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.

In 1989, Kimberlé Crenshaw published Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics, an article that drew explicitly on Black feminist criticism, and challenged three prevailing frameworks: 1) the male-centered nature of antiracist politics, which privileged the experiences of heterosexual Black men; 2) the White-centered nature of feminist theorizing, which privileged the experiences of heterosexual White women; and 3) the “single-axis”/sex or race-centered nature of antidiscrimination regimes, which privileged the experiences of heterosexual White women and Black men. Crenshaw demonstrated how people within the same social group (e.g., African Americans) are differentially vulnerable to discrimination as a result of other intersecting axes of disadvantage, such as gender, class, or sexual orientation.

This essay builds on that insight by articulating a performative conceptualization of race. It assumes that a judge is sympathetic to intersectionality and thus recognizes that Black women are often disadvantaged based on the intersection of their race and sex, among other social factors. This essay asks: How is that judge likely to respond to a case in which a firm promotes four Black women but not the fifth? The judge could conclude that there is no discrimination because the firm promoted four people (Black women) with the same intersectional identity as the fifth (a Black woman). We argue that this evidentiary backdrop should not preclude a finding of discrimination. It is plausible that our hypothetical firm utilized racially associated ways of being—performative criteria (self presentation, accent, demeanor, conformity, dress, and hair style)—to differentiate among and between the Black women. The firm might have drawn an intra-group, or intra-intersectional, line between the fifth Black women and the other four based on the view that the fifth Black woman is “too Black.” We describe the ease with which institutions can draw such lines and explain why doing so might constitute impermissible discrimination. Our aim is to broaden the conceptual terms upon which we frame both social categories and discrimination.

In this paper, we apply Omi and Winant's theory of racial formation to understand how a new racial category of “Latino” is being created within Atlanta, a city firmly entrenched in a Black/White binary of race. Comparing Dominicans and Guatemalans in the Atlanta metro area, we show how two processes are “racializing” Latinos: 1) the homogenization of Latinos into a single “race” through state laws and policies and 2) the diversified understandings of and responses to race and racial categorization among Latinos based on their national origin and ethnicity and the specific Atlanta context. We argue that in moving beyond the Black/White binary, state laws that racialize Latinos create a two-dimensional category, with a homogenized “Latino” category as one axis and an illegal/legal distinction as the second axis. The meanings attached to “race” and the consequences that Latinos experience from racialization depend upon their perceived or actual legal status.

This article examines the historical evolution of policing in America with a focus on race. Specifically, it is argued that racial bias has deep roots in American policing, and reforms in policing and American society have not eliminated the detrimental experiences of Blacks who encounter the police. Historical information and contemporary empirical research indicate that, even when legal and other factors are equal, Blacks continue to experience the coercive and lethal aspects of policing relative to their non-Black counterparts.

This article examines how a nonprofit organization prepares low-income students of diverse racial backgrounds to enter elite private high schools in the fall of the ninth grade. Combining ethnographic fieldwork completed during the program with follow-up interviews with ten students after their first semester at boarding school, this article addresses how students interact with and integrate into wealthy, predominantly White schools in an attempt to gain social mobility. Looking at how students interpret their surroundings, the article argues that students are trained to view themselves as “diversifiers” in order to successfully adapt to their new schools. In this role, students perceive themselves as especially serious and motivated students, and their elite peers as naïve, and find satisfaction in teaching others how to interact with people from different class and racial backgrounds. The paper concludes by considering the ramifications of the diversifier concept on efforts to diversify elite institutions and proposes further possible research sites where the concept may be applicable.

Racism reproduces through children. Racial bias is acquired early, and like many early-acquired predilections it is tenaciously resistant to counterevidence. Much of the institutional struggle against racism focuses on children, working to change their attitudes and judgments by addressing what children supposedly have come to know and believe about race. Yet much of what lay folk and educators alike imagine about children's knowledge of race and how they have come to acquire it is inaccurate. This essay is concerned to identify these inaccuracies, present evidence that challenges them, and briefly consider why they—like racialist thinking itself—are so tenaciously held and resistant to counterevidence.

