Every February, people in the United States participate in this strange ritual where we entrust a large rodent to predict whether winter will last six more weeks (about average for much of the northern United States) or if spring will come early. Yep, it’s Groundhog Day. And as strange as this practice might seem, superstitions and rituals like it actually play an important role in how people form identities and communities.

While scholars first studied rituals primarily in relation to religion, eventually they realized that rituals, whether religious or not, were important ways of bringing people together through shared practices. Emile Durkheim was the first to point to ritual’s community forming potential. He argued that rituals are the collective representations of the social group itself — rituals arouse passion, feelings of connectedness, and an experience of something larger than the individual. These features of ritual are conducive to identifying with social groups in an emotional and empowering way.

• Emile Durkheim. 1912. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. New York: The Free Press.
• Victor Turner. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Transaction Publishers.
• Douglas Marshall. 2002. “Behavior, Belonging, and Belief: A Theory of Ritual Practice.” Sociological Theory 20(30): 360-380.

However, rituals are not just any set of shared practices — in order to be meaningful, rituals need to feel natural. Rituals present themselves as unchanging and timeless, and until very recently, most people’s experience of ritual was such that to “create” or “invent” a ritual meant it was inauthentic. However, all rituals are products of human creation that become naturalized and taken-for-granted over time.

• Catherine Bell. 1997. Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Tom Driver. 1991. The Magic of Ritual: Our Need for Liberating Rites that Transform Our Live and Our Communities. New York: Harper Collins.
• David Cheal. 1992. “Ritual: Communication in Action.” Sociological Analysis 53(4): 363-374.

So, Groundhog Day is not celebrated because Americans truly believe a groundhog will predict the coming of spring. Rather, it’s one of many ways we ritualize our life to make meaning out of the passage of time and to feel connected to our fellow humans.

Every year the FBI releases its Uniform Crime Report (UCR), an annual collection of crimes reported to local police agencies across the United States.  When the FBI released the 2016 report last year, it was missing many key tables, spurring a letter from criminologists asking that Jeff Sessions and the FBI director, Christopher A. Ray, release the report in its complete form (as it had been in previous years). Although the FBI claims that the trimming of the report was planned for many years, other reports suggest that this may not be the case. So what exactly is missing from the UCR and why does it matter to social science research?

The 2016 UCR is missing tables from the Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR), which include data on homicide victims’ relationships to perpetrators and other situational circumstances of homicides. Without these data, researchers — like those studying intimate partner and family violence — will be unable to track these aspects of homicides over time. In the past, researchers used the SHRs to examine how declining marriage rates, increased access to domestic violence services, and the improved economic standing of women contributed to a sizable decrease in spousal homicide from the 1970s to the 1990s. Others used the SHRs to examine the geography of interpersonal homicide, indicating that rural residents may be more susceptible to intimate partner and familial homicides than residents of metropolitan areas.

• Laura Dugan, Daniel S. Nagin, and Richard Rosenfeld. 1999. “Explaining the Decline in Intimate Partner Homicide: The Effects of Changing Domesticity, Women’s Status, and Domestic Violence Resources.” Homicide Studies 3(3): 187-214.
• Adria Gallup-Black. 2005. “Twenty Years of Rural and Urban Trends in Family and Intimate Partner Homicide: Does Place Matter?” Homicide Studies 9(2): 149-173.
• Wesley G. Jennings and Alex R. Piquero. 2008. “Trajectories of Non-Intimate Partner and Intimate Partner Homicides, 1980-1999: The Importance of Rurality.” Journal of Criminal Justice 36(5): 435-443.

Like many other national databases, the Supplemental Homicide Reports suffer from some data quality issues. One study finds that data establishing the relationship between a victim and perpetrator in the SHRs may be particularly unreliable. While this may suggest that dropping some tables from the UCR may have been a strategic move by the FBI, most studies of the SHR data quality call for more efficient and effective data collection prior to compiling an SHR, as well as better variable measurement by the SHR, rather than complete dismissal of the reports.

