Mixed Race Studies

How Public Policy Impacts Racial Inequality

Louisiana State University Press
May 2019
208 pages
5.50 x 8.50 inches
12 graphs
Paperback ISBN: 9780807170700

Edited by:

Josh Grimm, Associate Professor; Associate Dean of Research and Strategic Initiatives
Manship School of Mass Communication, Louisiana State University

Jaime Loke, Assistant Professor
Bob Schieffer College of Communication, Texas Christian University

How Public Policy Impacts Racial Inequality, edited by Josh Grimm and Jaime Loke, brings together scholars of political science, sociology, and mass communication to provide an in-depth analysis of race in the United States through the lens of public policy. This vital collection outlines how racial issues such as profiling, wealth inequality, and housing segregation relate to policy decisions at both the local and national levels. Each chapter explores the inherent conflict between policy enactment, perception, and enforcement.

Contributors present original research focused on specific areas where public policy displays racial bias. Josh Grimm places Donald Trump’s immigration policies—planned and implemented—in historical perspective, identifying trends and patterns in common between earlier legislation and contemporary debates. Shaun L. Gabbidon considers the role of the American justice system in creating and magnifying racial and ethnic disparities, with particular attention to profiling, police killings, and reform efforts. Jackelyn Hwang, Elizabeth Roberto, and Jacob S. Rugh illustrate the continued presence of residential segregation as a major fixture defining the American racial landscape. As a route to considering digital citizenship and racial justice, Srividya Ramasubramanian examines how race shapes media-related policy in ways that perpetuate inequalities in media access, ownership, and representation. Focusing on lead poisoning, tobacco, and access to healthy foods, Holley A. Wilkin discusses solutions for improving overall health equity. In a study of legal precedents, Mary E. Campbell and Sylvia M. Emmanuel detail the extent to which measures aimed at addressing inequality often neglect multiracial individuals and groups. By examining specific policies that created wealth inequality along racial lines, Lori Latrice Martin shows how current efforts perpetuate asset poverty for many African Americans. Shifting focus to media reception, Ismail K. White, Chryl N. Laird, Ernest B. McGowen III, and Jared K. Clemons analyze political opinion formation stemming from mainstream information sources versus those specifically targeting African American audiences.

Presenting nuanced case studies of key topics, How Public Policy Impacts Racial Inequality offers a timely and wide- ranging collection on major social and political issues unfolding in twenty-first century America.

Race Policy and Multiracial Americans

Policy Press (Available in North America from University of Chicago Press)
2016-01-13
226 pages
234 x 156 mm
Hardback ISBN: 9781447316459
Paperback ISBN: 9781447316503

Edited by:

Kathleen Odell Korgen, Professor of Sociology
William Paterson University, Wayne, New Jersey

Race Policy and Multiracial Americans is the first book to look at the impact of multiracial people on race policies—where they lag behind the growing numbers of multiracial people in the U.S. and how they can be used to promote racial justice for multiracial Americans. Using a critical mixed race perspective, it covers such questions as: Which policies aimed at combating racial discrimination should cover multiracial Americans? Should all (or some) multiracial Americans benefit from affirmative action programmes? How can we better understand the education and health needs of multiracial Americans? This much-needed book is essential reading for sociology, political science and public policy students, policy makers, and anyone interested in race relations and social justice.

Contents

• Introduction ~ Kathleen Odell Korgen
• Multiracial Americans throughout the History of the U.S. ~ Tyrone Nagai
• National and Local Structures of Inequality: Multiracial Groups’ Profiles Across the United States ~ Mary E. Campbell and Jessica M. Barron
• Latinos and Multiracial America ~ Raúl Quiñones Rosado
• The Connections among Racial Identity, Social Class, and Public Policy? ~ Nikki Khanna
• Multiracial Americans and Racial Discrimination ~ Tina Fernandes Botts
• “Should All (or Some) Multiracial Americans Benefit from Affirmative Action Programs?”~ Daniel N. Lipson
• Multiracial Students and Educational Policy ~ Rhina Fernandes Williams and E. Namisi Chilungu
• Multiracial Americans in College ~ Marc P. Johnston and Kristen A. Renn
• Multiracial Americans, Health Patterns, and Health Policy: Assessment and Recommendations for Ways Forward ~ Jenifer L. Bratter and Chirsta Mason
• Racial Identity Among Multiracial Prisoners in the Color-Blind Era ~ Gennifer Furst and Kathleen Odell Korgen
• “Multiraciality and the Racial Order: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”~ Hephzibah V. Strmic-Pawl and David L. Brunsma
• Multiracial Identity and Monoracial Conflict: Toward a New Social Justice framework ~ Andrew Jolivette
• Conclusion: Policies for a Racially Just Society ~ Kathleen Odell Korgen

Race and a Political Race

Everyday Sociology Blog
2012-09-28

Jonathan R. Wynn, Assistant Professor of Sociology
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Dwanna L. Robertson
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

The Massachusetts Senate race between incumbent Scott Brown and Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren took an unexpected sharp turn this week. Shades of racialized language (reminiscent of the 2008 Presidential campaign) seeped in. This actually started in April, when Brown’s staffers uncovered that Warren claimed she was a minority, implicating her as committing ethnic fraud because she lacked proof of a Native American ancestry.
 
