Discussion 3

Race and

Ethnicity

Rashawn Ray, University of Maryland

Patrick Sharkey, Princeton University

Matthew Clair, Stanford University

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Race and Ethnicity R A S H A W N R A Y , U N I V E R S I T Y O F M A R Y L A N D

P A T R I C K S H A R K E Y , P R I N C E T O N U N I V E R S I T Y

M A T T H E W C L A I R , S T A N F O R D U N I V E R S I T Y

WHY ARE WE STILL TALKING ABOUT RACE?

Race and ethnicity

Are race and ethnicity “real”?

The “science” of race

EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT BIAS

Implicit bias

Stereotypes and prejudice

A sociological approach toward stereotypes

RACISM AND DISCRIMINATION

Racism in individuals and institutions

Affirmative action and reparations

THE PERSISTENCE OF RACIAL INEQUALITY

Trends in racial inequality

Understanding the persistence of racial inequality

A moment of change?

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President Barack Obama. (Source)

WHY ARE WE STILL TALKING ABOUT RACE?

 Is race still important in the U.S.?

 What do we mean by race and ethnicity?

 What is the racial and ethnic composition of the United States?

 Is race a biological feature of humans?

 When did the idea of race first emerge?

In 1903, the sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois famously wrote, “The problem of the twentieth

century is the problem of the color-line—the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men

in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea.”1 Du Bois was writing just a few

decades after the end of slavery, at a time when lynching of Black people was a common

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occurrence, public facilities were segregated by race, and immigrants from China were

excluded from entering the United States. Much has changed over the past century, but race

and racism remain central problems in American society.

The election of Barack Obama as the first Black President of the United States is a case

in point. President Obama’s election was a momentous event in American history, and many

political pundits and journalists at the time considered his election to be a harbinger of the

end of racism as we know it. Some commentators suggested that America had entered a

“post-racial” moment. So why are we still talking about race and ethnicity today?

In the eight years that President Obama was in office, he faced continuous questions

about whether he was born in the United States and whether he was lying about his religious

faith (given his name and ancestry). He was criticized by conservatives for bringing too much

attention to race, and criticized by liberals for failing to do enough to help Black Americans. At

the start of his presidency, the Tea Party emerged as a major conservative social movement,

and toward the end of his presidency, the Black Lives Matter movement developed in

response to police killings of Blacks and Latinos.

Eight years after Barack Obama was elected, Donald Trump—the man who had led

the call for proof that President Obama was born in the U.S.—became the 45th President of

the United States. Following President Trump’s election, hate crimes against racial and religious

minorities increased throughout the country, and white supremacist groups that used to be on

the fringes of society grew bolder and garnered more and more attention.

And then, in May of 2020, a video from Minneapolis showed Derek Chauvin, a White

police officer, kneeling on the neck of George Floyd, a Black man, until he lost consciousness

and died. The video, which emerged in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, led to a

massive mobilization against police violence and other forms of racial injustice and economic

oppression. Demonstrations were held in cities and towns across the country, as millions of

Americans expressed their support for a national reckoning on race. On April 20, 2021,

Chauvin was convicted of murder, but about 1,000 people—disproportionately Black, Latino,

and Native American—continue to be killed by the police every year and most police officers

are not held accountable.

A lot has happened since November 2, 2008, and there is no simple way to interpret

everything that’s changed since the day American voters elected the first Black president. But

two things are clear: the United States did not turn into a colorblind nation, and we are not

living in a post-racial era. Race and ethnicity remain crucial to every aspect of life in the

United States. This chapter explores why.

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Race and ethnicity

Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution requires an “enumeration” of the population,

otherwise known as a census, every ten years. The first Census occurred in 1790, and every ten

years since, the federal government has undertaken a massive project to find out how many

people live in the United States. Race, and related conceptions of who counts as a citizen,

have always been a central part of the effort. For example, Native Americans were rarely

included in the Census before 1900, and although enslaved Black people were counted, they

were considered to be only three-fifths of a person for the purposes of the political

representation of White citizens in slaveholding states.

Race is a system that humans created to classify and stratify groups of people based

mostly on skin tone and other phenotypic characteristics, such as eye shape and hair texture.2

Race has been used to create, maintain, and enhance group distinctions and disparities.3 The

first Census included only three racial categories: people were classified as either “free white

males or free white females,” “all other free persons,” or “slaves.” As the nation has become

more diverse and the category of citizenship has expanded, these categories have changed

again and again. Before 1950, Census-takers visited people in their homes and typically

assigned everyone there to a race, usually just by looking at them; since then, Census

procedures have changed and Americans are able to choose our race for ourselves. The

terms used for African Americans have included “colored,” “Negro,” and “Black.” Starting in

2000, respondents could choose multiple racial categories instead of being forced to choose

just one. And along the way, a new question was added to the Census: in addition to

identifying our race, Americans are now asked to identify another characteristic—our

ethnicity.

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During the Middle Passage transport from Africa to the Americas, Blacks were held in shackles and

chains inside ships. (Source)

Ethnicity refers to common culture, religion, history, or ancestry shared by a group of

people. Ethnicity, unlike race, is not always tied to shared physical characteristics. Ethnic

groups in the United States include different groups of Hispanic Americans (such as Mexican

Americans, Cuban Americans, and Puerto Ricans), Irish Americans, Vietnamese Americans,

and Jewish Americans. People considered members of different racial groups can belong the

same ethnic group (such as Black Mexicans and White Mexicans), and people of the same

race can be of different ethnicities (for example, Korean people and Filipino people). Ethnicity

is an aspect of identity that can be central to your life or one that only matters in certain

situations, like religious services or family parties. It can fade away over time, as people

assimilate into the wider culture. It can be the basis for stigma and discrimination, like race, but

it usually doesn’t imply a clear hierarchy the way racial categories do.

Now that we have a working definition of race and ethnicity, we can better understand

what the American population looks like. The latest information is available from the American

Community Survey, which runs every year in between the ten-year Census. Table 1 shows the

breakdown of the U.S. population in 2019.

