race

Chicago Public Media’s This American Life recently aired “The Problem We All Live With”—an extended episode with New York Times Magazine reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones on how racial segregation lives on into 21st century classrooms.

School segregation has been on the rise since the 1980s, leading, in part, to a wide achievement gap between Black and White students. Policymakers often focus on the moral achievement of Brown v. Board of Education, but racial separation persists.

• Gary Orfield, Susan E. Eaton, and The Harvard Project on School Desegregation. 1996. Dismantling Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal of Brown v. Board of Education. New York: New Press.

Minority students are much more likely to drop out of school, to be tracked into “low-ability” groups or vocational programs, and to face other barriers to achieving higher education. Ability matters for achievement, but so does the social structure of schools.

• Grace Kao and Jennifer S. Thompson. 2003. “Racial and Ethnic Stratification in Education Achievement and Attainment.” Annual Review of Sociology. 29:417-442

We usually think school segregation really happens at the neighborhood level, but neighborhood segregation has declined since 1990. Instead, we see increasing macro-segregation—patterns where minority groups are concentrated in certain urban and suburban areas. Therefore, entire schools or districts are more likely to see homogenous groups of students.

• Daniel T. Lichter, Domenico Parisi, and Michael C. Taquino. 2015. “Toward a New Macro-Segregation? Decomposing Segregation within and between Metropolitan Cities and Suburbs.” American Sociological Review 80(4):843–73.

For more on inequality in schools, check out the TSP White Paper “Students Squeezed by an Hourglass Economy” by Robert Crosnoe.

The Emmanuel AME shootings in Charleston, South Carolina have reignited public discussion of both terrorism and hate crimes. While the media often focuses on foreign religious extremism as a motivation for domestic attacks, data show more radicalization has taken place on the political far-right (independent of religion or race) than among Muslims in the United States. Since 9/11, only 25 recorded attacks have been committed by Muslim extremists, while 65 attacks were driven by right-wing extremists at home. So what’s the difference between terror and a hate crime? Is there a difference? Sociological research shows how public discourse and community differences can change the story.

Words like “terrorism” and “hate crime” change across social contexts. In the U.S., acts of violence perpetrated by minority populations are more likely to be defined as acts of terrorism, whereas “home-grown” offenders are likely to be dismissed as crazy, deranged, or evil—“bad apples” rather than people motivated by hate or politics. For hate-crimes, the pattern is reversed. Hate crimes that involve majority perpetrators, particularly in interracial incidents, are linked to higher seriousness ratings. In both cases, the social position of both perpetrator and victim changes how we interpret the violence.

• Austin T. Turk. 2004. “The Sociology of Terrorism.” Annual Review of Sociology 30:271-286.
• Phillip Jenkins. 2003. “Images of Terror: What We Can and Can’t Know about Terrorism.” Transaction Publishers.
• Christopher J. Lyons. 2008. “Individual Perceptions and the Social Construction of Hate Crimes: A Factorial Survey.” The Social Science Journal 45(1):107-131

American anti-black hate crimes are most prevalent in communities with a high concentration of white residents that are undergoing black in-migration. This suggests that majority members may try to “defend turf” from the perceived threat of “outsiders”. Compliance with hate crime law is less likely in high-percentage black communities, particularly in the southern U.S. Within these black communities, past lynchings (between 1882-1930) are associated with lower compliance with hate crime law in the present and a lower likelihood of prosecution of hate crime cases.

• Christopher J. Lyons. 2008. “Defending Turf: Racial Demographics and Hate Crime against Blacks and Whites.” Social Forces 87(1):357-385.
• Ryan D. King. 2007. “The Context of Minority Group Threat: Race, Institutions, and Complying with Hate Crime Law.” Law and Society Review 41(1): 189-224.
• Ryan D. King, Steven F. Messner, and Robert D. Baller. 2009. Contemporary Hate Crimes, Law Enforcement, and the Legacy of Racial Violence. American Sociological Review 74: 291-315.

For more on this issue, check out our other TROT! post, “How Hate Crimes Count.”

