Race through time
The Political Foundations of the Black-White Education Achievement Gap
Michael Hartney & Patrick Flavin
American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
More than 50 years after Brown v. Board, African American students continue to trail their White peers on a variety of important educational indicators. In this article, we investigate the political foundations of the racial "achievement gap" in American education. Using variation in high school graduation rates across the states, we first assess whether state policymakers are attentive to the educational needs of struggling African American students. We find evidence that state policymaking attention to teacher quality - an issue education research shows is essential to improving schooling outcomes for racial minority students - is highly responsive to low graduation rates among White students, but bears no relationship to low graduation rates among African American students. We then probe a possible mechanism behind this unequal responsiveness by examining the factors that motivate White public opinion about education reform and find racial influences there as well. Taken together, we uncover evidence that the persisting achievement gap between White and African American students has distinctively political foundations.
----------------------
Distinctively Black Names in the American Past
Lisa Cook, Trevon Logan & John Parman
NBER Working Paper, February 2013
Abstract:
We document the existence of a distinctive national naming pattern for African Americans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We use census records to identify a set of high-frequency names among African Americans that were unlikely to be held by whites. We confirm the distinctiveness of the names using over five million death certificates from Alabama, Illinois and North Carolina from the early twentieth century. The names we identify in the census records are similarly distinctive in these three independent data sources. Surprisingly, approximately the same percentage of African Americans had "black names" historically as they do today. No name that we identify as a historical black name, however, is a contemporary black name. The literature has assumed that black names are a product of the Civil Rights Movement, yet our results suggest that they are a long-standing cultural norm among African Americans. This is the first evidence that distinctively racialized names existed long before the Civil Rights Era, establishing a new fact in the historical literature.
----------------------
Subjective and Objective Indicators of Racial Progress
Betsey Stevenson & Justin Wolfers
Journal of Legal Studies, June 2012, Pages 459-493
Abstract:
Progress in closing differences in many objective outcomes for blacks relative to whites has slowed, and even worsened, over the past 3 decades. However, over this period the racial gap in happiness has shrunk. In the early 1970s data revealed much lower levels of subjective well-being among blacks relative to whites. Investigating various measures of well-being, we find that the well-being of blacks has increased both absolutely and relative to that of whites. While a racial gap in well-being remains, two-fifths of the gap has closed, and these gains have occurred despite little progress in closing other racial gaps such as those in income, employment, and education. Much of the current racial gap in happiness can be explained by differences in the objective conditions of the lives of black and white Americans. Thus, making further progress will likely require progress in closing racial gaps in objective circumstances.
----------------------
Örn Bodvarsson & Brad Humphreys
Contemporary Economic Policy, July 2013, Pages 604-617
Abstract:
We investigate the possibility that labor market discrimination affects capital. Previous research indicates that discrimination affects wages and employment in labor markets. However, the effects of discrimination on other inputs to production are not known. We develop a model of the optimal capital stock in the presence of customer discrimination and test this model using data on sports facility construction. The empirical evidence suggests that teams in cities with a larger white population and more racial segregation put less capital in place, confirming the predictions of the model about the effect of customer discrimination on capital inputs.
----------------------
The Residential Segregation Patterns of Whites by Socioeconomic Status, 2000-2011
Gregory Sharp & John Iceland
Social Science Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
In light of increasing racial and ethnic diversity, a recent housing crisis, and deep economic recession, arguments pertaining to the role of socioeconomic status (SES) in shaping patterns of racial/ethnic segregation remain salient. Using data from the 2000 decennial census and the 2007-2011 American Community Survey, we provide new evidence on the residential segregation patterns of whites from minorities by SES (income, education, and poverty). Results from our comprehensive analyses indicate that SES matters for the segregation patterns of whites from minorities. In particular, we find that whites as a whole are less segregated from higher-SES minority group members than lower-SES ones. Among whites, those of higher SES are more segregated from blacks and Hispanics as a whole and less segregated from Asians, indicating the importance of SES differentials across racial/ethnic groups in shaping residential patterns. We also find that during the 2000s, white-black segregation remained stable or declined, while whites became more segregated from Hispanics and Asians by all SES indicators. Fixed-effects models indicate that increasing white-minority SES segregation was fueled in part by increases in a metropolitan area's immigrant and elderly populations, minority poverty rate, and home values, while declining segregation was associated with rising education levels and new housing construction.
