22279 books match the query 'Social Science' and 1072 start with r

cover of RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences: The Underground Gun Market: Implications for Regulation and Enforcement

RSF

The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences: The Underground Gun Market: Implications for Regulation and Enforcement

Philip J. Cook

Russell Sage Foundation, 2017

Each year, gun homicides kill over ten thousand people in the United States. While most guns are initially purchased legally, many enter the underground market and end up in the hands of dangerous offenders, such as gang members and convicted felons. This issue of RSF, edited by public policy scholars Philip J. Cook and Harold A. Pollack, brings together eight articles exploring the markets for guns, both legal and illegal. The contributors draw from new datasets and interviews with inmates to examine how offenders obtain guns. By turning a spotlight on these little-understood supply chains, these chapters provide guidance for stemming the flow of guns to the underground market.
 
Cook and Pollack initiate the discussion with a comprehensive introduction that includes an original framework for understanding the legality of transactions that arm dangerous offenders.  Several contributors review trends in gun ownership across the nation and investigate how guns enter the underground market. Deborah Azrael and coauthors conduct a comprehensive survey of gun owners and find 270 million guns in private circulation. They estimate that 70 million firearms changed hands during a recent five-year period.  Most of those transactions were sales by licensed dealers; Garen Wintemute  reports on a survey of dealers that assesses the wide disparities among them as sources of guns to offenders.  Charles Wellford and coauthors use trace data and prison interviews to study how criminals obtain their guns in three jurisdictions that differ widely with respect to gun regulations and culture. 
 
Other contributors explore the effects of gun regulations and legislation on illegal supply chains. Daniel Webster and coauthors study the effects of Maryland’s 2013 Firearm Safety Act, which required all handgun purchasers to obtain a license. They find that 41 percent of surveyed parolees reported that it was more difficult to obtain a handgun after the law passed due to increased cost, lack of trusted sources, or people being less willing to buy handguns on their behalf. Analyzing over three decades of data on handguns recovered in Boston, Anthony Braga shows that fewer guns are illegally obtained from states that adopt legislation restricting buyers to one gun per month.  George Tita and coauthors  report the results of an inmate survey in Los Angeles in which they explored respondents’ knowledge of gun laws.  These findings suggest that laws aimed at legal gun transactions may also decrease the entry of guns into the underground market. 
 
The rate of gun violence in the U.S. surpasses that of any other advanced nation. This issue of RSF offers new empirical research on the underground market that arms dangerous criminals and provides a rich foundation for policies designed to curb gun violence.
[more]
cover of RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences: Three Decades Since 'Making Ends Meet': What We Know about How Single Mothers Survive Today

RSF

The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences: Three Decades Since 'Making Ends Meet': What We Know about How Single Mothers Survive Today

Elizabeth O. Ananat

Russell Sage Foundation, 2026

In their seminal 1995 book Making Ends Meet: How Low-Income Single Mothers Survive Welfare and Low-Wage Employment, Kathryn Edin and Laura Lein laid bare the strategies and challenges of low-income single mothers who were struggling to provide for their families. Even in an era when cash welfare was a federal entitlement, these women struggled to get by. In the thirty years since the book’s publication, many single parents wrestle with volatility and precarious resources from work, informal and formal supports. In this double issue of RSF, economist Elizabeth O. Ananat, political scientist and public policy scholar Carolyn Y. Barnes, sociologists Sandra K. Danziger and Kathryn Edin, and an interdisciplinary group of contributors examine how the policy landscape has changed since welfare reform and how it impacts low-income single mothers’ ability to make ends meet today.

Issue 1 has 8 articles that examine how the traditional safety net has evolved and new supports that have been developed since Making Ends Meet. For example, Sarah K. Bruch and colleagues assess changes to the social safety net since welfare reform in the 1990s and find that benefits have become more exclusive, have more constraints, and are less generous. Kelley Fong and Nora McCarthy reveal that, in an attempt to decrease child maltreatment, the child welfare system increasingly provides material resources to system-involved parents, including in-kind donations and assistance accessing childcare. However, parents often avoid obtaining resources through the system because it opens them up to increased state surveillance. Heather D. Hill and colleagues show that access to paid family and medical leave (PFML) varies greatly for single mothers, with two-thirds of single mothers living in states without PMFL. For those who live in states with PFML, the accessibility and generosity of benefits vary greatly.

Issue 2 has 5 articles that look at lessons that can be learned from COVID Era policies, how single mothers currently try to make ends meet, and men’s contributions to families. For example, Natasha V. Pilkauskas and Kevin Bruey find that low-income single mothers, with and without employment, utilize a variety of public and private resources to make ends meet. Despite this, both groups face high levels of material hardship, including food and housing insecurity. Hope Harvey examines how members of doubled up households understand their economic and social relationships and reveals that there are often disagreements about shared resources, such as money and food. However, it is not just the precise contributions that cause conflict, but how the exchanges are interpreted within the context of household members’ relationships. Allison Dwyer Emory and colleagues show that nonresident fathers often have trouble making ends meet themselves and are unable to make up for the loss of cash support post-welfare reform.

This double issue of RSF showcases the persistence of precarity that low-income families face since Making Ends Meet.

Note: This copy refers to both issues of the journal double issue.

[more]
cover of RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences: Three Decades Since 'Making Ends Meet': What We Know about How Single Mothers Survive Today

RSF

The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences: Three Decades Since 'Making Ends Meet': What We Know about How Single Mothers Survive Today

Elizabeth O. Ananat

Russell Sage Foundation, 2026

In their seminal 1995 book Making Ends Meet: How Low-Income Single Mothers Survive Welfare and Low-Wage Employment, Kathryn Edin and Laura Lein laid bare the strategies and challenges of low-income single mothers who were struggling to provide for their families. Even in an era when cash welfare was a federal entitlement, these women struggled to get by. In the thirty years since the book’s publication, many single parents wrestle with volatility and precarious resources from work, informal and formal supports. In this double issue of RSF, economist Elizabeth O. Ananat, political scientist and public policy scholar Carolyn Y. Barnes, sociologists Sandra K. Danziger and Kathryn Edin, and an interdisciplinary group of contributors examine how the policy landscape has changed since welfare reform and how it impacts low-income single mothers’ ability to make ends meet today.

Issue 1 has 8 articles that examine how the traditional safety net has evolved and new supports that have been developed since Making Ends Meet. For example, Sarah K. Bruch and colleagues assess changes to the social safety net since welfare reform in the 1990s and find that benefits have become more exclusive, have more constraints, and are less generous. Kelley Fong and Nora McCarthy reveal that, in an attempt to decrease child maltreatment, the child welfare system increasingly provides material resources to system-involved parents, including in-kind donations and assistance accessing childcare. However, parents often avoid obtaining resources through the system because it opens them up to increased state surveillance. Heather D. Hill and colleagues show that access to paid family and medical leave (PFML) varies greatly for single mothers, with two-thirds of single mothers living in states without PMFL. For those who live in states with PFML, the accessibility and generosity of benefits vary greatly.

Issue 2 has 5 articles that look at lessons that can be learned from COVID Era policies, how single mothers currently try to make ends meet, and men’s contributions to families. For example, Natasha V. Pilkauskas and Kevin Bruey find that low-income single mothers, with and without employment, utilize a variety of public and private resources to make ends meet. Despite this, both groups face high levels of material hardship, including food and housing insecurity. Hope Harvey examines how members of doubled up households understand their economic and social relationships and reveals that there are often disagreements about shared resources, such as money and food. However, it is not just the precise contributions that cause conflict, but how the exchanges are interpreted within the context of household members’ relationships. Allison Dwyer Emory and colleagues show that nonresident fathers often have trouble making ends meet themselves and are unable to make up for the loss of cash support post-welfare reform.

This double issue of RSF showcases the persistence of precarity that low-income families face since Making Ends Meet.

Note: This copy refers to both issues of the journal double issue.

[more]
cover of RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences: U.S. Census 2020: Continuity and Change

RSF

The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences: U.S. Census 2020: Continuity and Change

Zhenchao Qian

Russell Sage Foundation, 2025

Catalog copy pertains to both volumes 11.1 and 11.2

The census has registered more than two centuries of growth and transformation in America’s political, social, and economic life. It traditionally gives us the opportunity to ask big questions about and measure changes in American society. Sociologist and demographer Zhenchao Qian, economist Trevon Logan, and an interdisciplinary group of contributors examine how American society has changed — or stayed the same — from 2010-2020.
 
