Somewhere between Jim Crow & post-racialism: Reflections on the racial divide in America today

Daedalus

Volumn 140, Issue 2, 2011, Pages 11-36

  Bobo, Lawrence D ^a  

^a HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 79955401758     PISSN: 00115266     EISSN: 15486192     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/DAED_a_00091     Document Type: Article

References (91)

1. Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? (New York: Bantam, 1968), 19.
2. John Hope Franklin, The Color Line: Legacy for the 21st Century (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1993), 36.
3. Barack H. Obama, "A More Perfect Union," speech delivered at the National Constitution Center, Philadelphia, May 18, 2008.
4. I wish to thank Alicia Simmons, Victor Thompson, and Deborah De Laurell for their invaluable assistance in preparing this essay. I am responsible for any remaining errors or shortcomings.
5. St. Clair Drake, "The Social and Economic Status of the Negro in the United States," Dædalus 94 (4) (Fall 1965): 3-46.
6. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, "Employment, Income, and the Ordeal of the Negro Family," Dædalus 94 (4) (Fall 1965): 134-159.
7. See John McWhorter, Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America (New York: Free Press, 2000).
8. and Charles Johnson, "The End of the Black American Narrative," The American Scholar 77 (3) (Summer 2008).
9. See Hua Hsu, "The End of White America?" The Atlantic, January/February 2009.
10. and Susan Saulny, "Black? White? Asian? More Young Americans Choose All of the Above," The New York Times, January 29, 2011.
11. On laissez-faire racism, see Lawrence D. Bobo, James R. Kluegel, and Ryan A. Smith, "Laissez-Faire Racism: The Crystallization of a Kinder, Gentler, Antiblack Ideology," in Racial Attitudes in the 1990s: Continuity and Change, ed. Steven A. Tuch and Jack K. Martin (Greenwood, Conn.: Praeger, 1997), 15-44.
12. on modern or symbolic racism, see David O. Sears, "Symbolic Racism," in Eliminating Racism: Profiles in Controversy, ed. Phyllis A. Katz and Dalmas A. Taylor (New York: Plenum Press, 1988), 53-84.
13. and on color-blind racism, see Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists: Colorblind Racism and Racial Inequality in Contemporary America (Boulder, Colo.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010).
14. See C. Matthew Snipp, "Defining Race and Ethnicity: The Constitution, the Supreme Court, and the Census," in Doing Race: 21 Essays for the 21st Century, ed. Hazel R. Markus and Paula M.L. Moya (New York: W.W. Norton, 2010), 105-122. It is noteworthy that Obama himself checked only the "Black" category rather than marking more than one race on his 2010 Census form.
15. On the history of "mixing" in the United States, see Gary B. Nash, "The Hidden History of Mestizo America," Journal of American History 82 (1995): 941-964.
16. and Victor Thompson, "The Strange Career of Racial Science: Racial Categories and African American Identity," in The Oxford Handbook of African American Citizenship, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., et al. (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
17. David A. Hollinger, "Amalgamation and Hypodescent: The Question of Ethnoracial Mixture in the History of the United States," American Historical Review 108 (December 2003): 1305-1390.
18. Melissa R. Herman, "Do You See Who I Am?: How Observers' Background Affects the Perceptions of Multiracial Faces," Social Psychology Quarterly 73 (2010): 58-78.
19. see also Arnold K. Ho, Jim Sidanius, Daniel T. Levin, and Mahzarin R. Banaji, "Evidence for Hypodescent and Racial Hierarchy in the Categorization and Perception of Biracial Individuals," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 94 (2010): 1-15.
20. Vincent Kang Fu, "How Many Melting Pots?: Intermarriage, Panethnicity, and the Black/ Non-Black Divide in the United States," Journal of Comparative Family Studies 38 (2007): 215-237.
21. On the point of a racial preference hierarchy, see Vincent Kang Fu, "Racial Intermarriage Pairings," Demography 38 (2001): 147-159.
22. Zenchao Qian and Daniel T. Lichter, "Social Boundaries and Marital Assimilation: Interpreting Trends in Racial and Ethnic Intermarriage," American Sociological Review 72 (2007): 68-94.
23. See also Zenchao Qian, "Breaking the Last Taboo: Interracial Marriage in America," Contexts 4 (2005): 33-37.
24. Herbert J. Gans, "The Possibility of a New Racial Hierarchy in the Twenty-First Century United States," in The Cultural Territories of Race: Black and White Boundaries, ed. Michèle Lamont (New York: Russell Sage, 1999), 371-390.
25. and Frank D. Bean et al., "The New U.S. Immigrants: How Do They Affect Our Understanding of the African American Experience?" Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 621 (2009): 202-220.
26. For closely related discussions, see Mary C. Waters, Black Identities: West Indian Immigrant Dreams and American Realities (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999).
27. and Milton Vickerman, "Recent Immigration and Race: Continuity and Change," Du Bois Review 4 (2007): 141-165.
28. See Bart Landry, The New Black Middle Class (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).
29. Karyn Lacy, Blue Chip Black: Race, Class and Status in the New Black Middle Class (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007).
30. and Mary Pattillo, Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).
