Somewhere between Jim Crow & Post-Racialism: … · Somewhere between Jim Crow & Post-Racialism Dædalus, the Journal ofthe American Academy of Arts & Sciences. political science,

Somewhere between Jim Crow & Post-Racialism: Reflections on the Racial Divide in America Today

Lawrence D. Bobo

© 2011 by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences

LAWRENCED. BOBO, a Fellowof the American Academy since2006, is the W.E.B. Du Bois Pro-fessor of the Social Sciences atHarvard University and a found-ing editor of the Du Bois Review.His publications include RacializedPolitics: The Debate about Racism inAmerica (with David O. Sears andJames Sidanius, 2000), Urban In-equality: Evidence from Four Cities(with Alice O’Connor and ChrisTilly, 2001), and Prejudice in Poli-tics: Group Position, Public Opinion,and the Wisconsin Treaty Rights Dis-pute (with Mia Tuan, 2006).

In assessing the results of the Negro revolution sofar, it can be concluded that Negroes have estab-lished a foothold, no more. We have written a Dec-laration of Independence, itself an accomplishment,but the effort to transform the words into a life ex-perience still lies ahead.

–Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go From Here? (1968)

By the middle of the twentieth century, the color line was as well de½ned and as ½rmly entrenched as any institution in the land. After all, it was olderthan most institutions, including the federal govern-ment itself. More important, it informed the con-tent and shaped the lives of those institutions andthe people who lived under them.

–John Hope Franklin, The Color Line (1993)

This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stale-mate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naive as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single electioncycle, or with a single candidacy–particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

–Barack H. Obama, “A More Perfect Union” (May 18, 2008)1

The year 1965 marked an important inflectionpoint in the struggle for racial justice in the Unit-ed States, underscoring two fundamental points

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about race in America.2 First, that racialinequality and division were not onlySouthern problems attached to Jim Crowsegregation. Second, that the nature ofthose inequalities and divisions was amatter not merely of formal civil statusand law, but also of deeply etched eco-nomic arrangements, social and politi-cal conditions, and cultural outlooks and practices. Viewed in full, the racialdivide was a challenge of truly nationalreach, multilayered in its complexity and depth. Therefore, the achievementof basic citizenship rights in the Southwas a pivotal but far from exhaustivestage of the struggle.

The positive trend of the times revolvedaround the achievement of voting rights.March 7, 1965, now known as Bloody Sun-day, saw police and state troopers attackseveral hundred peaceful civil rights pro-testors at the Edmund Pettus Bridge inSelma, Alabama. The subsequent marchfrom Selma to Montgomery, participat-ed in by tens of thousands, along withother protest actions, provided the pres-sure that ½nally compelled Congress topass the Voting Rights Act of 1965. A tri-umphant Reverend Martin Luther King,Jr., and other activists attended the sign-ing in Washington, D.C., on August 6,1965. It was a moment of great triumphfor civil rights.

The long march to freedom seemed tobe at its apex, inspiring talk of an era of“Second Reconstruction.” A decade ear-lier, in the historic Brown v. Board of Edu-cation decision of 1954, the U.S. SupremeCourt repudiated the “separate but equal”doctrine. Subsequently, a major civil rightsmovement victory was achieved with thepassage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,which forbade discrimination in employ-ment and in most public places. With vot-ing rights now protected as well, and thefederal government authorized to inter-vene directly to assure those rights, one

might have expected 1965 to stand as amoment of shimmering and untarnishedcivil rights progress. Yet the mood ofoptimism and triumph did not last forlong.

The negative trend of the times wasepitomized by deep and explosive inequal-ities and resentments of race smolderingin many Northern, urban ghettos. Theextent to which the “race problem” wasnot just a Southern problem of civil rights,but a national problem of inequality wo-ven deep into our economic and culturalfabric, would quickly be laid bare follow-ing passage of the Voting Rights Act.Scarcely ½ve days after then-PresidentJohnson signed the bill into law, the LosAngeles community of Watts eruptedinto flames. Quelling the disorder, whichraged for roughly six days, required themobilization of the National Guard andnearly ½fteen thousand troops. Whendisorder ½nally subsided, thirty-fourpeople had died, more than one thou-sand had been injured, well over threethousand were arrested, and approxi-mately $35 million in property damagehad been done. Subsequent studies andreports revealed patterns of police abuse,political marginalization, intense pover-ty, and myriad forms of economic, hous-ing, and social discrimination as contrib-uting to the mix of conditions that led to the riots.

It was thus more than ½tting that in1965, Dædalus committed two issues toexamining the conditions of “The NegroAmerican.” The essays were wide-rang-ing. The topics addressed spanned ques-tions of power, demographic change,economic conditions, politics and civilstatus, religion and the church, familyand community dynamics, as well asgroup identity, racial attitudes, and thefuture of race relations. Scholars frommost social scienti½c ½elds, includinganthropology, economics, history, law,

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Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences

political science, psychology, and sociol-ogy, contributed to the volumes. No sin-gle theme or message dominated theseessays. Instead, the volumes wrestled withthe multidimensional and complex pat-terns of a rapidly changing racial terrain.

Some critical observations stand outfrom two of those earlier essays, whichhave been ampli½ed and made center-pieces of much subsequent social sciencescholarship. Sociologist and anthropol-ogist St. Clair Drake drew a distinctionbetween what he termed primary victim-ization and indirect victimization. Primaryvictimization involved overt discrimina-tion in the labor market that imposed ajob ceiling on the economic opportuni-ties available to blacks alongside hous-ing discrimination and segregation thatrelegated blacks to racially distinct urbanghettos. Indirect or secondary victimi-zation involved the multidimensionaland cumulative disadvantages resultingfrom primary victimization. These con-sequences included poorer schooling,poor health, and greater exposure to dis-order and crime. In a related vein, sociol-ogist Daniel Patrick Moynihan stressedthe central importance of employmentprospects in the wake of the civil rightsvictories that secured the basic citizen-ship rights of African Americans. BothDrake and Moynihan expressed concernabout a black class structure marked bysigns of a large and growing economical-ly marginalized segment of the black com-munity. Drake went so far as to declare,“If Negroes are not to become a perma-nent lumpen-proletariat within Amer-ican society as a result of social forcesalready at work and increased automa-tion, deliberate planning by governmen-tal and private agencies will be necessary.”Striking a similar chord, Moynihan assert-ed: “[T]here would also seem to be noquestion that opportunities for a largemass of Negro workers in the lower rang-

es of training and education have notbeen improving, that in many ways thecircumstances of these workers relative tothe white work force have grown worse.”This marginalized economic status, bothscholars suggested, would have ramify-ing effects, including weakening familystructures in ways likely to worsen thechallenges faced by black communities.3