Topics examined in Issue 1 include the impact of census counts, changes in neighborhood demographics, gender inequality in education, and racial inequality in employment. Lisa Neidert and colleagues find that the census consistently undercounts Hispanics, Blacks, and Native Americans and overcounts Whites and Asians, which has negative impacts on state and federal funding for vulnerable communities. Nima Dahir shows the arrival of Black immigrants into Black American neighborhoods often results in a decline in the native Black American population and an increase in White residents. Claudia Buchmann and colleagues reveal that women are now earning more advanced degrees than men in the U.S., however rising shares of women, including those who are pursing advanced degrees, are attending for profit institutions and carrying student debt. Julie Y. Cai and Marybeth J. Mattingly find that workers with variable hours have lower incomes than those who have more stable hours and Black workers earn substantially less than their White counterparts when working jobs with volatile hours.
 
Themes explored in Issue 2 include changes in living arrangements, divergent families, and rural America. Hyunjoon Parkand colleagues find that despite growing public concern about the potential rise in solitary living, the likelihood of living alone has not changed much over the last four decades except for older men, who have an increased likelihood of living alone. Christopher S. Carpenter and colleagues show that gender minority individuals, including transgender and nonbinary individuals, are less likely to be married, more likely to be widowed, and less likely to live in a traditional two-adult household compared to their cisgender counterparts. Daniel T. Lichter and Kenneth M. Johnson reveal that while rural America is often envisioned as a monolith, it is made up of complex and diverse economic, social, and demographic conditions.
 
This volume of RSF provides an updated and insightful snapshot of American society in the 2010s.
 
[more]
cover of RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences: U.S. Census 2020: Continuity and Change

RSF

The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences: U.S. Census 2020: Continuity and Change

Zhenchao Qian

Russell Sage Foundation, 2024

Catalog copy pertains to both volumes 11.1 and 11.2

The census has registered more than two centuries of growth and transformation in America’s political, social, and economic life. It traditionally gives us the opportunity to ask big questions about and measure changes in American society. Sociologist and demographer Zhenchao Qian, economist Trevon Logan, and an interdisciplinary group of contributors examine how American society has changed — or stayed the same — from 2010-2020.
 
Topics examined in Issue 1 include the impact of census counts, changes in neighborhood demographics, gender inequality in education, and racial inequality in employment. Lisa Neidert and colleagues find that the census consistently undercounts Hispanics, Blacks, and Native Americans and overcounts Whites and Asians, which has negative impacts on state and federal funding for vulnerable communities. Nima Dahir shows the arrival of Black immigrants into Black American neighborhoods often results in a decline in the native Black American population and an increase in White residents. Claudia Buchmann and colleagues reveal that women are now earning more advanced degrees than men in the U.S., however rising shares of women, including those who are pursing advanced degrees, are attending for profit institutions and carrying student debt. Julie Y. Cai and Marybeth J. Mattingly find that workers with variable hours have lower incomes than those who have more stable hours and Black workers earn substantially less than their White counterparts when working jobs with volatile hours.
 
Themes explored in Issue 2 include changes in living arrangements, divergent families, and rural America. Hyunjoon Parkand colleagues find that despite growing public concern about the potential rise in solitary living, the likelihood of living alone has not changed much over the last four decades except for older men, who have an increased likelihood of living alone. Christopher S. Carpenter and colleagues show that gender minority individuals, including transgender and nonbinary individuals, are less likely to be married, more likely to be widowed, and less likely to live in a traditional two-adult household compared to their cisgender counterparts. Daniel T. Lichter and Kenneth M. Johnson reveal that while rural America is often envisioned as a monolith, it is made up of complex and diverse economic, social, and demographic conditions.
 
This volume of RSF provides an updated and insightful snapshot of American society in the 2010s.
 
[more]
cover of RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences: Undocumented Immigrants and Their Experience with Illegality

RSF

The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences: Undocumented Immigrants and Their Experience with Illegality

Roberto G. Gonzales

Russell Sage Foundation, 2017

Today, an estimated 11.3 million undocumented immigrants live in the U.S. Most have family members who are citizens or lawful permanent residents, and over half have lived here for at least thirteen years. Yet, the threat of deportation and lack of citizenship rights have profound effects on the well-being of both undocumented individuals and their families. In this issue of RSF, editors Roberto G. Gonzales and Steven Raphael and an interdisciplinary team of scholars examine the lives of undocumented immigrants and the challenges that confront them.
 
Caitlin Patler and Nicholas Branic find that undocumented individuals in immigrant detention facilities that are privately operated are less likely to be visited by family members than those in county or city jails, in part because private facilities have restricted visiting hours and are more difficult to access via public transportation. Lauren Heidbrink finds that unaccompanied minors in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) are less likely to be released to guardians or reunited with family members because ORR standards are much tougher than those used by child protective services for minor citizens.
 
Lauren E. Gulbas and Luis H. Zayas find that many children with undocumented parents experience symptoms of anxiety and depression due to fears about their parents’ status. Yet, increased access to financial, educational, legal, and other immigration-related resources for these families can help buffer these children against trauma related to deportation and family separations. Susan K. Brown and Alejandra J. Sanchez focus on children with undocumented mothers and show that because having an undocumented mother is associated with a reduction in children’s years of schooling, it also indirectly lowers their levels of voting, activism, and political awareness as young adults.
 
Although undocumented immigrants are more enmeshed in the U.S. than they have been in the past, their status prevents further integration into society. This issue reveals the consequences of illegality not just for undocumented immigrants, but also for their families and their communities.
 
 
[more]
cover of RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences: Using Administrative Data for Science and Policy

RSF

The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences: Using Administrative Data for Science and Policy

Andrew M. Penner

Russell Sage Foundation, 2019

Note: The catalog copy refers to both issues 2 and 3.

In the twenty-first century, administrative data collected by the government, schools, hospitals, and other institutions are essential for effectively managing and evaluating public programs. Yet the U. S. lags behind many other countries when it comes to organizing these data and making linkages across different domains, such as education, health, and the labor market. This double issue of RSF, edited by sociologist Andrew Penner and developmental psychologist Kenneth Dodge, illustrates the tremendous potential of administrative data and provides guidance for the researchers and policymakers. Contributors across multiple disciplines demonstrate how linking disparate sources of administrative data can help us better understand the challenges faced by people in need, thereby improving the reach and efficiency of policy solutions.
 
Several contributors show how databases tracking educational attainment yield new insights into the role of schools in either ameliorating or perpetuating socioeconomic inequalities. Sean Reardon analyzes standardized test scores of roughly 45 million K-12 students nationwide to explore how educational opportunity varies by school districts over time. He finds that while affluent districts typically provide high levels of early childhood learning opportunities, there are some schools in high-poverty districts that do have increased average test scores between third and eighth grade. However, this growth still does not close the large achievement gap between low-and high-socioeconomic-status students. Megan Austin and coauthors, using student-level longitudinal data from Indiana, analyze the effects of school voucher programs on academic achievement and find that students who switch from a public to a private school with a voucher experience significant declines in achievement, particularly in math.
 
Other articles demonstrate how the analysis of administrative data can further our understanding of racial and gender inequality. Janelle Downing and Tim Bruckner link housing foreclosure records and birth records to show that foreclosures and related stresses during the Great Recession contributed to premature births and lower birth weights, particularly for Hispanic mothers and their children. Roberto Fernandez and Brian Rubineau investigate hiring data to explore how network recruitment, or recruitment through employer referrals, affects the “glass ceiling” in the workplace. They show that network recruitment increases women’s representation strongly at lower job levels, and to a lesser extent at higher levels.
 
Researchers now have unprecedented access to administrative data. As this issue shows, finding innovative ways to combine multiple data sets can facilitate partnerships between social scientists, administrators, and policymakers and extend our understanding of pressing social issues.
[more]
cover of RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences: Using Administrative Data for Science and Policy

RSF

The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences: Using Administrative Data for Science and Policy

Andrew M. Penner

Russell Sage Foundation, 2019

Note: The catalog copy refers to both issues 2 and 3.

In the twenty-first century, administrative data collected by the government, schools, hospitals, and other institutions are essential for effectively managing and evaluating public programs. Yet the U. S. lags behind many other countries when it comes to organizing these data and making linkages across different domains, such as education, health, and the labor market. This double issue of RSF, edited by sociologist Andrew Penner and developmental psychologist Kenneth Dodge, illustrates the tremendous potential of administrative data and provides guidance for the researchers and policymakers. Contributors across multiple disciplines demonstrate how linking disparate sources of administrative data can help us better understand the challenges faced by people in need, thereby improving the reach and efficiency of policy solutions.
 