• Thomas D. Bazley and Thomas Mieczkowski. 2004. “Researching Workplace Homicide: An Assessment of the Limitations of the Supplementary Homicide Reports.” Journal of Criminal Justice 32(3): 243-252.
• Jesenia M. Pizarro and April M. Zeoli. 2013. “An Assessment of the Quality of Homicide Data in the Supplementary Homicide Reports: A Research Note.” Justice Quarterly 30(4): 711-731.

Beyond homicide data, which also includes gang and drug-related homicides, the 2016 Uniform Crime Report is missing many additional tables. One of these is drug arrests by specific drug types, including synthetic opioids or heroin. This is a particularly surprising omission considering the opioid epidemic is a major policy concern for the Trump administration. The recent call to action by criminologists appears to have been successful — FBI Director Wray indicated at a December House Judiciary Committee hearing (see 3:28:35 for Wray’s statement) that the FBI now plans to republish the UCR with all of the missing tables included. This is good news for social scientists, who argue that we cannot have effective policies on social issues such as crime and drug use without the data that drive these critical decisions.

Of the many so-called crises in higher ed, University of Wisconsin-Superior recently announced its plan to suspend 25 academic programs (including sociology). Administrators claimed their decision is part of a larger effort in higher education institutions to decrease the time students spend in college in order to increase graduation rates and lessen debt for low-income, first-generation students. Social science research, however, suggests curriculum shifts may not address first-generation students’ needs. 

First-generation students are more likely to come from low-income minority families, delay entry into college, attend college part-time, and work full-time while in school — all characteristics that reduce the likelihood of completing a degree. Only 27 percent of first-generation college students at four-year institutions graduate in four years, compared to 42 percent of students whose parents graduated from college. And only five percent of low-income, first-generation students who begin at two-year community colleges completed a bachelor’s degree within six years. Further, first generation students often have limited access to the “cultural capital” that privileges wealthier students.

• Peter Collier and David L. Morgan. 2008. “‘Is That Paper Really Due Today?’: Differences in First-Generation and Traditional College Students’ Understandings of Faculty Expectations.” Higher Education 55(4):425–46.
• Sylvia Hurtado and Deborah Faye Carter. 1997. “Effects of College Transition and Perceptions of the Campus Racial Climate on Latino College Students’ Sense of Belonging.” Sociology of Education 70(4):324-345.

The completion agenda — an effort to increase completion rates, especially among community college students — aims to compensate for differences in cultural capital by making graduation requirements clear and accessible. It can also include limiting course or curricular options in an attempt to reduce “wasted” credits. But simply reducing the number of credits taken does not address the fundamental challenge of how to to pay for both tuition and basic needs, a major reason why students drop courses, take semesters off, and leave school. In addition, a completion agenda may limit low-income, first-generation students to low-quality programs, while more prestigious institutions offer privileged students broad selections that are transferable across many professions.

• Sara Goldrick-Rab. 2016. Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream. University of Chicago Press.
• Tressie McMillan Cottom. 2017. Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of for-Profit Colleges in the New Economy. New York: The New Press.

Originally posted April 10, 2017.

From Trump’s attempted restriction on immigration to his talk of building a wall on the country’s southern border, immigration policy has received renewed attention among both politicians and the public. A common reason for restricting immigration flows is association between immigration and crimes, which was explicitly mentioned by Trump along the campaign trail.  Social science agrees that immigration and crime are interconnected, but not in the way Trump and others claim.

Individual level data show that immigrants are actually less likely to engage in violent behavior than non-immigrants, with first generation immigrants being the least likely to commit crime as compared to second or third generation immigrants. Similarly, studies also find that areas with high proportions of immigrant residents are associated with lower levels of neighborhood violence and drug-crime when compared to similar neighborhoods with fewer immigrants. This association is best explained by the increases in social organization — culturally-based buffers like strong familial and neighborhood ties — and the associated economic gains stimulated by the influx of immigrants.