If the scholarly assessments of 1965occurred against a backdrop of powerfuland transformative mass-based movementfor civil rights and an inchoate sense ofdeep but imminent change, the backdropfor most scholarly assessments today isthe election of Barack Obama as presidentof the United States, the rise of a potentnarrative of post-racialism, and a senseof stalemate or stagnation in racial change.Many meanings or interpretations can beattached to the term post-racial. In its sim-plest and least controversial form, theterm is intended merely to signal a hope-ful trajectory for events and social trends,not an accomplished fact of social life. It is something toward which we as anation still strive and remain guarded-ly hopeful about fully achieving. Threeother meanings of post-racialism are½lled with more grounds for dispute andcontroversy. One of these meanings at-taches to the waning salience of whatsome have portrayed as a “black victim-ology” narrative. From this perspective,black complaints and grievances aboutinequality and discrimination are well-worn tales, at least passé if not nowpointedly false assessments of the mainchallenges facing blacks in a world large-ly free of the dismal burdens of overtracial divisions and oppression.4

A second and no less controversialview of post-racialism takes the positionthat the level and pace of change in thedemographic makeup and the identitychoices and politics of Americans arerendering the traditional black-white

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divide irrelevant. Accordingly, Americansincreasingly revere mixture and hybridi-ty and are rushing to embrace a decided-ly “beige” view of themselves and whatis good for the body politic. Old-fashionedracial dichotomies pale against the surgetoward flexible, deracialized, and mixedethnoracial identities and outlooks.5

A third, and perhaps the most contro-versial, view of post-racialism has themost in common with the well-rehearsedrhetoric of color blindness. To wit, Amer-ican society, or at least a large and steadi-ly growing fraction of it, has genuinelymoved beyond race–so much so that weas a nation are now ready to transcendthe disabling racial divisions of the past.From this perspective, nothing symbol-izes better the moment of transcendencethan Obama’s election as president. Thistranscendence is said to be especially trueof a younger generation, what New Yorkereditor David Remnick has referred to as“the Joshua Generation.” More than anyother, this generation is ready to crossthe great river of racial identity, division,and acrimony that has for so long de½nedAmerican culture and politics.

It is in this context of the ½rst AfricanAmerican president of the United Statesand the rise to prominence of the narra-tive of post-racialism that a group of socialscientists were asked to examine, frommany different disciplinary and intellec-tual vantage points, changes in the racialdivide since the time of the Dædalus issuesfocusing on race in 1965 and 1966.

The context today has points of greatdiscontinuity and of great similarity tothat mid-1960s inflection point. From theviewpoint of 1965, the election of Obamaas the ½rst African American presidentof the United States, as well as the expan-sion and the cultural prominence andsuccess of the black middle class of whichObama is a member, speak to the enor-mous and enduring successes of the civil

rights era. Yet also from the standpointof 1965, the persistence of deep povertyand joblessness for a large fraction of theblack population, slowly changing ratesof residential segregation by race, con-tinued evidence of antiblack discrimina-tion in many domains of life, and histor-ically high rates of black incarcerationsignal a journey toward racial justice thatremains, even by super½cial accounting,seriously incomplete.

In order to set a context for the essayscontained in this volume, I address threekey questions in this introduction. The½rst concerns racial boundaries. In anera of widespread talk of having achievedthe post-racial society, do we have realevidence that attention to and the mean-ing of basic race categories are funda-mentally breaking down? The secondset of questions concerns the extent ofeconomic inequality along the racial di-vide. Has racial economic inequality nar-rowed to a point where we need no longerthink or talk of black disadvantage? Orhave the bases of race-linked economicinequality changed so much that, at theleast, the dynamics of discriminationand prejudice no longer need concernus? The third question is, how haveracial attitudes changed in the periodsince the mid-1960s Dædalus issues?

To foreshadow a bit, I will show thatbasic racial boundaries are not quicklyand inevitably collapsing, though theyare changing and under great pressure.Racial economic inequality is less ex-treme today, there is a substantial blackmiddle class, and inequality within theblack population itself has probablynever been greater. Yet there remainlarge and durable patterns of black-white economic inequality as well, pat-terns that are not overcome or eliminat-ed even for the middle class and that still rest to a signi½cant degree on dis-

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criminatory social processes. In addition,I maintain that we continue to witnessthe erosion and decline of Jim Crow rac-ist attitudes in the United States. How-ever, in their place has emerged a newpattern of attitudes and beliefs, various-ly labeled symbolic racism, modern racism,color-blind racism, or as I prefer it, laissez-faire racism. The new form of racism is amore covert, sophisticated, culture-cen-tered, and subtle racist ideology, quali-tatively less extreme and more sociallypermeable than Jim Crow racism with its attendant biological foundations andcalls for overt discrimination. But thisnew racism yields a powerful influencein our culture and politics.6

Consider ½rst the matter of groupboundaries. The 2000 Census broke new ground by allowing individuals tomark more than one box in designatingracial background. Indeed, great politi-cal pressure and tumult led to the deci-sion to move the Census in a directionthat more formally and institutionallyacknowledged the presence of increas-ing mixture and heterogeneity in theAmerican population with regard toracial background. Nearly seven millionpeople exercised that option in 2000. Thesuccessful rise of Obama to the of½ce of president, the ½rst African Americanto do so, as a child of a white Americanmother and a black Kenyan father, hasonly accelerated the sense of the new-found latitude and recognition grantedto those who claim more than one racialheritage.7

Despite Obama’s electoral success andthe press attention given to the phenom-enon, some will no doubt ½nd it surpris-ing that the overwhelming majority ofAmericans identify with only one race.As Figure 1 shows, less than 2 percent ofthe population marked more than onebox on the 2000 Census in designatingtheir racial background. Fully 98 percent

marked just one. I claim no deep-rooted-ness or profound personal salience forthese identities. Rather, my point is thatwe should be mindful that the level of“discussion” and contention around mix-ture is far out of proportion to the extentto which most Americans actually desig-nate and see themselves in these terms.

