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In this essay, I reflect upon my experiences as a student, faculty member, and editor. I argue that microaggressions and macroaggressions, in classrooms and conference rooms, facilitate academic turning points—moments and experiences that turn underrepresented scholars away from academia as students, faculty, and staff in departments, centers, and institutions of higher learning. In what follows, I reflect on three moments when my career path almost diverged from its current position and trajectory, and from these experiences, I distill concrete recommendations for administrators, editors, faculty, and students on how to cultivate academic environments that enable underrepresented scholars to thrive in the academy.

Bryan L. Sykes and Meghan Ballard on racial justice acts.

In this article we examine the link between family complexity—measured by noncustodial parenthood and multiple-partner fertility—and incarceration. In 2012, close to 2.6 million children, or roughly one in twenty-five minors, had a parent in jail or prison. The risk of having a parent currently or ever incarcerated is disproportionately concentrated among black children and children of high school dropouts, many of whom are noncustodial parents. Variation in question wording, differences in length of exposure to parental incarceration, and the measurement of residential parenthood in household-based sample surveys converge to produce different estimates of race and class inequality in having a parent currently or ever incarcerated, when compared to similar estimates of parental incarceration from inmate surveys. Drawing on data from multiple sources and the development of a new method for the estimation of multiple-partner fertility among inmates, we consider how race and class inequality in parental incarceration may contribute to family complexity and the reproduction of childhood disadvantage.

The military is a major state provider of employment, occupational training, and educational subsidies. Yet military downsizing and its increased selectivity during penal expansion may have cleaved off employment opportunities for disadvantaged men. We show how institutional castling—the shifting prominence of competing institutions in the lives of specific demographic groups—has affected the underlying risk of military employment and penal confinement. Black veterans who have dropped out of high school are less likely to be incarcerated than their nonveteran counterparts, and declines in the employment rates of military servicemembers with less than a high school education are associated with large increases in incarceration rates. The military's critical role in providing institutional protection from the penal system has eroded for young, undereducated African American men.

Research shows that prison inmates have a higher risk of contracting HIV than the general population, which prompts measures aimed at diagnosis, quarantine, and treatment. Research has also linked released inmates to an increase in the HIV incidence rate of communities. The authors explore the disjuncture between institutional policies and potential community outcomes by evaluating health assessments of inmates before and during prison admission. The authors argue that the penal institution is an active agent in structuring and re-creating health inequalities within prisons, thereby exacerbating existing community health inequities when inmates are released. Using data from the 2002 Survey of Inmates in Local Jails and the 2004 Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Prisons, the authors find significant racial, educational, and marital inequalities in health testing and test results. These inequalities vary across types of institutional testing policies and inmate cohorts, with later admission cohorts being less likely to receive HIV tests and future release cohorts having a higher likelihood of being HIV-positive.

Research shows that prison inmates have a higher risk of contracting HIV than the general population, which prompts measures aimed at diagnosis, quarantine, and treatment. Research has also linked released inmates to an increase in the HIV incidence rate of communities. The authors explore the disjuncture between institutional policies and potential community outcomes by evaluating health assessments of inmates before and during prison admission. The authors argue that the penal institution is an active agent in structuring and re-creating health inequalities within prisons, thereby exacerbating existing community health inequities when inmates are released. Using data from the 2002 Survey of Inmates in Local Jails and the 2004 Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Prisons, the authors find significant racial, educational, and marital inequalities in health testing and test results. These inequalities vary across types of institutional testing policies and inmate cohorts, with later admission cohorts being less likely to receive HIV tests and future release cohorts having a higher likelihood of being HIV-positive. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright The American Academy of Political and Social Science.]

This article examines how the rise in incarceration and its disproportionate concentration among low-skill, young African American men influences estimates of educational attainment in the United States. We focus on high school graduation rates and the persistent gap in attainment that exists between young black and white Americans. Although official statistics show a declining racial gap in high school dropout in recent years, conventional data sources exclude the incarcerated population from sample data. We show how those exclusions underestimate the extent of racial inequality in high school graduation and underestimate the dropout rate among young black men by as much as 40 percent. America's prisons and jails have become repositories for high school dropouts, thereby obscuring the degree of disadvantage faced by black men in the contemporary United States and the relative competitiveness of the U.S. workforce. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright The American Academy of Political and Social Science.]

This article examines how the rise in incarceration and its disproportionate concentration among low-skill, young African American men influences estimates of educational attainment in the United States. We focus on high school graduation rates and the persistent gap in attainment that exists between young black and white Americans. Although official statistics show a declining racial gap in high school dropout in recent years, conventional data sources exclude the incarcerated population from sample data. We show how those exclusions underestimate the extent of racial inequality in high school graduation and underestimate the dropout rate among young black men by as much as 40 percent. America's prisons and jails have become repositories for high school dropouts, thereby obscuring the degree of disadvantage faced by black men in the contemporary United States and the relative competitiveness of the U.S. workforce.

Educational attainment is a key predictor of potential contact with the criminal justice system. A growing body of literature implicates social background and parental incarceration as factors that affect the educational, emotional, and behavioral development of children. Wilson argues that the social isolation of the underclass in urban cities prevents youth from being exposed to mainstream individuals who serve as positive role models, thereby solidifying inequality among the socially disadvantaged. This article draws upon a new, nationally representative data set to assess racial differences in informal mentorship among adolescents. We investigate how mentoring affects academic engagement and self-control among disadvantaged youth who have experienced parental incarceration. Using propensity score-matching methods, findings indicate persistent racial differences in the likelihood of having an informal mentor after controlling for measures of neighborhood disorder, social institutions, and social cohesion. Results show that informal mentoring is associated with increased self-control for non-White children who have never had a parent incarcerated but not for Latino youth who have had a parent behind bars. However, informal mentoring has no measurable effect on the academic engagement of adolescents exposed and unexposed to parental incarceration.