During their first political debate, Brown went straight at this issue in a prepared remark, saying, “Professor Warren claimed she was a Native American, a person of color—And as you can see, she’s not.” With this statement, Brown contends he can identify Native Americans—and other people of color—just by looking at them.

It would be humorous—Did she accidentally forget to braid her hair and wear her moccasins?—if it didn’t have serious undertones cutting at the heart of race and politics in the U.S.. Brown suggests Warren received special consideration for claiming she was part Cherokee. “When you are a U.S. Senator,” he stated, “you have to pass a test and that’s one of character and honesty and truthfulness. I believe and others believe she’s failed that test.” But did Warren fail the test?…

..Back to Brown’s assertion idea that our eyes can tell us a person’s race. Sociologist Mary Campbell has been working on misclassification of race based upon skin tone, finding not only that American Indians experience a high level of misidentification, but that in the process they also experience higher levels of psychological distress…

There is, however, a real challenge when it comes to speaking of how indigenous folk look. It is not just that it’s a bad idea to think facial features are satisfactory markers of race. It is that the emphasis on perception also indicates a complete misunderstanding of U.S. History: People who claim First Nation Heritage are of a mixed ethnic background due to generations of attempted racial extermination, cultural oppression, and a breaking of tribal links to land and community…

Read the entire article here.

“What About the Children?” The Psychological and Social Well-Being of Multiracial Adolescents

The Sociological Quarterly
Volume 47, Issue 1 (February 2006)
pages 147–173
DOI: 10.1111/j.1533-8525.2006.00041.x

Mary E. Campbell, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Iowa

Jennifer Eggerling-Boeck
University of Wisconsin–Madison

We used the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) to examine the social and psychological well-being of multiracial adolescents. Using two different measures of multiracial identity, we investigated the ways in which these adolescents compare to their monoracial counterparts on five outcomes: depression, seriously considering suicide, feeling socially accepted, feeling close to others at school, and participating in extracurricular activities. We found that multiracial adolescents as a group experience some negative outcomes compared to white adolescents, but that this finding is driven by negative outcomes for those with American Indian and white heritage. We found no consistent evidence, however, that multiracial adolescents as a group face more difficulty in adolescence than members of other racial and ethnic minority groups. The results were similar, whether the multiracial population is defined by self-identification or by their parents’ racial identifications.

Read or purchase the article here.

I wouldn’t, But You Can: Attitudes toward Interracial Relationships

Social Science Research
Published online: 2011-11-18
DOI: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2011.11.007

Melissa R. Herman, Visiting Researcher of the Research Unit
Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung
also Assistant Professor, Sociology, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire

Mary E. Campbell, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Iowa

Using the 2008 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), we study Whites’ attitudes towards dating, cohabiting with, marrying, and having children with African Americans and Asian Americans. We find that 29% of White respondents reject all types of relationships with both groups whereas 31% endorse all types. Second, Whites are somewhat less willing to marry and bear children interracially than to date interracially. These attitudes and behaviors are related to warmth toward racial outgroups, political conservatism, age, gender, education, and region. Third, White women are likely to approve of interracial relationships for others but not themselves, while White men express more willingness to engage in such relationships personally, particularly with Asians. However, neither White men nor White women are very likely to actually engage in interracial relationships. Thus, positive global attitudes toward interracial relationships do not translate into high rates of actual interracial cohabitation or marriage.

Highlights

• Whites are more willing date interracially than to intermarry or bear multiracial children.
• These attitudes are related to outgroup warmth, conservatism, age, gender, education & region.
• White women generally approve of interracial relationships for others but not themselves.
• White men generally approve of interracial relationships both personally and globally.
• Neither White men nor White women are very likely to actually engage in one.

More Iowans identifying as mixed race

The Daily Iowan
The Independent Daily Newspaper for the University of Iowa Since 1868
2011-04-19

Alison Sullivan

Photo: Christy Aumer/The Daily IowanSophomore Tevin Robbins poses in the window of the second floor at the Afro-American Cultural Center on April 5. Robbins is currently majoring in psychology but has switched his major from engineering to better accompany other areas of his life.

University of Iowa student Tevin Robbins sat lounging on the couch at the UI’s Latino Native American Cultural Center with friend, Michael Harbravison, on a Friday evening.

Robbins’ light coffee-crème complexion is juxtaposed by his hair — a thick, rusty-red mass sitting on top of his head.

“I don’t even know what type of skin color I am,” Robbins said. The 19-year-old, part Cherokee, African American, and white, makes the statement not out of confusion but merely the inability to choose.

Robbins is one among an increasing number of Iowans who identify as more than one ethnicity, according to data from the 2010 U.S. Census released in March. The number is still small—fewer than 2 percent of Iowans identified themselves as more than one race—but it is a 68 percent jump from 2000.

Growing up for Robbins was difficult because of his complexion. Too light, he said, to pass as African American, but dark enough to not pass as white. He never felt accepted in any one “group.”

