race

Shopping while black is not a crime, but what happens when a store assumes the customer is always white?

ColorofChange.org has created a petition urging the NYPD to conduct a full investigation into over 50 arrests of young people, predominantly of color, outside of major department stores like Barney’s and Macy’s. Why hasn’t the “shop and frisk” trend gone out of style?  Theories on race and racism, as well as the application of such ideas through social experiments, may offer some useful insights.

To study the gap between actions and rhetoric, audit studies reveal patterns of discrimination in the working world which shape employment opportunities for many low-wage workers of color.

• Pager, Devah and Lincoln Quillian. 2005.  “Walking the Talk? What Employers Say Versus What They Do.” American Sociological Review. 70: 355-80.

• Pager, Devah, Bruce Western, Bart Bonikowski.  2009.  “Discrimination in a Low-Wage Labor Market: A Field Experiment.”  American Sociological Review.  79: 777-99.

Some theorists view racial attitudes through a conflict perspective that suggests racism and prejudice is rooted in different social positions between groups.

• Bobo, Lawrence. 1999.  “Prejudice as Group Position: Microfoundations of a Sociological Approach to Racism and Race Relations.”  Journal of Social Issues.  55(3): 445-72.

A recent report from the New York Times tells us that Washington may be loosening the leash on mortgage lenders, but a range of research from sociologists over the last five years suggests that there were actually multiple problems that led to the 2008 housing crash, and they weren’t all about financial regulation alone.

Modern mortgages arose when homeownership was politically popular.

• Neil Fligstein and Doug McAdam’s A Theory of Fields

Politicians often used economic policy to “punt” unpopular political conflict.

• Greta Krippner, Capitalizing on Crisis, 2011.
• Thomas Ferguson and Robert Johnson, Too Big to Bail: The “Paulson Put,” Presidential Politics, and the Global Financial Meltdown (Part 1 and Part 2) 2009.

Subprime lending didn’t just take advantage of the poor—it was also a racial problem.

• Jacob Faber, Racial Dynamics of Subprime Mortgage Lending at the Peak, 2013.