----------------------
Race-Specific Agglomeration Economies: Social Distance and the Black-White Wage Gap
Elizabeth Ananat, Shihe Fu & Stephen Ross
NBER Working Paper, April 2013
Abstract:
We demonstrate a striking but previously unnoticed relationship between city size and the black-white wage gap, with the gap increasing by 2.5% for every million-person increase in urban population. We then look within cities and document that wages of blacks rise less with agglomeration in the workplace location, measured as employment density per square kilometer, than do white wages. This pattern holds even though our method allows for non-parametric controls for the effects of age, education, and other demographics on wages, for unobserved worker skill as proxied by residential location, and for the return to agglomeration to vary across those demographics, industry, occupation and metropolitan areas. We find that an individual's wage return to employment density rises with the share of workers in their work location who are of their own race. We observe similar patterns for human capital externalities as measured by share workers with a college education. We also find parallel results for firm productivity by employment density and share college-educated using firm racial composition in a sample of manufacturing firms. These findings are consistent with the possibility that blacks, and black-majority firms, receive lower returns to agglomeration because such returns operate within race, and blacks have fewer same-race peers and fewer highly-educated same-race peers at work from whom to enjoy spillovers than do whites. Data on self-reported social networks in the General Social Survey provide further evidence consistent with this mechanism, showing that blacks feel less close to whites than do whites, even when they work exclusively with whites. We conclude that social distance between blacks and whites preventing shared benefits from agglomeration is a significant contributor to overall black-white wage disparities.
----------------------
A theory of perceived discrimination
Tilman Klumpp & Xuejuan Su
Economic Theory, May 2013, Pages 153-180
Abstract:
We develop a model in which individuals compete for a fixed pool of prizes by investing effort in a contest. Individuals belong to two separate and identifiable groups. We say that the contest is discriminatory if a lower share of prizes is reserved for one group than for the other. We show that it can be difficult for an observer to detect the presence or absence of discrimination in the contest, as both regimes can be observationally equivalent. In particular, one group's belief that it is allocated a lower share of prizes than the other group can be consistent with observed data even if no such group quotas actually exist. Conversely, the belief that the contest does not discriminate can be consistent with data when, in fact, discrimination exists. Incorrect beliefs will therefore not be revised, as the contest generates no evidence to the contrary.
----------------------
Housing Tenure and Residential Segregation in Metropolitan America
Samantha Friedman, Hui-shien Tsao & Cheng Chen
Demography, forthcoming
Abstract:
Homeownership, a symbol of the American dream, is one of the primary ways through which families accumulate wealth, particularly for blacks and Hispanics. Surprisingly, no study has explicitly documented the segregation of minority owners and renters from whites. Using data from Census 2000, this study aims to fill this gap. Analyses here reveal that the segregation of black renters relative to whites is significantly lower than the segregation of black owners from whites, controlling for relevant socioeconomic and demographic factors, contrary to the notion that homeownership represents an endpoint in the residential assimilation process. The patterns for Hispanics and Asians conform more to expectations under the spatial assimilation model. The findings here suggest that race and ethnicity continue to be as important in shaping residential segregation as socioeconomic status, and raise concerns about the benefits of homeownership, particularly for blacks.