Several contributors show how databases tracking educational attainment yield new insights into the role of schools in either ameliorating or perpetuating socioeconomic inequalities. Sean Reardon analyzes standardized test scores of roughly 45 million K-12 students nationwide to explore how educational opportunity varies by school districts over time. He finds that while affluent districts typically provide high levels of early childhood learning opportunities, there are some schools in high-poverty districts that do have increased average test scores between third and eighth grade. However, this growth still does not close the large achievement gap between low-and high-socioeconomic-status students. Megan Austin and coauthors, using student-level longitudinal data from Indiana, analyze the effects of school voucher programs on academic achievement and find that students who switch from a public to a private school with a voucher experience significant declines in achievement, particularly in math.
 
Other articles demonstrate how the analysis of administrative data can further our understanding of racial and gender inequality. Janelle Downing and Tim Bruckner link housing foreclosure records and birth records to show that foreclosures and related stresses during the Great Recession contributed to premature births and lower birth weights, particularly for Hispanic mothers and their children. Roberto Fernandez and Brian Rubineau investigate hiring data to explore how network recruitment, or recruitment through employer referrals, affects the “glass ceiling” in the workplace. They show that network recruitment increases women’s representation strongly at lower job levels, and to a lesser extent at higher levels.
 
Researchers now have unprecedented access to administrative data. As this issue shows, finding innovative ways to combine multiple data sets can facilitate partnerships between social scientists, administrators, and policymakers and extend our understanding of pressing social issues.
[more]
cover of RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences: Wealth Inequality and Child Development: Implications for Policy and Practice

RSF

The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences: Wealth Inequality and Child Development: Implications for Policy and Practice

Christina Gibson-Davis

Russell Sage Foundation, 2021

Wealth – a household’s assets minus its debts – is an important indicator of child well-being. Higher household wealth related to better academic achievement, behavior, and health among children. Yet a sizeable share of American children, including a majority of Black and Hispanic children, grow up in households with very low levels of wealth, and wealth inequality among households with children is rising even faster than among the general population. This volume of RSF, edited by social policy experts Christina Gibson-Davis and Heather Hill, provides the first comprehensive examination of the contours and consequences of wealth inequality for children under the age of 18. An interdisciplinary roster of contributors consider the vast racial and ethnic disparities in wealth and how those disparities affect child well-being. 
 
Contributors Fabian Pfeffer and Nora Waitkus find that child wealth inequality is far worse in the U.S. than in other industrialized countries. Editors Gibson-Davis and Hill show that a relatively small group of American parents—mostly White—control the lion’s share of wealth, with Black and Hispanic parents having only pennies on the dollar for every dollar of White parental wealth. Nina Bandelj and Angelina Grigoryeva show how White parents with above median wealth are more likely than other parents to practice “financially intensive parenting,” saving and borrowing in ways that promote child achievement. After controlling for other measures of family resources and socioeconomic status, Portia Miller and colleagues demonstrate that family wealth is uniquely related to both academic and behavioral development throughout childhood and adolescence and that wealth helps buffer the negative effects of low family income. Jordan Conwell and Leafia Zi Ye find equalizing wealth is not sufficient to eliminate race- and ethnic-based gaps in academic achievement: even among families with the same levels of wealth Black and Hispanic children often have significantly worse scores than Whites.   
 
High levels of childhood wealth inequality are not inevitable; they are the consequence of laws and practices that favor wealth accumulation among few, primarily White, families. Jin Huang and coauthors look at one of the few policy models for increasing savings in low-income child households, Child Development Accounts, which have been shown to increase educational savings and improve maternal mental health, but they have yet to be adopted nationwide. Two studies in this issue, by Margot Jackson and colleagues and by Katherine Michelmore and Leonard Lopoo, find that large-scale income-support programs, the EITC and Medicaid, have positive spillovers onto asset accumulation, but policies designed to fundamentally alter the distribution of wealth among families with children will require more expansive changes to the tax code and program asset caps.
 
This issue of RSF expands our understanding of wealth inequality and its effects on children, and provides important insights into policies and practices that either directly or indirectly boost wealth acquisition among child households.
 

 
[more]
cover of RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences: Wealth Inequality: Economic and Social Dimensions

RSF

The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences: Wealth Inequality: Economic and Social Dimensions

Fabian T. Pfeffer

Russell Sage Foundation, 2016

It is widely acknowledged that over the last several decades wealth has become more concentrated at the very top. Less appreciated is the fact that wealth inequality is increasing across all households: extremely wealthy households are pulling away from the top, top households are pulling away from the middle, and middle households are pulling away from the bottom. This development has far-reaching implications for nearly all aspects of the economic and social lives of Americans. In this issue of RSF, edited by Fabian T. Pfeffer and Robert F. Schoeni, leading social scientists investigate the causes of wealth inequality and explore its consequences for social mobility, racial equity, education, marriage, and family well-being.
 
Several contributors investigate the growing chasm in wealth between the rich and the middle class. Edward Wolff attributes much of the recent wealth loss among the middle class to the housing market crash, as housing accounts for a much greater share of their total wealth than it does for the rich. Jonathan Fisher and coauthors show that wealth inequality is far higher than inequality in income and consumption, and argue that because wealth acts as a buffer to income changes, it is perhaps the most relevant measure of economic inequality. Others explore the persistent racial wealth gap. Alexandra Killewald and Brielle Bryan show that the average wealth return on home ownership for African Americans is only a quarter of the return for whites. Bryan Sykes and Michelle Maroto find that the incarceration of a family member is associated with reduced family wealth, exacerbating the racial wealth gap because of racial disparities in incarceration.
 
Other articles focus on the effects of wealth inequality on families and relationships. Emily Rauscher finds that that parents’ financial support for their children’s education, which has positive effects on children’s educational attainment, is increasingly connected to parental wealth, tightening the link between wealth inequality and inequality of opportunity. And Alicia Eads and Laura Tach find that while greater family wealth is associated with more stable marriages, lack of wealth—particularly in the form of unsecured debt—is associated with marital instability.
 
As wealth inequality has increased, it is increasingly important to understand its origins and manifold social and economic consequences for current and future generations.
 
[more]
cover of Race

Race

Gregory, Steven

Rutgers University Press, 1994

 “What unites these essays is a common focus on the ‘social construction’ of racial categories and a desire to expose the exercise of racism and its intersection with other forms of social domination such as class, gender, and ethnicity . . . Fascinating.”––Multicultural Review

“The coming together of theoretical, multiethnic, and ‘on-the-ground’ perspectives makes this book a particularly valuable contribution to the discourse on race.”––Paula Giddings

“Timely and thoughtful. . . contributes to our understanding of how race operates as a social process and in the contextualization of power and status.”––Contemporary Sociology

“A treasure chest full of gems. Virtually every article is fascinating and important, and as a collection, its impact is tremendous. Neo-conservative myths and fantasies fall like nine-pins before its well-researched and tightly argued papers.”––Martin Bernal, author of Black Athena

“A timely antidote to that reaction tome, The Bell Curve.”––Daily News (New York)

“Let’s be clear from the start what this book is about,” writes Roger Sanjek.  “Race is the framework of ranked categories, segmenting the human population, that was developed by Western Europeans following their global expansion.”To contemporary social scientists, this ranking is baseless, though it has had all-too-real effects.

Drawing on anthropology, history, sociology, ethnic studies, and women's studies, this volume explores the role of race in a variety of cultural and historical contexts. The contributors show how racial ideologies intersect with gender, class, nation and sexuality in the formation of complex social identities and hierarchies. The essays address such topics as race and Egyptian nationalism, the construction of “whiteness” in the United States, and the transformation of racial categories in post-colonial Haiti. They demonstrate how social elites and members of subordinated groups construct and rework racial meanings and identities within the context of global political, economic, and cultural change. Race provides a comprehensive and empirically grounded survey of contemporary theoretical approaches to studying the complex interplay of race, power, and identity.

[more]
cover of Race & Archaeology Of Identity

Race & Archaeology Of Identity

Charles Orser Jr

University of Utah Press, 2002

Race is not a subject most people associate with archaeological research. Yet because of archaeologists’ interest in long time-spans they are perfectly positioned to investigate the “naturalness” of racial designations through time.

Race and the Archaeology of Identity brings together twelve of America’s most perceptive and talented historical archaeologists. Their focus is on the recent archaeological record—stretching geographically from Jamaica to northern Michigan; their time frame is from colonial days to the late nineteenth century; and their subjects range from frontier fur traders to Victorian city dwellers. Using textual and archaeological sources, contributors explore such topics as the connections of race to economics, the creation and maintenance of institutionalized poverty, the role of race in structuring and guiding intercultural connections, and the importance of race in creating and defining space.

Contributors explore such topics as the connections of race to economics, the role of race in structuring and guiding intercultural connections, and the importance of race in creating and defining space.

