race

Thousands led by Native Americans from across the country have converged on rural North Dakota over the past month to stop construction of the Dakota Access pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation. Opponents say the pipeline is a threat to culturally and spiritually sacred sites as well as vital drinking water sources. Protesters have erected an encampment and are leading daily marches to the construction site demanding that the company and federal government halt construction in order to protect water and adhere to treaties with Native American tribes.

The protest over the Dakota Access pipeline reflects the social and political tensions that often emerge around resource extraction projects and potentially hazardous infrastructure, and sociologists have been at the forefront of research and analysis. Mining development led by large multinational companies often brings social dislocation, environmental problems, and a loss of livelihoods for native communities. Yet, indigenous communities have had some success in preventing development and maintaining control over land and natural resources partially through direct action, transnational coalitions, and public campaigns against corporations.

• Alex Golub. 2014. Leviathans at the Gold Mine: Creating Indigenous and Corporate Actors in Papua New Guinea. Raleigh, NC: Duke University Press.
• Gavin Hilson. 2014. Natural Resource Extraction and Indigenous Livelihoods: Development Challenges in an Era of Globalization. Farnham, GB: Routledge.
• Fabiana Li. 2015. Unearthing Conflict: Corporate Mining, Activism, and Expertise in Peru. Raleigh, NC: Duke University Press.

In the U.S., Native American reservations have often been used as sites for hazardous mining and disposal of toxic waste – what scholars call “national sacrifice zones” and environmental racism. Hooks and Smith find that Native Americans struggle with environmental injustices and are more likely to live near toxic waste sites, largely because the U.S. military has used reservations and nearby land for testing and disposing of weapons.

• Robert D. Bullard. 1994. Unequal Protection: Environmental Justice and Communities of Color. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.
• Gregory Hooks and Chad L. Smith. 2004. “The Treadmill of Destruction: National Sacrifice Areas and Native Americans.” American Sociological Review 69(4):558–75.
• Traci Brynne Voyles. 2015. Wastelanding: Legacies of Uranium Mining in Navajo Country. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Protest is also driven by group identities and culture. Mobilization against industrial development is shaped by historical and social differences in how people relate to the land. Indigenous philosophy, spirituality, and land claims can provide legitimacy to environmental opposition and are a source of inspiration and motivation for movement participants. This highlights the role of culture, place-based identity, and values in motivating people to participate in protest.

• William Freudenburg and Robert Gramling. 1993. “Socioenvironmental Factors and Development Policy: Understanding Opposition and Support for Offshore Oil.” Sociological Forum 8(3):341–64.
• Francesca Polletta. 1998. “‘It Was like a Fever …’ Narrative and Identity in Social Protest.” Social Problems 45(2):137–59.
• Rachel A. Wright and Hilary Schaffer Boudet. 2012. “To Act or Not to Act: Context, Capability, and Community Response to Environmental Risk.” American Journal of Sociology 118(3):728–77.

Environmentalists have joined the effort to stop the pipeline as part of a wider movement against fossil fuel extraction and climate change mobilization. Coalitions of environmentalists and indigenous peoples often develop in response to environmentally harmful projects, such as dams or pipelines, which have been important for generating public attention to issues of Native American rights while also building environmental movements. Protests over particular local industrial development can be used strategically by social movements to attract new participants and link people’s immediate concerns about health and safety to broader environmental issues.

• Mik Moore. 1998. “Coalition Building between Native American and Environmental Organizations in Opposition to Development: The Case of the New Los Padres Dam Project.” Organization & Environment 11(3):287–313.
• Joanna L. Robinson. 2013. Contested Water: The Struggle Against Water Privatization in the United States and Canada. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Kate J. Neville and Erika Weinthal. 2016. “Scaling up Site Disputes: Strategies to Redefine ‘local’ in the Fight against Fracking.” Environmental Politics 25(4):569–92.

There are those who contend that it does not benefit African Americans… to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less­ advanced school… a slower-track school where they do well.

During oral arguments for Fisher v. University of Texas-Austin (in which the Supreme Court just upheld UT Austin’s use of race in their admissions policies), Justice Antonin Scalia’s comments caused quite an uproar. Did a member of the Supreme Court actually say that African Americans aren’t capable of success at competitive colleges? He was drawing from the so-called “mismatch hypothesis,” which suggests that affirmative action places people into positions they can’t handle—that is, that affirmative action could hurt African Americans by placing them in schools where they may not succeed or from which they may not graduate.

