and high-socioeconomic-status counterparts, suggesting that the combination of both skin color and class may be central to the White-Latino racial boundary. Results also indicate that many who report external Whitening do not prefer to self-identify as White. In sum, multidimensional measures of racial classification indicate that only a very small minority of Latina/os may be “becoming White” in ways that some previous researchers have predicted.

The racialization of space is the subject of a huge body of literature, most recently in George Lipsitz’s (2011) How Racism Takes Place. But less has been done on the ways in which time could be racialized. Inspired by provocative treatments of the subject in writings by Michael Hanchard (1999) and Lawrie Balfour (2011), I suggest in this paper that we need to explore the workings of a “White temporal imaginary” analogous to Lipsitz’s “White spatial imaginary,” which likewise serves to protect White racial privilege from the threatening encroachments of racial justice. Using Eviatar Zerubavel’s (2003) Time Maps as a jumping-off point, I argue accordingly for the recognition of a “White time,” a “sociomental” representation of temporality shaped by the interests and experience of the White “mnemonic community.” The concept is obviously one of potentially very general usefulness, but in this essay I seek to apply it specifically to the dominant discourse on justice in political philosophy, as framed for the past forty years by John Rawls’ ([1971] 1999c) “ideal theory.” The relevance to the postracial theme of this issue is that, because of the peculiarity of philosophy as a discipline, it can claim it was always, or always-already, postracial, dealing as it ostensibly does with the (timeless) human condition as such. By making ideal theory—the normative theory of a perfectly just society—central to the conceptualization of social justice, by never exploring how radically different actual societies are from the ideal of society as “a cooperative venture for mutual advantage,” an exclusionary sociohistorical framework is established that makes the Euro-time of the West—abstracted out of the West’s relations of domination over people of color—the Greenwich Mean Time of normativity, while the alternative non-White temporality of structurally unjust societies requiring rectificatory racial justice remains a subject permanently untimely.

Research examining racial/ethnic disparities in pollution exposure often relies on cross-sectional data. These analyses are largely insensitive to exposure trends and rarely account for broader contextual dynamics. To provide a more comprehensive assessment of racial-environmental inequality over time, we combine the 1990 to 2009 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) with spatially- and temporally-resolved measures of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10) in respondents’ neighborhoods, as well as census data on the characteristics of respondents’ metropolitan areas. Results based on multilevel repeated measures models indicate that Blacks and Latinos are, on average, more likely to be exposed to higher levels of NO2, PM2.5, and PM10 than Whites. Despite nationwide declines in levels of pollution over time, racial and ethnic disparities persist and cannot be fully explained by individual-, household-, or metropolitan-level factors.

This exploratory study makes a contribution to the literature on antiracism by unpacking the cultural categories through which everyday antiracism is experienced and practiced by extraordinarily successful African Americans. Using a phenomenological approach, we focus on processes of classification to analyze the criteria that members of the African American elite mobilize to compare racial groups and establish their equality. We first summarize results from earlier work on the antiracist strategies of White and African American workers. Second, drawing upon in-depth interviews with members of the Black elite, we show that demonstrating intelligence and competence, and gaining knowledge, are particularly valued strategies of equalization, while religion has a subordinate role within their antiracist repertoire. Thus, gaining cultural membership is often equated with educational and occupational attainment. Antiracist strategies that value college education and achievement by the standards of American individualism may exclude many poor and working-class African Americans from cultural membership. In this way, strategies of equalization based on educational and professional competence may prove dysfunctional for racial solidarity.

Although there have been significant decreases in U.S. mortality rates, racial/ethnic disparities persist. The goals of this study are to: (1) elucidate a conceptual framework for the study of racial/ethnic differences in U.S. adult mortality, (2) estimate current racial/ethnic differences in adult mortality, (3) examine empirically the extent to which measures of socioeconomic status and other risk factors impact the mortality differences across groups, and (4) utilize findings to inform the policy community with regard to eliminating racial/ethnic disparities in mortality. Relative Black-White differences are modestly narrower when compared to a decade or so ago, but remain very wide. The majority of the Black-White adult mortality gap can be accounted for by measures of socioeconomic resources that reflect the historical and continuing significance of racial socioeconomic stratification. Further, when controlling for socioeconomic resources, Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants exhibit significantly lower mortality risk than non-Hispanic Whites. Without aggressive efforts to create equality in socioeconomic and social resources, Black-White disparities in mortality will remain wide, and mortality among the Mexican-origin population will remain higher than what would be the case if that population achieved socioeconomic equality with Whites.