[more]
cover of Race / Queer / Queens

Race / Queer / Queens

Edited by Mira ‘Assaf and Urvashi Chakravarty

Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2026

This expansive volume examines the intersections of gender, race, sexuality, and other formations of identity in early modern representations of queens.

Race/Queer/Queens is a new intervention into the well-established field of queenship and royalty studies. Queens/(queans) are at once the epitome of royal power and the exemplum of gendered disenfranchisement. The essays in this volume address the interlocking methodologies of premodern critical race studies, gender and sexuality studies, and queer and trans theory to shed light on how gendered negotiations of power, reproductive politics, and embodied performance are determined by and inscribed within a hierarchy of gender, race, class, religion, nationhood, and sexuality. Ranging across early modern drama, poetry, and prose by the likes of William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Lucy Hutchinson, and Hester Pulter, the essays in Race/Queer/Queens offer new intersectional approaches to studies of early modern history, genealogy, embodiment, and the nation, including model methodologies and directions for future scholarship.

[more]
cover of Race And Homicide In Nineteenth-Century California

Race And Homicide In Nineteenth-Century California

Clare V. McKanna

University of Nevada Press, 2007

Nineteenth-century California was a society in turmoil, with a rapidly growing population, booming mining camps, insufficient or nonexistent law-enforcement personnel, and a large number of ethnic groups with differing attitudes toward law and personal honor. Violence, including murder, was common, and legal responses varied broadly. Available now for the first time in paperback, Race and Homicide in Nineteenth-Century California examines coroners’ inquest reports, court case files, prison registers, and other primary and printed sources to analyze patterns of homicide and the state’s embryonic justice system. Author Clare V. McKanna discovers that the nature of crimes varied with the ethnicity of perpetrators and victims, as did the conduct and results of trials and sentencing patterns. He presents specific case studies and a vivid portrait of an unruly society in flux. Enhanced with testimony from contemporary sources and illustrated with period photographs, this study richly portrays a frontier society where the law was neither omnipotent nor impartial.

[more]
cover of Race And Reconciliation: Essays From The New South Africa

Race And Reconciliation

Essays From The New South Africa

Daniel Herwitz

University of Minnesota Press, 2003

A meditation on the lessons to be learned from South Africa’s transformation in the wake of apartheid

Justice, truth, and identity; race, society, and law—all come into dramatic play as South Africa makes the tumultuous transition to a post-apartheid democracy. Seeking the timeless through the timely and trying to find the deeper meaning in the sweep of events, Daniel Herwitz brings the vast resources of the philosophical essay to bear on the new realities of post-apartheid South Africa—from racial identity to truth commissions, from architecture to film and television.

A public intellectual’s reflections on public life, Herwitz’s essays question how the new South Africa has constructed its concepts of reconciliation and return and how its historical emergence has meant a rethinking, reimagining, reexperiencing, relabeling, and repoliticizing of race. Herwitz’s purpose is to give a philosophical reading of society—a society already relying on implicitly philosophical concepts in its social and political agendas. Working through these concepts, testing their relevance for reading society, his book itself becomes a part of the politics of definition and description in the new South Africa.
[more]
cover of Race Appeal: How Candidates Invoke Race in U.S. Political Campaigns

Race Appeal

How Candidates Invoke Race in U.S. Political Campaigns

Authored by Charlton D. McIlwain and Stephen M. Caliendo

Temple University Press, 2011

In our evolving American political culture, whites and blacks continue to respond very differently to race-based messages and the candidates who use them. Race Appeal examines the use and influence such appeals have on voters in elections for federal office in which one candidate is a member of a minority group.

Charlton McIlwain and Stephen Caliendo use various analysis methods to examine candidates who play the race card in political advertisements. They offer a compelling analysis of the construction of verbal and visual racial appeals and how the news media covers campaigns involving candidates of color.

Combining rigorous analyses with in-depth case studies-including an examination of race-based appeals in the historic 2008 presidential election—Race Appeal is a groundbreaking work that represents the most extensive and thorough treatment of race-based appeals in American political campaigns to date.

[more]
cover of Race Becomes Tomorrow: North Carolina and the Shadow of Civil Rights

Race Becomes Tomorrow

North Carolina and the Shadow of Civil Rights

Gerald M. Sider

Duke University Press, 2015

In Race Becomes Tomorrow Gerald M. Sider weaves together stories from his civil rights activism, his youth, and his experiences as an anthropologist to investigate the dynamic ways race has been constructed and lived in America since the 1960s. Tacking between past and present, Sider describes how political power, economic control, and racism inject chaos into the lives of ordinary people, especially African Americans, with surprising consequences. In addition to recounting his years working on voter registration in rural North Carolina, Sider makes connections between numerous issues, from sharecropping and deindustrialization to the recessions of the 1970s and 2008, the rise of migrant farm labor, and contemporary living-wage campaigns. Sider's stories—whether about cockroach races in immigrant homes, degrading labor conditions, or the claims and failures of police violence—provide numerous entry points into gaining a deeper understanding of how race and power both are and cannot be lived. They demonstrate that race is produced and exists in unpredictability, and that the transition from yesterday to tomorrow is anything but certain.
 
[more]
cover of Race Course Against White Supremacy: Against White Supremacy

Race Course Against White Supremacy

Against White Supremacy

Bill Ayers

Northwestern University Press, 2009

White supremacy and its troubling endurance in American life is debated in these personal essays by two veteran political activists. Arguing that white supremacy has been the dominant political system in the United States since its earliest days—and that it is still very much with us—the discussion points to unexamined bigotry in the criminal justice system, election processes, war policy, and education. The book draws upon the authors' own confrontations with authorities during the Vietnam era, reasserts their belief that racism and war are interwoven issues, and offers personal stories about their lives today as parents, teachers, and reformers.
[more]
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Race In The Hood

Conflict and Violence among Urban Youth

Howard Pinderhughes

University of Minnesota Press, 1997

A compelling study of the origins of racial conflict and violence in America.

“We’ll just be hanging out, partying. And somebody will say, ‘Hey, let’s go on a mission.’ That’s when you go looking for people who don’t belong in the neighborhood, and you beat ’em up. Sometimes we go out lookin’ for blacks to jump. Sometimes we look for anybody who ain’t supposed to be there.” —Sal, Avenue T Boys

Why are racial conflict and violence among the most enduring problems in American society? Why do some youths express racism violently while others develop tolerance and respect for those who are different? What can we as a society do to foster open-mindedness among children and teenagers? Seeking answers to these questions, Howard Pinderhughes spent two years talking to and studying three groups of New York City adolescents: the predominantly Italian American Avenue T Boys from the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn; a group of African American teenagers from Schomberg Plaza in East Harlem; and a group of Albanian American youth from Pelham Park in the Bronx. Through the voices of these young people, Pinderhughes examines how racial attitudes and identities develop in communities and are then expressed as either tolerance, resulting in territorial cooperation, or hatred, resulting in racial conflict. Race in the Hood draws a picture of young people who grew up in similar class circumstances, facing remarkably similar problems and issues, with one significant difference in their lives-their race or ethnicity. Pinderhughes argues that the key to success in developing racial tolerance lies in the transformation of racialized grassroots ideologies through community and school-based multicultural education. A sophisticated and nuanced study of race relations in New York City, Race in the Hood points to areas of concern and directions for change in all of our communities.
[more]
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Race News

Black Journalists and the Fight for Racial Justice in the Twentieth Century

Fred Carroll

University of Illinois Press, 2017

Once distinct, the commercial and alternative black press began to crossover with one another in the 1920s. The porous press culture that emerged shifted the political and economic motivations shaping African American journalism. It also sparked disputes over radical politics that altered news coverage of some of the most momentous events in African American history. Starting in the 1920s, Fred Carroll traces how mainstream journalists incorporated coverage of the alternative press's supposedly marginal politics of anti-colonialism, anti-capitalism, and black separatism into their publications. He follows the narrative into the 1950s, when an alternative press re-emerged as commercial publishers curbed progressive journalism in the face of Cold War repression. Yet, as Carroll shows, journalists achieved significant editorial independence, and continued to do so as national newspapers modernized into the 1960s. Alternative writers' politics seeped into commercial papers via journalists who wrote for both presses and through professional friendships that ignored political boundaries. Compelling and incisive, Race News reports the dramatic history of how black press culture evolved in the twentieth century.
[more]
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Race Passing and American Individualism

Kathleen Pfeiffer

University of Massachusetts Press, 2009

In the literature of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America, black characters who pass for white embody a paradox. By virtue of the "one drop" rule that long governed the nation's race relations, they are legally black. Yet the color of their skin makes them visibly-and therefore socially-white.