A significant amount of academic work debunks “mismatch theory,” deeming it both wrong and “paternalistic.”

Fischer and Massey use the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshman to analyze college outcomes and test the mismatch hypothesis; they find no evidence in its favor. Alon and Tienda use two different longitudinal datasets to run similar analyses, again finding no proof that ethnic minority students fare badly in advanced institutions. Replication results have been consistent over time; Kurlaender and Grodsky piece, for instance, find that students placed in programs considered “out of their league” performed just as well as those in less demanding programs.

• Mary J. Fischer and Douglas S. Massey. 2007. “The Effects of Affirmative Action in Higher Education,” Social Science Research 36(2):531-549.
• Sigal Alon and Marta Tienda. 2005. “Assessing the ‘Mismatch’ Hypothesis: Differences in College Graduation Rates by Institutional Selectivity,” Sociology of Education 78(4):294-315.
• Michal Kurlaender and Eric Grodsky. 2013. “Mismatch and the Paternalistic Justification for Selective College Admissions,” Sociology of Education 86(4):294-310.

In a twist, scholars find that affirmative action may place a different group of people in schools for which they are not equipped. In many schools, particularly prestigious ones, “legacy” students—whose family members graduated from the same school—benefit from affirmative action in admissions. Bowen and Bok show this has disproportionately affected white students, and Massey and Mooney show that legacy students earn lower grades than their peers and have lower graduation rates. If affirmative action is doing a disservice to some students, it is not in the way Justice Scalia suggested.

• William G. Bowen and Derek Bok. 1998, 2000. The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Douglas S. Massey and Margarita Mooney. 2007. “The Effects of America’s Three Affirmative Action Programs on Academic Performance,” Social Problems 54(1):99-117

In April, HBO premiered “Confirmation,” the story of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s 1991 confirmation hearings. In those hearings, a former colleague, lawyer Anita Hill, testified about the ongoing sexual harassment she endured while working for Thomas. HBO’s film, some 25 years after the hearings that Thomas famously called a “high-tech lynching,” reminds us of the murky waters women must drudge through when facing and reporting sexual harassment—as well as how complicated the intersections of race, gender, law, and work can be.

Hill testified that Thomas sexually harassed her as her supervisor at the Department of Education and the EEOC. Various studies find that at least 40% of all women report experiencing sexual harassment at work during some point of their lives. Women of color experience higher rates of both sexual and ethnic workplace harassment.

• Aniruddha Das. 2009. “Sexual Harassment at Work in the United States.” Archives of Sexual Behavior 38: 909-921.
• Jennifer L. Berdahl and Celia Moore. 2006. “Workplace Harassment: Double Jeopardy for Minority Women.” Journal of Applied Psychology 91(2): 426-436.

Hill testified that she continued working for Thomas despite the ongoing harassment because she had no other job alternatives. This is unsurprising given that women in law professions encounter a glass ceiling that limits upward mobility, often pushing women to pursue a limited track of jobs when seeking promotions. Further, women in law professions report hearing sexist jokes, having their authority questioned, and being complimented on looks rather than achievements—all at higher rates than their male colleagues.

• Elizabeth H. Gorman and Julie A. Kmec. 2009. “Hierarchical Rank and Women’s Organizational Mobility: Glass Ceilings in Corporate Law Firms,” American Journal of Sociology 114(5): 1428–74.
• Patricia MacCorquodale and Gary Jensen. 1993. “Women in the Law: Partners or Tokens?” Gender and Society 7(4): 582–93.

Even women in power are subject to sexual harassment. One study finds that sexual harassment can actually increase when some women occupy supervisory positions. Sexual harassment has much more to do with power than simple workplace hierarchies.

• Heather McLaughlin, Christopher Uggen, and Amy Blackstone. 2012. “Sexual Harassment, Workplace Authority, and the Paradox of Power,” American Sociological Review 77(4): 625-647.

Zoe Saldana’s portrayal of singer and activist Nina Simone in an upcoming biopic has proven controversial, even before the film’s premiere. In press photos, Saldana, a light-skinned woman of color, is clearly wearing dark makeup and a prosthetic nose to appear more like the late singer. Some argue using “blackface” in order to cast Saldana is particularly troubling considering Nina Simone’s own life-long dedication to encouraging the acceptance and embrace of dark skin tones. It also ignores the realities of colorism, which reproduces social inequalities and hierarchies among people of color.