----------------------
The Vulnerability of Minority Homeowners in the Housing Boom and Bust
Patrick Bayer, Fernando Ferreira & Stephen Ross
NBER Working Paper, May 2013
Abstract:
This paper examines mortgage outcomes for a large, representative sample of individual home purchases and refinances linked to credit scores in seven major US markets in the recent housing boom and bust. Among those with similar credit scores, black and Hispanic homeowners had much higher rates of delinquency and default in the downturn. These differences are not readily explained by the likelihood of receiving a subprime loan or by differential exposure to local shocks in the housing and labor market and are especially pronounced for loans originated near the peak of the boom. Our findings suggest that those black and Hispanic homeowners drawn into the market near the peak were especially vulnerable to adverse economic shocks and raise serious concerns about homeownership as a mechanism for reducing racial disparities in wealth.
----------------------
Kori Stroub & Meredith Richards
American Educational Research Journal, June 2013, Pages 497-531
Abstract:
Considerable attention has been devoted to the resegregation of public schools over the 1990s. No research to date, however, has examined change in school segregation since 2000. Using the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Common Core of Data (CCD), we examine longitudinal trends in racial/ethnic segregation in 350 U.S. metropolitan areas from 1993 to 2009. We find that worsening segregation over the 1990s has given way to a period of modest integration among all racial/ethnic groups since 1998. However, decreases in segregation were smaller in the formerly de jure segregated South and in metropolitan areas with large increases in racial/ethnic diversity. In addition, since 1998, the relative importance of segregation among non-Whites has increased, while the proportion of segregation that lies across district boundaries has stabilized.
----------------------
The Price of Opportunity: Race, Student Loan Debt, and College Achievement
Brandon Jackson & John Reynolds
Sociological Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper examines racial differences in student loan debt and concurrently assesses the potential payoffs and countervailing risks inherent in reliance on loans in a cohort of black and white first-year college students. Using the 1996-2001 Beginning Postsecondary Student study we find that the use of loans results in greater enrollment persistence and higher odds of college completion, especially for black students. However, black students acquire larger amounts of student loan debt and face a higher risk of default than white students. This is in part due to associated racial differences in family socioeconomic status and type of institution attended. We suggest these findings illuminate the dual-sided nature of college loans that makes them an imperfect, but overall positive, tool for reducing educational inequality. On the one hand, student loans reduce educational inequality that otherwise results from disadvantaged students' struggles to pay for college and complete college in a timely fashion. At the same time, the degree to which loans reduce racial inequality is diminished by black students' higher loan amounts, the large number of black students who borrow but do not finish college, and the large racial difference in the odds of defaulting on a loan.
----------------------
Poverty at a Racial Crossroads: Poverty Among Multiracial Children of Single Mothers
Jenifer Bratter & Sarah Damaske
Journal of Marriage and Family, April 2013, Pages 486-502
Abstract:
Although multiracial youth represent a growing segment of children in all American families, we have little information on their well-being within single-mother households. This article examines multiracial children's level of poverty within single-mother families to identify the degree to which they may stand out from their monoracial peers. Using data from the 2006-2008 American Community Survey (3-year estimates), we explore the level of racial disparities in child poverty between monoracial White children and monoracial and multiracial children of color. Fully adjusted multivariate logistic regression analyses (n = 359,588) reveal that nearly all children of color are more likely to be poor than White children. Yet many multiracial children appear to hold an in-between status in which they experience lower rates of poverty than monoracial children of color. The high level of variation across groups suggests that the relationship between race and childhood poverty is more complicated than generally presumed.
----------------------
Racial Heterogeneity and Medicaid Expenditure in the U.S. States: A Longitudinal Analysis
Soomi Lee
Journal of Socio-Economics, August 2013, Pages 28-37
Abstract:
This study investigates the relationship between racial heterogeneity and Medicaid expenditures as a share of state public expenditures in the U.S. states from 1999 to 2010. Extant studies predict that increasing racial heterogeneity reduces the share of expenditure on "productive public goods" such as health and education spending. The relationship, however, has been inadequately examined in the previous research because (1) the use of a cross-section dataset in previous research makes it difficult to draw a causal inference, (2) previous research does not sufficiently discuss the magnitude of the effect, (3) it uses aggregate expenditure data which do not distinguish between programs that benefit targeted groups vs. the general public, and (4) previous research does not take political representation bias into consideration. My paper offers the first longitudinal analysis to examine a causal effect of racial heterogeneity on Medicaid expenditure at the U.S. state level. Using state panel data from 2000 to 2010, I find that racial heterogeneity has a negative and statistically significant effect on Medicaid's share within a state's budget. The fiscal impact is also economically significant.