A recently released ACLU investigation a found that black residents of Minneapolis were 8.7 times more likely to be arrested for low-level offenses than white residents between January 2012 and September 2014. The report is the latest in eight city case studies, all of which “describe police departments that reserve their most aggressive enforcement for people of color.” The Minneapolis City Council also recently repealed spitting and lurking ordinances, two examples of the low level offenses cited by the report. Recent sociological research strikes a similar chord; it demonstrates how modern law enforcement isn’t just about crime, but controlling groups of people with minor rules and regulations.

Public discussion about crime tends to focus on felonies, but the majority of law enforcement activity today is geared toward misdemeanors. Even without conviction and sentencing, these minor offenses bring more people into the criminal justice system. The procedural hassle of dealing with a minor criminal record means more people are under this systematic control at any given time, regardless of their guilt or innocence.

• Issa Kohler-Hausmann. 2013. “Misdemeanor Justice: Control without Conviction.” American Journal of Sociology 119(2):351-393.

The ACLU report finds people experiencing homelessness are the most vulnerable to this system, and many are charged for minor offenses that directly result from being homeless (like panhandling or sleeping outside). Many cities criminalize these behaviors as a way to control space, even to the point that those with criminal records are barred from entering certain neighborhoods.

• Katherine Beckett and Steve Herbert. 2009. Banished: The New Social Control in Urban America. Oxford University Press.

This law enforcement isn’t just about crime, but also about power in communities of color. Neighborhood-level analysis shows that the stereotypical relationship between race and violent crime rates disappears for communities with more African Americans politically organizing and serving, either in office or on civilian review boards for the police. One of the ACLU’s recommendations to improve the situation in Minneapolis is to establish such review boards.

• María B. Vélez, Christopher J. Lyons, and Wayne A. Santoro. 2015. “The Political Context of the Percent Black-Neighborhood Violence Link: A Multilevel Analysis.” Social Problems 62(1):93–119.

Race’s role in higher education gets a lot of press. Recent challenges to admissions procedures and classes on race highlight problems with whiteness, raising questions about the state of college diversity.  But what often gets left out of these conversations is the impact of diversity on learning itself and the nuances of how these impacts differ between students.

A diverse student environment can have a positive effect on learning, especially since students from other backgrounds can help each other think about topics differently. In addition, students can learn from the lived experiences of their out-group peers.

• Patricia Gurin, Biren (Ratnesh) A. Nagda, and Gretchen E. Lopez. 2004. “The Benefits of Diversity in Education for Democratic Citizenship.” Journal of Social Issues 60(1): 17-34
• Sylvia Hurtado. 2006. ” Linking Diversity with the Educational and Civic Missions of Higher Education.” The Review of Higher Education 30(2): 185-196

While diversity has overall beneficial impacts for the educational process, these outcomes are not created equal. White students are more likely to connect class concepts to abstract theory or class contexts rather than personal experiences, and they are more likely to join in class discussions than are black students.

• Josh Packard. 2011. “Activating Diversity: The Impact of Student Race of Contributions to Course Discussions.” Teaching Sociology 41(2): 144–158.
• Lisa M. Nunn. 2011. “Classrooms as Racialized Spaces: Dynamics of Collaboration, Tension, and Student Attitudes in Urban and Suburban High Schools.” Urban Education,46(6): 1226-1255

Students from different backgrounds connect to professors, faculty, and educational spaces differently, affecting their scores and educational success. Notably, this affects the way educators teach and grade. Nonwhite students, particularly under a white teacher, are more likely to feel alienated in the classroom, participate less, and receive lower scores.

• Yoshimitsu Takei & Roger Shouse. 2008. “Ratings in Black and White: Does racial symmetry or asymmetry influence teacher assessment of a pupil’s work habits?” Social Psychology of Education 11:367–387

President Obama’s recently unveiled proposal would make two years of community college freely available to most students who graduate from high school, maintain a 2.5 or greater GPA, and are enrolled at least half time. Others have pointed out that students must also be from families earning $200,000 or less annually to be eligible for the free tuition. Universal access to community college is a popular idea in some circles, but is it really the most effective way to increase equality of opportunities?

How students attend college is changing. Half of students who begin at a four-year college attend at least one other school before graduating (or otherwise leaving school), and over a third take some time off after enrolling initially. Disadvantaged students are more likely to follow interrupted pathways to degree completion, so differences in patterns of college attendance could be influencing social class differences in graduation rates (and thus inequality in opportunities).