“Why do I have to choose to identify as something?” he said. “I’m not one ethnicity.”

The 2010 census was the first time researchers were able to use the comparable data. In Johnson County, there has been a 77 percent increase. And at the University of Iowa, 223 students identified as two or more ethnicities in the fall of 2010—an increase from the 133 students in 2009, when the UI first began collecting such data.

Overall, the census shows a 60 percent increase in minorities in Iowa.

“This is a group whose choices have changed,” said Mary Campbell, a UI associate professor of sociology.

Campbell said roughly 40 years ago, people who had more than one ethnicity faced the pressures to identify with a single one, but now, social change has eased such constraints…

Read the entire article here.  View the slideshow here.

Thinking outside the (black) box: Measuring black and multiracial identification on surveys

Social Science Research
Volume 36, Issue 3, September 2007
Pages 921-944
DOI: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2006.07.001 

Mary E. Campbell, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Iowa

To better understand the diversity of the multiracial population, compare multiracial data to single-race data, and evaluate the rigidity of racial boundaries, we must understand the single-race identification choices of multiracial respondents. Many studies assume that this pattern will be straightforward for multiracial respondents who choose a part-black identification, with virtually all choosing a “black” single-race identification. I investigate whether this assumption is justified by available survey data. Using the May 1995 Current Population Survey’s Race and Ethnicity Supplement, I explore the single-race identifications of individuals who have chosen a part-black multiracial label on a survey. I find that single-race identification choices on forced-choice questions vary considerably across family heritage groups, with those who choose a “black-American Indian” identity extremely likely to select a black single-race identity, while other groups like “black-whites” have substantial variation in single-race identifications. Identification patterns vary significantly by age, family context and survey characteristics.

Read or purchase the article here.

Politics and policies: attitudes toward multiracial Americans

Ethnic and Racial Studies
First Published on: 2010-04-15
Volume 33, Issue 9 (October 2010)
pages 1511-1536
DOI: 10.1080/01419871003671929

Mary E. Campbell, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Iowa

Melissa R. Herman, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Dartmouth College

The growing prominence of the multiracial population in the United States is prompting new questions about attitudes toward multiracial people and popular opinion of policies designed to protect them from discrimination. Currently, American anti-discrimination policies are directed at groups who identify with a single race, but the rising profile of multiracial groups introduces new complexity into questions about racial policy. In this study, we find generally positive affect toward multiracial people, although monoracial minorities are more positive toward multiracial people than whites are. About half of the monoracial minorities and the majority of whites oppose including multiracial people in anti-discrimination policies. Attitudes are associated with traditional predictors such as education and political beliefs, and also with the racial heterogeneity of the local context and intimate contact with other racial groups. Although multiracial people report experiencing discrimination at levels similar to those of monoracial minorities, our results suggest there may be significant resistance to anti-discrimination policies that include multiracial groups. 

Read the entire article here.

Multiracial Groups and Educational Inequality: A Rainbow or a Divide?

Social Problems
Volume 56, Number 3 (August 2009)
Pages 425–446
DOI 10.1525/sp.2009.56.3.425

Mary E. Campbell, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Iowa

How do multiracial groups “fit” into the system of racial oppression and privilege in the United States? Are the outcomes of multiracial individuals explained by the Latin Americanization hypothesis (Bonilla-Silva 2002), or a hardening racial divide between blacks and all other racial groups (Gans 1999; Yancey 2006)? Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, I address these questions and show that the educational outcomes of multiracial groups and individuals are not consistently explained by measures of appearance, as suggested by these theories. Although the educational outcomes of Latinos and single-race groups are significantly associated with skin color and the racial perceptions of observers, multiracial young adults’ high school and college educational outcomes are not consistently related to either measure of appearance. Parental education and family income are the most important predictors of educational outcomes for multiracial respondents across different types of outcomes. The implications of these findings for racial inequality and research on multiracial groups are discussed.

One of the key debates about the future of racial and ethnic inequality in the United States is the question of how multiracial Americans will fit into the United States’ system of racial oppression and privilege. These groups may be a bellwether we can use to discern how racial inequality is changing, since they straddle racial boundaries and therefore are often the first to experience changes in those boundaries and systems of racialized advantage. For example, Eduardo Bonilla Silva (2002; Bonilla Silva and Embrick 2006) has argued that the United States is moving towards a three-tier racial stratification system that is increasingly similar to Latin American systems of racial stratification based on skin tone, and thus biracial groups that are lighter skinned will have greater privilege than those that are darker skinned. George Yancey (2006) and Herbert Gans (1999), in a distinct but related argument, contend that we are moving away from a binary system that used a narrow and exclusive definition of “whiteness” to disadvantage anyone perceived as “not white” towards an evolving binary system that systematically disadvantages anyone seen as “black” and advantages anyone seen as “not black” (even those who are not considered “white”). Under this shifting system, biracial individuals perceived as black will experience oppression, while the rest of the multiracial groups will experience positive outcomes that become more similar to whites over time…

Read or purchase the article here.