• Robert J. Sampson, Jeffrey D. Morenoff, and Stephen Raudenbush. 2005.  “Social Anatomy of Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Violence.” American Journal of Public Health 95(2): 224-232.
• Lesley Williams Reid, Harald E. Weiss, Robert M. Adelman, and Charles Jaret. 2005. “The Immigration– Crime Relationship: Evidence Across US Metropolitan Areas.” Social Science Research 34(4): 757- 780.
• Tim Wadsworth. 2010.  “Is Immigration Responsible for the Crime Drop? An Assessment of the Influence of Immigration on Changes in Violent Crime Between 1990 and 2000.” Social Science Quarterly 91(2): 531-553.
• Graham C. Ousey, and Charis E. Kubrin. 2009. “Exploring the Connection Between Immigration and Violent Crime Rates in US Cities, 1980–2000.” Social Problems 56(3): 447-473.

This association between immigration and lower crime rates is stronger in areas with more opportunities for immigrant political action. Cities with higher levels of minority political representation and pro-immigrant legislation enhance the buffering effect of immigration on both homicide and robbery.

• Christopher J. Lyons, María B. Vélez, and Wayne A. Santoro. 2013. “Neighborhood Immigration, Violence, and City-Level Immigrant Political Opportunities.” American Sociological Review 78(4): 604-632.

What’s troubling is that even though immigrants and the areas they inhabit are associated with lower levels of crime, both documented and undocumented individuals are more likely to be incarcerated and receive longer prison sentences, even when controlling for race/ethnicity, crime severity, and other factors.

• Michael T. Light, Michael Massoglia, and Ryan D. King. 2014. “Citizenship and Punishment: The Salience of National Membership in US Criminal Courts.” American Sociological Review 79(5): 825-847.

Church bells ring in England, as the country prepares for the royal wedding between Prince Harry and American actress Meghan Markle next spring. While royal weddings have long stirred excitement among local and foreign regions alike, commentators have been quick to speculate how Markle’s identity as a biracial woman – African American mother and white American father – might shape the future of the British monarchy. The speculation surrounding Markle’s racial identity highlights the complexities of being multiracial in an increasingly diverse, yet still discriminatory, global world. Sociological studies can help us better appreciate how mixed-race individuals navigate the societal perceptions of their identities.

The recognition and visibility of mixed-race individuals and identities has grown in recent decades, yet the histories, meanings, and responses to mixed racial identities vary considerably within and across international contexts. While the U.S. primarily emphasizes “bi-racial” as rooted in a white and nonwhite racial system, in Latin America, mixed-race identities fall within a more flexible “tri-racial”system. For instance, individuals from Brazil and the Caribbean trace their mixed-race origins back to colonial conquest centuries ago, and thus mixed-race people have been considered a central part of the national identity in these locations. Understanding these differences further our understandings of how race is socially constructed.

• Eduardo Bonilla-Silva. 2006. “From Bi-Racial to Tri-Racial: Towards a New System of Racial Stratification in the USA.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 27(6): 931-950.
• Rebecca C. King-O’Riain, Stephen Small, Minelle Mahtani, Miri Song, and Paul Spickard, eds. 2014. Global Mixed-Race. New York: New York University Press.

While some mixed-race people embrace a multiracial identity, others use strategies to appear as monoracial. For black-white biracial individuals, this means attempting to appear as either white or black. Individuals in one U.S. study reported tanning, combing their hair, speaking, and dressing in a certain way to appear as more white or black depending upon the potential social gains in any given context. Nevertheless, as we might expect from the experiences of other people of color, mixed-race individuals often face mistreatment from whites and non-whites alike for their appearance. Biracial women, for example, report receiving frequent mistreatment from non-biracial black women, who often accuse them of thinking they are “all that” because of their light skin and hair texture.

• Kerry Ann Rockquemore. 2002. “Negotiating the Color Line: The Gendered Process of Racial Identity Construction among Black/White Biracial Women.” Gender & Society 16(4): 485-503.
• Nikki Khanna and Cathryn Johnson. 2010. “Passing as Black: Racial Identity Work among Biracial Americans.” Social Psychology Quarterly 73(4): 380-397.