----------------------
The Origins and Persistence of Black-White Differences in Women's Labor Force Participation
Leah Platt Boustan & William Collins
NBER Working Paper, May 2013
Abstract:
Black women were more likely than white women to participate in the labor force from 1870 until at least 1980 and to hold jobs in agriculture or manufacturing. Differences in observables cannot account for most of this racial gap in labor force participation for the 100 years after Emancipation. The unexplained racial gap may be due to racial differences in stigma associated with women's work, which Goldin (1977) suggested could be traced to cultural norms rooted in slavery. In both nineteenth and twentieth century data, we find evidence of inter-generation transmission of labor force participation from mother to daughter, which is consistent with the role of cultural norms.
----------------------
Chronic physical health conditions among children of different racial/ethnic backgrounds
P. Kitsantas et al.
Public Health, forthcoming
Objectives: It is estimated that 20% of children in the USA are affected by at least one chronic disease. Although the burden of chronic conditions is greater for minority populations of children, research that has explored the prevalence and risk factors of chronic disease across different racial/ethnic groups is scarce. The aim of this study was to examine racial/ethnic disparities in the prevalence rates of common physical, chronic diseases in White, Black and Hispanic children; and assess the effect of several factors on the risk of having a chronic disease.
Methods: Using the 2007 National Survey of Childrens Health, prevalence estimates were calculated for asthma, hearing impairment, visual impairment, joint/bone/muscle problems, brain injury and other illnesses for each racial/ethnic group. Multivariate logistic regression analyses were conducted to examine the effects of several risk factors on the risk of each of these health conditions.
Results: The findings show that the prevalence for all health conditions was significantly higher (25.3%) among Black children than White (19.8%) and Hispanic (18.6%) children. Furthermore, 19.5% of Black children have had or currently have asthma compared with 12.2% of White and Hispanic children. More Black and Hispanic children were covered by public health insurance, while 19% of Hispanic children were currently uninsured. White children whose mothers had a health problem were associated with asthma, hearing impairment, visual impairment and joint/bone/muscle problems, while Black children were more likely to report asthma and Hispanics reported visual impairment and joint/bone muscle problems. Hispanic children who were living in poverty or were uninsured were at lower risk for any chronic disease. Regardless of race/ethnicity, children living in a single-parent household were more likely to be associated with any health condition.
Conclusions: This study provides evidence that racial/ethnic disparities in chronic physical conditions and health care among US children are extensive. It underscores that uninsured children who do not have access to the healthcare system are not being screened for chronic diseases, or are not obtaining medical care for such health problems. Healthcare providers should educate families about prevention measures and community services that might be able to assist them in improving the health of their children.
----------------------
Julia Goodman et al.
Social Science & Medicine, July 2013, Pages 83-89
Abstract:
Natural selection conserves mechanisms allowing women to spontaneously abort gestations least likely to yield fit offspring. Small gestational size has been proposed as an indicator of fitness observable by maternal biology. Previous research suggests that exposure to ambient stress in utero results in more "culling" of small fetuses and therefore lower rates of small-for-gestational-age (SGA). However, African American women persistently have higher rates of SGA than non-Hispanic white women, despite experiencing more ambient stress. This paper tests whether attenuation of the stress response among highly stressed African American women, as suggested by the weathering hypothesis, may help to explain this apparent inconsistency. We apply time-series modeling to over 2 million African American and non-Hispanic white male term births in California over the period of January 1989 through December 2010. We test for the parabolic (i.e., "U" shaped) relationship, implied by an attenuated stress response, between unusually strong labor market contraction and the rate of SGA among African American term male infants, and a linear relationship among non-Hispanic whites. We find the hypothesized parabolic relationship among term male African American infants. As expected, we find a linear relationship between unexpected layoffs and the rate of SGA among term male non-Hispanic whites. These results are robust to sensitivity analyses. These results may help to explain the high rates of SGA among term male African American infants, despite greater maternal exposure to ambient stress during pregnancy.