“Black male exceptionalism” is the premise that African American men fare more poorly than any other group in the United States. The discourse of Black male exceptionalism presents African American men as an “endangered species.” Some government agencies, foundations, and activists have responded by creating “Black male achievement” programs. There are almost no corresponding “Black female achievement” programs. Yet empirical data does not support the claim that Black males are burdened more than Black females. Without attention to intersectionality, Black male achievement programs risk obscuring Black females and advancing patriarchal values. Black male achievement programs also risk reinforcing stereotypes that African American males are violent and dangerous. An intersectional approach would create space for Black male focused interventions, but require parity for Black female programs.

Response to Hurricane Katrina and public commentary by high-profile individuals has made race a focus in the media and brought racial inequality to the attention of people in the United States. Analyzing responses to an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, I find that, even after this very public event that brought race to the forefront in the U.S., people relied on the ideologies of meritocracy and color blindness to rationalize inequality. Findings of how the myth of meritocracy is utilized, along with how people argue against it, can be used to keep race at the forefront of the nation's attention while furthering discussions of inequality. The academic community is challenged to keep the voices of alternative ideologies in the spotlight and to use the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina to create change.

This paper compares the identity-formation processes of Latino students in three different college contexts (a liberal arts college, a research university, and a regional public university). Drawing on ethnographic observations, in-depth interviews, and surveys of members of Latino student organizations, I chart the distinct ways in which Latino students interact with one another and arrive at particular ethnic identities on different campuses. By applying ethnoracialization theory to mesolevel settings, I examine how students respond to external ascription as they co-construct and negotiate their ethnic-racial understandings. I identify three different patterns by which students deploy panethnic boundaries, specifically, as they adopt and define identity labels: inclusive Latino identification signifying solidarity above all, qualified Latino identification mediated through specific organizational membership, and the rejection of panethnic identities. I consider how the organizational context of each campus provides a distinct racial climate that mediates student interactions and potentially shapes the disparate identity outcomes that result. The findings suggest that, beyond providing academic experiences, colleges also provide Latino students with disparate lessons regarding who they are and where they fit in the ethnoracial hierarchy.

Has Barack Obama's success transformed the racial divide? Did he somehow transcend or help bring to an end centuries of racial division in the United States? Did he deliberately run a strategically race-neutral, race-evading campaign? Did his race and ingrained American racism constrain the reach of his success? Have we arrived at that postracial moment that has long been the stuff of dreams and high oratory? Or was the outcome of the 2008 presidential election driven entirely by nonracial factors, such as a weak Republican ticket, an incumbent party saddled with defending an unpopular war, and a worsening economic crisis? It is at once too simple and yet entirely appropriate to say that the answers to these questions are, in a phrase, complicated matters. These complexities can, however, be brought into sharper focus.

Although there is little debate that Census data reveal declines in standard measures of segregation over the past several decades, depending on who you ask, racial residential segregation is either just about gone or is stubbornly persistent. In this study, we draw attention to how the murkiness in the conceptualization of what has replaced ‘segregation’ and the related question of what integration is, contributes to this disagreement. Through an analysis of attitudes toward racially integrated neighborhoods, we demonstrate the pitfalls of our lack of consistency and clarity about the conceptual and operational definition of integration. Our analysis reveals the diversity of attitudes toward integrated communities—depending on who is asked, and what kind of integration is considered—and points to a fragility of commitment to the ideals of integration. We do this by using an innovative survey dataset that includes both open and closed-ended questions asked of a large probability sample of Whites, African Americans, and Latinos living in the Chicago metropolitan area. The survey asked individuals to describe their ideal neighborhood racial/ethnic composition and explain why it was ideal; they were then asked to describe (and explain) their least desired neighborhood racial/ethnic composition. Juxtaposing the results, we reveal that integration is both enthusiastically endorsed and much maligned—even within the same person—and that whether it is good or bad very much depends on the type of integration. We argue that appreciating the diversity of integration attitudes is critical if we are to develop a more nuanced understanding of future patterns of residential stratification in our increasingly diverse nation.