In this book, Kathleen Pfeiffer explores the implications of this dilemma by analyzing its treatment in the fiction of six writers: William Dean Howells, Frances E. W. Harper, Jean Toomer, James Weldon Johnson, Jessie Fauset, and Nella Larsen. Although passing for white has sometimes been viewed as an expression of racial self-hatred or disloyalty, Pfeiffer argues that the literary evidence is much more ambiguous than that. Rather than indicating a denial of "blackness" or co-optation by the dominant white culture, passing can be viewed as a form of self-determination consistent with American individualism. In their desire to manipulate personal identity in order to achieve social acceptance and upward mobility, light-skinned blacks who pass for white are no different than those Americans who reinvent themselves in terms of class, religion, or family history.

In Pfeiffer's view, to see race passing as a problematic but potentially legitimate expression of individualism is to invite richer and more complex readings of a broad range of literary texts. More than that, it represents a challenge to the segregationist logic of the "one drop" rule and, as such, subverts the ideology of racial essentialism.
[more]
cover of Race Riot at East St. Louis, July 2, 1917

Race Riot at East St. Louis, July 2, 1917

Elliott Rudwick

University of Illinois Press, 1982

        ".
        . . a well-researched and thoughtful inquiry into the circumstances and
        social forces producing one of the most violent of twentieth-century American
        race riots."
        -- American Historical Review
      "His work fills a serious
        gap in the history of racial violence in the United States. Never before
        analyzed by sociologists in the way that the Chicago and Detroit riots
        were, the East St. Louis riot outranked both as measured by the number
        of deaths."
        -- American Journal of Sociology
 
[more]
cover of Race Riot: CHICAGO IN THE RED SUMMER OF 1919

Race Riot

CHICAGO IN THE RED SUMMER OF 1919

William M. Tuttle, Jr.

University of Illinois Press, 1996

"The origins of the Chicago race riot of 1919 are to be found, not in high-level policy, but in gut-level animosities between black and white people who were generally inarticulate and presentist-oriented, and who did not record their motivations or feelings for posterity. . . To explain the Chicago riot, this evidence has to be found; and though such evidence is not abundant by any means, it does exist."--From the preface
 
[more]
cover of Race Struggles

Race Struggles

Edited by Theodore Koditschek, Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua, and Helen A. Neville

University of Illinois Press, 2008

This collection is a contribution to the ongoing examination of race and its relation to class and gender. The essays in the volume start with the premise that although race, like class and gender, is socially constructed, all three categories have been shaped profoundly by their context in a capitalist society. Race, in other words, is a historical category that develops not only in dialectical relation to class and gender but also in relation to the material conditions in which all three are forged.

These assumptions underlie the organization of the volume, which is divided into three parts: "Racial Structures," which explores the problem of how race has historically been structured in modern capitalist societies; "Racial Ideology and Identity," which tackles diverse but interrelated questions regarding the representation of race and racism in dominant ideologies and discourses; and "Struggle," which builds on the insight that resistance to structures and ideologies of racial oppression is always situated in a particular time and place.

In addition to discussing and analyzing various dimensions of the African American experience, contributors also consider the ways in which race plays itself out in the experience of Asian Americans and in the very different geopolitical environments of the British Empire and postcolonial Africa.

Contributors are Pedro Cabán, Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua, David Crockett, Theodore Koditschek, Scott Kurashige, Clarence Lang, Minkah Makalani, Helen A. Neville, Tola Olu Pearce, David Roediger, Monica M. White, and Jeffrey Williams.

[more]
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Race Talk in a Mexican Cantina

Tatcho Mindiola

Michigan State University Press, 2021

People avoid speaking about race in the presence of another racial group for fear of saying something wrong and creating friction. This was not the situation at JB’s, a small Mexican cantina located in one of Houston’s oldest Mexican barrios. Mexicans made up most of the regular patrons, but a small number of whites also visited the bar on a regular basis. This situation created the circumstances for race talk in which the Mexican patrons needled and criticized the white patrons because of their whiteness. The white patrons likewise criticized the Mexican patrons, but their remarks were not as strident in comparison to those they received. When Tatcho Mindiola visited the bar and heard the race talk, he realized that it was a unique situation. He thus became a regular patron, and over a three-year period kept notes on the racial exchanges he observed and heard, which form the basis of this insightful volume.
[more]
cover of Race against Liberalism: Black Workers and the UAW in Detroit

Race against Liberalism

Black Workers and the UAW in Detroit

David M. Lewis-Colman

University of Illinois Press, 2007

Race against Liberalism examines how black worker activism in Detroit shaped the racial politics of the labor movement and the white working class. David M. Lewis-Colman traces the substantive, long-standing disagreements between liberals and the black workers who embraced autonomous race-based action. As he shows, black autoworkers placed themselves at the center of Detroit's working-class politics and sought to forge a kind of working class unity that accommodated their interests as African Americans. The book covers the independent caucuses in the 1940s and the Trade Union Leadership Council in the 1950s; the black power movement and Revolutionary Union Movements of the mid-1960s; and the independent race-based activism of the 1970s that resulted in Coleman Young's 1973 election as the city's first black mayor.

[more]
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Race among Friends

Exploring Race at a Suburban School

Modica, Marianne

Rutgers University Press, 2015

Many saw the 2008 election of Barack Obama as a sign that America had moved past the issue of race, that a colorblind society was finally within reach. But as Marianne Modica reveals in Race Among Friends, attempts to be colorblind do not end racism—in fact, ignoring race increases the likelihood that racism will occur in our schools and in society.
 
This intriguing volume focuses on a “racially friendly” suburban charter school called Excellence Academy, highlighting the ways that students and teachers think about race and act out racial identity. Modica finds that even in an environment where students of all racial backgrounds work and play together harmoniously, race affects the daily experiences of students and teachers in profound but unexamined ways. Some teachers, she notes, feared that talking about race in the classroom would open them to charges of racism, so they avoided the topic. And rather than generate honest and constructive conversations about race, student friendships opened the door for insensitive racial comments by whites, resentment and silence by blacks, and racially biased administrative practices. In the end, the school’s friendly environment did not promote—and may have hindered—serious discussion of race and racial inequity.
 
The desire to ignore race in favor of a “colorblind society,” Modica writes, has become an entrenched part of American culture. But as Race Among Friends shows, when race becomes a taboo subject, it has serious ramifications for students and teachers of all ethnic origins.
[more]
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Race and Authority in Urban Politics

David J. Greenstone

Russell Sage Foundation, 1974

What really happened when citizens were asked to participate in their community’s poverty programs? In this revealing new book, the authors provide an answer to this question through a systematic empirical analysis of a single public policy issue—citizen participation in the Community Action Program of the Johnson Administration’s “War on Poverty.” Beginning with a brief case study description and analysis of the politics of community action in each of America’s five largest cities—New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, and Philadelphia—the authors move on to a fascinating examination of race and authority structures in our urban life. In a series of lively chapters, Professors Greenstone and Peterson show how the coalitions that formed around the community action question developed not out of electoral or organizational interests alone, but were strongly influenced by our conceptions of the nature of authority in America. They discuss the factors that affected the development of the action program and they note that democratic elections of low-income representatives, however much preferred by democratic reformers, were an ineffective way of representing the interests of the poor. The book stresses the way in which both machine and reform structures affected the ability of minority groups to organize effectively and to form alliances in urban politics. It considers the wide-ranging critiques made of the Community Action Program by conservative, liberal, and radical analysts and finds that all of them fail to appreciate the significance and intensity of the racial cleavage in American politics.
[more]
cover of Race and Authority in Urban Politics: Community Relations and the War on Poverty

Race and Authority in Urban Politics

Community Relations and the War on Poverty

David Greenstone and Paul E. Peterson

University of Chicago Press, 1976

In this penetrating book, the authors provide a systematic empirical analysis of an important public policy issue—citizen participation in the Community Action Program of the Johnson administration's "War on Poverty." This Phoenix edition includes a new introduction in which the authors explicate the most important themes in their analysis.

In a series of lively chapters, Greenstone and Peterson show how the coalitions that formed around the community action question developed not out of electoral or organizational interests alone but were strongly influenced by prevailing conceptions of the nature of authority in America. The book stresses the way in which both machine and reform structures affected the ability of minority groups to organize effectively and to form alliances in urban politics. It considers the wide-ranging critiques made of the Community Action Program by conservative, liberal, and radical analysts and finds that all of them fail to appreciate the significance and intensity of the racial cleavage in American politics.
[more]
cover of Race and Class Matters at an Elite College

Race and Class Matters at an Elite College

Elizabeth Aries

Temple University Press, 2008

In Race and Class Matters at an Elite College, Elizabeth Aries provides a rare glimpse into the challenges faced by black and white college students from widely different class backgrounds as they come to live together as freshmen. Based on an intensive study Aries conducted with 58 students at Amherst College during the 2005-2006 academic year, this book offers a uniquely personal look at the day-to-day thoughts and feelings of students as they experience racial and economic diversity firsthand, some for the first time.