• Sara Goldrick-Rab. 2006. “Following Their Every Move: An Investigation of Social-Class Differences in College Pathways.” Sociology of Education 79(1):67–79.

While community colleges improve college access and extend post-secondary educational opportunities to underserved groups, they aren’t closing the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged groups in terms of program completion. As a result, they don’t necessarily reduce racial and socioeconomic inequities. However, enrolling in a community college modestly increases the probability of completing a bachelor’s degree among disadvantaged students who would not have otherwise attended college (the majority of community college-goers).

• Lauren Schudde & Sara Goldrick-Rab. 2015. “On Second Chances and Stratification How Sociologists Think About Community Colleges.” Community College Review 43(1):27–45.
• Jennie E. Brand, Fabian T. Pfeffer, and Sara Goldrick-Rab. 2014. “The Community College Effect Revisited: The Importance of Attending to Heterogeneity and Complex Counterfactuals.” Sociological Science 1:448–65.

More education yields economic benefits in earnings, occupation and employment. It also provides non-economic benefits in areas like marriage, fertility, social participation, and physical and mental health. The returns on a four-year college degree are greatest for marginal students—those whose decision to attend college could be swayed by free access to community college. Completing an associate’s degree or certain certificates that involve at least a year of coursework can also lead to much greater income when compared to just taking some courses.

• Matthew Curry & Jennie E. Brand. 2014. Enduring Effects of Education. (Working Paper) California Center for Population Research.
• Jennie E. Brand and Yu Xie. 2010. “Who Benefits Most from College? Evidence for Negative Selection in Heterogeneous Economic Returns to Higher Education.” American Sociological Review 75(2):273–302.
• Mina Dadgar & Madeline J. Trimble. 2014. “Labor Market Returns to Sub-Baccalaureate Credentials How Much Does a Community College Degree or Certificate Pay?”. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis.
• Christopher Jepsen, Kenneth Troske, & Paul Coomes. 2014. “The labor-market returns to community college degrees, diplomas, and certificates.” Journal of Labor Economics, 32(1), 95-121.

Attorney General Eric Holder has reduced the ability of law enforcement agencies to seize assets without a criminal conviction, an “informal measure” of policing known as civil forfeiture. The program had been expanded by the 1984 Comprehensive Crime Control Act in an effort to curtail the sale and distribution of illegal drugs, and it has since allowed law enforcement agencies to divide and keep the majority of proceeds seized from forfeitures.

Proponents argue that civil forfeiture makes certain crimes less profitable and redistributes resources for socially beneficial programs. Critics say it might be part of a “hidden economic agenda” behind “tough on crime” initiatives and can lead to due process infringements

• Eric L. Jensen and Jurg Gerber. 1996. “The Civil Forfeiture of Assets and the War on Drugs: Expanding Criminal Sanctions while Reducing Due Process Protections,” Crime and Delinquency, 42.
• Eric Blumenson and Eva Nilsen. 1998. “Policing for Profit: The Drug War’s Hidden Economic Agenda,” University of Chicago Law Review, 65.

Institutional contexts are important: 40% of law enforcement agencies report dependence on the revenue produced from civil forfeitures. Agencies in states with strict forfeiture policies tend to use federal “equitable sharing” policies more often, even after accounting for factors such as official crime rates and drug arrests. This suggests agencies try to maximize their returns on civil forfeiture seizures.

• John L. Worrall. 2001. “Addicted to the Drug War: The Role of Civil Asset Forfeiture as a Budgetary Necessity in Contemporary Law Enforcement,” Journal of Criminal Justice, 29(3).
• John L. Worrall and Tomislav V Kovandzic. 2008. “Is Policing for Profit? Answers from Asset Forfeiture,” Criminology & Public Policy 7(2).
• Jefferson E. Holcomb, Tomislav V Kovandzic, and Marian R. Williams. 2011. “Civil Asset Forfeiture,            Equitable Sharing, and Policing for Profit in the United States,” Journal of Criminal Justice 39(3).

Law enforcement agencies operating in high inequality areas and more conservative voting districts seize more value per drug arrest. This ratio also increases with agency complexity but drops in districts with higher black populations. Agencies may use more formal measures, such as arrests, in majority minority areas.