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Table 1: Race and Ethnicity in the United States as of 2019

Racial/Ethnic Group Number % of Total Population

Total U.S. Population 324,697,795 100%

Not Hispanic or Latino (total) 266,218,425 82%

White alone 197,100,373 61%

Black or African American alone 39,977,554 12%

American Indian and Alaska Native alone 2,160,378 1%

Asian alone 17,708,954 6%

Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone 540,511 Less than 1%

Some other race alone 789,047 Less than 1%

Two or more races 7,941,608 3%

Hispanic or Latino (total) 58,479,370 18%

White alone 38,277,289 12%

Black or African American alone 1,257,088 Less than 1%

American Indian and Alaska Native alone 589,765 Less than 1%

Asian alone 215,255 Less than 1%

Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone 59,357 Less than 1%

Some other race alone 15,258,322 5%

Two or more races 2,822,294 1%

Source: American Community Survey 2019 (5-year estimates)

The most common way to classify race and ethnicity is to first ask people whether they

are Hispanic or Latino. Hispanic is classified on the Census as an ethnicity rather than a race,

even though many Latinos are increasingly classified as a racial group by everyday people

and other institutions.4 Roughly 18% of the U.S. population is Hispanic or Latino, and most

Hispanics are of Mexican descent. The remainder of the population, about 82%, is not Hispanic

or Latino. Just over 61% of the population identifies as non-Hispanic White, 12% identifies as

non-Hispanic Black or African American, 6% identifies as Asian, and less than 1% identifies as

either American Indian/Alaskan Native or Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander. A tiny

percentage are members of some other racial group, and another 3% identify as members of

at least two racial groups.

But even this detailed breakdown of the population doesn’t tell the whole story.

Because respondents answer questions about both race and Hispanic ethnicity, it’s possible

for people who identify as Hispanic to also select a racial group. If we consider both race and

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ethnicity, we find that about 12% of the population (and the vast majority of all Hispanics)

identifies as Hispanic (their ethnicity) and White (their race); 5% of Americans consider

themselves Hispanic and “some other race.”

Two lessons are clear from this exercise in classifying the U.S. population. First, Americans

are extremely diverse, and a sizable share are not content with classifying themselves in a

single racial or ethnic category. Second, we don’t really know the “true” racial and ethnic

makeup of the country. Our understanding of race and ethnicity is affected by the categories

we’ve selected to officially measure race and ethnicity, and by individuals’ own ideas about

their identity and ancestry. As an example, many state laws used to declare that any person

with any African ancestry at all was Black, a custom known as the one-drop rule. Although this

is no longer written in law, the custom hasn’t gone away. Many well-known public figures, like

Halle Berry and Vice President Kamala Harris, have parents with diverse racial and ethnic

ancestries, but they identify—and are described by others—as Black.

Similarly, the groups of people who count as White have changed over time.5 In the

1800s, Greeks, Irish, Italians, Poles, and Jews from different countries were all seen as members

of different races, inferior to Americans of English descent. Slowly, individuals from these groups

began to assimilate into the culture of the United States, and their close connection to their

homelands weakened over generations. As they began to speak English and moved out of

the highly-segregated neighborhoods where they lived when they first arrived in the U.S., the

boundaries between different European ethnic groups became less sharp. Today, people with

ancestry from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are categorized as White on the

Census. Despite this Census classification, many people with MENA ancestry in the United

States are racialized as non-White and experience ethno-racial and religious stigma and

discrimination, especially after the September 11th terrorist attacks.6

Estimates indicate that Whites may no longer make up a majority of the U.S. population

at some point in the next few decades. While it’s undeniable that the country is becoming

more ethnically diverse, it’s also true that various groups of Americans may see themselves

differently over time. Just as ethnic groups like the Irish, Italians, and Jews came to be seen as

White over time, it’s possible that other groups, like some Hispanics or Asians, may begin to

identify as White. The categories that we use to classify the population may also change. As

an example, there were extensive conversations about whether a new MENA category would

be added to the 2020 Census, given the discrimination they face. Ultimately, MENA was not

added as a racial category, and the millions of people in this category continue to be

classified as White but can indicate their specific ethnicity as, for example, Lebanese or

Egyptian under the White racial category.

The categories we create to classify race are sometimes quite persistent, but they can

be interpreted in many different ways and—as the Census example shows—the categories

can change. These changes show that race and ethnicity are not fixed, biological attributes.

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They are ideas that are created and revised by humans as a means to classify ourselves. But

as we’ll see in the remainder of the chapter, these concepts have very real consequences.

Are race and ethnicity “real”?

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is a well-known and highly-respected professor of African

American Studies at Harvard University. He has written dozens of books and made fifteen

documentary films, one of which won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Historical Program. In

2006, Gates produced and hosted African American Lives, a groundbreaking show on PBS

that traced the family background of some of the most notable African Americans through

historical research and DNA testing.

While doing research for the show, Gates made a startling discovery. He knew that not

all of his ancestors were from Africa, but when he investigated his history in more depth, he

learned that his ancestry was about half African and half European. One of the most

prominent scholars of the African American experience had a much more complex family

history than he realized.

A few years later, his story got even more complicated. On July 16, 2009, Gates was

returning home to Cambridge, Massachusetts, from a trip overseas and was unable to open

the door to his house. A neighbor in the mostly-White neighborhood noticed Gates and his

driver attempting to force the door open and called the police. The officer who responded

ordered Gates to come out of the house and asked him to prove that he was a professor at

Harvard and owned the house. Gates eventually complied, but repeatedly asked the officer

for his badge number and name. The officer warned Gates that he was acting in a disorderly

manner and ultimately handcuffed and arrested him. While charges against Gates were

dropped, the mugshot of the world-renowned professor revealed something very deep and

disturbing about race in the United States.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., may have an equal number of ancestors from Europe and from

Africa, but his African descent seemed to matter most that day in Cambridge. Although it’s

impossible to know for certain, Gates was convinced that neighbors would not have called

the police, and officers would not have been so aggressive, if his skin were white.

The consequences of race in daily life are very real, but the science and genetics of

race are messy.7 Despite the search by many life scientists—such as geneticists—over several

centuries, there has been no discovery of a gene for race—that is, there is no gene biologists

can find that determines which racial category someone falls into or that clearly separates

members of one race from members of another.8 In fact, a White person and a Black person

can be genetically more similar to each other than two White people or two Black people.

If race doesn’t have genetic coherence, then how do we understand its importance?

Sociologists typically think of race as a social construct, a concept that humans invented and

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gave meaning to in order to understand or justify some dimension of the social world.

Differences in skin tone or other physical markers have been used for centuries to explain

differences or inequalities between groups and to justify treating groups of people differently.9

And the idea of race has been justified, for centuries, on the basis of natural science.

Despite research showing no genetic differences by race, DNA is often used to justify

racial differences. (Source)

The “science” of race

Although the most credible research reveals no biological or genetic differences exist

that cause meaningful psychological, mental, or physical distinctions among races, many

people believe there are innate differences in the capabilities of racial groups.10 Dominant

stereotypes in the U.S. lead people to think of Asians as short and intelligent, Blacks as

physically superior but intellectually inferior, and Whites as the standard and epitome of the

human ideal.

