This article sheds light on the pending affirmative action lawsuit filed by Asian American plaintiffs against Harvard University by providing a brief history of how Asian Americans have been figured (and have figured themselves) in U.S. Supreme Court jurisprudence on race-conscious admissions in higher education. It shows that the figuration of Asian Americans has played a critical role in the legal-ideological project of despecifying Black subjection and disavowing racial positionality in the U.S. social order, from Bakke to the present, and argues that a new ‘sociometry’ of race is necessary to help us understand and challenge persistent structures of racial power.

This paper argues that diversity is more than just a mixing of people perceived as different, and consists of activities and relationships much like other social phenomena. Consequently, there is much to be studied, beginning with the diversification process by which diversity is implemented. Since diversification is often initiated as a deliberate policy, researchers can be helpful to policy makers, especially with empirical research that addresses their policy related questions.

On February 26, 2012, George Zimmerman, a man of White American and Peruvian descent, shot and killed Trayvon Martin, a Black teenager who was walking back to the home where he was a guest in Sanford, Florida. For many, Trayvon Martin is this generation’s Emmett Till, the fourteen-year-old Black boy who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955 for whistling in a White woman’s presence. In fact, several scholars have highlighted similarities between the Till and Martin tragedies. One unexplored commonality is the manner in which defense counsel in both the Till and Martin trials used the trope of protecting White womanhood to get the jurors to psychologically identify and empathize with the defendants. Employing Multidimensional Masculinities Theory, this essay seeks to expose the role that the protection of White womanhood (and thus the preservation of White manhood) played in the killings of Till and Martin and in each of their killers’ defense strategies at trial. It does so by offering a history of lynching; explaining how White men demonstrated their ownership of White women and their dominance over Blacks by using violence against Black men who threatened the social order; and revealing how the defense attorneys in both the Till and Martin cases manipulated and employed the narrative of the White male protector of White women to facilitate acquittals for their clients. In so doing, it analyzes the transcript from the Till trial, a transcript previously believed to be lost forever until the FBI discovered the transcript upon its re-opening and investigation of the Till murder and released the transcript in 2006. Finally, utilizing excerpts from the trial transcript in the Martin case, this essay reveals how the trope of protecting White womanhood shaped the outcome in the Martin case, even though the stock narrative of needing White female protection from purportedly dangerous Black men was not at all related to the claims about Martin or charges against Zimmerman. In so doing, this essay reveals (1) how White womanhood has been abstracted to encompass not only a specific woman in an incident and to include not only a “man’s” home, but also to include broader spaces like gated communities, and (2) how that reality, coupled with the way that civil rights laws have made it harder for White men to bully Black men and the way that feminism has made it harder to subordinate women, has produced a new masculine anxiety for White men.

In this case study, I look at Benton Harbor, Michigan’s tenure under a state-appointed “emergency manager,” with extensive local powers replacing all local elected government, and a single imperative to balance the city’s budget. The law, ostensibly race-neutral, wound up targeting almost all of Michigan’s cities with significant Black population. The law ultimately disenfranchised half the state’s Black population but only two percent of Whites. This law invalidates a basic civil right and prerequisite for urban political theory: electoral democracy. Who holds power in the urban regime when the state takes over? Drawing on forty-four interviews, observations and archival research, I argue a White urban regime governs without elected representation in this majority-Black city. The ideological framing of emergency management as “neutral,” and Black politics as “corrupt” or “self-interested,” provides the logic to blame Black governance for structural disinvestment and White-led extraction.

Despite its predictive power, there is substantial debate about the attitudes measured by the racial resentment scale (RRS) and the relative weight of each. One group contends that the RRS is a valid measure of racial animus, foregrounding a basic psychological acrimony; some foreground social concerns about group status hierarchies; and yet others assert that the RRS is an invalid measure of racial enmity, instead primarily tapping non-racial principles and politics. We use a multimethod approach to address these debates, mapping the frames of reference respondents use in explaining their RRS answers. We find that the RRS fundamentally measures racial concerns and minimally taps non-racial politics. Although RRS responses reflect psychological acrimony, this orientation is substantially outweighed by social concerns about relative group position. Moreover, RRS responses substantially reflect beliefs about the relevance of race in the contemporary US and the sources of racial inequality, and values about individualism and fairness. We discuss how one of the most potent measures of present-day racial prejudice is rightly understood, and the implications for theory and research at the intersection of race and politics.

Despite a recent increase in research on its sociopolitical implications, many questions regarding rap music’s influence on mass-level participation remain unanswered. We consider the possibility that “imagining a better world” (measured here as the degree to which young African Americans are critical of the music’s negative messages) can correlate with a desire to “build a better world” (operationalized as an individual’s level of political participation). Evidence from the Black Youth Project (BYP)’s Youth Culture Survey (Cohen 2005) demonstrates that rap critique exerts a conditional impact on non-voting forms of activism. Rap critique enhances heavy consumers’ civic engagement, but this relationship does not occur among Blacks who consume the music infrequently. By demonstrating rap’s politicizing power and contradicting certain criticisms of Hip Hop culture, our research celebrates the possibilities of Black youth and Black music.