• Ronald Helms and S. E. Costanza. 2009. “Race, Politics, and Drug Law Enforcement: An Analysis of Civil Asset Forfeiture Patters across US Counties,” Policing & Society 19(1).

Charles Blow recently devoted his Times column to relaying the news that his son, a junior at Yale, was racially profiled and detained at gunpoint by campus police. Blow mentions that he was glad he had had “the talk” with his son—how to deal with police as a black man:

This is the scenario I have always dreaded: my son at the wrong end of a gun barrel, face down on the concrete. I had always dreaded the moment that we would share stories about encounters with the police in which our lives hung in the balance, intergenerational stories of joining the inglorious “club.”

When that moment came, I was exceedingly happy I had talked to him about how to conduct himself if a situation like this ever occurred. Yet I was brewing with sadness and anger that he had to use that advice.

Blow is not the only parent to impart such advice—recall New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s controversial comment about advising his biracial son in dealings with police. Poor, middle-class, and even rich and well-known* parents of children of color advise their children on how to stay safe—to thrive, they must survive.

Scholars call how parents talk to their children about racial discrimination and how to cope with it “preparation for bias,” and it is just one practice among several that comprise ethnic-racial socialization.

• Diane Hughes et al. 2006. “Parents’ Ethnic-Racial Socialization Practices: A Review of Research and Directions for Future Study.” Developmental Psychology 42(5).

Sociologist Patricia Hill Collins powerfully conveys how this work is done by black women sharing child-rearing responsibilities within woman-centered networks.

• Patricia Hill Collins. 1999. “Black Women and Motherhood.” In Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. 2nd edition. New York: Routledge.

And these lessons seem necessary: Black adolescent males report repeated negative interactions with police and black mothers report constant worry about the well-being of their sons, who they believe are profiled and targeted by both police and other citizens.

• Cady Berkel et al. 2008. “It Takes a Village: Protecting Rural African American Youth in the Context of Racism.” Journal of Youth and Adolescence 38(2).

Parents emphasize racial barriers and protocol to prepare their children for racism, often using role-playing to demonstrate how to reduce risk in reacting (or not reacting) to discrimination.

• Stephanie I. Coard et al. 2004. “Towards Culturally Relevant Preventive Interventions: The Consideration of Racial Socialization in Parent Training with African American Families.” Journal of Child and Family Studies 13(3).

*For his part, Blow’s son acknowledged his own class privilege in having his experience so widely publicized, a statement his father shared on Twitter.

With more troops coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan, this Veterans Day sees a unique push for public awareness about the challenges that accompany a return to civilian life. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has a new book and A&E a new reality show, and the social science shows why we want to pay attention to veterans after they return from service. We have a few previous TROT posts on issues within the military, but unique problems arise in a civilian world which can often be less hospitable than the regiment.

Military service provides a number of social benefits upon returning home. The positive image of having served can even overcome negative stereotypes in civilian life and help advance veterans who have a history of delinquency.

• Alair MacLean and Meredith Kleykamp. 2014. “Coming Home: Attitudes Toward Veterans Returning from Iraq.” Social Problems 61(1):131-54
• Robert J. Sampson and John H. Laub. 1996. “Socioeconomic Achievement in the Life Course of Disadvantaged Men: Military Service as a Turning Point, Circa 1940-1965.” American Sociological Review 61(3): 347-367

After service, however, institutional problems in civilian life mean veterans don’t all face the same challenges when they return home. For example, the G.I. Bill offered a wide range of education and housing benefits, but historic racial inequality in civilian institutions often made it harder for vets of color to collect those benefits. Today, female vets are more likely to face unemployment than males. However, those with only a high school degree often do earn more than non-vets with only a high school degree, and they are more likely to be enrolled in college.

• Meredith Kleykamp. 2013. “Unemployment, Earnings and Enrollment among Post 9/11Veterans.” Social Science Research 42(3):836-51.
• Ira Katznelson. 2006. When Affirmative Action was White: The Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth Century America. New York: W.W. Norton 2nd ed.

We can still do a lot of work to improve the military, particularly in leadership and adjudication, but it also has a history of positive institutional changes to address issues like racial inequality and reduce the risks of service for certain minority groups.