Moreover, even if we restrict attentionto just those who marked more than onebox, two-thirds of these respondents des-ignated two groups other than blacks(namely, Hispanic-white, Asian-white,or Hispanic and Asian mixtures), as Fig-ure 2 shows. Some degree of mixture withblack constituted just under a third ofmixed race identi½ers in 2000. Given thehistoric size of the black population andthe extended length of contact with whiteAmericans, this remarkable result sayssomething powerful about the potencyand durability of the historic black-whitedivide.

It is worth recalling that sexual rela-tions and childbearing across the racialdivide are not recent phenomena. The1890 U.S. Census contained categoriesfor not only “Negro” but also “Mulatto,”“Quadroon,” and even “Octoroon”;these were clear signs of the extent of“mixing” that had taken place in theUnited States. Indeed, well over one million individuals fell into one of themixed race categories at that time. Inorder to protect the institution of slav-ery and to prevent the offspring of whiteslave masters and exploited black slavewomen from having a claim on freedomas well as on the property of the master,slave status, as de½ned by law, followedthe mother’s status, not the father’s. For most of its history, the United Stateslegally barred or discouraged racial mix-ing and intermarriage. At the time of the Loving v. Virginia case in 1967, seven-teen states still banned racial intermar-riage.8

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Source: Author’s analysis of data from U.S. Census Bureau, Census 2000 Redistricting (Public Law 94-171)Summary File, 2001, Table PL1.

Figure 1Percent of Respondents to U.S. Census 2000 Identifying with One Race or Two or More Races (Non-Hispanic)

Figure 2Percent of Respondents to U.S. Census 2000 Identifying with Two or More Races Who ChoseBlack in Combination with One or More Other Races (Non-Hispanic)

Source: Author’s analysis of data from U.S. Census Bureau, Census 2000 Summary File 1, 2001, Matrices P8 and P10.

Formal, legal de½nitions of who wasblack, and especially the development of rules of “hypodescent,” or the one-drop rule, have a further implication that is often lost in discussions of race:these practices tended to fuse togetherrace and class, in effect making black-ness synonymous with the very bottom of the class structure. As historian David Hollinger explains:

The combination of hypodescent with thedenial to blacks residing in many states withlarge black populations of any opportunityfor legal marriage to whites ensured thatthe color line would long remain to a verylarge extent a property line. Hence the dy-namics of race formation and the dynam-ics of class formation were, in this mostcrucial of all American cases, largely thesame. This is one of the most importanttruths about the history of the UnitedStates brought into sharper focus whenthat history is viewed through the lens of the question of ethnoracial mixture.9

Still, we know that today the ethno-racial landscape in the United States ischanging. As of the 2000 Census, whitesconstituted just 69 percent of the U.S.population, with Hispanics and blackseach around 12 percent. This distribu-tion represents a substantial decline inthe percentage of whites from twenty or, even more so, forty years ago.

With continued immigration, differ-ential group fertility patterns, and thecontinued degree of intermarriage andmixing, these patterns will not remainstable. Figure 3 shows the Census racialdistribution projections out to the year2050. The ½gure clearly shows a contin-ued steady and rapid decline in the rela-tive size of the white population; fore-casts predict that somewhere between2040 and 2045, whites will cease to be a numerical majority of the population.(This change could possibly happen

much sooner than that.) The relative sizeof the Hispanic population is expected togrow substantially, with the black, Asian,Native Hawaiian and other Paci½c Island-er, American Indian, and Alaska Nativegroups remaining relatively constant.Figure 3 strongly implies that pressure to transform our understanding of ra-cial categories will continue.

Does that pressure for change foretellthe ultimate undoing of the black-whitedivide? At least three lines of researchraise doubts about such a forecast. First,studies of the perceptions of and identi-ties among those of mixed racial back-grounds point to strong evidence of thecultural persistence of the one-drop rule.Systematic experiments by sociologistsand social psychologists are intriguing in this regard. For example, sociologistMelissa Herman’s recent research con-cluded that “others’ perceptions shape aperson’s identity and social understand-ings of race. My study found that part-black multiracial youth are more likelyto be seen as black by observers and tode½ne themselves as black when forcedto choose one race.”10

Second, studies of patterns in racialintermarriage point to a highly durable if somewhat less extreme black-whitedivide today. A careful assessment of ra-cial intermarriage patterns in 1990 bydemographer Vincent Kang Fu foundthat “one key feature of the data is over-whelming endogamy for blacks andwhites. At least 92 percent of white men,white women, black women and blackmen are married to members of their owngroup.”11 Rates of intermarriage rose forblacks and whites over the course of the1990s. However, subsequent analysts con-tinued to stress the degree to which a fun-damental black-white divide persists. Asdemographers Zhenchao Qian and DanielLichter conclude in their analyses of U.S.Census data from 1990 and 2000:

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[O]ur results also highlight a singularlypersistent substantive lesson: AfricanAmericans are least likely of all racial/ethnic minorities to marry whites. And,although the pace of marital assimilationamong African Americans proceededmore rapidly over the 1990s than it did in earlier decades, the social boundariesbetween African American and whites re-main highly rigid and resilient to change.The “one-drop” rule apparently persistsfor African Americans.12

Third, some key synthetic works arguefor an evolving racial scheme in the Unit-ed States, but a scheme that nonethelesspreserves a heavily stigmatized black cat-egory. A decade ago, sociologist HerbertGans offered the provocative but well-grounded speculation that the UnitedStates would witness a transition from a society de½ned by a great white–non-white divide to one increasingly de½nedby a black–non-black ½ssure, with an

in-between or residual category for thosegranted provisional or “honorary white”status. As Gans explained: “If currenttrends persist, today’s multiracial hierar-chy could be replaced by what I think ofas a dual or bimodal one consisting of‘nonblack’ and ‘black’ population cate-gories, with a third ‘residual’ categoryfor the groups that do not, or do not yet,½t into the basic dualism.” Most trou-bling, this new dualism would, in Gans’sexpectations, continue to bring a pro-found sense of undeservingness and stig-ma for those assigned its bottom rung.13

Gans’s remarks have recently receivedsubstantial support from demographerFrank Bean and his colleagues. Based ontheir extensive analyses of populationtrends across a variety of indicators, Beanand colleagues write: “A black-nonblackdivide appears to be taking shape in theUnited States, in which Asians and Lati-nos are closer to whites. Hence, Ameri-

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Figure 3Population Projections by Race and Ethnicity, 2000 to 2050

Source: Author’s analysis of data on race from Population Division, U.S. Census Bureau, Projected Popula-tion by Single Year of Age, Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin for the United States: July 1, 2000 to July 1, 2050 (August 14, 2008).

ca’s color lines are moving toward a newdemarcation that places many blacks ina position of disadvantage similar to thatresulting from the traditional black-whitedivide.”

If basic racial categories and identitiesare not soon to dissolve, then let me nowaddress that second set of questions, con-cerning the degree of racial economic in-equality. I should begin by noting thatthere has been considerable expansion inthe size, security, and, arguably, salienceand influence of the black middle class.14

Turning to the question of income, we½nd a similar trend. Figure 4 reports onthe distribution of the population by racesince 1968 across several ways of slicingthe family income distribution. At thevery bottom are those who the Censuswould designate as the “very poor”: thatis, having a family income that is 50 per-cent or less of the poverty level. At the verytop are those in the “comfortable” cate-gory, having family incomes that are ½vetimes or more the poverty level. The pro-portion of whites in this upper categoryexceeded 10 percent in 1960 and rose tonearly 30 percent by 2008. For blacks, theproportion was less than 5 percent in 1968but about 12 percent in 2008. Likewise,the fraction in the middle class (thosewith family incomes more than twicethe poverty level) grows for both groups.But crucially, the proportion of blacks inthe “poor” (at the poverty line) or “verypoor” categories remains large, at a com-bined ½gure of nearly 40 percent in 2008.This contrasts with the roughly 20 per-cent of whites in those same categories.15

The of½cial black poverty rate has fluc-tuated between two to three times the pov-erty rate for whites. Recent trend analy-ses suggest that this disparity declinedduring the economic boom years of the1990s but remained substantial. As pub-lic policy analyst Michael Stoll explains:

“Among all black families, the povertyrate declined from a 20 year high of about40 percent in 1982 and 1993 to 25 percentin 2000. During this period, the povertyrate for white families remained fairlyconstant, at about 10 percent.” That ½g-ure of 25 percent remains true throughmore recent estimates. In addition, theGreat Recession has taken a particular-ly heavy toll on minority communities,African Americans perhaps most of all.As the Center for American Progressdeclared in a recent report: “Economicsecurity and losses during the recessionand recovery exacerbated the alreadyweak situation for African Americans.They experienced declining employmentrates, rising poverty rates, falling home-ownership rates, decreasing health in-surance and retirement coverage duringthe last business cycle from 2001 to 2007.The recession that followed made a badsituation much worse.”16

Overall trends in poverty, however, do not fully capture the cumulative andmultidimensional nature of black eco-nomic disadvantage. Sociologist WilliamJulius Wilson stresses how circumstancesof persistently weak employment pros-pects and joblessness, particularly forlow-skilled black men, weaken the for-mation of stable two-parent householdsand undermine other community struc-tures. Persistent economic hardship andweakened social institutions then createcircumstances that lead to rising rates ofsingle-parent households, out-of-wed-lock childbearing, welfare dependency,and greater risk of juvenile delinquencyand involvement in crime. Harvard so-ciologist Robert Sampson points to anextraordinary circumstance of exposureto living in deeply disadvantaged com-munities for large segments of the Afri-can American population. This disad-vantage involves living in conditionsthat expose residents to high surround-

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ing rates of unemployment, family break-up, individuals and families reliant onwelfare, poor-performing schools, juve-nile delinquency, and crime. As Sampsonexplains:

[A]lthough we knew that the average na-tional rate of family disruption and pov-erty among blacks was two to four timeshigher than among whites, the number of distinct ecological contexts in which

blacks achieve equality to whites is strik-ing. In not one city of 100,000 or more inthe United States do blacks live in ecologi-cal equality with whites when it comes tothese basic features of economic and fami-ly organization. Accordingly, racial differ-ences in poverty and family disruption areso strong that the “worst” urban contextsin which whites reside are considerablybetter than the average context of blackcommunities.17

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Figure 4Economic Status of the Black and White Population, 1968 to 2008

Very poor denotes below 50 percent of the poverty line; poor, 50 to 90 percent of the poverty line; near poor,100 to 199 percent of the poverty line; middle class, 200 to 499 percent of the poverty line; and comfortable, 500 percent of poverty line. Source: Author’s analysis of data from Miriam King, Steven Ruggles, TrentAlexander, Donna Leicach, and Matthew Sobek, Integrated Public Use Microdata Series, Current PopulationSurvey: Version 2.0 (Minneapolis: Minnesota Population Center, 2008).

Recent work published by sociologistPatrick Sharkey assesses race differencesin the chances of mobility out of impov-erished neighborhoods. The result is avery depressing one. He ½nds evidenceof little upward social mobility for disad-vantaged blacks and a fragile capacity tomaintain advantaged status among eventhe most well-off African Americans. Hewrites: “[M]ore than 70% of black chil-dren who are raised in the poorest quar-ter of American neighborhoods will con-tinue to live in the poorest quarter ofneighborhoods as adults. Since the 1970s,more than half of black families havelived in the poorest quarter of neighbor-hoods in consecutive generations, com-pared to just 7% of white families.” Dis-cussing the upper end, Sharkey writes:“Among the small number of black fam-ilies who live in the top quartile, only 35%remain there in the second generation.By themselves, these ½gures reveal thestriking persistence of neighborhooddisadvantage among black families.”This ½gure of 35 percent remaining inthe top quartile across generations forblacks contrasts to 63 percent amongwhites. Thus, “White families exhibit a high rate of mobility out of the poor-est neighborhoods and a low rate of mo-bility out of the most affluent neighbor-hoods, and the opposite is true among black families.”18

The general labor market prospects ofAfrican Americans have undergone keychanges in the last several decades. Threepatterns loom large. There is far more in-ternal differentiation and inequality with-in the black population than was true atthe close of World War II, or even duringour baseline of the mid-1960s. The for-tunes of men and women have recentlydiverged within the black community.Black women have considerably narrowedthe gap between themselves and whitewomen in terms of educational attain-

ment, major occupational categories, andearnings. Black men have faced a growingproblem of economic marginalization.Importantly, this is contingent on levelsof education; education has become afar sharper dividing line, shaping lifechances more heavily than ever before in the black community.19

Several other dimensions of socioeco-nomic status bear mentioning. Even byconservative estimates, the high schooldropout rate among blacks is twice thatof whites, at 20 percent versus 11 percent.Blacks also have much lower college com-pletion rates (17 percent versus 30 per-cent) and lower advanced degree com-pletion rates (6 percent versus 11 percent).These differences are enormously conse-quential. As the essays in this volume byeconomist James Heckman and socialpsychologist Richard Nisbett emphasize,educational attainment and achievementincreasingly de½ne access to the goodlife, broadly de½ned. Moreover, somescholars make a strong case that impor-tant inequalities in resources still plaguethe educational experiences of manyblack school children, involving suchfactors as fewer well-trained teachersand less access to ap courses and othercurriculum-enriching materials andexperiences.20

One of the major social trends affect-ing African Americans over the past sev-eral decades has been the sharply puni-tive and incarceration-focused turn inthe American criminal justice system.Between 1980 and 2000, the rate of blackincarceration nearly tripled. The black-to-white incarceration ratio increased toabove eight to one during this time peri-od. Actuarial forecasts, or lifetime esti-mates, of the risk of incarceration forblack males born in the 1990s approachone in three, as compared to below onein ten for non-Hispanic white males. Arecent major study by the Pew Founda-

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tion reported that as of 2007, one in ½f-teen black males age eighteen and abovewas in jail or prison, and one in nine blackmales between the ages of twenty andthirty-four was in jail or prison. Blacksconstitute a hugely disproportionate shareof those incarcerated relative to theirnumbers in the general population.21

The reach of mass incarceration hasrisen to such levels that some analystsview it as altering normative life-courseexperiences for blacks in low-incomeneighborhoods. Indeed, the fabric of so-cial life changes in heavily policed, low-income urban communities. The degreeof incarceration has prompted scholarsto describe the change as ushering in anew fourth stage of racial oppression,“the carceral state,” constituted by theemergence of “the new Jim Crow” or,more narrowly, racialized mass incar-ceration. Whichever label one employs,there is no denying that exposure to thecriminal justice system touches the livesof a large fraction of the African Ameri-can population, especially young men oflow education and skill levels. These lowlevels of education and greater exposureto poverty, along with what many regardas the racially biased conduct of the Waron Drugs, play a huge role in black over-representation in jails or federal andstate prisons.22

Processes of racial residential segrega-tion are a key factor in contemporary ra-cial inequality. Despite important declinesin overall rates of segregation over thepast three decades and blacks’ increasingsuburbanization, blacks remain highlysegregated from whites. Some have sug-gested that active self-segregation on thepart of blacks is now a major factor sus-taining residential segregation. A num-ber of careful investigations of prefer-ences for neighborhood characteristicsand makeup and of the housing searchprocess strongly challenge such claims.

Instead, there is substantial evidencethat, particularly among white Ameri-cans, neighborhoods and social spacesare strongly racially coded, with negativeracial stereotypes playing a powerful rolein shaping the degree of willingness toenter (or remain) in racially integratedliving spaces. Moreover, careful auditingstudies continue to show lower, but stillsigni½cant, rates of antiblack discrimi-nation on the part of real estate agents,homeowners, and landlords.23

Lastly, I want to stress that wealth in-equality between blacks and whites re-mains enormous. Recent scholarship has convincingly argued that wealth (oraccumulated assets) is a crucial determi-nant of quality of life. Blacks at all levelsof the class hierarchy typically possessfar less wealth than otherwise compara-ble whites. Moreover, the compositionof black wealth is more heavily based inhomes and automobiles as compared towhite wealth, which includes a moreeven spread across savings, stocks andbonds, business ownership, and othermore readily liquidated assets. Whereasapproximately 75 percent of whites owntheir homes, only 47 percent of blacksdo. Looking beyond homeownership tothe full range of ½nancial assets, analy-ses from sociologists Melvin Oliver andTom Shapiro put the black-to-whitewealth gap ratio in the range of ten oreleven to one. Other estimates, such asthose based on Panel Study of IncomeDynamics data, are lower but still repre-sent gaping disparities.24

In order to provide a more concretepicture of the current state of the wealthgap, Figure 5 reproduces results from arecent Brandeis University study. It showsthat over the past twenty-three years, theblack-white gap in median wealth rosedramatically, moving from $20,000 in1984 to nearly $100,000 by 2007. Thestudy also revealed that for much of this

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time period, middle-income white fami-lies had more wealth than even the high-est income segment of African Americanfamilies, with that gap rising to $56,000by 2007. Moreover, all earners, but espe-cially African Americans, have fallen farbehind the high-income white familiesin median wealth holdings. To the extentthat wealth bears on the capacity to sur-vive a period of unemployment, to ½nancecollege for one’s children, or to endure a costly illness or other unexpected largeexpense, these ½gures point to an enor-mous and growing disparity in the lifechances of blacks and whites in theUnited States.25

In many respects, these sizable gaps inwealth associated with race are one of theprincipal ways in which the cumulativeand “sedimentary” impact of a long his-tory of racial oppression manifests itself.Research has shown that black and whitefamilies do not differ substantially in theextent to which they try to save income.