----------------------
The Evolution of Gender Employment Rate Differentials within Racial Groups in the United States
Candace Hamilton Hester, Chris Meyer & Steven Raphael
Journal of Legal Studies, June 2012, Pages 385-418
Abstract:
This paper analyzes changes in gender employment rate (GER) differentials for whites and blacks in the United States from 1950 to 2008. We document the evolution of the GER gap, which narrows considerably within both racial groups and turns slightly negative for blacks. We document the changing employment levels that drive these patterns as well as compositional shifts in each gender-race population. Among whites, nearly all of the narrowing is attributable to increasing employment rates among women. For blacks, a large component of the narrowing is explained by declining employment rates among men. Black employment rates decline precipitously for the least educated and post-1980 are reduced further by increased institutionalization and declining marriage rates. In an analysis of state-level interdecade changes in female outcomes, we find that a worsening of black male employment prospects is associated with an increase in female education and a decline in marriage and fertility rates.
----------------------
Interrogating Claims of Progress for Black Women Since 1970
Enobong Hannah Branch & Caroline Hanley
Journal of Black Studies, March 2013, Pages 203-226
Abstract:
Utilizing a comparative and historical perspective, we interrogate claims of progress focusing on low-wage Black and White women workers from 1970 to 2000. We begin by offering a historical perspective on occupational segregation by race and gender, which informs the evaluation of low-wage Black women's occupational progress. We then situate Black women's occupational attainment since 1970 within the larger context of labor market restructuring, which fundamentally changed the occupational landscape. We find no evidence that industrial and occupational upgrading among low-wage Black women, particularly in the South, from 1970 to 2000 narrowed the racial wage gap among low-wage women. The wage gap between low-wage Black and White women declined because of larger changes in the American economy, which reduced the quality of those jobs, eroding the wage advantage that White women in the white-collar service sector once enjoyed.
----------------------
Embracing Isolation: Chinese American Geographic Redistribution during the Exclusion Era, 1882-1943
Susan Carter
University of California Working Paper, February 2013
Abstract:
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the first race-based immigration restriction in American history. It prohibited the entry of Chinese laborers and legitimated a host of new discriminatory policies and practices that circumscribed the activities of Chinese Americans residing in the country. This paper explores the geographic responses of Chinese Americans to the harsh new reality ushered in by the law. Using data from the IPUMS and ICPSR digitized census files, hand-coded entries from published census volumes, and Exclusion-era Chinese case files, this paper describes and analyzes for the first time the forces that shaped the geographic redistribution of the Chinese American population in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. I reject the standard view that Chinese Americans were "confined to Chinatowns" during Exclusion and document instead their wide geographic dispersion. Chinatowns in the West shrank. This was true of those in big cities like San Francisco, Portland, and Oakland but also of those in smaller places such as Stockton, Sacramento, and Butte. Many Chinese returned home. Others left for cities in the Northeast, Midwest, and South. While new Chinatowns outside the West were established, I show that much of the migratory flow out of the West was directed toward smaller cities without Chinatowns. I model Chinese American locational choices in terms of three motivations: a desire to live in their own ethnic communities, the need for remunerative employment, and the contrasting preferences of solitary male sojourners and co-habiting families raising children. Multivariate regression analysis suggests that the community motive played a strong positive role throughout the Exclusion Era, with larger Chinatowns especially attractive, but, during the period of Chinese population decline, its influence on geographic distribution was outweighed by the employment motive. Discrimination coupled with good access to capital and labor led the Chinese to embrace laundry and restaurant service. Chinese Americans dispersed throughout the country in an effort to locate near potential customers, often becoming the only person of their race living in their community. Success on Gold Mountain came at the price of an unparalleled degree of social isolation. Beginning in the 1920s, the recovery of the Chinese American population improved the economic viability of Chinatowns and offset the centrifugal effect of laundry and restaurant employment.