This essay explores the historical genealogy of Internal Colonialism as an American theory of race from approximately 1950 to the early 1990s. Internal Colonialism as an idea originated in Latin America as part of a larger Marxist critique of development ideologies and was specifically elaborated by dependency theorists to explain the racial effects of poverty and isolation on indigenous communities. Black and Chicano radicals fascinated by the Cuban Revolution learned about the theory by reading Ernesto “Che” Guevara, by participating in the Venceremos Brigades harvesting Cuban sugar cane, and by the larger diffusion of Latin American dependency theory in the United States. Black nationalists and Chicano radicals embraced, transformed, and further elaborated on the idea of Internal Colonialism to explain their own subordinate status in the United States, which was the product of forced enslavement and military occupation. As a colonized population in the United States, Blacks and Chicanos suffered the effects of racism, were dominated by outsiders, much as colonial subjects in the Third World, and had seen their indigenous values and ways of life destroyed. As a theory that explained the effects of racism, it had its greatest popularity during the radicalization of the Civil Rights Movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s when nationalism and separatist ideas were in vogue. By the 1980s the theory had been abandoned in favor of more accommodationist politics and ideas.

Through a critical engagement with Lawrence Blum’s theory of racism, I defend a “social criticism” model for the philosophical study of racism. This model relies on empirical analyses of social and psychological phenomena but goes beyond this to include the assessment of the warrant of widely held beliefs and the normative evaluation of attitudes, actions, institutions, and social arrangements. I argue that we should give political philosophy theoretical primacy over moral philosophy in normative analyses of racism. I also show how conceptualizing racism as an ideology gives us a unified account of racism and helps us to see what is truly troubling about racism, both in the past and today.

Proponents and opponents of reparations for Blacks vociferously disagree. Conservative opponents argue that reparations for Black slavery are a disastrous idea and that proponents are motivated by either greed or the desire to do harm to the republic. Liberal and left opponents of reparations argue that the advocacy on this issue will lead to great racial divisions and do potentially irreparable harm to progressive movements. Supporters of reparations argue that it is a case of simple justice. That during the colonial, slavery, and Jim Crow eras Blacks were systematically oppressed and exploited with the active support of the state. They also argue that both domestic and international precedents strengthen the case for Black reparations. This paper shows that there is a tremendous divide between Blacks and Whites on questions of both an apology to Blacks as well as monetary reparations. The racial divide extends to support for the reparations to Japanese-Americans who were victims of official incarceration during World War II. Finally, multivariate analyses demonstrates that for both Blacks and Whites, racialized views of politics are best predictors of support for or opposition to reparations.

The theory of stereotype threat was developed to account for persistent minority underachievement in American colleges and universities. It hypothesizes that members of minority groups underperform academically because of unconscious fears of living up to negative group stereotypes. While evidence pertaining to stereotype threat has been positive, it mostly comes from small experimental studies of selected undergraduate subjects at a few universities. In this paper we test the theory of stereotype threat on a large, representative population of college and university students. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshmen, which surveyed nearly 4,000 students at twenty-eight academic institutions, we construct scales to measure stereotype threat and use them to predict grades. We uncover a clear process of disidentification in response to minority stereotyping and show how it, along with other theoretically specified mechanisms, undermines the grade performance of minorities.

Although intersectionality analysis originates in a critique of legal doctrine and its confining approach to subject formation, intersectionality has been adopted widely outside of legal scholarship—nationally and internationally—to explain how fields of power operate and interact to produce hierarchy for any limitless combination of identities. Yet, within law, some scholars have raised questions precisely about the capacity of intersectionality to grapple with subjects who occupy multiple social positions and those with “partially privileged” identities in particular. Thus, over roughly a decade, a critique took shape about the theoretical capacity and normative commitment of intersectionality theory to address particular subgroups.

This essay tells part of the curious story about how a race-sexuality critique of intersectionality emerged, what may have motivated it, and how it has facilitated an emerging progressive masculinities literature that is “post-intersectional,” i.e., positioned over and against intersectionality. Like other post-intersectionality approaches, multidimensionality theorists decidedly seek to ‘get beyond’ something, and that ‘something’ that underwrites the turn away from intersectionality appears not as substantive theoretical or analytical content, or as political strategy, but rather, as identity-driven and engendered.

In the United States, African Americans face stark inequalities in health. The life course perspective offers a unique viewpoint through which racial disparities in morbidity and mortality may be understood as the result of repeated exposures to risk factors during both childhood and adulthood. However, the utility of this approach is limited by its failure to investigate the degree to which racial/ethnic minorities are able to translate gains in socioeconomic status into favorable health outcomes, both for themselves and for their children. In order to adequately reflect the realities of marginalized groups, life course models must explore the interactive nature of linkages across lifecourse stages, pay particular attention to the unique processes that create and maintain health disparities over time, and consider the specific contexts in which these processes occur. To this end, I examine the ways in which exclusionary forces and discriminatory conditions are likely to prevent African American women and their children from reaping the health benefits typically associated with upward socioeconomic mobility.