Suchergebnisse

As questions about racial reparations have entered public and political discourse again, research about the long-term impact of chattel slavery—so called "legacy of slavery" research—has taken on new significance. Over the past two decades researchers have identified direct quantitative links between slavery and a number of contemporary social and economic outcomes, including income, poverty, home ownership, school segregation, crime, educational inequality, and political polarization. Recently, however, researchers have begun to connect slavery to contemporary health outcomes, showing the legacy of slavery seems to stunt the health of black Americans while bolstering the health of white Americans. This manuscript builds on that recent research by examining the connection between subnational variation in the density of slavery and life expectancy in the American South. Using a variety of data sources, such as the US Census, American Community Survey (ACS), the United States Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation County Health Rankings, and spatially robust OLS regression analysis, I find that in southern counties where slavery was denser black life expectancy remains proportionally lower and white life expectancy remains proportionally higher than in southern counties where slavery was less dense.

This manuscript leverages the plethora of research on colorism and skin tone stratification among Black Americans to consider how the "Black" racial category may change going forward. I build on ideas about path dependence, racial and ethnic boundary formations, racial reorganization, and a case study on race and body size to explore how extant group-level differences in social outcomes and emerging differences in political attitudes between lighter skinned and darker skinned Black Americans may lead to a schism between the two groups that forces us to question what it means to identify or be identified as "Black." The idea that "Black is Black" has become thoroughly engrained in the American imagination, facilitated by the history of "one-drop rules" and encouraged by racial segregation. This drives our racial categorization and fuels resistance to many public discussions of colorism. However, we may have reached an even more important crossroads in our examination of colorism that forces us to reckon with the question "what is a racial group?"

Critical race theory teaches that racism and racial inequality are constants in American society that stand outside of the prejudices of individuals. It argues that structures and institutions are primarily responsible for the maintenance of racial inequality. However, critical race theorists have neglected to formally examine and theorize colorism, a primary offshoot of racial domination. Although studies of colorism have become increasingly common, they lack a unifying theoretical framework, opting to lean on ideas about prejudice and preference to explain the advantages lighter skinned, Black Americans are afforded relative to darker skinned Black Americans. In this study, I deploy a critical race framework to push back against preference as the only, or primary, mechanism facilitating skin tone stratification. Instead, I use historical Census data and regression analysis to explore the historical role of color-based marriage selection on concentrating economic advantage among lighter skinned Black Americans. I then discuss the policy and legal implications of developing a structural view of colorism and skin tone stratification in the United States and the broader implications for how we conceptualize race in this country.

Studies show lighter skinned Black people are advantaged on a number of social indicators—a phenomenon called "colorism." These studies generally contend preferences for light-skinned and/or Mulatto slaves endured the postbellum period to shape social outcomes into today. Following this idea, other studies examine differences in social outcomes between Mulattos and Blacks in the 19th century, but few empirically connect antebellum life to postbellum Mulatto–Black stratification. With that in mind, I examine whether the socio-economic differences between Mulattos and Blacks varied across geographic space in proportion to places' reliance on slave labor and the characteristics of its free African American population. This allows me to examine whether differences in economic status between Mulattos and Blacks are a result of Mulatto advantage in the form of privileged positions during slavery. My results reveal that Mulattos have higher occupational statuses relative to Blacks in places where slavery was more prominent and where free Mulattos were literate. This suggests the intraracial hierarchy established during slavery was more likely to be replicated in places where slavery was more important, and Mulattos were able to capitalize on freedom by leveraging their literacy into better economic statuses after emancipation. These results support the idea that skin color stratification was initiated at least in part by practices during chattel slavery and offers some plausible mechanisms for its transmission.

Studies consistently show that attractiveness is racialized, and in a racial hierarchy that privileges whites at the expense of blacks, white phenotypic characteristics are deemed more attractive than black phenotypic characteristics. This study seeks to examine whether the racialized nature of attractiveness is based on more than just appearance. To that end, I use Add Health data to analyze whether black people who identify as mixed race rather than as a single race are perceived as more attractive even when controlling for phenotype, particularly skin tone, eye color, and hair color.

Space and place are important concepts when studying how society functions. Spatial regression analysis techniques provide one important means for incorporating space into quantitative analyses. We highlight this methodological approach by detailing the steps that we took in a recent study of the legacy of slavery. Our case study provides guidance on when and how to use spatial statistics like the Moran's I statistic, Lagrange Multiplier diagnostic tests, and spatial regression models. Our previous research on the legacy of slavery offers a prime example of how accounting for space may be important even if it is not the focus. The goal of our study was to better understand the legacy of slavery, but to estimate the focal relationship using regression analysis we needed to account for any unobserved processes related to the spatial position of our units of analysis. Sociological scholars in all areas need to consider how space may be affecting their statistical results. Furthermore, we argue that closer attention to spatial position through other methodological approachesboth quantitative and qualitativecan provide greater clarity on the social processes that we aim to understand.

History is centrally involved in place development. Given the historical importance of antebellum slavery, it is little surprise that it profoundly shaped the social and economic future of the United States. What is perhaps more surprising is the link to local, county-level development as it relates to contemporary systems of black disadvantage. Through our focus on one aspect of school segregation in the American South, namely racial disparities in public school enrollment, we contribute to the literature on the legacy of slavery by examining how this local link persists. We use spatial data analysis techniques to assess the relationship between county historical slave concentration and the black-white ratio of public school attendance. Our data originally come from the 1860 Census, 2006–2010 American Community Survey, and National Center for Education Statistics Private School Universe Survey, 2007–2008. Notably, our historical slave concentration estimates incorporate spatially informed refinements to better represent contemporary counties than previously available data. Drawing from our regression analysis, we argue that slavery history shaped the local social structure in a way that facilitates contemporary white disinvestment from public school systems. We examine two potential explanations for this legacy of slavery—the number of private schools and racial threat—particularly their manifestation within the Deep South. Despite evidence of subregional differences rooted in history, neither pathway explains the initial slavery association. We argue that processes tied to the legacy of slavery are a foundational component of black disadvantage and that further examination of this foundation is necessary to stem the tide of recent resegregation.