31. See Michael A. Stoll, "African Americans and the Color Line," in The American People: Census 2000, ed. Reynolds Farley and John Haaga (New York: Russell Sage, 2005), 380-414, esp. 395.
32. and Lawrence D. Bobo, "An American Conundrum: Race, Sociology, and the African American Road to Citizenship," in The Oxford Handbook of African American Citizenship, ed. Gates.
33. Christian E. Weller, Jaryn Fields, and Folayemi Agbede, "The State of Communities of Color in the U.S. Economy" (Washington, D.C.: Center for American Progress, January 21, 2011), http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/01/coc_snapshot.html/print.html (accessed January 23, 2011).
34. William Julius Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).
35. William Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor (New York: Knopf, 1996).
36. and Robert J. Sampson, "Urban Black Violence: The Effect of Male Joblessness and Family Disruption," American Journal of Sociology 93 (1987): 348-382.
37. Patrick Sharkey, "The Intergenerational Transmission of Context," American Journal of Sociology 113 (4): 931-969.
38. See also Tom Hertz, "Rags, Riches, and Race: The Intergenerational Economic Mobility of Black and White Families in the United States," in Unequal Chances: Family Background and Economic Success, ed. Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis, and Melissa Osborne Groves (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005).
39. See Michael B. Katz, Mark J. Stern, and Jamie J. Fader, "The New African American Inequality," The Journal of American History 92 (1) (2005): 75-108.
40. Linda Darling Hammond, "The Color Line in American Education: Race, Resources, and Student Achievement," Du Bois Review 1 (2004): 213-246.
41. and Linda Darling Hammond, "Structured for Failure: Race, Resources, and Student Achievement," in Doing Race, ed. Markus and Moya, 295-321.
42. Alfred Blumstein, "Race and Criminal Justice," in America Becoming: Racial Trends and Their Consequences, Volume II, ed. Neil J. Smelser, William Julius Wilson, and Faith Mitchell (Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2001), 21-31.
43. and Pew Center on the States, "One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008" (Washington, D.C.: Pew Charitable Trusts, 2008).
44. Generally, see Bruce Western, Punishment and Inequality in America (New York: Russell Sage, 2006).
45. On changes in the normative life trajectories, see Becky Pettit and Bruce Western, "Mass Imprisonment and the Life-Course: Race and Class Inequality in U.S. Incarceration," American Sociological Review 69 (2004): 151-169.
46. On the social costs of heavy police scrutiny of poor neighborhoods, see Loïc Wacquant, "Deadly Symbiosis: When Ghetto and Prison Meet and Mesh," Punishment and Society 3 (2001): 95-135.
47. and Alice Goffman, "On the Run: Wanted Men in a Philadelphia Ghetto," American Sociological Review 74 (2009): 339-357.
48. On the rising incarceration rates for blacks more broadly, see Lawrence D. Bobo and Victor Thompson, "Racialized Mass Incarceration: Poverty, Prejudice, and Punitiveness," in Doing Race, ed. Markus and Moya, 322-355.
49. and Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New Press, 2010).
50. Generally, see Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993).
51. Camille Z. Charles, Won't You Be My Neighbor?: Race, Class, and Residence in Los Angeles (New York: Russell Sage, 2006).
52. Robert J. Sampson, "Seeing Disorder: Neighborhood Stigma and the Social Construction of 'Broken Windows,'" Social Psychology Quarterly 67 (2004): 319-342.
53. Maria Krysan, Mick Couper, Reynolds Farley, and Tyrone A. Forman, "Does Race Matter in Neighborhood Preferences? Results from a Video Experiment," American Journal of Sociology 115 (2) (2009): 527-559.
54. and Devah Pager and Hana Shepherd, "The Sociology of Discrimination: Racial Discrimination in Employment, Housing, Credit, and Consumer Markets," Annual Review of Sociology 34 (2008): 181-209.
55. Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro, Black Wealth/White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality (New York: Routledge, 1995).
56. Dalton Conley, Being Black, Living in the Red: Race, Wealth, and Social Policy in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).
57. and Thomas M. Shapiro, The Hidden Cost of Being African American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).
58. Thomas M. Shapiro, Tatjana Meschede, and Laura Sullivan, "The Racial Wealth Gap Increases Fourfold," Research and Policy Brief, Institute on Assets and Social Policy, Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University, May 2010.
59. See Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold Story of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America (New York: W.W. Norton, 2005).
60. I owe much of this discussion of racial attitudes to Howard Schuman, Charlotte Steeh, Lawrence D. Bobo, and Maria Krysan, Racial Attitudes in America: Trends and Interpretations (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997).
61. See also Lawrence D. Bobo, "Racial Attitudes and Relations at the Close of the Twentieth Century," in America Becoming: Racial Trends and Their Consequences, Volume 1, ed. Neil J. Smelser, William Julius Wilson, and Faith Mitchell (Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2001), 264-301.
62. and Maria Krysan, "From Color Caste to Color Blind?: Racial Attitudes Since World War II," in The Oxford Handbook of African American Citizenship, ed. Gates.