Much wealth is inherited; it is not theproduct of strictly individual merit orachievement. Furthermore, social poli-cy in many ways played a direct role infacilitating the accumulation of wealthfor many generations of white Ameri-cans while systematically constrainingor undermining such opportunities forAfrican Americans. For example, Oliverand Shapiro and political scientist IraKatznelson both point to federal homemortgage lending guidelines and prac-tices, which were once openly discrimi-natory, as playing a crucial role in thisprocess.26

What do we know about changes inracial attitudes in the United States? The½rst and most consistent ½nding of themajor national studies of racial attitudesin the United States has been a steadyrepudiation of the outlooks that sup-ported the Jim Crow social order. JimCrow racism once reigned in American

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Figure 5Median Wealth Holdings of White Families and African American Families, 1984 to 2007

Data do not include home equity. Source: Thomas Shapiro, Tatjana Meschede, and Laura Sullivan, “The RacialWealth Gap Increases Fourfold,” Research and Policy Brief, Institute on Assets and Social Policy, Heller Schoolfor Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University, May 2010.

society, particularly in the South. Accord-ingly, blacks were understood as inher-ently inferior to whites, both intellectu-ally and temperamentally. As a result,society was to be expressly ordered interms of white privilege, with blacks rel-egated to secondary status in education,access to jobs, and in civic status such asthe right to vote. Above all, racial mix-ture was to be avoided; hence, societyneeded to be segregated. The best surveydata on American public opinion suggestthat this set of ideas has been in steadyretreat since the 1940s.27

Figure 6 contains one telling illustrationof this trend. It shows the percentage ofwhite Americans in national surveys whosaid that they would not be willing to votefor a quali½ed black candidate for pres-ident if nominated by their own party.When ½rst asked in 1958, nearly two outof three white Americans endorsed such

an openly discriminatory posture. Thattrend has undergone unabated decline,reaching the point where roughly onlyone in ½ve white Americans expressedthis view by the time the Reverend JesseJackson launched his ½rst bid for theDemocratic presidential nomination in1984. It declined to fewer than one in tenby the time of Obama’s campaign in 2008.

In broad sweep, though not necessari-ly in exact levels, the trend seen in Figure6 is true of most questions on racial atti-tudes from national surveys that deal withbroad principles of whether Americansociety should be integrated or segregat-ed, discriminatory or nondiscriminatoryon the basis of race. Whether the speci½cdomain involved school integration, res-idential integration, or even racial inter-marriage, the level of endorsement ofdiscriminatory, segregationist responseshas continued to decline. To an impor-

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Figure 6Percent of Whites Who Said They Would Not Vote for a Black Presidential Candidate, 1958 to 2008

The Gallup Poll asked, “If your party nominated a generally well-quali½ed person for president who happenedto be black, would you vote for that person?” The General Social Survey (gss) asked, “If your party nominateda (negro/black/African-American) for President, would you vote for him if he were quali½ed for the job?”Source: Author’s analysis of data from Gallup Poll, 1958–2007; Jeffrey M. Jones, “Some Americans Reluctant toVote for Mormon, 72-Year-Old Presidential Candidates,” in The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 2007, ed. GeorgeHorace Gallup (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Little½eld, 2008), 77–78; author’s analysis of data from gssCumulative Data File, 1972–2008.

tant degree, these changes have been ledby highly educated whites and those out-side the South. African Americans havenever endorsed elements of the Jim Crowoutlook to any substantial degree, thoughmany of these questions were not initial-ly asked of black respondents out of fearthat the questions would be regarded asan insult, or to the assumption that theirresponses were predictable.

This picture of the repudiation of JimCrow is complicated somewhat by evi-dence of signi½cant social distance pref-erences. To be sure, low and typicallydeclining percentages of whites objectedwhen asked about entering into integrat-ed social settings–neighborhoods orschools–where one or just a small num-ber of blacks might be present. But as thenumber of blacks involved increased,and as one shifts from more impersonaland public domains of life (workplaces,schools, neighborhoods) to more inti-mate and personal domains (intermar-riage), expressed levels of white resis-tance rise and the degree of positivechange is not as great.

The notion of the 1960s as an inflectionpoint in the struggle for racial change isreinforced by the growing preoccupationof studies of racial attitudes in the post-1960 period with matters of public policy.These studies consider levels of supportor opposition to public policies designedto bring about greater racial equality(antidiscrimination laws and variousforms of af½rmative action) and actualintegration (open housing laws and meth-ods of school desegregation such as schoolbusing). The picture that results is com-plex but has several recurrent features.Blacks are typically far more supportiveof social-policy intervention on mattersof race than are whites. In general, sup-port for policy or governmental interven-tion to bring about greater integration orto reduce racial inequality lags well be-

hind endorsement of similar broad prin-ciples or ideals. This ½nding has led manyscholars to note a “principle-implemen-tation gap.” Some policies, however, havewider appeal than others. Efforts to en-hance or improve the human capital attri-butes of blacks and other minority groupmembers are more popular than policiesthat call for group preferences. Forms ofaf½rmative action that imply quotas orotherwise disregard meritocratic criteriaof reward are deeply unpopular.

One important line of investigationseeking to understand the principle-implementation gap involved assess-ments of perceptions and causal attribu-tions for racial inequality. To the extentthat many individuals do not perceivemuch racial inequality, or explain it interms of individual dispositions andchoices (as opposed to structural con-straints and conditions such as discrim-ination), then there is little need seen for government action. Table 1 showsresponses to a series of questions on possible causes of black-white econom-ic inequality that included “less inbornability,” “lack of motivation and will-power,” “no chance for an education,”and “mainly due to discrimination.” The questions thus span biological basis(ability), cultural basis (motivation), a weak form of structural constraint(education), and ½nally, a strong struc-tural constraint (discrimination).28

There is low and decreasing supportamong whites for the overtly racist beliefthat blacks have less inborn ability. Themost widely endorsed account amongwhites points to a lack of motivation orwillpower on the part of blacks as a keyfactor in racial inequality, though thisattribution declines over time. Attribu-tions to discrimination as well as to theweaker structural account of lack of achance for education also decline amongwhites. Blacks are generally far more