Through online questionnaires and face-to-face interviews, Aries followed four groups of students throughout their first year of college: affluent whites, affluent blacks, less financially advantaged whites from families with more limited education, and less financially advantaged blacks from the same background. Drawing heavily on the voices of these freshmen, Aries chronicles what they learned from racial and class diversity—and what colleges might do to help their students learn more.

[more]
cover of Race and Class on Campus: Conversations with Ricardo’s Daughter

Race and Class on Campus

Conversations with Ricardo’s Daughter

Jay M. Rochlin

University of Arizona Press, 1997

Racism. Is it alive and well and living on college campuses across the United States? Is it a factor in high dropout rates and other crises affecting minority college students, and if so, how? Are controversial programs of affirmative action proving to be a solution--or are they part of the problem?

Here are some insights into the hot issues sparking debate over equal opportunity and American education. In these pages, through the use of a fictional character, author Jay Rochlin presents more than forty very real African American and Mexican American men and women who struggled to earn degrees at a large, nationally recognized university in the west. Their goals, their gains, and their disappointments echo the experiences of millions of others around the country during much of the twentieth century. Perhaps most important, their true stories will provide inspiration to the many young people who wonder whether pursuing the dream of a college education is possible for them.

Readers will warm to the words of Carlos Vélez-Ibáñez, learning as a toddler from his father that the university represented toda la sabiduría del mundo,"all the wisdom in the world." Their hearts will go out to young Laura Banks, barred as a black woman from a "whites only" pool and the swimming class required for her degree in physical education. In the face of open hostility and closed doors, these students and many others persevered. When they were shunned by Anglo social clubs, they created their own. When they were assigned "back of the room" seating because of discrimination, they rose above it. And when their ultimate goal--graduation--was threatened by racism, they fought it.

Looking back, many in the book remember coming from poor families who nonetheless considered themselves middle class and, as such, simply expected their children to go to college. This family support--bolstered by the students' own drive, ambition, and sense of responsibility--seemed to be pivotal to their success. Thus the book comes out strongly on the side of critical race theorists, who emphasize individual effort as a means of combating racism and personal narratives as a way of analyzing the complex issue.

These pages are filled with the voices of everyday men and women. Their language is straightforward and from the heart. Their message is timely, in the midst of current debates over race, class, and affirmative action. And their words--for American education and for the country as a whole--carry force and meaning guaranteed to reach far into the future.
[more]
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Race and Cultural Practice in Popular Culture

Perez, Domino

Rutgers University Press, 2019

Race and Cultural Practice in Popular Culture is an innovative work that freshly approaches the concept of race as a social factor made concrete in popular forms, such as film, television, and music. The essays collectively push past the reaffirmation of static conceptions of identity, authenticity, or conventional interpretations of stereotypes and bridge the intertextual gap between theories of community enactment and cultural representation. The book also draws together and melds otherwise isolated academic theories and methodologies in order to focus on race as an ideological reality and a process that continues to impact lives despite allegations that we live in a post-racial America. The collection is separated into three parts: Visualizing Race (Representational Media), Sounding Race (Soundscape), and Racialization in Place (Theory), each of which considers visual, audio, and geographic sites of racial representations respectively.  
[more]
cover of Race and Displacement: Nation, Migration, and Identity in the Twenty-First Century

Race and Displacement

Nation, Migration, and Identity in the Twenty-First Century

Edited by Maha Marouan and Merinda Simmons

University of Alabama Press, 2013

Race and Displacement captures a timely set of discussions about the roles of race in displacement, forced migrations, nation and nationhood, and the way continuous movements of people challenge fixed racial definitions.
 
The multifaceted approach of the essays in Race and Displacement allows for nuanced discussions of race and displacement in expansive ways, exploring those issues in transnational and global terms. The contributors not only raise questions about race and displacement as signifying tropes and lived experiences; they also offer compelling approaches to conversations about race, displacement, and migration both inside and outside the academy. Taken together, these essays become a case study in dialogues across disciplines, providing insight from scholars in diaspora studies, postcolonial studies, literary theory, race theory, gender studies, and migration studies.
 
The contributors to this volume use a variety of analytical and disciplinary methodologies to track multiple articulations of how race is encountered and defined. The book is divided by editors Maha Marouan and Merinda Simmons into four sections: “Race and Nation” considers the relationships between race and corporality in transnational histories of migration using literary and oral narratives. Essays in “Race and Place” explore the ways spatial mobility in the twentieth century influences and transforms notions of racial and cultural identity.  Essays in “Race and Nationality” address race and its configuration in national policy, such as racial labeling, federal regulations, and immigration law. In the last section, “Race and the Imagination” contributors explore the role imaginative projections play in shaping understandings of race.
 
Together, these essays tackle the question of how we might productively engage race and place in new sociopolitical contexts.  Tracing the roles of "race" from the corporeal and material to the imaginative, the essays chart new ways that concepts of origin, region, migration, displacement, and diasporic memory create understandings of race in literature, social performance, and national policy.
 
Contributors: Regina N. Barnett, Walter Bosse, Ashon T. Crawley, Matthew Dischinger, Melanie Fritsh, Jonathan Glover, Delia Hagen, Deborah Katz, Kathrin Kottemann, Abigail G.H. Manzella, Yumi Pak, Cassander L. Smith,  Lauren Vedal
 
[more]
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Race and Education, 1954-2007

Raymond Wolters

University of Missouri Press, 2008

With the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown decisions of 1954 and 1955, American education changed forever. But Brown was just the beginning, and Raymond Wolters contends that its best intentions have been taken to unnecessary extremes.

In this compelling study, a scholar who has long observed the traumas of school desegregation uncovers the changes and difficulties with which public education has dealt over the last fifty years—and argues that some judicial decisions were ill-advised. Dealing candidly with matters usually considered taboo in academic discourse, Wolters argues that the Supreme Court acted correctly and in accordance with public sentiment in Brown but that it later took a wrong turn by equating desegregation with integration.

Retracing the history of desegregation and integration in America’s schools, Wolters distinguishes between several Court decisions, explaining that while Brown called for desegregation by requiring that schools deal with students on a racially nondiscriminatory basis, subsequent decisions—Green, Swann, Keyes—required actual integration through racial balancing. He places these decisions in the context of educational reform in the 1950s that sought to encourage bright students through advanced placement and honors courses—courses in which African American and Hispanic students were less likely to be enrolled. Then with the racial unrest of the 1960s, the pursuit of academic excellence yielded to concerns for uplifting disadvantaged youths and ensuring the predominance of middle-class peer groups in schools.

Wolters draws on rich historical records to document the devastating consequences of requiring racial balance and sheds new light on America’s legal, social, and cultural landscapes. He reexamines the educational theories of Kenneth Clark and James Coleman, and he challenges statistics that support the results of racial balancing by describing how school desegregation and integration actually proceeded in several towns, cities, and counties.

Race and Education is a bold challenge to political correctness in education and a corrective to the now widely accepted notion that desegregation and racially balanced integration are one and the same. It is essential reading for scholars of law and education and a wake-up call for citizens concerned about the future of America’s schools.
[more]
cover of Race and Environmental Justice in the Era of Climate Change and COVID-19

Race and Environmental Justice in the Era of Climate Change and COVID-19

Tatiana Konrad

Michigan State University Press, 2025

Informed by transdisciplinary research in social and environmental justice, Race and Environmental Justice in the Era of Climate Change and COVID-19 is a contribution to the scholarly discourse as well as a form of activism for environmental, climate, and health justice. Using race and Indigeneity as an analytical lens, the book explores how justice in the era of climate change and COVID-19 is envisioned, depicted, and achieved. With a focus largely on humans and environments, its explorations of (in)justice illustrate the wide health and safety gaps between individuals, communities, and even nations living under different environmental conditions. The volume also moves beyond the human toward justice for all beings. This book foregrounds voices from world communities, provides solutions to environmental and health crises, and advances environmental justice.
[more]
cover of Race and Ethnicity in Arkansas: New Perspectives

Race and Ethnicity in Arkansas

New Perspectives

John A. Kirk

University of Arkansas Press, 2014

Race and Ethnicity in Arkansas brings together the work of leading experts to cast a powerful light on the rich and diverse history of Arkansas’s racial and ethic relations. The essays span from slavery to the civil rights era and cover a diverse range of topics including the frontier experience of slavery; the African American experience of emancipation and after; African American migration patterns; the rise of sundown towns; white violence and its continuing legacy; women’s activism and home demon¬stration agents; African American religious figures from the better know Elias Camp (E. C.) Morris to the lesser-known Richard Nathaniel Hogan; the Mexican-American Bracero program; Latina/o and Asian American refugee experiences; and contemporary views of Latina/o immigration in Arkansas. Informing debates about race and ethnicity in Arkansas, the South, and the nation, the book provides both a primer to the history of race and ethnicity in Arkansas and a prospective map for better understanding racial and ethnic relations in the United States.
[more]
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Race and Ethnicity in Latin America

Peter Wade

Pluto Press, 2010

For over ten years, Race and Ethnicity in Latin America has been an essential text for students studying the region. This second edition adds new material and brings the analysis up to date.