63. Important early work on attributions for racial inequality appears in Howard Schuman, "Sociological Racism," Society 7 (1969): 44-48.
64. Richard Apostle et al., The Anatomy of Racial Attitudes (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983).
65. James R. Kluegel and Eliot R. Smith, Beliefs About Inequality: Americans' Views of What Is and What Ought to Be (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1986).
66. Paul M. Sniderman and Michael G. Hagen, Race and Inequality: A Study in American Values (Chatham, N.J.: Chatham House, 1985).
67. and James R. Kluegel "Trends in Whites' Explanations of the Black-White Gap in Socioeconomic Status, 1977-1989," American Sociological Review 55 (1990): 512-525.
68. Matthew O. Hunt, "African-American, Hispanic, and White Beliefs about Black/White Inequality, 1977-2004," American Sociological Review 72 (2007): 390-415.
69. Lawrence D. Bobo et al., "The Real Record on Racial Attitudes," in Social Trends in the United States 1972-2008: Evidence from the General Social Survey, ed. Peter V. Marsden (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, forthcoming).
70. On the stereotype measures, see Tom W. Smith, "Ethnic Images," gss Technical Report No. 19 (Chicago: National Opinion Research Center, 1990).
71. and Lawrence D. Bobo and James R. Kluegel, "Status, Ideology, and Dimensions of Whites' Racial Beliefs and Attitudes: Progress and Stagnation," in Racial Attitudes in the 1990s, ed. Tuch and Martin, 93-120.
72. On the stereotype connection to public policy views, see Martin I. Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare: Race, Media, and the Politics of Antipoverty Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).
73. Lawrence D. Bobo and James R. Kluegel, "Opposition to Race-Targeting: Self-Interest, Stratification Ideology, or Racial Attitudes?" American Sociological Review 58 (1993): 443-464.
74. and Steven A. Tuch and Michael Hughes, "Whites' Racial Policy Attitudes," Social Science Quarterly 77 (1996): 723-745.
75. For one excellent empirical report, see David O. Sears, Collette van Larr, Mary Carillo, and Rick Kosterman, "Is It Really Racism?: The Origins of White American Opposition to Race-Targeted Policies," Public Opinion Quarterly 61 (1997): 16-53.
76. For a careful review and assessment of debates regarding the new racism hypothesis, see Maria Krysan, "Prejudice, Politics, and Public Opinion: Understanding the Sources of Racial Policy Attitudes," Annual Review of Sociology 26 (2000): 135-168.
77. For a discussion of the growing role of such resentments in partisan outlooks and political behavior, see Nicholas A. Valentino and David O. Sears, "Old Times There Are Not Forgotten: Race and Partisan Realignment in the Contemporary South," American Journal of Political Science 49 (2005): 672-688.
78. For differential effects by race, see Lawrence D. Bobo and Devon Johnson, "A Taste for Punishment: Black and White Americans' Views on the Death Penalty and the War on Drugs," Du Bois Review 1 (2004): 151-180.
79. Those representative of the "deeply rooted racial flaw" camp would include Derrick Bell, Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism (New York: Basic Books, 1992).
80. Andrew Hacker, Two Nations: Black and White: Separate, Hostile, Unequal (New York: Scribner, 1992).
81. Donald R. Kinder and Lynn M. Sanders, Divided by Color: Racial Politics and Democratic Ideals (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).
82. Charles W. Mills, The Racial Contract (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997).
83. Joe R. Feagin, Racist America: Roots, Current Realities, and Future Reparations (New York: Routledge, 2000).
84. Michael K. Brown et al., White-Washing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).
85. and Douglas S. Massey, Categorically Unequal: The American Stratification System (New York: Russell Sage, 2006).
86. Those representative of the "triumph of American liberalism" camp would include Nathan Glazer, "The Emergence of an American Ethnic Pattern," in From Different Shores: Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity in America, ed. Ronald Takaki (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 11-23.
87. Orlando Patterson, The Ordeal of Integration: Progress and Resentment in America's "Racial" Crisis (Washington, D.C.: Basic Civitas, 1997).
88. Paul M. Sniderman and Edward G. Carmines, Reaching Beyond Race (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997).
89. Abigail Thernstrom and Stephan Thernstrom, America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997).
90. and Richard D. Alba, Blurring the Color Line: The New Chance for a More Integrated America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009).
91. These numbers point to a sharp rise in the percentage of white Americans endorsing the view that we have or will soon achieve racial equality; the figure rose from about 66 percent in 2000 to over 80 percent in 2009. A similar increase occurred among blacks: while 27 percent endorsed this view in 2000, the figure rose to 53 percent in 2009; thus, it nearly doubled. The 2000 survey allowed respondents to answer, "Don't know"; the 2009 survey did not. These percentages are calculated without the "don't know" responses. The 2000 results are reported in Lawrence D. Bobo, "Inequalities that Endure? Racial Ideology, American Politics, and the Peculiar Role of the Social Sciences," in The Changing Terrain of Race and Ethnicity, ed. Maria Krysan and Amanda E. Lewis (New York: Russell Sage, 2004), 13-42.