In some contexts, multiracial individuals are preferred above whites. And dating is no exception. Within romantic relationships, sexual and dating partners tend to exoticize biracial individuals. For some, perceived racial ambiguity makes biracial individuals ideal for casual sexual encounters, while others are sought after because their partners believe they will make beautiful babies. One recent study suggested that mixed-race women may be more likely to self-identify as “multiracial” than mixed-race men because the multiracial identity is more associated with traditional perceptions of feminine beauty. Despite individual and systemic preferences for biracial people, this preference often comes at a cost of commodifying their bodies, and many cannot escape discrimination that have historically oppressed people of color.

• Chandra Waring. 2013. “‘They See Me as Exotic…. That Intrigues Them:’ Gender, Sexuality and the Racially Ambiguous Body.” Race, Gender & Class 20(3/4): 299–317.
• Shantel Gabrieal Buggs. 2017. “Does (Mixed-)Race Matter? The Role of Race in Interracial Sex, Dating, and Marriage.” Sociology Compass 11(11): 1-13.
• Celeste Vaughan Curington, Ken-Hou Lin, and Jennifer Hickes Lundquist. 2015. “Positioning Multiraciality in Cyberspace: Treatment of Multiracial Daters in an Online Dating Website.” American Sociological Review 80(4): 764-788.
• Lauren D. Davenport. 2016. “The Role of Gender, Class, and Religion in Biracial Americans’ Racial Labeling Decisions.” American Sociological Review 81(1): 57-84.

Originally published Oct. 31, 2017

In recent weeks, over 500,000 women and men shared the hashtag #MeToo in response to the following social media tweet: “If all the women who have been sexuallly harrassed or assaulted wrote ‘Me too.’ as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.” Some participants only shared the hashtag, while others revealed deeply personal stories of sexual harassment in the workplace, child sexual abuse, and sexual assault on college campuses, to name a few. Initially started by activist Tarana Burke, this reinvigoration of the Me Too campaign comes amidst numerous sexual assault and harassment claims against several high status men, including Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, musical artist Nelly, and most recently, House of Cards actor Kevin Spacey. Sexual harassment and sexual assault are certainly not new phenomena. Yet, these campaigns that provide space for survivors to address victimization may signal a renewed public effort to address rape culture – a struggle that social scientists have spent decades trying to resolve.

Consequences of Sexual Violence

Sexual violence frequently results in several psychological and financial consequences for victims and survivors throughout the life course. Many report feelings of depression and posttraumatic stress disorder following the incident, and the trauma that results from sexual violence may alter how victims view themselves. Kaitlyn Boyle argues that assault characteristics like physical injury, perpetrator force, and physical resistance shape one’s self-identification as a “victim” or a “survivor.” Sexual violence may also impact women’s career trajectories. For example, many women that are sexually harassed in the workplace are more likely than non-harassed women to change jobs earlier in their career in order to avoid their harassers and/or employers who failed to fully investigate their claims. These moves often resulted in increased financial hardship.

• Kaitlin M. Boyle. 2017. “Sexual Assault and Identity Disruption: A Sociological Approach to Posttraumatic Stress.” Society and Mental Health 7(2): 69-84.
• Heather McLaughlin, Christopher Uggen, Amy Blackstone. 2017. “The Economic and Career Effects of Sexual Harassment on Working Women.” Gender & Society 31(3): 333-358.

Defining Rape Culture and Dismantling Masculinity

Feminist sociologists have long pointed out that sexual violence doesn’t simply stem from individual sexual impulses — it emerges as a consequence of masculine ideals that justify men’s aggression and encourage women’s subordination. This is in large part due to rape culture. In their important study on college fraternities and sexual assault, A. Ayres Boswell and Joan Spade define rape culture as “a set of values and beliefs that provide an environment conducive to rape” (133).

• R.W. Connell. 1995. Masculinities. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Ayres Boswell and Joan Z. Spade. 1996. “Fraternities and Collegiate Rape Culture: Why Are Some Fraternities More Dangerous Places for Women?” Gender & Society 10(2): 133-147.

Under popular rape myths that suggest “guys will be guys” and “bros before hos,” some men within highly male-dominated peer groups, such as fraternities and athletic teams, engage in acts like harassment and gang rape to connect with and impress their male peers. And while there are many men who openly oppose sexual violence by distancing themselves from perceived rapists and claiming they are “good guys,” they may also reinforce cultural rape myths that only stereotypical “bad guys” — strangers, physically violent individuals, and minority men — commit rape. This ultimately works to cover up the more subtle forms of everyday sexual violence.