These types of beliefs are present even among the best-educated professionals. One

study compared attitudes about race and genetics among first-year medical students to

attitudes among those who had completed medical school and were doing their medical

residency.11 Nearly 30% of first-year medical students, compared to only 4% of medical

residents, believed that the blood of Blacks clots faster than the blood of Whites. Over 20% of

first-year medical students (but only 4% of medical residents) believed that Blacks have

stronger immune systems than Whites. Some racial stereotypes persisted even after medical

residents underwent training on race and health; 40% of medical students and one-quarter of

medical residents believed that Blacks have thicker skin than Whites.

As some of these medical students failed to realize, humans are one species regardless

of skin color, language, eye shape, or hair texture. While there are average differences

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between racial and ethnic groups in health, educational attainment and test scores, and

athletic achievements, these differences are driven by socialization, environmental factors,

culture, and opportunities.12 Scientists across many disciplines reject the idea that race is

rooted in biology.

So if race is indeed a social construct, an idea made up by humans, then who invented

it? In the mid-1700s, Carolus (Carl) Linnaeus, a Swedish taxonomist, started with the simple

observation that people looked very different from each other.13 Linnaeus argued that there

had to be psychological traits associated with these physical differences in skin color. He split

humans into four subspecies, each associated with a major continent.

The classification of humans into racial groups had just begun and was reinforced by

European conquest of the Americas, genocide of Indigenous populations, enslavement of

Africans, and the global spread of capitalism. In the early 1800s, the German naturalist Johann

Blumenback introduced five racial categories—American, Caucasoid, Malay, Mongoloid, and

Ethiopian—with each race associated with a color (white, yellow, red, brown, and black).

Later, the term Negroid, which means black, replaced the term Ethiopian. These classifications

of racial groups were arbitrary, and were made by White Europeans and Americans. This

explains why Whites were placed on top of the racial hierarchy and why Whiteness was used

as the marker of perfection.14 Other groups were placed into a hierarchy below Whites, often

ordered by skin color from lightest (at the top) to darkest (at the bottom).

As the science of evolution progressed,

theories of race and biology were reinforced.

In The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin

showed how the survival of the fittest leads to

a superior species that evolves and adapts to

its environment. Sir Francis Galton, Darwin’s

cousin, argued that selective breeding of the

fittest people, genetic engineering, in vitro

fertilization, and forced sterilization of those he

viewed as unfit would allow humans to

develop enhanced intelligence while saving

society’s resources and reducing human

suffering.15 Eugenics, the idea that we can

actively improve the genetic profile of humans, led to forced sterilizations of groups of people

labeled as unfit to reproduce.

As a result of these theories from the 1700s and 1800s, external physical characteristics

(such as skin color, hair color and texture, and eye shape) and ethnic distinctions were

believed to reflect psychological and mental abilities that made some racial or ethnic groups

superior to others.16 Pseudo-scientists (people without proper training or credentials) used

A statue of Charles Darwin. (Source)

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data, often fabricated, on anatomical features like skull weight and facial angles to shape

public opinion and government policies about race and inequality. By the turn of the

twentieth century, eugenics was popular in the United States and Europe. The idea

contributed to the Holocaust, where Nazi Germany systematically murdered six million Jews

between 1941 and 1945.

Through the development of theories and concepts that described and categorized

humans, race became a social reality—an idea that, because people believed in it, had real

and immensely harmful consequences. It became a means to separate, exploit, and even

murder groups. Darwin’s theory of evolution and natural selection became the scientific

justification for the idea that differences naturally exist among racial groups. Galton’s eugenics

theory provided the scientific basis to justify the attempt to preserve the “purity” of the superior

White race. Racial prejudices became linked with biological theories of human inequality,

ensuring that race would continue to be a crucial part of social life in the centuries to come.

REVIEW SHEET: WHY ARE WE STILL TALKING ABOUT RACE

CLICK THE LINK FOR:

LEARNING OBJECTIVES KEY QUESTIONS

AUDIO KEY POINTS

PRACTICE QUIZ KEY PEOPLE

VOCABULARY CROSSWORD PUZZLES KEY TERMS

Race and Ethnicity (Fall 2021)

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EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT BIAS

 Why are most of us biased in our judgments about different groups of people?

 Where do stereotypes come from and why do they persist?

 Sociologically, how should we think about differences between racial and ethnic groups?

Has your hair color changed since you were born? What about your eye color? Does

your skin or hair color change from season to season with exposure to the sun?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you’re not alone. In a quick survey of a

class of 120 students, nearly 100% said their skin tone changes with exposure to the sun.

Roughly 15% said their hair color has changed since they were born, and a similar percentage

said their eye color has changed since birth. About 20% of students said their hair or eye color

changes with the seasons.

The human phenotype is the set of our visible features or characteristics, like the color of

our skin, hair, and eyes. The phenotype is affected by both genetics and our environment, and

most individuals’ phenotypic features change over their lives. And yet, many of the same

features that change within each of us have been used as justifications for racial classification

and exploitation.

The connection between phenotype and the value, quality, or goodness of human

beings is ingrained in society. Think about words that pop into your head when you hear the

colors yellow, red, black, and white. In another in-class survey of students, some words

commonly associated with the color yellow included docile, cowardly, cautious, and sunny.

Red triggered words such as fire, stop, blood, and aggressive. The color white brought to mind

words such as purity, cleanliness, and innocence. In contrast, black triggered words like evil,

bad, and satanic. Black is the color people wear at funerals and symbolizes death, whereas

white is the color worn by brides, doctors, and nurses. White is the absence of color and

represents being good, positive, and pure.

These associations may seem meaningless, but there is evidence that they can affect

the way we see other people. In famous experiments carried out in the early 1940s, Drs.

Kenneth and Mamie Clark presented children with identical dolls, one with white skin and

yellow hair and the other with brown skin and black hair. They asked the children which doll

was nice, which one was bad, which they preferred to play with, and other questions. Both

White and Black children favored the “White” doll. They preferred to play with the White doll

and thought it was nicer, and were more likely to say that the Black doll was “bad.” The

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preference for the White doll was particularly strong among Black children who attended

highly-segregated schools in Washington, D.C.

The Clarks concluded that racial identity and self-awareness develop as early as age

three, and that segregation damaged Black children’s self-esteem and self-concept. Their

research was later cited in the U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education, in which

the Court ruled that segregated schools were unconstitutional because they were inherently

unequal.