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Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences26

Table 1Explanations for Racial Socioeconomic Inequality by Education and Age across Selected Years

Whites

Inequality is Due to: Years of Education AgePooled < 12 12 13+ 18–33 34–50 51+

Discrimination 1977–1989 40% 40 37 43 46 39 36

1990–1999 35 47 32 36 35 34 35

2000–2008 30 30 27 32 31 28 32

Less Inborn Ability 1977–1989 21 36 22 11 12 16 35

1990–1999 13 27 16 6 7 8 22

2000–2008 9 20 13 5 6 7 13

Lack of Chance 1977–1989 52 42 48 63 55 52 49

for Education 1990–1999 47 37 41 55 46 49 47

2000–2008 43 33 36 49 41 45 44

Lack of Motivation 1977–1989 63 74 67 51 54 62 72

or Willpower 1990–1999 55 70 63 46 50 50 65

2000–2008 50 66 61 41 45 45 57

Blacks

Inequality is Due to: Years of Education AgePooled < 12 12 13+ 18–33 34–50 51+

Discrimination 1977–1989 77% 82 72 76 75 79 79

1990–1999 71 74 68 73 67 74 72

2000–2008 59 62 54 62 52 58 69

Less Inborn Ability 1977–1989 16 31 9 4 8 12 26

1990–1999 11 16 12 6 10 8 15

2000–2008 13 23 13 8 11 11 17

Lack of Chance 1977–1989 68 69 65 70 63 68 75

for Education 1990–1999 60 63 61 57 55 55 72

2000–2008 52 56 46 55 47 50 61

Lack of Motivation 1977–1989 35 44 34 26 30 33 44

or Willpower 1990–1999 38 43 40 33 45 32 38

2000–2008 44 51 50 38 49 42 42

Respondents were asked, “On the average (Negroes/Blacks/African-Americans) have worse jobs, income,and housing than white people. Do you think these differences are”: “mainly due to discrimination”;“because most (Negroes/Blacks/African-Americans) have less inborn ability to learn”; “because most(Negroes/Blacks/African-Americans) don’t have the chance for education that it takes to rise out of poverty”; or “because most (Negroes/Blacks/African-Americans) just don’t have the motivation or willpower to pull themselves up out of poverty?” N for whites ranges between 5,307 and 16,906. N for blacks ranges between 517 and 2,387. Source: Author’s analysis of data from General Social Survey,1977–2008.

likely than whites to endorse structuralaccounts of racial inequality, particularlythe strongest attribution of discrimina-tion. However, like their white counter-parts, a declining number of blacks pointto discrimination as the key factor, andthere is actually a rise in the percentageof African Americans attributing racialinequality to a lack of motivation or will-power on the part of blacks themselves.More detailed multivariate analyses sug-gest that there has been growth in cultur-al attributions for racial inequality. AmongAfrican Americans this growth seemsmost prominent among somewhat young-er, ideologically conservative, and lesswell-educated individuals.29

Another line of analysis of racial atti-tudes sparked in part by the principle-implementation gap involved renewedinterest in the extent of negative racial

stereotyping. Figure 7 shows trends inwhites’ stereotype trait ratings of whitesas compared to blacks on the dimensionsof being hardworking or lazy and intelli-gent or unintelligent. In 1990, when thesetrait-rating stereotype questions were ½rstposed in national surveys, more than 60percent of whites rated whites as morelikely to be hardworking than blacks, andjust under 60 percent rated blacks as lessintelligent. A variety of other trait dimen-sions were included in this early assess-ment, such as welfare dependency, in-volvement in drugs and gangs, and levelsof patriotism. Whites usually expresseda substantially negative image of blacksrelative to how they rated whites acrossthis array of traits. The trends suggestsome slight reduction in negative stereo-typing over the past two decades, butsuch negative images of blacks still re-

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Figure 7Percent of Respondents Who Said Whites Are More Hardworking or More Intelligent than Blacks, 1990 to 2008

White respondents were asked to rate blacks and whites according to whether they thought blacks and whitestended to be hardworking or lazy. Respondents were also asked, “Do people in these groups tend to be unin-telligent or tend to be intelligent? Where would you rate whites in general on this scale? Blacks?” The com-parison is generated by subtracting the scores whites are given on a one to seven point scale from the scoresblacks are given on each measure. On the resulting scale, positive numbers indicate that blacks are rated aspossessing more of the desirable trait than whites; negative scores indicate that whites are rated more posi-tively; and scores of zero indicate that both groups received equal ratings. Negative scores were coded asagreeing. Seven percent of whites rated blacks as more hardworking than whites, and 6 percent rated blacks as more intelligent. Source: Author’s analysis of data from General Social Survey, 1990–2008.

main quite commonplace. To the extentthat unfavorable beliefs about the behav-ioral characteristics of blacks have a bear-ing on levels of support for policies de-signed to bene½t blacks, these data imply,and much evidence con½rms, that nega-tive beliefs about blacks’ abilities andbehavioral choices contribute to low lev-els of white support for signi½cant social-policy interventions to ameliorate racialinequality.30

A third and perhaps most vigorouslyconsidered resolution of the principle-implementation gap involves the hypoth-esis that a new form of antiblack racismis at the root of much white oppositionto policies aimed at reducing racial in-equality. This scholarship has focusedlargely on the emergence of attitudes of resentment toward the demands orgrievances voiced by African Americansand the expectation of governmentalredress for those demands and grievances.