When deciding whether to provide job-matching assistance to formerly incarcerated job seekers, which factors do individuals with job information and influence privilege? Drawing from in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 126 ethnoracially diverse jobholders at one large, public sector employer, I show that jobholders’ assistance relied on the cultural frames for action they deployed. Two frames dominated discussion—the second chance frame and the signaling change frame. Through the former, jobholders argued that all individuals were capable of change and entitled to more chances to prove themselves. These jobholders were strongly inclined to help. Through the latter, jobholders either referenced the nature of offenses for which job seekers were punished, a proxy for their ability to change, or they referenced evidence that job seekers had changed, a proxy for former prisoners’ commitment to do better. These jobholders tended to be noncommittal. Two frames were mentioned significantly less often—the rigid structures and the opportunities to assist frames. Neither implicated the former prisoners’ essential attributes but instead identified factors outside of job seekers’ control. A significant minority of jobholders also offered some combination of these four frames. Importantly, ethnoracial background, which informed the extent, nature and quality of jobholders’ experiences with the formerly incarcerated, also shaped which frame or set of frames jobholders deployed.

While prisoners cannot vote, they are counted as residents of the often rural legislative districts where they are incarcerated rather than their home districts. We examine the extent to which incarceration shifts the balance of a representative democracy by considering its impact on legislative apportionment. Drawing on data from the Census, Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, and Pennsylvania Redistricting Commission, we develop a counterfactual framework to examine whether removing and returning prisoners to their home districts affects equal representation. Because prisoners are disproportionately African American, we also employ this counterfactual to assess racial differences in the impact of prison gerrymandering. Findings indicate that incarceration shifts political power from urban districts to suburban and rural districts through legislative apportionment. Moreover, non-White communities suffer the most. We conclude by considering how our findings fit a growing literature on the role of mass incarceration in [re]producing racial inequalities in the contemporary United States.

Intersectionality has contributed to the ongoing deconstruction of dichotomous and essentializing categories of identity and oppression. As some scholars have noted, however, intersectionality has debunked a sociobiological, single-node paradigm and unintentionally codified a deterministic form of social cognition. I suggest one mechanism for understanding how to untangle this intersectional dilemma: disclosure practices. Disclosure of stigmatized statuses can illuminate how macro level inequalities manifest in individual thought processes. This study adds to emerging research by showing how social actors rely on intersectional experiences to understand, think about, and frame complex social problems. I examine this topic via 197 interviews with 102 Black participants who identify as LGBT about their views on same-sex marriage as a civil rights issue before and after same-sex marriage was nationally legalized. Specifically, I argue that the Black LGBT participants’ experience with intersectional discrimination and their levels of sexual and gender identity disclosure account for their personal views on same-sex marriage and Black civil rights. Further, the majority of Black participants across disclosure practices viewed marriage equality as primarily benefitting the property interests of White gays and lesbians. Last, I discuss the implications of my findings for LGBT politics and the connections between self-interest and political perspectives.

This paper examines how a nonprofit organization prepares low-income Black and Latino/a students to attend elite boarding high schools. Using ethnographic data, I investigate how the program engineers the experience of academic and emotional struggle for students, how students experience these struggles, and what students learn from this process. I find that the program’s academically-induced emotional rollercoaster serves to strengthen students’ confidence in their academic skills and their ability to persist in the face of academic challenges—a valuable emotional asset for the students as they enter elite boarding schools. However, I argue, the feeling students emerge with of having earned their successes (and failures) may ultimately serve to reproduce the individualistic, meritocratic discourses that support the patterns of social inequality the program helps its students sidestep.

Using data from a mixed methods study with suburban Detroit, middle-class mothers as participants, we explore the relationship between racial microaggressions and the racial battle fatigue experienced by Black mothers with young daughters attending predominantly White schools. We find that Black mothers are regularly subjected to racial microaggressions by the White teachers, administrators, and parents with whom they interact. When experiencing slights, insults, and indignities, mothers report taking direct action—borne from African American motherwork—to combat the racial microaggressions. In the context of predominantly White schools, Black mothers enact aesthetic presence, maintain a visible presence, and are strategic in their interactions with school personnel. Racial battle fatigue is evident as they experience and combat racial microaggressions. To extend understanding of racial microaggressions, we apply the sociological concept of the Du Boisian Veil to our analysis. We discuss how the Veil—a barrier which protects the Black psyche by grounding the racialized self while simultaneously precluding racial equality by sustaining racial oppression—can induce the racial battle fatigue that is manifested when one is deluged by racial microaggressions.

In this article I investigate how a group of Black men in college worked together to learn and practice the professional pose—professional styles and behaviors meant to navigate professional settings. I argue that these behaviors were adopted to preempt any potential discriminatory acts and would ideally disassociate them from the negative labels associated with Black men. Specifically, I examine how leaders of the group Uplift and Progress (UP) prepared other members and recruits by teaching them how to present themselves as professional Black men who were familiar with White middle-class practices. To further encourage their success, group members sought out opportunities to practice these styles in public. By cultivating this professional pose, they were able to claim their place at a White institution and distance themselves from the unfavorable stereotypes of Black men. This strategy also bolstered their reputation on campus and would ideally prepare them for the predominantly White workplace.

We ask how Black Protestants frame the connection between religion and science, analyzing fifty in-depth interviews with Black Protestants of different socioeconomic backgrounds who attend churches in two U.S. cities. Although individuals across the sample observe some tension, or incompatibility, between religion and science, Black Protestants from lower socioeconomic backgrounds tended to perceive much more tension when compared with those from higher socioeconomic backgrounds. However, when science is thought to contribute to improving health conditions (e.g., medical improvements to diagnose or prevent birth defects), individuals from both SES backgrounds framed religion and science as compatible. This lack of tension in regards to medicine challenges prevailing wisdom about lower-income African Americans’ attitudes towards medicine. We draw out the implications of these findings for larger discussions about trust toward science and scientific communities, elucidating Black Protestant particularities and perspectives in tensions between science and religion as a foundation for further research.