Several studies address the benefits that accrue to light-skinned women. Employers, for example, often evaluate women applicants on physical attractiveness, regardless of job skills. This includes privileging physical features that suggest lighter-skinned women are friendlier and more intelligent. Lighter skin tones also make their female bearers more likely to marry spouses with higher incomes, report less perceived job discrimination, and earn a higher income. In schools, studies find that teachers expect their lighter-skinned students to display better behavior and higher intelligence than their darker peers, and public health research shows lower rates of mental and physical health problems among lighter-skinned blacks.

• Margaret Hunter. 2007. “The Persistent Problem of Colorism: Skin Tone, Status, and Inequality.” Sociology Compass 1(1): 237-254.
• Ellis P. Monk, Jr. 2015. “The Cost of Color: Skin Color, Discrimination, and Health among African Americans.” American Journal of Sociology 121(2): 396-444

Colorism may provide socioeconomic, educational, and health benefits to light-skinned women, but it also challenges their identity as black women. Other blacks may perceive them as not “black enough,” assuming that they are more assimilated into white culture and lack awareness of black struggles. Those with lighter skin may feel isolated as members of their ethic group openly question their authenticity and belonging.

• Cedric Herring, Verna Keith, and Hayward Derrick Horton. 2004. Skin Deep: How Race and Complexion Matter in the “Color-Blind” Era. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.

To cut costs, the city of Flint, Michigan moved its residents from the Detroit city water system to water sourced from the Flint River. It was a temporary fix until Flint could access Great Lakes water directly. Now, as the world knows, there’s something in the water: lead. In Flint, more than 40% of residents live below the poverty line, and the high lead levels (10 times higher than originally estimated) have caused skin lesions, hair loss, vision loss, memory loss, depression and anxiety, and Legionnaires’ disease. According to sociologists, it’s no fluke that a disenfranchised community pays the ultimate price for environmental damage.According to sociologists, it’s no fluke when a disenfranchised community pays the ultimate price for environmental damage.

Nature is a battleground where the privileges of wealth and whiteness prevail. Race and class inequalities perpetuate practices that harm the environment, and the poor, immigrants, and minorities are most likely to live in areas with environmental damage (some 60% of African Americans and Latino/a people live in in places with uncontrolled toxic waste sites). This is largely due to the ways that bureaucracies and the state exercise power over resources in a capitalist economy. Flint, MI is just one of many examples of wealthy governments and corporations exporting hazardous material to poor communities of color.  

• David Naguib Pellow. 2007. Resisting Global Toxics: Transnational Movements for Environmental Justice. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Murray Bookchin. 2005 The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy. Oakland, CA: AK Press.
• Greta Gaard. 2004. “Toward a Queer Ecofeminism.” In New Perspectives on Environmental Justice: Gender, Sexuality, and Activism, ed. R. Stein, pp.21-44. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press.
• James William Gibson. 2009. A Reenchanted World: The Quest for a New Kinship with Nature. New York: Henry Holt.
• Riley E. Dunlap and William R. Catton, Jr. 1979. “Environmental Sociology,” Annual Review of Sociology (5): 243-273.

Poor communities of color also receive lower government response and assistance in environmental emergencies. From Hurricane Katrina to the Flint water crisis, African Americans tend to lack the economic resources and transportation necessary to evacuate an environmental danger zone, exacerbating its impacts on minority communities.

• Robert D. Bullard and Beverly Wright. 2012. The Wrong Complexion for Protection: How the Government Response to Disaster Endangers African American Communities. New York: NYU Press.

Conservative and liberal legislators alike are calling for criminal justice reform. Last November, President Obama proposed a “ban the box” initiative that prevents federal agencies from inquiring about an applicant’s criminal history during the initial stages of the hiring process. The plan mirrors similar policies in over 100 U.S. cities that seek to reduce employment discrimination against people with criminal records and alleviate the socioeconomic burdens they often face as they reenter the job market. Social science highlights the scope of this problem and how ban the box policies may help.

Employers often dismiss applicants with criminal records, which disproportionately affects black men. A Milwaukee study revealed employers contacted only 5% of black men who disclosed a record; even black men without a criminal record were less likely to receive a callback than their white male peers with a criminal record. Thus, even in the absence of criminal background checks, employers may use racial indicators, education levels, and gaps in employment to evaluate potential criminality among job applicants.

• Devah Pager. 2007. MARKED: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
• Harry Holzer, Steven Raphael, and Michael Stoll. 2006. “Perceived Criminality, Criminal Background Checks, and the Racial Hiring Practices of Employers,” Journal of Law and Economics 451-480.

