The year 2008 has provided many opportunities to look back and take stock of what has and has not changed along the color line. Perhaps of greatest salience is that this year marks four decades of uneven progress since the tragic assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and of Senator Robert F. Kennedy. It also marks the fortieth anniversary of the publication of what became known as the Kerner Commission report (National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders 1968). The great sadness following those tragic deaths, and the somber tone set by the “two nations” declaration at the heart of the Kerner Report, call to mind an era of acute racial division, but also of steady struggle for change.

Barack Obama was elected president of the United States shortly before this issue of the Du Bois Review went to press. The historic nature of the 2008 presidential campaign was evident early in the process, particularly as it became clear that the Democratic Party would nominate either a woman or an African American as its standard-bearer. As scholars who have devoted our professional lives to studying the cancerous effect that racial disadvantage has on American society and politics, we are well aware of the profound hope that many place in the president-elect. We are also aware of the many pitfalls and challenges that await not only President Obama but the nation as well, whose citizens must sort out the new (and old) features of the nation's increasingly complex racial terrain. We devote the next two issues of the Du Bois Review (volume 6, numbers 1 and 2) to scholarship focused on the 2008 presidential campaign and the implications of that campaign going forward. In this issue we focus on research assessing where we have been and where we are regarding racial dynamics within the United States.

Crime alerts are meant to raise community awareness and identify individual criminal suspects; they are not expected to affect attitudes and beliefs toward the social group to which an individual suspect belongs. However, psychological principles of learning, categorization, and memory predict that what is learned about an instance can color perception of an entire category. At the intersection of psychology, criminal justice, sociology, and media studies, two experiments were conducted to test the effect that providing individual racial identity in crime alerts has on racial group stereotypes. In Experiment 1, participants visualized four scenarios involving Black or White would-be criminals. Results revealed that in the case where Black would-be criminals were made salient in memory, participants demonstrated significantly more negative implicit stereotypes toward Blacks as a group compared with a condition in which White would-be criminals were more salient in memory. In Experiment 2, participants read a written description of a crime scene with a suspect who was either depicted as White or Black, and then imagined the suspect. On both implicit and explicit measures of group stereotypes obtained afterward, participants who read about a Black criminal reported and revealed more anti-Black/pro-White stereotypes than did those who read about a White criminal. Crime alerts that mention racial identity, whatever their benefit, come with the burden of shifting stereotypes of social groups. In this context, the value of racial identification in crime alerts warrants reconsideration.

There is a lively debate about the causes of racial residential segregation. Counter to the racial-proxy hypothesis (Harris 1999, 2001), we argue that race, per se, continues to be influential when Whites make housing decisions. Using a survey-based experiment, we ask: Does information about neighborhood racial composition influence how Whites judge the quality of that neighborhood, quite apart from the actual characteristics of the homes located in it? A random sample of adults aged twenty-one and older in the Chicago and Detroit metropolitan areas watched videos embedded in a face-to-face interview. These videos portrayed neighborhoods ranging from lower working class to upper class. All respondents saw the same neighborhoods but were randomly assigned to see either (1) White residents, (2) Black residents, or (3) a mix of both White and Black residents. Respondents then evaluated the neighborhoods in terms of housing cost, property upkeep, safety, trajectory of housing values, and quality of the schools. Results show that Whites who saw White residents rated the neighborhood more positively on four of five dimensions than did Whites who saw the identical neighborhood with Black residents; racially mixed neighborhoods fell in between. In addition, Whites who endorsed negative stereotypes about Blacks were more likely to give low evaluations to neighborhoods with Black residents than were Whites who did not endorse stereotypes.

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.

This article examines the determinants and the substantive content of racial socialization strategies among African Americans. Existing studies have established that most Black parents socialize their children to race. However, studies have yet to determine whether assimilation trajectories and commitments to Black social heritage influence racial socialization outcomes. This article addresses this void within the context of a new, assimilation-based theory of adult Black identity—the investment in Blackness hypothesis. Findings from a national probability sample of African Americans suggest that there is a relationship between degree of assimilation into the mainstream and racial socialization strategies among parents. The implications of these findings are discussed, as well as suggestions for future research.

Two indicators of race relations in the United States are interracial marriage and transracial adoption. We examine the salience of race in the romantic involvements of Korean adoptees, and we argue that mainstream racial discourses influence romantic preferences across variations in personal experience, local demographics, and social distance. Applying a dating-history approach to a probability sample of semistructured interviews with fifty-eight adult Korean adoptees, we demonstrate how racial discourses influence romantic preferences by shaping adoptees' interpretations of their romantic involvements across a range of structural conditions, and we also identify specific conditions that limit their salience. In brief, we introduce a conception of romantic preference that bridges the existing constructs in the qualitative and the quantitative literatures on interracial marriage.

This article focuses on the construction and reconfiguration of race in the U.S. South during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Much literature on race is designed to show that race is socially constructed, with the inference that race is merely a social construction. Thus, talk about race, which is not demonstrably grounded in human biology, must be akin to talk about unicorns. But so what? Does race being a social construction make any difference to the historical accounts we give of how racial practices work? This article suggests that it can if we focus on the process of construction itself, in a particular time and place, and ask how race was socially constructed. I trace how race was made, unmade, and remade in the years between 1865 and 1920. During the postemancipation era, Southern White elites constructed race as and through naturalized relations of dependence and independence. This construction was held in place and then undermined by the prevailing social order. I offer an account of the sharp increase in racist practices at the turn of the century, focused on the notion of mobility. I show how, in the decades since the war, mobility undermined race as it had been socially constructed.

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.

This article examines how a nonprofit organization prepares low-income students of diverse racial backgrounds to enter elite private high schools in the fall of the ninth grade. Combining ethnographic fieldwork completed during the program with follow-up interviews with ten students after their first semester at boarding school, this article addresses how students interact with and integrate into wealthy, predominantly White schools in an attempt to gain social mobility. Looking at how students interpret their surroundings, the article argues that students are trained to view themselves as “diversifiers” in order to successfully adapt to their new schools. In this role, students perceive themselves as especially serious and motivated students, and their elite peers as naïve, and find satisfaction in teaching others how to interact with people from different class and racial backgrounds. The paper concludes by considering the ramifications of the diversifier concept on efforts to diversify elite institutions and proposes further possible research sites where the concept may be applicable.

As a graduate student, Du Bois studied with two of the most important figures within what is today remembered as the German historical school of economics—Gustav Schmoller and Adolf Wagner. By taking seriously Du Bois's early ambitions in the field of economics, and rereading his early work as a social scientist in the context of early twentieth-century economic thought, the following article makes the case that Du Bois should be credited with having made several important contributions to U.S. economics. The article suggests that our failure to remember Du Bois as an economist is a joint consequence of two independent causes. The first is the racist attitudes of the U.S. academy of his time that simply would not accept a highly qualified African American as a colleague. The second is the sweeping changes that have so profoundly modified the method, form, and substance of U.S. economics over the past century.

Employing postcolonial critical international relations theory as its theoretical bedrock, this article uses the U.N.-U.S.-French-led humanitarian intervention in Haiti in 2004 to examine top-tier states' claims to universal human rights and bottom-tier states' claims to sovereign national democratic rights. This article critically interrogates both the theoretical and policy assumptions of an emergent interventionism by the North into the South, and examines Haitian social forces and their pan-African allies (CARICOM, the AU, and CBC), who are opposed to the universalist appropriation and imposition of a rights domain that curtails freedom in the international arena.

This article brings Frazier's ideas about male and female family roles into focus. Although Frazier was at the forefront of arguing for racial equality in the 1930s, his ideas remained limited by his belief that African Americans should assimilate into the gender and sexual ideals of patriarchal U.S. culture. At the center of this article is Frazier's conviction that middle-class egalitarian marriages, women's participation in the waged work force, and increased consumption of material goods would perpetuate or worsen African Americans' family health. Importantly, this article argues that Frazier's socialist political alignments and his suspicion of bourgeois norms were inseparable from his suspicion of middle-class Black women and notions of morality. Ultimately, it suggests that his mistrust of women colors social scientists' treatments of Black Americans throughout the twentieth century.

In this paper we approach, from a different angle than previous research, the question of whether gains in descriptive representation for African Americans result in losses in substantive representation. By looking at how the presence of African Americans has changed Congress over time, we assess the long-term impact of electing more African Americans to Congress on substantive representation. Specifically, we content analyze House floor debates on civil rights legislation, from 1957 to 1991, and find that Black members have influenced how White members talk about civil rights.

Throughout their histories, civil rights organizations have chosen to advocate on behalf of the poor, despite disincentives. This paper examines SNCC's and the NAACP's activities concerning the Economic Opportunity Act during the early and mid-1960s. First, I establish the level of attention SNCC and NAACP devoted to the War on Poverty. Based on analysis of the groups' archives, I find that both groups increased their attention to antipoverty policy during a period when other issues were salient to all African Americans. Second, I assess why these shifts in organizational priorities occurred. My findings indicate that competition among civil rights organizations drove the NAACP and SNCC to commit attention to antipoverty issues, and to focus attention on grassroots organizing concerning the War on Poverty. Differences in the organizations' structures mediated what form this attention would take.

We explore the gender gap in college completion among Blacks and Whites. Using the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988, we examine how early school achievement and educational expectations affect attainment by following a nationally representative sample of youths from 1988 (approximately age fourteen) to 2000 (approximately age twenty-six). The odds of attaining an associate's or a bachelor's degree among Black women are greater than the odds among White men after controlling for family socioeconomic status. However, the difference between Black men and White men is additionally dependent on differences in middle school and high school achievement and in high school sequencing.

This article presents an analysis of the limits of “power to” and agency through an examination of the Barry administration in Washington, DC. I begin by asking why this administration, born of the civil rights movement and tremendous optimism, was unable to live up to its expectations. I provide an in-depth examination of Barry's efforts at reform, his popular appeal, and his appeal to business within the context of Washington's local political history. I find that Barry's power was constrained by a combination of structural factors, personal choices, the legacy of racism and racist exclusion, and a failed identity-deployment strategy. The findings have broader implications for the use of identity-deployment strategies for minority political leaders generally.

Whether to provide reparations to African Americans for the atrocities of slavery and segregation is arguably the most controversial public matter concerning race in the United States today. This debate, a clash over the economics and ethics of equality, is nothing less than a struggle over the future of racial identity, race relations, and racial progress in the current post–civil rights movement era.

With the stakes for African Americans so high, and the prospects for affirmative action dim, public intellectuals have weighed in heavily on each side of the issue. Randall Robinson—author of the best-known work advocating for reparations, The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks (2000)—and David Horowitz—the reparationist movement's most reviled nemesis and author of Uncivil Wars: The Controversy over Reparations for Slavery (2002)—have become the alpha and omega of almost any deliberation on Black reparations.

Not surprisingly, rancorous rhetoric has often overshadowed rigorous research on the veracity of antireparations and proreparations claims. This essay aims to correct this problem with an extensive analysis of David Horowitz's (2002) arguments, providing a synthesis of data, concepts, theories, and methodologies from the disciplines of sociology, history, economics, and anthropology. This essay finds that Horowitz's use of academic scholarship to discredit African American reparations fails to meet the “scientific” standards he demands of his opponents.

This article examines attitudes toward mainstream society among Caribbeans and South Asians in Britain. Conventional wisdom predicts that Caribbeans should be more likely than South Asians to have positive attitudes toward British society, in part because Caribbeans are more socially and culturally assimilated. In addition, much of the current debate around ethnic minority alienation in Britain focuses on the fact that recent terrorist activity has primarily been committed by Muslim South Asians. This article presents evidence that runs counter to these predictions, with data suggesting that South Asians are more likely than Caribbeans to have high levels of positive national identification, high levels of trust, and less pessimistic expectations for discrimination in Britain. To account for these dynamics, I develop an argument about the importance of ethnic minority migrants' expectations. I claim that cultural and social assimilation increases expectations for incorporation. When migrants with high expectations face incorporation difficulties, they will be more likely to develop pessimistic attitudes. In comparison, cultural and social segregation lowers expectations for incorporation prospects. When migrants with lower expectations face incorporation difficulties, they will be less likely to have pessimistic attitudes. I use this argument to explain why Caribbeans are less likely than South Asians to have positive attitudes toward mainstream British society.