• Michael Kimmel. 2008. Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men. New York: Harper Collins.
• Beth A. Quinn. 2002. “Sexual Harassment and Masculinity: The Power and Meaning of ‘Girl Watching.’” Gender & Society 16:386–402.
• CJ Pascoe and Jocelyn A. Hollander. 2016. “Good Guys Don’t Rape: Gender, Domination, and Mobilizing Rape.” Gender & Society 30(1): 67-79.

LGBT families are increasingly visible in public life. From famous celebrity same-sex parents like Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka to same-sex family representations in popular television shows like Grey’s Anatomy and Modern Family, it may be easy to forget the hurdles LGBT families continue to face. For decades, anti-same-sex parenting activists have challenged LGBT parental rights, arguing that same-sex parenting somehow harms the wellbeing of children. Social science research on LGBT parenting has generally refuted  these claims, providing evidence that good parenting occurs under a diversity of family arrangements.

Families have never truly resembled the so-called “traditional” nuclear family, yet LGBT families have indeed expanded definitions of kinship and parenting. Beyond disrupting norms about gender and sexual orientation of family members, many LGBT families use adoption and various methods of assisted reproduction to have children. Some families include two parents, some include one, and others involve co-parenting between more than two people.

• Stephanie Coontz. 1992. The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap. New York: Basic Books.
• Joshua Gamson. 2015. Modern Families: Stories of Extraordinary Journeys to Kinship. New York: New York University Press.

Despite a range of options for family structures, LGBT families still face legal challenges to parenting. Legal rights pertaining to adoption and parental rights vary significantly across the United States, as do parents’ understandings of and interactions with the law. In fact, parents’ expectations of what family formation means are often shaped by the legal context in which they live. For instance, if adoption is not an option for the second parent, it may become less important to the parents’ perception of how a family should look.

• Amanda K. Baumle and D’Lane R. Compton. 2015. Legalizing LGBT Families: How the Law Shapes Parenthood. New York: New York University Press.

Over the past decade, research on the well-being and success of children with lesbian and gay (LG) parents has intensified. Evidence overwhelmingly indicates that these children do just as well as children raised by different-sex parents in social and cognitive development, academic performance, and avoiding substance abuse and delinquent behavior. Beyond wellbeing, LG parents may be less likely to enforce rigid gender norms on their children, instead offering a variety of gendered options. Studies have also found that children’s activity preferences are less gendered when parental division of labor is more equally shared between both parents, and this egalitarian form of co-parenting appears to be more common among middle class, white lesbians. However, parents from all backgrounds may be less likely to endorse gender nonconformity with their sons than with their daughters.

• Wendy D. Manning, Marshal Neal Fettro, and Esther Lamidi. 2014. “Child Well-Being in Same-Sex Parent families: Review of Research Prepared for American Sociological Association Amicus Brief.” Population Research and Policy Review 33(4): 485-502.
• Emily W. Kane. 2006. “No Way My Boys Are Going to Be Like That!”: Parents’ Responses to Children’s Gender Nonconformity.” Gender & Society 20(2): 149-176.
• Kate Henley Averett. 2016. “The Gender Buffet: LGBTQ Parents Resisting Heteronormativity.” Gender & Society 30(2): 189-212.

While the research base on LG parents and family structures has developed rapidly, we know much less about transgender parents and transgender youth. Similarly, the experience of bisexual individuals has often been ignored or collapsed under LG experiences. This lack of research complicates the notion of LGBT as a comprehensive umbrella term in family studies, as social scientists know far less about the BT than the LG, and even less about queer and asexual identities (QA).

• Timothy J. Biblarz and Evren Savci. 2010. “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Families.” Journal of Marriage and Family, 72(3): 480-497.

The recent passing of the GOP tax plan in the both House and the Senate means that Congress will continue its frantic pace on tax reform to overhaul the tax code by the end of the year. Many legislators are worried about the bill’s potential impact on working class families, and graduate students are anxious about the proposed tax on tuition waivers. No one knows what the Congressional tax plan will look like if it passes both houses and becomes law, but we do know that tax policy affects the structure of social inequality in America. Here’s how — 

The tax code matters for what and who gets taxed. Researchers pay particular attention to the relative tax burden on various groups. The level of progressivity, or how much tax is paid by high income groups as compared to middle income groups, has shifted over time along with macroeconomic conditions such as unemployment, economic development, and budget deficits. Past tax reforms, particularly in 1986 and 2001, also shifted the proportion of taxes that come from wages and salaries as opposed to capital gains or other investments.

• Michael Patrick Allen and John Campbell. 1994. “State Revenue Extraction from Different Income Groups: Variations in Tax Progressivity in the United States, 1916 to 1986.” American Sociological Review 59(2): 169-186.
• Richard Caputo. 2007. “Federal Taxation of Individual Capital and Labor Income in the United States, 1978-2003.” Race, Gender & Class 14(1): 275-280.

Rising inequality as a result of the concentration of income among the highest earners is one of the most prominent points in social stratification research, and has fueled populist movements in the United States like Occupy Wall Street and the Sanders and Trump campaigns. Lower tax rates for the highest earners were a key driver of inequality between 1980 and 2008, along with shifts toward more conservative Congresses, lower union membership, and stock prices. Tax policy decisions that benefit the top half of the top one percent of Americans are clear examples of how organized political interests have more power to set policy than the interests of the average voter.

• Anthony Atkinson, Thomas Piketty, and Emmanuel Saez. 2011. “Top Incomes in the Long Run of History.” Journal of Economic Literature 49(1): 3-71.
• Thomas Volscho and Nathan Kelly. 2012. “The Rise of the Super-Rich: Power Resources, Taxes, Financial Markets, and the Dynamics of the Top 1 Percent, 1949 to 2008.” American Sociological Review 77(5): 679-699.
• Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson. 2010. “Winner-Take-All Politics: Public Policy, Political Organization, and the Precipitous Rise of Top Incomes in the United States.” Politics & Society 38(2): 152-204.

Apart from debates on whether shifts in tax policy will actually stimulate economy growth, tax revenue affects availability of resources for social welfare programs that address persistent stratification across groups.

• David Williams and Chiquita Collins. 1995. “US Socioeconomic and Racial Differences in Health: Patterns and Explanations.” Annual Review of Sociology, 21: 349-386.
• Kate Strully , David Rehkopf, and Ziming Xuan. 2010. “Effects of Prenatal Poverty on Infant Health: State Earned Income Tax Credits and Birth Weight.” American Sociological Review 75(4): 534-562.

Prominent figures in American film, news, and politics are facing a dramatic wave of sexual harassment accusations. In response, the heads of organizations — like the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences and various colleges and universities — are not only encouraging victims to voice their allegations, but also re-examining their own institutional cultures. Social science research has explored the social dynamics of sexual harassment in the workplace and the conditions that prevent reporting. 

Individuals who experience sexual harassment often do not report right away — some may not interpret their experiences as abuse at first, but even when they do, many choose not to come forward. And others who are aware of the harassment frequently turn a blind eye. In order for victims of sexual harassment, discrimination, or abuse to come forward, they must first believe that doing so will be effective and not result in their own harm. Lost jobs opportunities and the fear of retaliation are among the most frequent reasons for not reporting, and educational, psychological factors, and financial resources all influence the likelihood of reporting. 

• Amy Blackstone, Christopher Uggen, and Heather McLaughlin. 2009. “Legal Consciousness and Responses to Sexual Harassment.” Law & Society Review 43(3): 631–668.
• Deborah Brake. 2007. “Perceiving Subtle Sexism: Mapping the Social-Psychological Forces and Legal Narratives that Obscure Gender Bias.” Columbia Journal of Gender & Law 16: 679.
• Elizabeth Wolfe Morrison and Frances J. Milliken. 2000. “Organizational Silence: A Barrier to Change and Development in a Pluralistic World.” Academy of Management Review 25(4): 706-725.