----------------------
Celeste Carruthers & Marianne Wanamaker
Journal of Public Economics, May 2013, Pages 53-67
Abstract:
Long-run labor market inequities are frequently attributed to disparities in primary and secondary school quality, and philanthropists often resort to targeted and tightly conditioned gifts to address these quality disparities. We match data on the Rosenwald Schools Program, an early 20th century initiative aimed at the Southern black-white school quality gap, to newly assembled data on local school districts and measure the impact of Rosenwald gifts on African-American public school resources. Although these gifts increased contemporaneous expenditures on African-American schools, results show that they yielded no lasting change in multiple school quality proxies. Further, because Rosenwald funds were diverted or implicitly matched to favor white schools, we find no evidence that the Fund reduced the black-white gap in superficial school quality. We demonstrate, however, that overall black public education expenditures in this era had a steeper marginal effect on black attendance and literacy measures than white public expenditures had on white outcome measures, which helps to explain why the Rosenwald program led to meaningful human capital gains for black, but not white, individuals despite its failure to impact relative school quality.
----------------------
Citizen Control: Race at the Welfare Office
Rose Ernst, Linda Nguyen & Kamilah Taylor
Social Science Quarterly, forthcoming
Objectives: Individual relationships to the state are shaped through encounters with a variety of institutions. Little scholarly attention has been devoted to how citizenship is shaped through everyday interactions with the social service arm of the state through local "welfare" offices. In Washington State, one-third of all residents are served by the state's primary social service agency. Does this state agency send different messages about citizenship to individuals according to race? We examine this question through encounters of individuals with front-line welfare office staff.
Methods: Using a systematic audit method, we collected data from 54 Community Service Offices in Washington State to explore messages sent to individuals.
Results: We find consistent relationships between race and the quantity of information received and the quality of the interaction with the representatives of the state.
Conclusions: Our findings provide evidence that the state reinforces notions of both belonging and marginalization through patterns of racialized encounters with the state.
----------------------
Racial disparities in travel time to radiotherapy facilities in the Atlanta metropolitan area
Lucy Peipins et al.
Social Science & Medicine, July 2013, Pages 32-38
Abstract:
Low-income women with breast cancer who rely on public transportation may have difficulty in completing recommended radiation therapy due to inadequate access to radiation facilities. Using a geographic information system (GIS) and network analysis we quantified spatial accessibility to radiation treatment facilities in the Atlanta, Georgia metropolitan area. We built a transportation network model that included all bus and rail routes and stops, system transfers and walk and wait times experienced by public transportation system travelers. We also built a private transportation network to model travel times by automobile. We calculated travel times to radiation therapy facilities via public and private transportation from a population-weighted center of each census tract located within the study area. We broadly grouped the tracts by low, medium and high household access to a private vehicle and by race. Facility service areas were created using the network model to map the extent of areal coverage at specified travel times (30, 45 and 60 minutes) for both public and private modes of transportation. The median public transportation travel time to the nearest radiotherapy facility was 56 minutes vs. approximately 8 minutes by private vehicle. We found that majority black census tracts had longer public transportation travel times than white tracts across all categories of vehicle access and that 39% of women in the study area had longer than one hour of public transportation travel time to the nearest facility. In addition, service area analyses identified locations where the travel time barriers are the greatest. Spatial inaccessibility, especially for women who must use public transportation, is one of the barriers they face in receiving optimal treatment.