• James Burk and Evelyn Espinoza. 2012. “Race Relations Within the US Military.” Annual Review of Sociology 38: 401-422

On Thursday, November 6, Minneapolis-Saint Paul ABC affiliate KSTP ran a story claiming Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges had “flashed a gang sign” with a “known felon” during a get out the vote drive in North Minneapolis. The photo shows Hodges embracing and pointing at a young black man, and him pointing back. To support the headline that law enforcement officials were “outraged” by Hodges’s interactions with this man, KSTP reporter Jay Kolls quoted retired Minneapolis police officer Michael Quinn, who accused Hodges of “legitimizing gangs who are killing our children.” The story drew an immediate backlash in other press outlets and on social media. Writing in the Star Tribune, University of St. Thomas law professor Nekima Levy-Pounds criticized the media’s routine portrayal of black men as dangerous criminals and argued that such stories desensitize people to institutional racism. Twitter users deployed the hashtag #pointergate to criticize KSTP and Kolls for their inflammatory reporting, and by mid-day Friday, #pointergate was the top non-sponsored hashtag in the U.S. What might KSTP have expected to gain from running a story like this? Should it have anticipated the furious backlash? And should we be surprised that the reaction on Twitter is as big a story as the original report? Playing on fear has long been a media tactic for drawing attention to stories, but the fear of crime and gangs is a special case.

News media organizations construct their stories as secular morality plays that deploy a “discourse of fear,” which transforms news consumers into victims of the problems that the stories construct. The use of these “problem frames” has increased during the 2000s, and the media applies them much more frequently to stories about race, drugs and gangs.

• David L. Altheide. 1997. “‘The News Media, the Problem Frame, and the Production of Fear.’” Sociological Quarterly 38(4):647–68.
• David L. Altheide. 2009. “Moral Panic: From Sociological Concept to Public Discourse.” Crime, Media, Culture 5(1):79–99.
• Mark Peffley, Todd Shields, and Bruce Williams. 1996. “The Intersection of Race and Crime in Television News Stories: An Experimental Study.” Political Communication 13(3): 309-327.

Social media allows marginalized groups to share frustration much more quickly and publicly. In these symbolic conflicts, both sides escalate their positions through the same venues, like Twitter, and the side that escalates fastest usually prevails. KSTP’s silence on Twitter has given their critics full, uncontested voice, and allowed them to make their protest itself a news item.

• James M. Jasper. 2014. “Constructing Indignation: Anger Dynamics in Protest Movements.” Emotion Review 6(3):208–13.
• Randall Collins. 2012. “C-Escalation and D-Escalation A Theory of the Time-Dynamics of Conflict.” American Sociological Review 77(1):1–20.

A new survey from the Pew forum sheds light on widespread online harassment. Young adults in the study reported experiencing more bullying overall, and women were more likely to have been stalked or sexually harassed. These are serious crimes, but routine harassment also isn’t harmless. A new viral video and recent piece from The Daily Show capture women’s everyday experiences with street harassment and catcalling in public. These accounts bring bullying back to light, and social science research shows how and why harassment emerges. 

Bullying isn’t just meaningless cruelty; it is one way groups enforce social norms (especially around gender and race). Challenging harassment often means criticizing society’s deeply held beliefs.

• C.J. Pascoe. 2011. Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School. 2nd ed. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
• C.J. Pascoe. 2013. “Notes on a Sociology of Bullying: Young Men’s Homophobia as Gender Socialization” QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking Inaugural Issue: 87-103
• Joe R. Feagin. 1991. “The Continuing Significance of Race: Antiblack Discrimination in Public Places.” American Sociological Review 56(1): 101-116

Bullying and harassment are also advanced through social organization. Bullying can emerge when an organization is in chaos and can’t moderate unequal relationships around race and gender, and our legal protection of free speech often makes anti-harassment efforts hard to enforce.

• Randy Hodson, Vincent J. Roscigno and Steven H. Lopez. 2006. “Chaos and the Abuse of Power Workplace Bullying in Organizational and Interactional Context.” Work and Occupations 33(4): 382-416
• Laura Beth Nelson. 2000. “Situating Legal Consciousness: Experiences and Attitudes of Ordinary Citizens about Law and Street Harassment” Law & Society Review 34(4): 1055-1090