Organizations can also develop cultures of corruption and silence as sexual harassment becomes embedded within the institution. Members normalize and justify these practices, and then socialize newcomers to view such behavior as permissible and even desirable. In doing so, members of the organization legitimize and reinforce the status quo. For instance, women’s success may be interpreted as a threat to men’s masculinity, and in some cases, these men respond through controlling practices like sexual harassment. In order to keep their jobs and avoid conflict with coworkers, many women remain silent and feel they must tolerate unwelcome sexual advances. When coworkers witness harassment and do not respond, victims may internalize negative judgments, which lowers their sense of well-being and reduces opportunities for collective action.

• Heather McLaughlin, Christopher Uggen, and Amy Blackstone. 2012. “Sexual Harassment, Workplace Authority, and the Paradox of Power.” American Sociological Review 77(4): 625-647.
• Deborah Jones and Judith Pringle. 2015. “Unmanageable Inequalities: Sexism in the Film Industry.” The Sociological Review 63(1): 37-49.
• Diane Vaughan. 1996. The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Blake E. Ashforth and Vikas Anand. 2003. “The Normalization of Corruption in Organizations.” Research in Organizational Behavior 25: 1-52.

Neo-Nazi swastikas, explicitly racist chants and slogans, and public demonstrations with hoods and torches, as seen recently in places likes Charlottesville, are what signal white supremacy for many Americans. Yet, for over a decade, activists and policy makers have used the phrase “white supremacy” in different ways, moving beyond extremist ideologies and individuals’ bigoted beliefs to focus on the deep historical structure and institutional dimensions of racial inequality in social life. Perhaps not surprisingly, sociologists have been at the forefront of parsing out this broader usage and meaning of white supremacy.

Rather than focusing solely on explicit prejudice and organized hate groups, recent sociological uses of the term describe how the very nature of American society inherently privileges white people, white identities, and the status of whiteness. This includes how white people fare better in economic terms, as well as how white people experience superior outcomes in other ways, such as education and health, and how all of these systemic inequalities happen through established institutional arrangements, cultural norms, and public policies. For scholars with this emphasis, America is a “white supremacist” nation — not because individuals or the law are explicitly prejudiced, but because white privilege is central to American social life.

• Moon Kie Jung, João H. Costa Vargas and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (eds) 2011. The State of White Supremacy: Racism, Governance, and the United States. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press
• Naa Oyo A. Kwate, and Melody S. Goodman. 2014. An Empirical Analysis of White Privilege, Social Position and Health. Social Science & Medicine 116: 150-160.
• Joe Feagin. 2013. The White Racial Frame: Centuries of Racial Framing and Counter-Framing. New York: Routledge.
• Matthew Desmond and David Emirbayer. 2009. “What is Racial Domination?” Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race 6(2): 335-355.
• Matthew Hughey. 2010. “The (Dis)similarities of White Racial Identities: The Conceptual Framework of ‘Hegemonic Whiteness’.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 33(8): 1289-1309.

This is not to suggest that sociologists and other social scientists have neglected the study of extremist white groups like Neo-Nazis or the KKK. In fact, sociologists have continued to track how more traditional white supremacists have evolved alongside changing social backdrops and history. These scholars have documented how white supremacist movements in the 21st century have been shaped by whites’ perceptions of victimhood following increased immigration, globalization, and diversity in America.

• Jackie Hogan and Kristin Haltinner. 2015. “Floods, Invaders, and Parasites: Immigration Threat Narratives and Right-Wing Populism in the USA, UK and Australia.” Journal of Intercultural Studies 36(5): 520-543.
• Rory McVeigh. 2009. The Rise of the Ku Klux Klan: Right-Wing Movements and National Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• Pete Simi, Kathleen Blee, Matthew DeMichele, and Steven Windisch. 2017. “Addicted to Hate: Identity Residual among Former White Supremacists.” American Sociological Review 1-21.

With all of these different strands of research and interpretations of white supremacy, it is imperative for all of us — activists and analysts alike, as well as everyone in between — to be thoughtful and cautious about how, when, and in what company we use the term “white supremacy.”