race

Americans these days like to think of the Ku Klux Klan—if they think of the KKK at all—as a white supremacist abomination whose time has come and gone. That is, its presence was deplorable but its impact minimal. A new article from Rory McVeigh, David Cunningham, and Justin Farrell paints a different picture, arguing that the very visible demonstrations of the extremist organization have played a lasting role in shaping the American electorate as we know it today.

The 1960s saw a major shift in the Southern United States where mostly white voters, motivated by their opposition to Civil Rights policies, shifted their support from Democrats to Republicans. The authors argue the Klan was a major player in this shift, but not because it recruited a wide swath of voters to their cause. Instead, KKK activism, in its extremism, drew attention to how the civil rights movement was challenging long-held “links between movement goals and positions taken by political candidates” (1148), thus turning white voters against the Democratic party.

McVeigh, Cunningham, and Farrell base their argument on findings from two sets of tests. First, using data from the National Consortium on Violence Research, House UnAmerican Activities Committee data on Klan organization from 1967, they measure Klan activism within counties in ten southern states through the 1960s. Counties marked by KKK activism were significantly more likely to vote for Republican Presidential candidates. And this effect carried past the ‘60s. Repeated tests comparing 1960 to 1972, 1980, 1992, and even 2000 show that the effect holds over time. There is also a geographic effect; counties that bordered centers of Klan activism had weaker, but significant shifts toward Republican voting as well.

A second analysis using 1992 Southern Focus Poll data shows a similar pattern among individual voters. Those more in favor of segregation were more likely to vote Republican; however, this was only if they lived in counties that had documented Klan activism back in the 1960s.

The authors are careful to point out these results do not mean the Klan has directly influenced voters over the last 50 years. Instead, this is a story about the unintended, yet long-lasting consequences of a radical group that “dislodge[s] voters from preexisting party loyalties” and reshapes the field of public opinion (1161). In short, the Klan changed the political culture and produced a system of party allegiances that remained in place long after their activism diminished.

Poor neighborhoods tend to have poor schools. This means that poor families, many of whom are minorities, face barriers to quality education. School choice is often seen as the solution.

Peter M. Rich and Jennifer L. Jennings investigate whether and how families in Chicago respond to new information about school quality and opportunities to choose their children’s schools when financial, social, and geographic constraints influence their enrollment decisions. Analyzing Chicago Public School (CPS) administrative records of student enrollment over consecutive semesters shows whether students stay at one school, transfer to another school in the same district, or switch to a non-CPS school. To understand more about who moves where, Rich and Jennings look at each student’s race and gender, whether the student receives free or reduced lunch, their math and reading test scores, and other demographic information. The authors then compare differences in transfer rates before and after the enactment of a school accountability policy.

The authors find that many families change schools in response to their child’s school earning a poor rating. Poor families most often transfer schools within districts, but overall, they transfer less frequently than non-poor families. When poor families move schools, they often switch from probation schools (those in danger of failing accountability testing) to non-probation schools. Although such moves seem logical, the non-probation schools to which families switch are still in the bottom 50% of all Chicago Public Schools. Families with more resources are more likely to transfer schools within the same district, transfer to schools in other districts, or enroll their children in private schools.

This pattern arises not just from class, but also from race. Over 80% of all students attending the CPS probation schools were Black, compared to almost no Asian, Native American, or White students. However, Black families responded to school probation status by transferring, while Hispanic students generally stay.

School accountability policies in this study resulted in an overall sorting away from probation schools, but holding schools accountable failed to close the inequality gap between poor and non-poor students. School choice seems to simply reinforce existing gaps: those likely to benefit from school choice are already privileged enough to transfer schools.

Gentrification is a hot-button issue. The renovation and rebuilding of homes and businesses provide cultural changes that socially separate wealthy whites who move into minority neighborhoods from current residents, even when the spacial distance between the groups is small or non-existent. Looking at the history of residential segregation, Angelina Grigoryeva and Martin Reuf investigate whether whites living in close proximity to racial minorities will result in social interaction or if today’s experiences of segregation will be different than in the past.