----------------------
Chenoa Flippen
American Journal of Sociology, March 2013, Pages 1161-1198
Abstract:
While the link between geographic and social mobility has long been a cornerstone of sociological approaches to migration, recent research has cast doubt on the economic returns to internal U.S. migration. Moreover, important racial disparities in migration patterns remain poorly understood. Drawing on data from the 2000 census, the author reappraises the link between migration and social mobility by taking relative deprivation into consideration. She examines the association between migration, disaggregated by region of origin and destination, and absolute and relative earnings and occupational prestige, separately by race. Findings lend new insight into the theoretical and stratification implications of growing racial disparities in migration patterns; while both blacks and whites who move north-south generally average lower absolute incomes than their stationary northern peers, they enjoy significantly higher relative social positions. Moreover, the relative "gains" to migration are substantially larger for blacks than for whites. The opposite patterns obtain for south-north migration.
----------------------
Matthew Hunt, Larry Hunt & William Falk
Social Science Quarterly, forthcoming
Objective: We examine (1) whether black migration trends from the final few decades of the 20th century continued during the first decade of the 21st century, (2) whether the black southern migration stream continues to be demographically distinctive, and (3) whether incorporating subjective/motivational factors into our models advances our understanding of race and interregional migration.
Methods: Using data from the 2000 to 2010 Current Population Surveys, we employ descriptive and inferential statistics to (1) map recent patterns of interregional migration in the United States by race and (2) estimate the effects of race, other sociodemographics, and subjective/motivational factors on people's propensity to migrate to the United States South.
Results: We find that the rate of black migration to the South continues to exceed that of whites, and that black migrants differ from their white counterparts both demographically and motivationally. We also observe selected gender differences within the black southern migration stream.
Conclusions: Our results underscore the need for more research on race, gender, and interregional migration in the United States. We suggest directions for such work, with particular focus on possibilities for further inquiry when 2010 census materials become more widely available.
----------------------
Apology and Redress: Escaping the Dustbin of History in the Postsegregationist South
Gary Alan Fine
Social Forces, forthcoming
Abstract:
How at moments of dramatic change and a shifting social context do political actors alter their public identities? Put differently, how do political figures respond when positions with which they have been closely identified are no longer morally and electorally defensible and must be altered? Responses to identity challenge within institutional spheres require an expansion of the theory of accounts to an approach that examines shifts in cultural fields. Those challenged must signal adherence to newly claimed values. The standard view of accounts examines interpersonal justifications outside of institutional pressures, downplaying social location. Extending a theory of accounts to political actors requires recognizing appeals to audiences and distribution of resources. In the political arena the presentation of accounts carries reputational dangers. Presenting excuses, politicians deny agency, placing themselves at jeopardy as incompetent. Justifications require a credulous audience that overlooks possible insincerity. As a result, other strategies are necessary. Political actors rely on apologies or redress to demonstrate a revised self to stakeholders, strategies based on position, resources and audience. To analyze the realignment of reputation in unsettled times, I examine the postsegregation careers of Governor George Wallace of Alabama and Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. Both moved from being icons of segregation to (claimed) devotees of racial equality, but because of their political location they moved in different ways. Given their context, Wallace apologized, while Thurmond provided redress to offended communities.
----------------------
April Copes
Journal of Communication Inquiry, January 2013, Pages 26-44
Abstract:
This study assessed the inclusiveness of New York Times coverage prior to the 2012 presidential election as it relates to the lived experiences of African American voters. The study specifically asked, does the newspaper include substantive information about African American voters, the most pressing social justice concerns facing Black communities, and African American voices? The sampled news discourse is compared to the defining issues for the 21st century identified by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP): racial disparity, economic disparity, health care disparity, education disparity, voter empowerment, and criminal justice. Findings reveal a paucity of coverage about African American voters in 2011. Although most of the articles discussed at least one social justice issue, when the scant coverage is considered, it becomes clear that the attention these issues received was severely lacking. African American voice was also seriously underrepresented.