Hurricane Katrina, which hit the Central Gulf Coast in August 2005, was undoubtedly one of the worst natural disasters to strike the United States in the age of round-the-clock media journalism. Television coverage of Hurricane Katrina brought to the forefront the costs of disadvantage along racial and class lines. Needless to say, the victims left behind were disproportionately African American, elderly, and impoverished residents of the area. While the focus of media discussions centered around whether African Americans were abandoned by governmental agencies or if they were to blame for not heeding the call to evacuate, there was a complete absence of coverage and discussion of Hispanic and Asian American residents of the area, who are also disproportionately poor and many of whom lacked English skills to navigate the little help available to residents. This essay briefly discusses the few newspaper articles that examined these populations; Hispanic and Asian American journalists wrote almost all of these articles. I then examine how the lack of attention to these populations shapes our common understandings of race and why this may be problematic both in the United States and in a global environment.

This paper examined the interface between “racial” and national identity from the perspective of two competing theoretical frameworks: the ideological asymmetry hypothesis and the thesis of Iberian Exceptionalism. In contrast to previous results found in the United States and Israel, use of survey data from Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba showed some support for both theoretical positions. Consistent with the asymmetry thesis, there was strong and consistent evidence of racial hierarchy within all three Caribbean nations. However, contradicting the asymmetry hypothesis and more in line with the Iberian Exceptionalism perspective, there was a general tendency for all “races” to be equally attached to the nation in both the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. Somewhat unexpectedly, Cuban Blacks tended to be slightly more positively attached to the nation than Cuban Whites. These results suggest that the precise interface between racial and national identity will be acutely influenced by the specific socio-political context within each nation.

In the 2008 presidential primaries, Barack Obama seemed to have a problem connecting with Asian American voters, as he lost heavily to Hillary Clinton in states such as California and New Jersey. Many speculated that race-based considerations played a significant role in Asian Americans' overwhelming support for Clinton over Obama, with conjectures built on a limited set of aggregate exit poll data from three states. Race may also have accounted for the high proportion of Asian Americans who in polls said they were undecided heading into the November election. In this article, we analyze the importance of race-based considerations in the Asian American vote, after controlling for other factors such as partisanship, issue preferences, age, and gender. We rely on the National Asian American Survey, a large-scale telephone survey of Asian American voters conducted mostly in the fall of 2008, with interviews in eight languages and with sizable numbers of respondents from the six largest national-origin groups. We find that race-based considerations do indeed help explain the Asian American vote in 2008. Respondents who failed to see political commonality between Asian Americans and Blacks were less likely to vote for Obama in the primary, although other factors, such as age and gender, played a more significant role. Finally, the role of race-based considerations paled in comparison to party identification and issue preferences in the general election, suggesting that election contexts can play an important role in shaping whether or not race is relevant to vote choice.

This article provides a thematic overview of a subset of controversial officer involved shootings that have occurred in Denver, Colorado during a period of thirty years (1983-2012). Determining whether a shooting was legally justified involved multiple participants, including local, national, and international representatives. The primary stakeholders were City and County District Attorneys regarding whether to file criminal charges against the officer, and Managers of Safety for whether officers acted within police departmental policy. Although most cases were processed without conflict, a small number were challenged by members of the community based on thematic reasons of shooting individuals who had not committed a crime, violating continuum of force standards, and entrusting law enforcement officers with the power to use deadly force both off-duty and while working secondary jobs. Despite outcome legitimacy vested in a small number of public officials, community members often reported a lack of justice and accountability. They struggled to get public officials to take notice and implement systematic change. Reviewing controversial shootings highlights the multiple issues involved in protecting law enforcement officers from encountering criminal charges, and in essence the procurement of colonial control. Critical Race Theory (interest convergence and storytelling), Social Dominance Theory, along with the historical framework of W. E. B. Du Bois, were utilized to explore a number of officer-involved shootings that continue to produce disparate outcomes by race, class, and gender.