The authors use household data from the 1880 U.S. Census to analyze different ways residential segregation appeared in post-Civil War United States. They begin by focusing on Washington, D.C., using data collected by “census enumerators”—people who went door-to-door conducting the Census. Then they examine a larger sample of 171 post-Civil War cities and towns. Grigoryeva and Reuf find regional differences in segregation, noting that the Northeast became characterized by black and white people living in separate districts, while segregation in the South grew to be characterized by a “backyard” pattern, where black and white people live within the same Census districts.The Northeast U.S. became characterized by racially separate districts, while segregation in the South was characterized by a “backyard” pattern, with black and white people living within the same Census districts.

Grigoryeva and Reuf believe their method of tracing residential housing segregation changes the way we think of the history of residential segregation in the U.S., and their findings about the different patterns of contemporary Northern and Southern segregation demonstrate how the social effects of segregation remain powerful, even when racial groups live in close proximity.

Many factors predict rates of gun ownership, including race, education and income levels, political-party affiliation, and local crime rates. But what about legislation and statements from local politicians and media? Do these factors also influence gun sales? University of Washington professor (and current Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar in Health Policy at the University of Michigan) Rene D. Flores’ research explores the relationship between the two.

Flores tests whether an increase in anti-immigration ordinances or arguments predicts an increase in gun sales within twenty-four Pennsylvania counties. Using administrative data from the countries themselves, he shows how proposed anti-immigrant laws, such as increased deportation power or English-only mandates, predicts an increased sale of handguns. Even after controlling for other factors that predict gun ownership, proposed anti-immigrant ordinances and rates of gun sales track each other closely. Flores also finds a similar link between anti-immigrant-ordinances and subsequent handgun purchases in South Carolina.

Flores suggests the relationship springs from the rhetoric used by politicians and media outlets that describes immigrants as criminal, violent, and dangerous. When immigrants or other populations are portrayed negatively in this way, social anxiety can catch fire in native populations. He tests this claim by examining how, after anti-immigrant ordinances are proposed in Pennsylvania counties, local media run more stories linking immigrants to crime and violence. He suggests that these stories either cause or reflect a change in local attitudes toward immigration—one that results in increased anti-immigration sentiment and gun sales. In short, anti-immigration legislation and rhetoric can shape public attitudes, and social anxiety can predict the likelihood that locals “lock and load.”

Since 9/11, Arab Americans have experienced various forms of harassment and repression in the U.S., including deportations, FBI questioning, citizen surveillance, and harassment as well as insults, threats, and physical attacks we might now categorize as hate crimes. Sociologists Wayne Santoro and Marian Azab are interested in how these experiences impact Arab Americans’ political activism, with a particular focus on protests.

Using Michigan as their case study, Santoro and Azab focus on two main questions. First, to what extent are documented levels of repression associated with increases in public demonstrations and meetings between Detroit-area Arab Americans and authorities about ethnic-based grievances? And second, which Arab Americans are more likely to be involved in activism and civic engagement?

To answer the first, Santoro and Azab examined archives of the Detroit Free Press from 1999-2010. They found a clear temporal relationship between increases in repressive treatment against Arab Americans and patterns of protest and organizing in the community. Such activism peaked in the year after 9/11, with a general increase in protest in the following years.

If the fact that protests peaked post-9/11 within the Arab-American community is unsurprising, the second question—who participated in these protests—provides new information. To examine the effects of repression on an individual level, Santoro and Azab used the Detroit Arab American Study (DAAS) to look at a sample of 1,016 people of Arab or Chaldean descent living in the Detroit area in 2003. They examined the impact of experiencing repression due to race, ethnicity, or religion on the respondent’s participation in a protest, march, or demonstration about any social or political issue within the last twelve months. The results indicated that individuals who identify weakly with their Arab identity are more likely to protest after experiencing repression.

The results indicate that repression does not just mobilize those who are already activists. Rather, repression mobilizes individuals with low levels of identity who are especially shocked by their experiences with oppression.

Public sector jobs, like those in the military, education, and prisons, have long been seen as increasing racial equality; they’re often service-oriented and secure, providing seniority, benefits, and paths to promotion. But as “new governance,” described by George Wilson, Vincent J. Roscigno, and Huffman’s new Social Problems research, and privatization make the public sector look more like the private sector, racial wage parity erodes. In exploring their findings, the authors challenge scholarship on institutions and inequality that has assumed that, over time, “social change and associated structural transformations will reduce… inequalities”—that organizational and bureaucratic forces will lead, inevitably, to drops in racism and discrimination.

Using two datasets, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID2012) and the Integrated Public Use Data Series (IPUMS), Wilson, Roscigno, and Huffamn compare wage discrepancies between black and white employees across time and “new governance,” controlling for factors such as work ethic, education, physical health, gender, age, and unionization. The authors show that, with privatization, wage discrepancies by race grow within and beyond the public sector; this change is not explained by other variables.With privatization, wage discrepancies by race grow within and beyond the public sector.

New governance means both private and public sectors operate, increasingly, under business models, complete with managerial discretion and market principles. Thus, public jobs start to look more like private ones and rather than continuing a legacy of increased equality, both sectors see more inequality over time.

Despite popular notions that the U.S. is now “post-racial,” numerous recent events (such as the Rachel Dolezal kerfuffle and the Emmanuel AME Church shooting) have clearly showcased how race and racism continue to play a central role in the functioning of contemporary American society. But why is it that public rhetoric is at such odds with social reality?

A qualitative research study by Natasha K. Warikoo and Janine de Novais provides insights. By conducting interviews with 47 white students at two elite US universities, Warikoo and de Novais explore the “lenses through which individuals understand the role of race in society.” Described as race frames, Warikoo and de Novais articulate the manner in which their respondents rely on particular cultural frames in making sense of race and race relations in the U.S.

They label the first of these the colour-blind frame*, a perspective held by respondents that suggests that the U.S. is now a “post-racial” society where race has little social meaning or consequence.

The colour-blind frame is challenged by what Warikoo and de Novais identify as the diversity frame, or the view that race is a “positive cultural identity” and that the incorporation of a multitude of perspectives (also referred to as multiculturalism) is beneficial to all those involved.

Integral to Warikoo and de Novais’ study is the finding that about half of their student respondents simultaneously house both the colour-blind and diversity frames. Of 24 students who held a colour-blind frame, 23 also promoted a diversity frame. Warikoo and de Novais explain this discursive discordance as a product of the environments in which respondents reside: a pre-college environment where race is typically de-emphasized and a college environment that amplifies the importance of diversity and multiculturalism.

Importantly, Warikoo and de Novais argue that the salience of these two co-occurring race frames is significant not only because of their seeming contradictions, but because they share conceptions of race that largely ignore the structural basis of racism and racial inequality in the U.S. Ultimately, Warikoo and de Novais’ findings illustrate the general ambivalence that their white respondents share about race and race-based issues—undoubtedly reflective of the discrepancies concerning race in broader society.

*Spelling from original article.

Stories like those out of Ferguson and Baltimore show a double bind for the Black Lives Matter movement. On the one hand, large scale protests draw national attention to important matters of racial injustice and structural police violence. However, media attention to riots leads commentators to criticize “violence” among protestors and discredit their mobilization. One response to these critiques is the argument that violence is political—it is sometimes the only possible way to resist injustice when the traditional political system fails. New research gives us another perspective to chew on: tangible political power for citizens of color may actually reduce the link between race and violence that the media is so quick to criticize.

Research on neighborhood violence often finds a relationship between racial composition and rates of violence—communities with a higher percentage of black residents tend of have higher rates of violence even after we control for structural problems like economic inequality. Vélez, Lyons, and Santoro argue that neighborhood context matters a great deal and can challenge this conclusion. In particular, political opportunities for community members of color offer policy benefits and increased trust in local institutions, and these factors in turn may reduce or even eliminate the relationship between race and violence in a neighborhood.Political opportunities for community members of color offer policy benefits and increased trust in local institutions, and these factors may reduce or even eliminate the relationship between race and violence in a neighborhood.

Using data from the National Neighborhood Crime Study and the 2000 Census, the authors measured violent crime (homicides and robberies) in 8,931 census tract neighborhoods in 87 cities. They also measured black political opportunities in terms of elected representatives, workers in civil service positions, civilian police review boards, and liberal voting bases, and black political mobilization through the presence of citywide minority advocacy organizations and histories of riots and nonviolent protests. Finally, they controlled for city-level factors like the number of manufacturing jobs, racial segregation, and residential mobility.