Race and ethnic identities are increasingly salient in Latin America. Peter Wade examines changing perspectives on Black and Indian populations in the region, tracing similarities and differences in the way these peoples have been seen by academics and national elites. Race and ethnicity as analytical concepts are re-examined in order to assess their usefulness.

This book should be the first port of call for anthropologists and sociologists studying identity in Latin America.

[more]
cover of Race and Ethnicity in the Middle Ages, Volume 31

Race and Ethnicity in the Middle Ages, Volume 31

Thomas Hahn, ed.

Duke University Press, 0

This special issue brings together some of the most dynamic current scholarship addressing race and ethnicity in the medieval and early modern periods. The contents include:
"The Difference the Middle Ages Makes: Color and Race before the Modern World" by Thomas Hahn
"Medieval and Modern Concepts of Race and Ethnicity" by Robert Bartlett
"Black Servant, Black Demon: Color Ideology in the Ashburnham Pentateuch" by Dorothy Hoogland Verkerk
"Pagans are wrong and Christians are right: Alterity, Gender, and Nation in the Chanson de Roland" by Sharon Kinoshita
"On Saracen Enjoyment: Some Fantasies of Race in Late Medieval France and England" by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen
"Medieval Travel Writing and the Question of Race" by Linda Lomperis
"Why ‘Race’?" by William Chester Jordan
[more]
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Race and Gender at War

Writing American Military History

Edited by Lesley J. Gordon and Andrew J. Huebner

University of Alabama Press, 2024

Beyond the battlefield: How race and gender redefined war, identity, and memory in Civil War America.

Race and Gender at War is a collection of essays that illuminates ways that race and gender have persistently shaped the military history of the United States. Editors Lesley J. Gordon and Andrew J. Huebner showcase historians with varied research agendas in the field of “war and society,” a fertile area of inquiry that shares space (and often overlaps) with operational studies inside the broader field of military history. Chronicling more than 150 years of American history, the essays in this volume demonstrate that the tensions and injustices surrounding race, gender, and the military remain relevant and controversial, and continue to roil American politics, society, and culture to this day.

Spanning the two centuries from the 1830s to the present, the collection examines topics such as Choctaw Natives who served in the Confederate Army, the trailblazing but fraught experiences of Black servicemen from the Civil War through World War I, the hypersexualized images of World War II servicemen, and the varied and mutable roles of women in the armed services. Utilizing diverse methodologies, the book examines how these factors influenced everything from military policy to civilian experiences, encompassing topics like martial rhetoric, citizenship, propaganda, and patriotism.
 

CONTRIBUTORS

Kevin Adams / Amanda Bellows / Kari L. Boyd-Weisenberger / Michele Curran Cornell / Lesley J. Gordon / Andrew J. Huebner / Gregory Mixon / Caroline Wood Newhall / Heather Marie Stur / Patrick T. Troester / Chad L. Williams / Fay A. Yarbrough

[more]
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Race and Meaning

The African American Experience in Missouri

Gary R. Kremer

University of Missouri Press, 2014

No one has written more about the African American experience in Missouri over the past four decades than Gary Kremer, and now for the first time fourteen of his best articles on the subject are available in one place with the publication of Race and Meaning: The African American Experience in Missouri. By placing the articles in chronological order of historical events rather than by publication date, Kremer combines them into one detailed account that addresses issues such as the transition from slavery to freedom for African Americans in Missouri, all-black rural communities, and the lives of African Americans seeking new opportunities in Missouri’s cities.

In addition to his previously published articles, Kremer includes a personal introduction revealing how he first became interested in researching African American history and how his education at Lincoln University--and specifically the influence of his mentor, Lorenzo Greene--helped him to realize his eventual career path. Race and Meaning makes a collection of largely unheard stories spanning much of Missouri history accessible for the first time in one place, allowing each article to be read in the context of the others, and creating a whole that is much greater than the sum of its parts. Whether you are a student, researcher, or general reader, this book will be essential to anyone with an interest in Missouri history.
[more]
cover of Race and Nation in Puerto Rican Folklore: Franz Boas and John Alden Mason in Porto Rico

Race and Nation in Puerto Rican Folklore

Franz Boas and John Alden Mason in Porto Rico

Rafael Ocasio

Rutgers University Press, 2020

Race and Nation in Puerto Rican Folklore: Franz Boas and John Alden Mason in Porto Rico explores the historic research trip taken to Puerto Rico in 1915. As a component of the Scientific Survey of Porto Rico and the Virgin Islands, Boas intended to perform field research in the areas of anthropology and ethnography while other scientists explored the island’s natural resources. A young anthropologist working under Boas, John Alden Mason, rescued hundreds of oral folklore samples, ranging from popular songs, poetry, conundrums, sayings, and, most particularly, folktales while documenting native Puerto Rican cultural practices. Through his extensive excursions, Mason came in touch with the rural lives of Puerto Rican peasants, the jíbaros, who served as both his cultural informants and writers of the folklore samples. These stories, many of which are still part of the island’s literary traditions and collected in a bilingual companion volume by Rafael Ocasio, reflect a strong Puerto Rican identity coalescing in the face of the U.S. political intervention on the island. A fascinating slice of Puerto Rican history and culture sure to delight any reader!
 
[more]
cover of Race and Performance after Repetition

Race and Performance after Repetition

Soyica Diggs Colbert, Douglas A. Jones Jr., and Shane Vogel, editors

Duke University Press, 2020

The contributors to Race and Performance after Repetition explore how theater and performance studies account for the complex relationship between race and time. Pointing out that repetition has been the primary point of reference for understanding both the complex temporality of theater and the historical persistence of race, they identify and pursue critical alternatives to the conceptualization, organization, measurement, and politics of race in performance. The contributors examine theater, performance art, music, sports, dance, photography, and other forms of performance in topics that range from the movement of boxer Joe Louis to George C. Wolfe's 2016 reimagining of the 1921 all-black musical comedy Shuffle Along to the relationship between dance, mourning, and black adolescence in Flying Lotus's music video “Never Catch Me.” Proposing a spectrum of coexisting racial temporalities that are not tethered to repetition, this collection reconsiders central theories in performance studies in order to find new understandings of race.

Contributors. Joshua Chambers-Letson, Soyica Diggs Colbert, Nicholas Fesette, Patricia Herrera, Jasmine Elizabeth Johnson, Douglas A. Jones Jr., Mario LaMothe, Daphne P. Lei, Jisha Menon, Tavia Nyong’o, Tina Post, Elizabeth W. Son,  Shane Vogel, Catherine M. Young, Katherine Zien
[more]
cover of Race and Photography: Racial Photography as Scientific Evidence, 1876-1980

Race and Photography

Racial Photography as Scientific Evidence, 1876-1980

Amos Morris-Reich

University of Chicago Press, 2015

Race and Photography studies the changing function of photography from the 1870s to the 1940s within the field of the “science of race,” what many today consider the paradigm of pseudo-science. Amos Morris-Reich looks at the ways photography enabled not just new forms of documentation but new forms of perception. Foregoing the political lens through which we usually look back at race science, he holds it up instead within the light of the history of science, using it to explore how science is defined; how evidence is produced, used, and interpreted; and how science shapes the imagination and vice versa.
           
Exploring the development of racial photography wherever it took place, including countries like France and England, Morris-Reich pays special attention to the German and Jewish contexts of scientific racism. Through careful reconstruction of individual cases, conceptual genealogies, and patterns of practice, he compares the intended roles of photography with its actual use in scientific argumentation. He examines the diverse ways it was used to establish racial ideologies—as illustrations of types, statistical data, or as self-evident record of racial signs. Altogether, Morris-Reich visits this troubling history to outline important truths about the roles of visual argumentation, imagination, perception, aesthetics, epistemology, and ideology within scientific study.  
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cover of Race and Place: School Desegregation in Prince George's County, Maryland

Race and Place

School Desegregation in Prince George's County, Maryland

Deirdre Mayer Dougherty

Rutgers University Press, 2025

Race and Place considers the everyday experiences of community members throughout the process of school desegregation and how race, place, and truth came to matter in this process in Prince George’s County, Maryland, from 1945 through 1973. The book is organized around several successive policies that emerged in this time: school equalization, school choice, neighborhood schools, school construction, school closure, busing for racial integration, and school discipline. Dougherty shows how these policies contained and reinforced assumptions about place and created new racial truths about people and schooling.
 