Sadly, these impacts on Black children’s sense of self aren’t a thing of the past. In the

2005 documentary A Girl Like Me, Kiri Davis replicated the doll study, with similar results. As we

will see, our internalized ideas about race affect the ways we think about different groups of

people and ourselves, and none of us are immune.

Implicit bias

A bias is a tendency to view things in a particular way, regardless of the details of the

specific situation. Implicit bias is the association our minds make between seemingly unrelated

things; it is subconscious, and we may be entirely unaware of our implicit biases. Implicit bias is

ingrained in all of us, regardless of our race or ethnicity, through socialization in family and

neighborhood settings and media exposure. In our daily lives, we are continuously exposed to

oversimplified beliefs about different groups, which lead us to form mental associations

between these groups and positive or negative evaluations.

In studies, both White and Black children prefer to play with White dolls. In 2005, Kiri Davis

replicated the study, with similar results. (Source)

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Until recently, research on racism focused primarily on explicit bias: bias that we are

openly and consciously aware of. Explicit racial bias—that is, openly viewing racial groups in

particular ways—has declined over time, as it has generally become less acceptable to hold

overtly negative views of certain races (though such attitudes certainly still exist).17 However,

implicit bias exists whether people hold explicit racial attitudes or not.

Implicit bias gained national prominence with video and audio showing how

unconscious biases can affect the way individuals from different racial groups interact with

one another. One of the saddest, and most controversial, examples is the case of 17-year-old

Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman.18 Martin, a Black boy, was returning to his father’s

home from a nearby convenience store when Zimmerman, a White and Hispanic man, began

to follow him. Zimmerman, a self-appointed neighborhood watchperson, called 911 to report

a suspicious person walking around the neighborhood. An altercation ensued between the

two; it left Zimmerman bruised and bloodied and Martin

dead from a gunshot wound. Zimmerman was charged

with second-degree murder but a jury found him not

guilty of Martin’s murder.

We will likely never know exactly why Zimmerman

thought that this young man was a criminal, why he

followed him, confronted him, and killed him. It may have

been the hoodie Martin was wearing, although it was

raining when the incident happened, so wearing a

hoodie with the hood up would not be unreasonable or

even unusual. Perhaps Zimmerman would have stopped

any young person walking through the neighborhood, no

matter their clothing or skin color. It may have been

explicit bias and prejudice, or it may have been an

unconscious feeling that made Zimmerman think this

African American young man had to be a criminal.

Although implicit bias has become associated with

high-profile incidents like Trayvon Martin’s killing, it is much broader than that.19 Everyone has

implicit biases about almost everything, from which store has the best fruit to assumptions that

taller people are better basketball players. Implicit bias is the human mind’s way of quickly

making sense of our social interactions. Even academics are not immune to implicit bias.

Corinne Moss-Racusin and her colleagues gave science professors resumes to evaluate; the

resumes were all the same except that half of the professors received ones with a woman’s

name and half received one with a man’s name. Faculty members were more likely to say

they would hire the resumes with male-sounding names, compared to female-sounding

names, and to recommend a higher starting salary for them.20 Other studies show that

The hoodie has become synonymous

with the killing of Trayvon Martin, and

for some, criminality. (Source)

Race and Ethnicity (Fall 2021)

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professors are less likely to respond to an email sent from a person with an Asian-sounding

name. Researchers have also found that people can have implicit biases against their own

group. Internalized bias occurs when a person belonging to a marginalized racial group

associates their own group with negative evaluations. For example, a study from the Pew

Research Center found that 29% of Black people in their sample had a subconscious

preference for White people over Black people and 38% of Asian people had a subconscious

preference for White people over Asian people.21 Although our biases may at times simply be

preferences and may not directly impact our behavior, at other times they have grave

consequences for how we treat others.22

Stereotypes and prejudice

Stereotypes are widely-shared perceptions about the personal characteristics,

tendencies, or abilities of members of a particular group, like intelligence, personality, physical

features, preferences, aggressiveness, or criminality. Some are positive, and others are

negative. The Irish are rowdy drunks. Jews are good with money but cheap. Asians are

studious and good at math. African Americans are athletic and aggressive. All of these are

stereotypes about groups of people. Stereotypes can arise for a number of reasons: They can

be myths made up about a group, historical relics from the past, or superficial associations that

are reinforced by the media or politicians.

They can also change over time. Consider the idea that African Americans are

naturally good at basketball. In the first half of the 1900s, the same stereotype was applied to

a different group: Jewish Americans. Basketball has always been a city game, played on

concrete courts by kids who needed a ball, a hoop, and nothing else. At that time, American

Jews were concentrated in urban neighborhoods. According to a well-known sportswriter in

the 1930s, Jews excelled at basketball because it required “an alert, scheming mind, flashy

trickiness, artful dodging and general smart aleckness.”23 This kind of stereotypical language

seems absurd now. But at the time, many readers likely agreed with the sportswriter, since he

played on stereotypes of Jewish Americans as intelligent but sneaky and untrustworthy.

Media representations of stereotypes are less explicit these days, but they haven’t

disappeared. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, one of the deadliest hurricanes in U.S.

history, tens of thousands of people in New Orleans were stranded for days, without basic

supplies or assistance. Two photographs captured the desperate attempts of residents to find

water and food in the days after the storm, when much of the city was underwater. However,

the media framed the residents completely differently by race. A Black boy (who was

described as a “man” in the caption) is said to be “looting a grocery store.” The caption of the

other photo described two White residents “finding bread and soda from a local grocery

store.”

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Stereotypes are not only perpetuated by the media. During the 1976 presidential

campaign, candidate Ronald Reagan coined the term “welfare queen” to refer to Black

women he said were conning the government by living luxuriously on generous welfare

checks. Reagan exploited well-known stereotypes to appeal to White voters, ignoring the fact

that most welfare recipients were White and that there was no evidence of this type of fraud.

Sociologists Kathryn Edin and Laura Lein conducted interviews with nearly 400 single mothers in

several cities, most of whom received welfare, and found that they were remarkably careful

with money and had to find creative ways to make enough just to survive from month to

month.24 More recently, during the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump described many

Mexican immigrants as drug dealers and rapists. Sociologists and criminologists, however,

consistently find that immigrants engage in less criminal behavior than native-born peers.25

These examples reveal how stereotypes are used to appeal to our prejudices, or

preconceived beliefs, attitudes, and opinions about members of a group. Those beliefs,

attitudes, and opinions are usually not based on personal experience or evidence, and they

are usually negative. Scholars have shown that individual prejudices are often driven by our

views about different social groups and where those groups rank, relative to our own, in the

social and economic hierarchy.26 Prejudices can grow stronger if we begin to think of another

group as an economic, political, or cultural threat—for instance, if the size of a racial or ethnic

minority group begins to grow in a neighborhood or a city. This is the idea behind the group

threat theory of prejudice.

Once established, prejudices toward other groups of people are difficult to break, even

if we see examples of individuals who don’t match our stereotypes. This is partly due to a

psychological concept called ultimate attribution error, or a tendency to perceive undesirable

characteristics or behaviors exhibited by members of another group as an innate or inherent

part of their personality or essence—that is, any negative behavior is seen as just who they

are.27 On the other hand, positive characteristics exhibited by members of other groups are

more likely to be attributed to external factors like going to a good school, receiving

opportunities, or just plain luck. Seeing positive behaviors from people we think of negatively

can produce cognitive dissonance, a psychological state in which our preexisting ideas do

not match what we see with our own eyes.28 When we experience cognitive dissonance, our

natural tendency is to avoid the mental conflict and find a way to explain the anomaly. Thus,

if someone from a group we view negatively does something we view as positive, we interpret

them as exceptions; their existence doesn’t undermine our prejudiced beliefs about their

group.

Race and Ethnicity (Fall 2021)

Page 18

Black and Latino neighborhoods are more likely to be in floodplains that are exposed to

natural disasters. (Source)

But if we simply spend more time around individuals from other backgrounds, races,

and ethnicities, our stereotypical beliefs will fade away, right? Psychologist Gordon Allport’s

contact theory helps explain how interaction with members of other groups affects prejudices.

Allport argues that interaction and exposure can be beneficial, but only under specific

conditions: the interaction has to occur in a collaborative, voluntary, and non-competitive

space; we must interact multiple times, not just once; our interaction must be personal,

informal, and one-on-one; the interaction should be legal; and the setting must allow

participants to interact as equals.

The problem is that most interracial contact does not take place under these

conditions. Interactions with people from other races often takes place in situations that are

not equal (such as when a member of one race performs low-wage work for a person of

another race) or where at least one side does not welcome the interaction (for instance, if

residents of a neighborhood are unhappy about people from another race moving onto their

street). Robert Putnam analyzed data from across the U.S. to examine the relationship

between racial and ethnic diversity and social trust and found that people in more diverse

communities tend to “withdraw from collective life, to distrust their neighbors, regardless of the

Race and Ethnicity (Fall 2021)

Page 19

color of their skin.”29 This problem is common in diverse communities: people face challenges

in developing a united community, they may not appreciate cultural or political changes that

arise when a new group enters their neighborhood, and they may resent the changes taking

place around them. Given this, it’s not shocking that more diverse places are not always

friendlier or more welcoming. But Putnam also points to examples showing that diversity can

work over the long-run. During World War II, White soldiers in the U.S. military were asked what

they thought about having Black and White soldiers in the same company. A majority were

opposed. But among soldiers who were already serving in an integrated unit that included

Black and White soldiers, less than a quarter were opposed to the idea. Stereotypes and

prejudices can, in fact, break down—but integration sometimes comes with conflict and

mistrust, and it often takes great effort and time to work.

Interacting or living with a more diverse group of people can break down

stereotypes, but only under certain conditions. (Source)

A sociological approach toward stereotypes

All of this information about stereotypes may explain where they come from and why

they persist, but we don’t want to give the impression that there are no average differences

between racial and ethnic groups in behavior or tastes. One look at a typical NBA roster tells

us very clearly that African Americans are disproportionately represented at the highest level

of basketball, for instance. So what explains average differences between racial and ethnic

groups?

Our suggestion is to take a sociological perspective. Look for data on behaviors or

social characteristics of different groups; don’t simply accept what you might hear about

them. Be suspicious of the idea that stereotypical behaviors or characteristics are “natural” or

inherent to specific groups of people, and think about potential social explanations for

Race and Ethnicity (Fall 2021)

Page 20

common behaviors or characteristics. Think of people as individuals, instead of projecting

stereotypes onto them. Average differences between racial groups rarely help us predict how

any individual will behave. Recognize that most of us, from every race and ethnicity, have

unconscious biases that affect how we perceive others. And finally, be aware of the

damaging consequences of biases and stereotypes, a topic we’ll turn to next.

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RACISM AND DISCRIMINATION

 What is discrimination?

 What is individual and institutional racism?

 Where did affirmative action come from and what does it do?

In 2002, almost 400 pairs of people were sent out across eight cities in Minnesota,

Montana, and New Mexico to ask about renting an apartment.30 The two members of each

pair had almost identical backgrounds—they were the same gender and roughly the same

age, had the same number of children, and had similar incomes and jobs. But they looked

different: one member of each pair was White, the other was Native American. In these three

states, where many Native Americans live, that difference had a substantial impact on how

they were treated as they searched for a place to live.

Race and Ethnicity (Fall 2021)

Page 21

In one case, a 43-year-old White woman asked about a two-bedroom apartment in

Billings, Montana. She was told that the unit was open and available, was given a form to

complete and a business card, and was shown two other units that looked similar to the one

that was advertised. A day later, her Native American teammate, a woman with the same

characteristics, asked about the same unit. She was given the same form and a business card,

but was told that the agent was too busy to talk. She was not shown any apartments, and was

asked to come back a few days later.

This case was not an exception. The White applicant was favored in at least a quarter

of cases in each city. The careful design of the research project—an example of an audit

study—meant that the applicants were perfectly matched according to all characteristics

that would make them more or less attractive renters; the only thing that differed was their

race. In other words, something about the real estate agents, the firms for which they worked,

or perhaps the real estate industry as a whole led to the different treatment of Whites and

Native Americans.

With this example, we move into an investigation of racial discrimination, the differential

treatment of people based on their presumed racial group membership. While biases,

stereotypes, and prejudices are about our thoughts and feelings, discrimination is an action.

This section discusses several types of negative racial discrimination, or unfavorable and unjust

treatment of a person based on their racial group membership. This section also discusses

some efforts used to rectify historical and contemporary forms of negative discrimination.

Before 1964, in many states Blacks could not drink from the same water fountains or

attend the same public places as Whites; many also could not vote. (Source)

Race and Ethnicity (Fall 2021)

Page 22

Racism in individuals and institutions

Sociologists define racism as a set of beliefs, ideologies, or institutional practices that

are based on the idea that one racial group is biologically or culturally inferior to another

group and that reproduces racial domination and exploitation.31 Since racism generally

involves beliefs and actions, it typically combines prejudice with discrimination and power.

While some of us are able to ignore racism, others are forced to deal with it on a daily basis,

given unequal power dynamics between racial groups. White supremacy—a set of beliefs,

ideologies, and institutional practices that position White people as superior to other racial

groups—is the dominant form of racism in the U.S. Racism doesn’t just exist in individuals; it lives

in organizations and institutions like schools, workplaces, our housing market, our laws, and our

politics. For racial minority groups, it can lead to worse outcomes in school, lower-status jobs,

unequal treatment by police officers and doctors,32 and worse mental and physical health.33

Decades ago, real estate agents developed a money-making scheme based on racial

fears. They would go to White homeowners and warn them that Black families were about to

move into their neighborhood (whether or not this was true). Whites, panicked at the thought

of integrated neighborhoods or falling home prices, often wanted to sell quickly and move.

The real estate agents would buy houses cheaply from the White families they had frightened

into a quick sale and then sell them at well above market value to Black families eager for a

share of the American Dream. More recently, in 2012, Wells Fargo Bank settled a lawsuit with

the U.S. Department of Justice alleging that the bank targeted Blacks and Latinos with the

subprime loans that led to the collapse of the housing market in 2008, even when those clients

qualified for lower-risk, lower-cost loans. As this example shows, discrimination hasn’t gone

away. Even if explicitly racist beliefs and attitudes have become much less common, racism

persists in many institutions. Institutional racism refers to the ways that core institutions, like the

law, education, and labor market, are embedded with racial biases and practices that

reproduce racial inequality.

Race and Ethnicity (Fall 2021)

Page 23

Due to redlining and restrictive covenants, Blacks were often forced to live in crowded

urban project housing. (Source)

Institutional racism has existed since the formation of the United States and its founding

documents. The inspiring words of the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to

be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” were written by Thomas Jefferson, a

slaveowner. Enslaved people were counted as only three-fifths of a person in the Constitution.

And although the Bill of Rights protected the rights and liberties of minority groups in the United

States, African Americans and Native Americans were not considered to be full citizens in the

great national experiment described in our founding documents.

We don’t have to go back to the country’s origins to see how race is embedded within

our institutions and laws. Historian Ira Katznelson has documented how the most important

social programs implemented in the 1900s were designed specifically to provide assistance to

White Americans and to exclude, as much as possible, Black Americans. Social Security is

arguably the most influential and long-lasting social program in U.S. history; it created

retirement benefits for the elderly, unemployment benefits, and programs to assist low-income

women and children. But the 1935 legislation that created it covered only certain jobs, mainly

in industry and commerce; it specifically excluded many jobs held by the Black population at

the time, such as farm and domestic work. As a result, in the 1930s over 60% of all Black

workers, and nearly 75% of Black workers in the South, didn’t qualify for Social Security benefits.

Additionally, federal funds that supported the poor and veterans were controlled by local

Race and Ethnicity (Fall 2021)

Page 24

officials, who frequently discriminated against Blacks. Funds intended to help people train for

stable jobs, ensure financial stability in retirement, and build wealth were often only available

to Whites. Katznelson says this created a form of “policy apartheid” that mainly benefited

Whites.34 (Apartheid is the formal policy or practice of political, legal, economic, and/or social

discrimination against a particular group.)

The Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) program, generally referred to as “welfare,” was

established in 1935 for families that generally had only one parent or caretaker; yet funds were

withheld from Black families who qualified.35 In fact, about one-third of Black children who

qualified for ADC did not receive assistance. In the 1940s, Texas, Kentucky, and Mississippi

didn’t participate in the program at all, so children in these states didn’t receive any

assistance.

The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the GI Bill, aimed to

reintegrate veterans returning from World War II. Massive numbers of young people were

deployed during the War, and the GI Bill applied to roughly 80% of men who were in their 30s

and had families. Because of the bill, millions of families were able to purchase homes, start

businesses, and send themselves and their children to college. But Black veterans struggled to

access the benefits they were owed. The GI Bill was distributed federally but controlled locally,

and Black veterans, particularly in the South, were often denied GI Bill funds that were

available to White veterans.

Soldiers board a military plane. (Source)

Race and Ethnicity (Fall 2021)

Page 25

Affirmative action and reparations

In the 1960s, the longstanding pattern of social policies explicitly favoring Whites began

to change. The Civil Rights Movement—a large-scale, Black-led social movement centered

around protest, civil disobedience, and legal battles—laid the groundwork for major advances

in voting and civil rights. The legal basis for segregated neighborhoods and schools finally

began to break down with the passage of legislation like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which

banned discrimination based on characteristics including race and sex) and, later, the Fair

Housing Act of 1968 (which banned discrimination in the housing market). But earlier in the

decade, President John F. Kennedy, facing pressure from movement leaders, started a

program that used a different mechanism to address injustices in the labor market, housing

market, and in social policy: he instructed federal contractors to take “affirmative action to

ensure that applicants are treated equally without regard to race, color, religion, sex, or

national origin.”

In its initial formulation, affirmative action referred to policies or programs that sought to

redress past discrimination through active measures to ensure equal opportunity now. It openly

acknowledged that unjust policies and decisions historically limited the opportunities of

disadvantaged groups and benefitted advantaged groups, and tried to make up for such

injustices. Affirmative action has been used to encourage or require organizations, universities,

and public agencies to consider factors like race and gender in decisions about which

contractors to use, which job applicants to hire, or which students to admit. It has been most

widely used in university admissions and government hiring, and has provided non-White

groups and women with equal access to positions they were previously excluded from. Today,

following Supreme Court cases that have narrowed its scope, affirmative action is largely

considered to be a set of policies or programs seeking to increase racial and other forms of

diversity rather than to redress past discrimination or harm.

At the end of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, affirmative action has

generated substantial controversy. Critics argue that it attempts to remedy discrimination in

the past through “reverse discrimination.” Others say that affirmative action doesn’t

necessarily benefit the people who are truly the victims of discrimination, and suggest that it

should be based on poverty rather than race or gender. And others believe that all social

policy or admissions decisions should be “color blind,” with no advantages or considerations

for any group based on race, ethnicity, or any other criteria other than perceived

achievement. These arguments overlook the many subtle ways individuals from advantaged

backgrounds receive a boost on their way to elite schools or sought-after jobs by drawing on

networks of friends or family for referrals, internships, letters of recommendation, and access to

resource-rich high schools. These arguments ignore the way “achievement” can be based on

institutionally racist or sexist factors. They also ignore the not-so-subtle ways that factors other

Race and Ethnicity (Fall 2021)

Page 26

than achievement enter into admissions decisions—for example, elite universities commonly

set aside a substantial portion of their admissions slots for “legacies,” applicants whose parents

attended the institution.36 Every few years the Supreme Court hears another case about the

use of race in university admissions, but rarely do we hear objections about the tremendous

advantage that students automatically have if they’re applying to an elite school that their

parents were fortunate enough to previously attend.

Today, a growing number of scholars and people involved in new movements for racial

justice—from the Black Lives Matter movement to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous

Women and Girls movement—have advocated for reparations. Reparations are recognition

of and compensation (typically financial) for past harm against specific people or groups of

people. Reparations are not a new idea. Throughout American history, individuals,

organizations, and the government have considered—or even provided—reparations for past

racial discrimination and exploitation. For example, during World War II, the United States

interned people of Japanese descent living in the U.S. in camps. In the 1970s, the Japanese

American Citizens' League and other organizations pushed for compensation to those who

were incarcerated. In the 1980s, Congress passed the Civil Liberties Act, which formally

apologized for Japanese internment and paid $20,000 to survivors. Unlike affirmative action,

reparations are a way to formally recognize a past harm and provide direct financial

compensation to all members of the harmed group. In 1989, Congressman John Conyers, Jr.,

first introduced legislation that would acknowledge the injustice of slavery and recommend

appropriate remedies for African Americans. However, Black people have yet to receive

reparations for slavery.

REVIEW SHEET: RACISM AND DISCRIMINATION

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Race and Ethnicity (Fall 2021)

Page 27

THE PERSISTENCE OF RACIAL INEQUALITY

 How much racial inequality is there in the U.S.?

 What does a sociological perspective on racial inequality look like?

Trends in racial inequality

During the 1960s, African Americans began to move into professional occupations and

into the middle class on a large scale, schools started to integrate, and there was great hope

that racial inequality would fade away. What has happened since then?

The answer depends on the dimension of inequality we consider. Perhaps the most

basic measures of inequality focus on family income and wealth. As shown in Figure 1, the gap

in household incomes between Blacks and Whites remained virtually the same between 1967

and 2016. As of 2014, about 25% of Black and Latino families lived in poverty, compared to

10% of Whites. Racial gaps in wealth are even more severe than gaps in income. White

people as a group had thirteen times as much wealth as Black Americans in the years after

the Great Recession, the largest gap since the late 1980s. Yet, Whites are not at the top of the

economic hierarchy in the United States; certain groups of Asian Americans have higher

incomes than any other racial or ethnic group, largely due to higher levels of education and

where they live (high-cost states such as California, New York, and Hawaii). Their success can

also be attributed to immigrant selectivity, or the process whereby people who immigrate to

the U.S. from certain countries have a unique demographic profile compared to the people

who stay behind in their home countries. In the case of some Asian groups, they are more

likely to immigrate with higher educational attainment and other characteristics valued in

American society.

Race and Ethnicity (Fall 2021)

Page 28

Figure 1: Median Household Income of Black and White Households, 1967-2016

Source: United States Census Bureau, Historical Income Tables: Households

Other dimensions of inequality have improved considerably over time, the most notable

example being educational attainment. In 1996, the high school dropout rate among Latinos

was 34%, more than four times as high as for Whites. The rate for African Americans was 16%,

twice as high as Whites (8%). In the next ten years, the dropout rate for Latinos fell to 10%, and

the rate for African Americans fell to 7%, only slightly higher than the rate for Whites (5%).37

Among Black people, there is growing heterogeneity, given increased immigration from Africa

and the Caribbean. Nigerian Americans, for example, have higher levels of education than

most other racial or ethnic groups, including Whites and Asians.

There are other signs of modest progress. Residential segregation of Black Americans

from White Americans peaked in 1980 but has fallen steadily since then. And there has been

substantial improvement on one of the most basic measures of health: life expectancy, a

statistical measure of how long people can expect to live, on average. The gap in life

expectancy between Whites and Blacks has been gradually shrinking over time, though there

are still enormous differences. In 2015, White women could expect to live more than two years

longer than Black women, on average, and White men could expect to live more than four

years longer than Black men. Even on the dimensions of racial inequality that have improved,

in other words, there are still severe discrepancies.

This pattern reflects the complex nature of racial inequality in the United States. On

some measures of economic status, there has been no progress toward racial equality since

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Race and Ethnicity (Fall 2021)

Page 29

the 1970s. On other measures, there has been substantial progress. But on virtually every

measure available, even those that have improved over time, we can still observe a disturbing

degree of inequality between Black and White Americans. Why?

Understanding the persistence of racial inequality

Throughout American history, race has been used to justify a hierarchy based on skin

color and ancestry. It has fooled people into thinking that success and failure are driven by

psychological, genetic, intellectual, biological, and cultural differences between racial or

ethnic groups.38 These beliefs persist today. Surveys of Whites in the U.S. show that they are

more likely to attribute racial gaps in education and labor market success to differences in

motivation, cultural inferiority, or genetics. Blacks and Latinos, on the other hand, are more

likely to attribute racial differences in achievement and economic success to discrimination.

One study examined responses to a national survey asking why “Blacks (are) in their current

state?” Only 31% of Whites responded that discrimination was a central reason for continuing

racial disparities, compared to 61% of Blacks.39

And yet we know, with certainty, that racism directly affects the way people are

treated in many different settings, and these differences are often most pronounced when

comparing Whites and Blacks. We described an audit study focusing on the treatment of

Native Americans; similar studies have shown stark differences in the treatment of White and

Black individuals who have inquired about apartments, home loans, or jobs. One study

advertised iPhones on a common online marketplace and showed pictures of either a Black

or a White hand holding the phone. The ads with White hands were much more likely to

receive a response. Another study sent resumes to employers with distinctively “Black” names

like Lakisha or Jamal or White-sounding names like Emily or Greg. Applicants named Emily and

Greg were much more likely to be contacted.40

The persistence of discrimination is undoubtedly one reason racial inequality has not

gone away. But we hope that this chapter leads you to think even more broadly about factors

that have contributed to racial inequality not only in the present, but over long periods of our

history. As we’ve shown, the most important government programs of the past century, like

Social Security and the GI Bill, were designed to largely exclude Black Americans. When a

whole generation of returning veterans were given subsidies to get college degrees and

establish a foothold in the labor market, Black American veterans were not given the same

chance to use these benefits. When the federal government first began to subsidize home

mortgages, providing a government-supported “push” that led to the massive growth of

suburbs, non-White Americans were almost completely left out of the program. In the decades

since, homeownership has been the most reliable way for Americans to accumulate assets

(since for most people, their home is the single most valuable item they own), but African

Race and Ethnicity (Fall 2021)

Page 30

Americans have often been systematically excluded from buying real estate or taking out low-

interest loans that allow families to build up wealth in the form of homes.41

Black people and Native Americans have faced uniquely harsh forms of racial

discrimination and exploitation throughout the course of U.S. history, and it’s impossible to

understand racial inequality today without considering the histories of settler colonialism,

slavery, and Jim Crow. Many Americans point to differences between Black Americans, in

particular, and other racial groups on characteristics like academic achievement and family

structure to argue that there is something about the culture of the Black population that

impairs their outcomes in life or their ability to get ahead.

Sociologists have

taken this argument seriously.

They have found that some

dimensions of culture and

behavior do help to explain

the reproduction of unequal

outcomes between groups.

For example, Black

Americans have higher rates

of single parenthood than

other racial and ethnic

groups, and children raised

by single parents are much

more likely to grow up in

poverty.

While racial groups

may exhibit cultural

differences, it’s a mistake to

assume these differences are

sufficient explanations of inequality, and it’s a mistake to think of culture as a natural,

unchanging feature of a racial or ethnic group. A sociological perspective takes group

differences in culture seriously, but attempts to understand whether these differences offer

independent explanations. For example, even though Black men have higher rates of single

parenthood, research has found that Black single fathers are more involved in their children’s

lives than White single fathers. Moreover, some scholars argue that it is not cultural differences

that cause unequal outcomes, but rather it is the unfair responses of empowered

professionals—such as lawyers in the criminal legal system or teachers in schools—to cultural

differences between groups.42

People visit the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C. King is the

first African American, and the fourth non-U.S. President, to have a monument

on the National Mall. (Source)

Race and Ethnicity (Fall 2021)

Page 31

In addition, a sociological perspective reveals how cultural differences are connected

to a larger set of historical forces, often rooted in racism. Nowhere is this approach clearer

than in the work of sociologist William Julius Wilson, who analyzed historical data on urban

labor markets to show how shifts in the jobs available to African American men from the 1950s

to the 1980s created widespread economic dislocation, leading to fewer “marriageable” men

who could support their families with steady employment. As jobs disappeared from central

city neighborhoods, much of the African American population remained stuck in

neighborhoods that offered few economic opportunities. Over time, rates of joblessness rose

and the rate of single-parent families skyrocketed, along with use of welfare benefits. This

happened to all racial and ethnic groups, but it was particularly severe for African Americans

because they had fewer alternative job options when manufacturing jobs disappeared.

We can learn lessons from Wilson’s classic analysis of the link between changes in urban

labor markets and cultural adaptations among African Americans. The first lesson is that group

differences in culture do not arise out of nowhere; they are often linked to broader economic

or political forces. When we study cultural or behavioral differences between groups, we must

focus on how culture emerges, and how larger forces help explain behaviors that may seem

counterproductive, or even destructive, from the outside. The second lesson is that a

sociological perspective on inequality should not be driven by politics or ideology, and

sociologists should not ignore or downplay behaviors that might contribute to group

differences. Instead, our goal is to explain such differences, and to do so by linking them with

larger social forces—in other words, we should wade into even the most controversial issues,

and we should do so armed with a robust sociological imagination.

A moment of change?

Many of the themes in this chapter became visible, once again, in the spring and

summer of 2020. In March 2020, COVID-19 began to spread across the United States, and

communities of color were hit hardest. After adjusting for age, early estimates of death rates

for Latinos were two and a half times higher than for Whites, and death rates for Black

Americans were three and a half times higher than for Whites.43 Throughout 2020 and into

2021, a series of horrific murders of Black and Latino people—Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor,

George Floyd, and Adam Toledo—all at the hands of current or former police officers,

provided a brutal reminder of what institutional racism looks like.

As they have many times before, Americans took to the streets to protest police

violence and racial injustice. But in 2020, the demonstrations had more energy, and more

people, than ever before. They occurred in hundreds of towns and cities, despite police

crackdowns that have, in some cities, been ugly and violent. The demonstrations have

persisted into this year even as the news cycle has moved on.

Race and Ethnicity (Fall 2021)

Page 32

As the demonstrations have continued, the basic message of the Black Lives Matter

movement has filtered through the country and around the world. In 2020, companies that

had usually been silent on race openly voiced their support, and organizations like the

National Football League changed their positions in response. And everyday Americans

seemed to be changing their views. In the summer of 2020, Black Lives Matter was more

popular than it had ever been among all Americans.44

But progress is not linear, and change can be fleeting. Just a year later, White people

today are less supportive of Black Lives Matter than they were before the protests in the spring

and summer of 2020.45 Other racial groups’ support has also declined, but not as starkly.

Moreover, whether public support for a movement is necessary to implement tangible policies

or programs designed to confront the nation’s history of racism and the continuing pattern of

racial injustice is still to be seen. While race and racism remain durable realities of American

life, this moment nonetheless opens up new possibilities for change.

REVIEW SHEET: THE PERSISTENCE OF RACIAL INEQUALITY

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Page 33

REFERENCES

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2 Bobo, Lawrence and Cybelle Fox. 2003. “Race, Racism, and Discrimination: Bridging Problems, Methods, and

Theory in Social Psychological Research.” Social Psychology Quarterly (Special Issue: Race, Racism, and

Discrimination) 64: 319-332.

3 Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 1997. “Rethinking Racism: Toward a Structural Interpretation.” American Sociological

Review, 62(3): 465-480. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2657316; Clair, Matthew and Jeffrey S. Denis.

2015. “Racism, Sociology of.” The International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences 19: 857-863;

Omi, Michael and Howard Winant. 1994. Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s. 2nd ed.

New York: Routledge.

4 Massey, Douglas S. 2014. “The racialization of Latinos in the United States.” The Oxford handbook of ethnicity,

crime, and immigration: 21-40.

5 Brodkin, Karen. 1998. How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says about Race in America. New Brunswick,

NJ: Rutgers University Press; Jacobson, Matthew Frye. 1999. Whiteness of a Different Color. Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press.

6 Maghbouleh, Neda. 2017. The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian Americans and the Everyday Politics of Race. Stanford,

CA: Stanford University Press.

7 Zuberi, Tukufu. 2001. Thicker Than Blood: How Racial Statistics Lie. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

8 Fiske, Susan T. 2010. “Interpersonal Stratification: Status, Power, and Subordination.” In Fiske, Susan T., Daniel T.

Gilbert, and Lindzey Gardner. (Eds.). Handbook of Social Psychology, Fifth Ed. New York: Wiley. Pp. 941-982.

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