With a method called hierarchical generalized linear modeling, the authors test the relationship between neighborhood racial composition and neighborhood violence across census tracts clustered in cities. When they introduce the controls for city-level disadvantage, the relationship between race and violence drops substantially, suggesting that it does not hold true across different locations. Finally, they find that in cities with more black political opportunities and more past mobilization through protests and riots the relationship between race and violence disappears.

This last finding is especially important for two reasons. First, it is a myth buster; the authors argue “these results challenge pervasive cultural stereotypes that trace black neighborhoods inevitably to violence” (110). Second, the finding shows us the benefits of political engagement and symbolic inclusion in neighborhood life—when communities have opportunities to organize, mobilize, protest, and ultimately secure power, certain social forces that may increase neighborhood violence disappear.

Immigration, particularly undocumented immigration, is a hot-button political issue. Polls consistently show Americans are concerned about the flow, control, and punishment of undocumented immigrants. Previous sociological inquiry has highlighted how, when people think minority groups pose a threat to their interests, they are more likely to support anti-immigration stances.

Ted Chiricos and colleagues use a national survey of non-Latino respondents to investigate the role of context in attitudes supporting stronger border control (such as increased manpower at boundaries) and internal controls (such as not allowing undocumented immigrants to receive welfare). They find their respondents’ personal characteristics, such as education level and non-white race, are associated with lower levels of support for both types of immigration control, whereas characteristics such as a conservative political persuasion and living in a border state increase support for controls.

The researchers also look at how perceived threats affect individuals’ stances on immigration control. Dynamic changes in the unemployment rate (an economic threat) and the ratio of Latinos to non-Latinos (a cultural threat) both increase support for internal immigration regulation, but not border controls. Such changes in demographic context may be more noticeable to individuals than static observations. Chiricos and colleagues also show that people’s perception of the threat of immigration mediates many personal and contextual factors in forming their opinions. That is, it’s the sense of threat, rather than the existence of one, that drives attitudes toward immigration policy.

Community changes can sway immigration attitudes when the changes are perceived as legitimate cultural or economic threats. Thus, when citizens, pundits, and politicians label social changes as “threats,” they can shift popular opinion toward closed (and closely guarded) borders.

A lot of ink has been spilled investigating “mass incarceration,” the massive expansion in the scope of punishment and its subsequent social consequences. However, the largest arrest categories are for crimes below a felony level, which do not elicit a prison sentence. These “lower-level” criminal justice encounters involve misdemeanors or infractions of noncriminal codes. Issa Kohler-Hausmann, using over 2 years of field work in a New York City criminal court, investigates how “misdemeanor justice” – the criminal justice processing of lower level offenses – represents a form of social control, even though the majority of these sub-felony cases do not result in either a finding of guilt or a formal punishment.

Kohler-Hausmann argues that the criminal justice system extends its net of control through misdemeanor level cases through three techniques: marking, procedural hassle, and performance. The first procedure, marking, is an official mark on the defendant, most often in the form of a temporary rap sheet (which can be dismissed after a period of time). The mark allows the authorities to keep temporary “tabs” on the defendant, and restricts the defendant’s travel and immigration. Further, all open criminal matters in New York are accessible to the public through an online database. This can increase the stigmatizing reach of the criminal mark, as employers and landlords can access this data.

The second form of misdemeanor control, procedural hassle, involves the institutional “hurdles” necessary to obtain the dismissal of the mark. Defendants have to conform to the institutional demands of the court, for example, a mandatory court appearance (or a number of them) is accompanied by stress, lost work, child care costs, and often the neglect of other opportunities in order to comply with court dates. Additionally, the time from arrest to dismissal is defined by numerous encounters with state authority, which demand a level conformity and obedience.

The final penal technique offered by Kohler-Hausmann is performance. The threat of a lasting criminal mark and the demands of criminal justice procedures require the defendants to comply with the demands placed on them. For example, the performance of community service is a common prerequisite for a case dismissal. Overall, these techniques allow the criminal justice system to track and discipline alleged low-level offenders without the formal punishment of parole, prison, or jail, widening the system’s net of control.