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Race and Police

The Origin of Our Peculiar Institutions

Ben Brucato

Rutgers University Press, 2024

In the United States, race and police were founded along with a capitalist economy dependent on the enslavement of workers of African descent. Race and Police builds a critical theory of American policing by analyzing a heterodox history of policing, drawn from the historiography of slavery and slave patrols. Beginning by tracing the historical origins of the police mandate in British colonial America, the book shows that the peculiar institution of racialized chattel slavery originated along with a novel, binary conception of race. On one side, for the first time Europeans from various nationalities were united in a single racial category. Inclusion in this category was necessary for citizenship. On the other, Blacks were branded as slaves, cast as social enemies, and assumed to be threats to the social order. The state determined not only that it would administer slavery, but that it would regulate slaves, authorizing the use of violence by agents of the state and white citizens to secure the social order. In doing so, slavery, citizenship, and police mutually informed one another, and together they produced racial capitalism, a working class defined and separated by the color line, and a racial social order.
 
Race and Police corrects the Eurocentrism in the orthodox history of American police and in predominating critical theories of police. That orthodoxy rests on an origin story that begins with Sir Robert Peel and the London Metropolitan Police Service. Predating the Met by more than a century, America’s first police, often called slave patrols, did more than maintain order—it fabricated a racial order. Prior to their creation, all white citizens were conscripted to police all Blacks. Their participation in the coercive control of Blacks gave definition to their whiteness. Targeted as threats to the security of the economy and white society, being policed defined Blacks who, for the first time, were treated as a single racial group. The boundaries of whiteness were first established on the basis of who was required to regulate slaves, given a specific mandate to prevent Black insurrection, a mandate that remains core to the police role to this day.
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cover of Race and Politics: Asian Americans, Latinos, and Whites in a Los Angeles Suburb

Race and Politics

Asian Americans, Latinos, and Whites in a Los Angeles Suburb

Leland T. Saito. Foreword by Roger Daniels

University of Illinois Press, 1998

Located a mere fifteen minutes from Los Angeles, the San Gabriel Valley is an incubator for California's new ethnic politics. Here, Latinos and Asian Americans are the dominant groups. Politics are Latino-dominated, while a large infusion of Chinese immigrants and capital has made the San Gabriel Valley the center of the nation's largest Chinese ethnic economy. The white population, meanwhile, has dropped from an overwhelming majority in 1970 to a minority in 1990. 

Leland T. Saito presents an insider's view of the political, economic, and cultural implications of this ethnic mix. He examines how diverse residents of the region have worked to overcome their initial antagonisms and develop new, more effective political alliances. 

Tracing grassroots political organization along racial and ethnic lines, Race and Politics focuses on the construction of new identities in general and the panethnic affiliation "Asian American" in particular.

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Race and Radicalism in the Union Army

Mark A. Lause

University of Illinois Press, 2013

In this compelling portrait of interracial activism, Mark A. Lause documents the efforts of radical followers of John Brown to construct a triracial portion of the Federal Army of the Frontier. Mobilized and inspired by the idea of a Union that would benefit all, black, Indian, and white soldiers fought side by side, achieving remarkable successes in the field. Against a backdrop of idealism, racism, greed, and the agonies and deprivations of combat, Lause examines links between radicalism and reform, on the one hand, and racialized interactions among blacks, Indians, and whites, on the other.

Lause examines how this multiracial vision of American society developed on the Western frontier. Focusing on the men and women who supported Brown in territorial Kansas, Lause examines the impact of abolitionist sentiment on relations with Indians and the crucial role of nonwhites in the conflict. Through this experience, Indians, blacks, and whites began to see their destinies as interdependent, and Lause discusses the radicalizing impact of this triracial Unionism upon the military course of the war in the upper Trans-Mississippi.

The aftermath of the Civil War destroyed much of the memory of the war in the West, particularly in the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). The opportunity for an interracial society was quashed by the government's willingness to redefine the lucrative field of Indian exploitation for military and civilian officials and contractors.

Assessing the social interrelations, ramifications, and military impact of nonwhites in the Union forces, Race and Radicalism in the Union Army explores the extent of interracial thought and activity among Americans in this period and greatly expands the historical narrative on the Civil War in the West.

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Race and Religion Among the Chosen People of Crown Heights

Goldschmidt, Henry

Rutgers University Press, 2006

In August of 1991, the Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights was engulfed in violence following the deaths of Gavin Cato and Yankel Rosenbaum—a West Indian boy struck by a car in the motorcade of a Hasidic spiritual leader and an orthodox Jew stabbed by a Black teenager. The ensuing unrest thrust the tensions between the Lubavitch Hasidic community and their Afro-Caribbean and African American neighbors into the media spotlight, spurring local and national debates on diversity and multiculturalism. Crown Heights became a symbol of racial and religious division. Yet few have paused to examine the nature of Black-Jewish difference in Crown Heights, or to question the flawed assumptions about race and religion that shape the politics—and perceptions—of conflict in the community.

In Race and Religion among the Chosen Peoples of Crown Heights, Henry Goldschmidt explores the everyday realities of difference in Crown Heights. Drawing on two years of fieldwork and interviews, he argues that identity formation is particularly complex in Crown Heights because the neighborhood’s communities envision the conflict in remarkably diverse ways. Lubavitch Hasidic Jews tend to describe it as a religious difference between Jews and Gentiles, while their Afro-Caribbean and African American neighbors usually define it as a racial difference between Blacks and Whites. These tangled definitions are further complicated by government agencies who address the issue as a matter of culture, and by the Lubavitch Hasidic  belief—a belief shared with a surprising number of their neighbors—that they are a “chosen people” whose identity transcends the constraints of the social world.

The efforts of the Lub­avitch Hasidic community to live as a divinely chosen people in a diverse Brooklyn neighbor­hood where collective identi­ties are generally defined in terms of race illuminate the limits of American multiculturalism—a concept that claims to celebrate diversity, yet only accommodates variations of certain kinds. Taking the history of conflict in Crown Heights as an invitation to reimagine our shared social world, Goldschmidt interrogates the boundaries of race and religion and works to create space in American society for radical forms of cultural difference.

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cover of Race and Repast: Foodscapes in Twentieth-Century Southern Literature

Race and Repast

Foodscapes in Twentieth-Century Southern Literature

Urszula Niewiadomska-Flis

University of Arkansas Press, 2022

Race and Repast: Foodscapes in Twentieth-Century Southern Literature examines the literary foodscapes of the American South—from Jim Crow–era kitchens where White and Black Southerners reacted against racial mores, to the public dining spaces where Southerners probed the limits of racial identity, to the lunch counters that became touchstones of the Black Freedom movement. Mining literary texts by iconic authors like Ernest Gaines and Walker Percy to demonstrate that “food reflects and refracts power,” Urszula Niewiadomska-Flis wields food studies as a revelatory lens through which to view a radically segregated society that was often on the cusp of violence. Niewiadomska-Flis also provides a rich and succinct introduction to scholarship in Southern studies and food studies, making Race and Repast a compelling read that offers countless insights to experts as well as readers exploring these areas of research for the first time.
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cover of Race and Retail: Consumption across the Color Line

Race and Retail

Consumption across the Color Line

Bay, Mia

Rutgers University Press, 2015

Race has long shaped shopping experiences for many Americans. Retail exchanges and establishments have made headlines as flashpoints for conflict not only between blacks and whites, but also between whites, Mexicans, Asian Americans, and a wide variety of other ethnic groups, who have at times found themselves unwelcome at white-owned businesses. 
 
Race and Retail documents the extent to which retail establishments, both past and present, have often catered to specific ethnic and racial groups. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the original essays collected here explore selling and buying practices of nonwhite populations around the world and the barriers that shape these habits, such as racial discrimination, food deserts, and gentrification. The contributors highlight more contemporary issues by raising questions about how race informs business owners’ ideas about consumer demand, resulting in substandard quality and higher prices for minorities than in predominantly white neighborhoods.  In a wide-ranging exploration of the subject, they also address revitalization and gentrification in South Korean and Latino neighborhoods in California, Arab and Turkish coffeehouses and hookah lounges in South Paterson, New Jersey, and tourist capoeira consumption in Brazil.  
 
Race and Retail illuminates the complex play of forces at work in racialized retail markets and the everyday impact of those forces on minority consumers. The essays demonstrate how past practice remains in force in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.
 
 

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