Exciting changes are happening in criminal jurisdiction in Indian country at the national level. Due in large part to activism on the part of Native women, Congress has attempted to improve criminal justice on tribal lands. The reforms do not go far enough, however, and many of the recent legal changes have not yet been challenged in the federal courts. This article will preview many of the legal issues likely to ignite a firestorm of litigation and lobbying around issues of crime in Indian country. This article will also wrestle with the difficult question of whether tribal nations should adopt or sustain the typical carceral law and order model used by Anglo-American governments. In an effort to take advantage of the changes in federal law, tribal nations are explicitly required to comply with certain Anglo-American norms. The risks and rewards of such adherence will also be explored.

This article sets forth four modalities of the relationship between members of marginalized communities and the criminal justice system: subordination, consumption, resistance, and transformation. These modalities attempt to break out of traditional ways of thinking about community members’ formal roles in the system—defendants, witnesses, victims, judges, prosecutors, police officers, correctional officers, and the indeterminate but oft-invoked “community.” Instead, these modalities are fluid and situational. This article also calls for new research, scholarship, and advocacy that takes seriously how members of communities that the criminal legal system most deeply and directly affects engage in these fluid and situational modalities. Attention to the complexity of “community” is essential to creating lasting change in social systems of blame and punishment.

In recent years, there has been a surge of discussion, debate, and research on the topic of implicit bias. Implicit bias has become the go-to form of racial bias that many academics, practitioners, and policy makers have identified as important and timely to study (Eberhardt et al., 2004; Levinson and Smith, 2017). Interventions to address implicit racial bias in policing have been particularly popular (Fridell 2008). Arguably, combatting implicit racial bias presents itself as a tool for protecting civil rights. This essay examines the emergence of the implicit bias paradigm as a way to address racial bias in justice system outcomes. The first part provides an overview of implicit bias, including how it is defined, how it is measured, and how it impacts the justice system. The second part examines the term “implicit bias.” This section assesses implicit bias as a social problem and considers whether the label illuminates or obscures the reality of racial bias in the criminal justice system. The discussion considers whether “implicit bias” is viewed as a more appealing approach for dealing with racial bias because it does not assign racial blame. The third part considers the contours of the relationship between implicit bias and explicit bias. The discussion highlights the interconnectedness between the two forms of racial bias. Is the implicit bias approach a signal of racial retrenchment? The final section considers how elementary and secondary education could be used as a proactive strategy for addressing implicit racial bias.

White Americans have long resisted the idea of reparations to the descendants of slaves. We examine the psychological basis of such resistance, primarily testing the possibility that resistance may be a function of Whites' perception of the ongoing cost of being Black. White participants (n = 958) across twelve independent samples (varying in age, student status, and geographic location) were asked variations of the question: How much should you be paid to continue to live the remainder of your life as a Black person? Participants generally required low median amounts, less than $10,000, to make the race change, whereas they requested high amounts, $1,000,000, to give up television. To the extent that larger amounts were requested, support for reparations also increased. Attempts to educate participants about Black cost/White privilege had negligible effects on assessments of the cost of being Black and support for reparations. Together, these results suggest that White resistance to reparations for Black Americans stems from fundamental biases in estimating the true cost of being Black. The implications of our findings for color-blind and multiculturalist conceptual approaches are discussed.This work was facilitated by a postdoctoral fellowship to the first author from the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University. In addition, we are greatly indebted to Hal Arkes for comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript.