Integration
Labor Unions and White Racial Politics
Paul Frymer & Jacob Grumbach
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Scholars and political observers point to declining labor unions, on the one hand, and rising white identity politics, on the other, as profound changes in American politics. However, there has been little attention given to the potential feedback between these forces. In this article, we investigate the role of union membership in shaping white racial attitudes. We draw upon research in history and American political development to generate a theory of interracial labor politics, in which union membership reduces racial resentment. Cross‐sectional analyses consistently show that white union members have lower racial resentment and greater support for policies that benefit African Americans. More importantly, our panel analysis suggests that gaining union membership between 2010 and 2016 reduced racial resentment among white workers. The findings highlight the important role of labor unions in mass politics and, more broadly, the importance of organizational membership for political attitudes and behavior.
Labor Unions and White Democratic Partisanship
David Macdonald
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
The Democratic Party’s declining support among white voters is a defining feature of contemporary American politics. Extant research has emphasized factors such as elite polarization and demographic change but has overlooked another important trend, the decades-long decline of labor union membership. This oversight is surprising, given organized labor’s long ties to the Democratic Party. I argue that the concurrent decline of union membership and white support for the Democratic Party is not coincidental, but that labor union affiliation is an important determinant of whites’ partisan allegiances. I test this using several decades of cross-sectional and panel data. I show that union-affiliated whites are more likely to identify as Democrats, a substantively significant relationship that does not appear to be driven by self-selection. Overall, these findings underscore the political consequences of union decline and help us to better understand the drivers of declining white support for the Democratic Party.
A Penny on the Dollar: Racial Inequalities in Wealth among Households with Children
Christine Percheski & Christina Gibson-Davis
Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, June 2020
Abstract:
The dynamics of racial/ethnic wealth inequality among U.S. families with resident children (child households) have been understudied, a major oversight because of wealth’s impact on child development and intergenerational mobility. Using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances (2004–2016), the authors find that wealth gaps between black and white households are larger in, and have grown faster for, child households relative to the general population. In contrast, black-white income gaps for child households have remained largely unchanged. Wealth trends for black and Hispanic child households have diverged, and by 2016, Hispanic child households had more net worth than black child households. Between 2004 and 2016, home ownership rates and home equity levels for black child households decreased, while educational debt increased. In 2016, black child households had just one cent for every dollar held by non-Hispanic white child households. These findings depict the extreme wealth fragility of black child households.
The Franchise, Policing, and Race: Evidence from Arrests Data and the Voting Rights Act
Giovanni Facchini, Brian Knight & Cecilia Testa
NBER Working Paper, July 2020
Abstract:
This paper investigates the relationship between the franchise and law enforcement practices using evidence from the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965. We find that, following the VRA, black arrest rates fell in counties that were both covered by the legislation and had a large number of newly enfranchised black voters. We uncover no corresponding patterns for white arrest rates. The reduction in black arrest rates is driven by less serious offenses, for which police might have more enforcement discretion. Importantly, our results are driven by arrests carried out by sheriffs - who are always elected. While there are no corresponding changes for municipal police chiefs in aggregate, we do find similar patterns in covered counties with elected rather than appointed chiefs. We also show that our findings cannot be rationalized by alternative explanations, such as differences in collective bargaining, changes in the underlying propensity to commit crimes, responses to changes in policing practices, and changes in the suppression of civil right protests. Taken together, these results document that voting rights, when combined with elected, rather than appointed, chief law enforcement officers, can lead to improved treatment of minority groups by police.
Persistence of skin-deep resilience in African American adults
Gene Brody et al.
Health Psychology, forthcoming
Objective: The skin-deep resilience pattern suggests that, for low-socioeconomic-status African American youths, the ability to maintain high self-control and to persist with efforts to succeed may act as a double-edged sword, facilitating academic success and adjustment while undermining physical health. We extend research by following a sample of rural African Americans, asking whether the skin-deep resilience pattern, evident during adolescence, persists into adulthood by increasing susceptibility to metabolic syndrome (MetS) and insulin resistance (IR).
Methods: The sample included 368 11-year-old African Americans, their parents, and their teachers. Parents provided data on family poverty across ages 11–18 years. Teachers provided data on youths’ planful self-control across ages 11–13 years. At age 27 years, participants completed questionnaires about educational attainment and psychological adjustment and provided a fasting blood sample from which MetS and IR were assessed.
Results: Regardless of years spent living in poverty, planful self-control during childhood was associated with college graduation (p < .001) and with low levels of depressive symptoms (p = .016) and antisocial behavior (p = .028). For participants exhibiting high levels of self-control, however, living more years in poverty across adolescence was associated with a greater number of MetS components that met clinical cutoff criteria (p = .018) and greater IR (p = .016) during adulthood.
Who Benefits? Race, Immigration, and Assumptions About Policy
Jake Haselswerdt
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Existing scholarship suggests that attitudes about the real or imagined beneficiaries or targets of public policies shape public opinion about those policies, with racial and ethnic stereotypes driving policy evaluations for many Americans. Despite the importance of these assumptions, we lack strong evidence about how and why people form such assumptions in the first place. In a pre-registered survey experiment, I demonstrate that elements of policy design (e.g., a work requirement) significantly affect the assumptions that individuals make about policy beneficiaries (their race and national origin). These assumptions shape individuals’ evaluations of the policy, conditional on existing attitudes (e.g., racial resentment). Importantly, existing attitudes do not condition the effects at the assumption stage: even those who profess not to believe in racial stereotypes about work ethic still assume that the absence of a work requirement makes a policy more likely to benefit blacks and immigrants.
Racial Capitalism within Public Health: How Occupational Settings Drive COVID-19 Disparities
Elizabeth McClure et al.
American Journal of Epidemiology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Epidemiology of the U.S. COVID-19 outbreak focuses on individuals’ biology and behaviors, despite centrality of occupational environments in the viral spread. This demonstrates collusion between epidemiology and racial capitalism because it obscures structural influences, absolving industries of responsibility for worker safety. In an empirical example, we analyze economic implications of race-based metrics widely used in occupational epidemiology. In the U.S., White adults have better average lung function and worse hearing than Black adults. Both impaired lung function and hearing are criteria for Worker’s compensation, which is ultimately paid by industry. Compensation for respiratory injury is determined using a race-specific algorithm. For hearing, there is no race adjustment. Selective use of race-specific algorithms for workers’ compensation reduces industries’ liability for worker health, illustrating racial capitalism operating within public health. Widespread and unexamined belief in inherent physiological inferiority of Black Americans perpetuates systems that limit industry payouts for workplace injuries. We see a parallel in the epidemiology of COVID-19 disparities. We tell stories of industries implicated in the outbreak and review how they exemplify racial capitalism. We call on public health professionals to: critically evaluate who is served and neglected by data analysis; and center structural determinants of health in etiological evaluation.
The Complexities of Race and Place: Childhood Neighborhood Disadvantage and Adult Incarceration for Whites, Blacks, and Latinos
Steven Elías Alvarado
Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, June 2020
Abstract:
The author uses restricted geocoded tract-level panel data (1986–2014) that span the prison boom and the acceleration of residential segregation in the United States from two cohorts of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1979 and Children and Young Adults) to study whether the association between childhood neighborhood disadvantage and adult incarceration varies by race and ethnicity. Sibling fixed-effects models suggest that exposure to childhood neighborhood disadvantage increases the likelihood of incarceration in adulthood, net of observed and unobserved adjustments. However, the association appears weakest for blacks, especially black boys, compared with whites and Latinos. This suggests a more consistent likelihood of incarceration for blacks across all neighborhood origins. The author discusses potential theoretical explanations, including discrimination in profiling, policing, surveillance, and other prejudicial policies in the criminal justice system that are likely to uniquely affect blacks from all neighborhoods.
Racism Is Not Enough: Minority Coalition Building in San Francisco, Seattle, and Vancouver
Jae Yeon Kim
Studies in American Political Development, forthcoming
Abstract:
Scholars have long argued that the marginalized racial status shared by ethnic minority groups is a strong incentive for mobilization and coalition building in the United States. However, despite their members’ shared racial status as “Orientals,” different types of housing coalitions were formed in the Chinatowns of San Francisco, Seattle, and Vancouver during the 1960s and 1970s. Asian race-based coalitions appeared in San Francisco and Seattle, but not in Vancouver, where a cross-racial coalition was built between the Chinese and southern and eastern Europeans. Drawing on exogenous shocks and process tracing, this article explains how historical legacies — specifically, the political geography of settlement — shaped this divergence. These findings demonstrate how long-term historical analysis offers new insights into the study of minority coalition formation in the United States.