Among candidates with a record, employers may consider the severity of the crime, the time since the crime was committed, and the outcome of the crime. Felony crimes and convictions appear to create the most barriers, while job applicants with misdemeanor arrests face lower hurdles. Since interviews with employers show that making personal contact with job applicants can help overcome the negative effects of a criminal record, “ban the box” measures that delay consideration of the criminal record until the interview process could make a real difference in individuals’ job prospects.

• Chris Uggen, Mike Vuolo, Sarah Lageson, Ebony Rhuland, and Hilary K. Whitham. 2014. “,The Edge of Stigma: An Experimental Audit of the Effects of Low-Level Criminal Records on Employment.” Criminology 52(4): 627-654.

A recent working paper from Harvard found that hosts of the room/house renting service Airbnb discriminate against renters with Black-sounding names. The study revealed that “requests from guests with distinctly African-American names are roughly 16% less likely to be accepted than identical guests with distinctively White names.”

Unfortunately, racial discrimination based on names is nothing new.

• Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan. 2004. “Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination,” The American Economic Review 94(4): 991-1013.

Racialized housing discrimination also has a long history. Once overt, such as in the outright denial of mortgages, housing discrimination has shifted toward micro-aggressions that are harder to spot, such as the private decision not to offer an Airbnb to people of color.

• Devah Pager and Hana Shepherd. 2008. “The Sociology of Discrimination: Racial Discrimination in Employment, Housing, Credit, and Consumer Markets,” Annual Review of Sociology 34: 181–209.
• Vincent J. Roscigno, Diana L. Karafin, and Griff Tester. 2009.“The Complexities and Processes of Racial Housing Discrimination,” Social Problems 56(1): 49-69.
• Douglas S. Massey. 2015. “ The Legacy of the 1968 Fair Housing Act,” Sociological Forum 30(1): 571-588.

Hazing has been in the news a lot recently. It exists across a variety of settings, including sports and the military.

Why does hazing occur? Some research discusses the function of hazing as rites of passage or as an expression of group solidarity. Hazing can bring members together, validate one another in the group’s eyes, symbolize transition into group membership, bolster group cohesion, and create group conformity within particular hierarchies.

• Hank Nuwer. 2004. The Hazing Reader. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
• Caroline F. Keating, Jason Pomerantz, Stacy D. Pommer, Samantha J.H. Ritt, Lauren M Miller, and Julie McCormick. 2005. “Going to College and Unpacking Hazing: A Functional Approach to Decrypting Initiation Practices Among Undergraduates.” Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice 9(2): 104-126
• Stephen Sweet. 1999. “Understanding fraternity hazing: Insights from symbolic interactionist theory.” Journal of College Student Development 40(4):355-364.

Research on insider’s attitudes towards hazing highlights interesting dynamics within organizations. Individual members often have negative thoughts about hazing, but individuals are unlikely to protest the practice in-group settings. Power dynamics within those groups normalize hazing and silence opposition to it.

• Judy L. Van Raalte, Allen E. Cornelius, Darwyn E Linder, and Britton W Brewer. 2007. “The relationship between hazing and team cohesion.” Journal of Sport Behavior 30(4): 491-507.
• Donna Winslow. 1999. “Rites of Passage and Group Bonding in the Canadian Airborne.” Armed Forces & Society 25(3): 429-457.

The research suggests that hazing takes on a particular character within Greek Letter Organizations (GLOs). In fraternities, for example, where membership and group identity are constructed around ideas of the “all-male” group, hazing can serve as a validation of masculinity and a suppression of femininity. In addition, in GLOs that have been historically raced, hazing can express racial identities, in-group unity, and belonging.

• Elizabeth J. Allan. 2009. Hazing in View: College students at Risk. Collingdale, PA: DIANE Publishing.
• Ricky L. Jones. 2004. Black haze: Violence, sacrifice, and manhood in Black Greek-letter fraternities. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

You’ve probably seen more than an ad or two this fall for DraftKings or FanDuel, two massive online fantasy sports websites valued at over $1 billion each. Since 2009, the number of fantasy sports players has doubled, and, as of August, 56.8 million participated in the United States and Canada (according to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association). It’s not all fun and games, though. The New York Attorney general launched an investigation into these sites, and a recent feature in The New York Times highlights how deep the rabbit hole goes for illegal online gambling on fantasy sports. It is easy to focus on scandalous stories of crime rings, big winnings, and crushing losses, but these sites are not just about gaming the system. Sociologists emphasize that they are also powerful social communities driven by cultures of masculinity and fandom.

Eric Leifer argues that the history of sports fandom in the U.S. is place- and team-based—fans supported the team in their town or region as a marker of community membership. Fantasy leagues and social media challenged this by shifting the focus from entire teams to individual athletes’ performance.

• Eric M. Leifer. 1995. Making the Majors: The Transformation of Team Sports in America. Harvard University Press.
• John P. McGuire, Greg G. Armfield, and Jeff Boone. 2012. “Show Me the Numbers! Media Dependency and Fantasy Game Participants.” pp. 275-287 in Sports Fans, Identity, and Socialization ed. Adam C. Earnheardt, Paul M. Haridakis, and Barbara S. Hugenbeg.
• Matthew David and Peter Millward. 2015. “Sport and New Media” pp. 388-397 in Routledge Handbook of the Sociology of Sport ed. Richard Giulianotti.

Sociologists, especially, focus on the racialized and gendered nature of sport-based communities. Members often forge strong social ties in male-dominated spaces that emphasize knowledge and expertise, and the groups can privilege racial stereotypes and racialized assumptions about athletic performance.

• Nickolas W. Davis and Margaret Carlisle Duncan. 2006. “Sports Knowledge is Power: Reinforcing Masculine Privilege Through Fantasy Sports League Participation.” Journal of Sport & Social Issues. 30(3): 244-264
• Adam Love and Matthew W. Hughey. 2015. “Out of Bounds? Racial Discourse on College Basketball Message Boards.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 38(6):877–93.

Fantasy sites (and the betting that ensues on them) are in line with other case studies that show how online socialization is not “less real” or consequential than offline social interaction—both teach everything from harmless play to deviant behavior. We see the power of online interaction in everything from hackers developing their own open-source political theory to online peers teaching others how to download music for free and sport message boards reinforcing racial stereotypes.

• Gabriella Coleman. 2012. Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking. Princeton University Press
• George E. Higgins, Catherine D. Marcum, Tina L. Freiburger, and Melissa L. Ricketts. 2012. “Examining the Role of Peer Influence and Self-Control on Downloading Behavior.” Deviant Behavior 33(5):412–23.

Of course, gambling is tied up in these social structures. While American society has “medicalized” compulsive gambling, treating it as an individual and treatable problem, more recent work shows how social environments create what gamblers want most: a chance to be in the “zone” and play for long periods of time. The strong communal aspect of fantasy sports websites makes them a perfect space for sustained play.

• John Rosecrance. 1985. “Compulsive Gambling and the Medicalization of Deviance.” Social Problems. 32(3):275-284
• Natasha Dow Schüll. 2012. Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press

In The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration” details the historical development of the carceral state, its consequences on current and formerly imprisoned black Americans, and the unique challenges families face during their absences and returns. Coates cites and interviews several prominent sociologists for their insight into the carceral state’s repercussions for black Americans specifically. We rounded up some of their best work on the topic.

The 1970s saw increasing unemployment and concentrated poverty. Legislators developed “tough on crime” policies that resulted in the start of a massive increase in the number of incarcerated individuals in jails and prisons. Increases in incarceration, however, do not appear to have had a significant effect on decreasing crime rates.

• Robert J. Sampson and William Julius Wilson. 1995. “Toward a Theory of Race, Crime, and Urban Inequality.” In Shaun L. Gabbidon and Helen Taylor Greene (eds.), Race, Crime, and Justice: A Reader. London: Routledge. pp. 177-190.
• Bruce Western and Christopher Muller. 2013. “Mass Incarceration, Macrosociology, and the Poor,” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 647(1):166-189.
• Bruce Western. 2006. Punishment and Inequality in America. New York: Russell Sage.

Mass imprisonment has a wide range of collateral consequences. Those who serve time face health risks, familial struggles, and barriers to employment before and after they are released.

• Christopher Wildeman and Christopher Muller. 2012. “Mass Imprisonment and Inequality in Health and Family Life,” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 8:11-30.
• Sara Wakefield and Christopher Wildeman. 2013. Children of the Prison Boom: Mass Incarceration and the Future of American Inequality. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Devah Pager. 2003. “The Mark of a Criminal Record,” American Journal of Sociology 108(5):937-975.
• Devah Pager. 2007. Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.