Figure 8 shows trends for one questionfrequently used to tap such sentiments;respondents are asked to agree or dis-agree with the statement, “Irish, Italian,Jewish and many other minorities over-came prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same withoutspecial favors.” Throughout the 1994 to2008 time span, roughly three-fourths of white Americans agreed with this as-sertion. The ½gure shows no meaning-ful trend, despite a slight dip in 2004:the lopsided view among whites is thatblacks need to make it all on their own.31

Throughout the fourteen-year timespan, whites were always substantiallymore likely to endorse this viewpointthan blacks; however, not only did a non-trivial number of blacks agree with it(about 50 percent), but the black-whitegap actually narrowed slightly over time.The meaning and effects of this type ofoutlook vary in important ways depend-

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Figure 8Percent of Respondents Agreeing with the Belief that Blacks Should Overcome Prejudice withoutSpecial Favors, 1994 to 2008

Respondents were asked, “Do you agree strongly, agree somewhat, neither agree nor disagree, disagree some-what, or disagree strongly with the following statement: Irish, Italian, Jewish and many other minorities over-came prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same without special favors.” “Agree strongly”and “agree somewhat” responses are coded as agreeing. Source: Author’s analysis of data from General SocialSurvey, 1994–2008.

ing on race, usually carrying less potentimplications for policy views amongblacks than among whites. Indeed, onereason for focusing on this type of atti-tude is that it and similar items are foundto correlate with a wide range of social-policy outlooks. And some evidence sug-gests that how attitudes and outlooksconnect with partisanship and votingbehavior may be strengthening andgrowing.32

Judged by the trends considered here andin the essays in this volume, declarationsof having arrived at the post-racial mo-ment are premature. Much has changed–and unequivocally for the better–inlight of where the United States stood in1965. Indeed, I will speculate that noneof the contributors to the 1965/1966 Dæda-lus volumes would have considered likelychanges that have now, a mere four or sodecades later, been realized, including theelection of an African American Presidentof the United States, the appointment ofthe ½rst black Chair of the Joint Chiefs ofStaff, and the appointment of two differ-ent African American Secretaries of State.Similarly, the size and reach of today’sblack middle class were not easy to fore-cast from the scholarly perch of mid-1960sdata and understandings. At the sametime, troublingly entrenched patterns ofpoverty, segregation, gaps in educationalattainment and achievement, racial iden-tity formation, and disparaging racialstereotypes all endure into the present,even if in somewhat less extreme forms.And the scandalous rise in what is nowtermed racialized mass incarcerationwas not foreseen but now adds a newmeasure of urgency to these concerns.

The very complex and contradictorynature of these changes cautions againstthe urge to make sweeping and simpledeclarations about where we now stand.But our nation’s “mixed” or ambiguous

circumstance–suspended uncomfortablysomewhere between the collapse of theJim Crow social order and a post-racialsocial order that has yet to be attained–gives rise to many intense exchanges overwhether or how much “race matters.”This is true of scholarly discourse, wheremany see racial division as a deeply en-trenched and tragic American flaw andmany others see racial division as a wan-ing exception to the coming triumph ofAmerican liberalism.33

Average Americans, both black andwhite, face and wage much of the samedebate in their day-to-day lives. One wayof capturing this dynamic is illustratedin Figure 9, which shows the percentageof white and black respondents in a 2009national survey that asked, “Do you thinkthat blacks have achieved racial equality, will soon achieve racial equality, will notachieve racial equality in your lifetime,or will never achieve racial equality?”Fielded after the 2008 election and theinauguration of Obama in early 2009,these results are instructive. Almost twoout of three white Americans (61.3 per-cent) said that blacks have achieved ra-cial equality. Another 21.5 percent ofwhites endorse the view that blacks willsoon achieve racial equality. Thus, theoverwhelming fraction of white Ameri-cans see the post-racial moment as effec-tively here (83.8 percent). Fewer thanone in ½ve blacks endorsed the idea thatthey have already achieved racial equali-ty. A more substantial fraction, 36.2 per-cent, believe that they will soon achieveracial equality. African Americans, then,are divided almost evenly between thosedoubtful that racial equality will soon beachieved (with more than one in ten say-ing that it will never be achieved) andthose who see equality as within reach,at 46.6 percent versus 53.6 percent.34

These results underscore why discus-sions of race so easily and quickly be-

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come polarized and fractious along ra-cial lines. The central tendencies of pub-lic opinion on these issues, despite realincreasing overlap, remain enormouslyfar apart between black and white Amer-icans. When such differences in percep-tion and belief are grounded in, or at leastreinforced by, wide economic inequality,persistent residential segregation, large-ly racially homogeneous family units andclose friendship networks, and a popularculture still suffused with negative ideasand images about African Americans,then there should be little surprise thatwe still ½nd it enormously dif½cult tohave sustained civil discussions aboutrace and racial matters. Despite growingmuch closer together in recent decades,the gaps in perspective between blacksand whites are still sizable.

The ideas and evidence marshaled inthis Dædalus issue should help sharpen

our focus and open up productive newlines of discourse and inquiry. Four ofthe essays directly engage central, butchanging, features of racial strati½cationin the United States. Sociologist DouglasS. Massey provides a trenchant, broadmap of change in the status of AfricanAmericans. Sociologist William JuliusWilson reviews and assesses his ½eld-de½ning argument about the “decliningsigni½cance of race.” The core frame-work is sustained, he maintains, by muchsubsequent careful research; but Wilsonstresses now the special importance ofemployment in the government sector to the economic well-being of manyAfrican Americans. Economist James J.Heckman focuses on education, buildingthe case for enhancing the capacities offamilies and communities to preparechildren to get the most out of school-ing. Social psychologist Richard E. Nis-

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Figure 9Whites’ and Blacks’ Beliefs about when Racial Equality will be Achieved

Respondents were asked, “Do you think that blacks have achieved racial equality, will soon achieve racial equality, will not achieve racial equality in your lifetime, or will never achieve racial equality?” Source: Lawrence D. Bobo and Alicia Simmons, Race Cues, Attitudes and Punitiveness Survey (Data Collected by Polimetrix), Department of Sociology, Harvard University, July 2009.

bett looks closely at the types of earlyintervention strategies that evidencesuggests are most likely to improve ultimate educational attainment andachievement.

Three essays put the changing status of African Americans in more explicitpolitical, policy-related, and legal per-spectives. Political scientist Rogers M.Smith and his colleagues identify thepivotal role played by agents of compet-ing racial policy coalitions, pointing tothe differing agendas and degrees ofpolitical success and influence of thosepursuing a color-blind strategy andthose pursuing a color-conscious strate-gy. Legal scholar Michael J. Klarmanchallenges the presumption that the U.S.Supreme Court has been a special ally orsupporter of African American interestsand claims. He suggests that the Courthas often, particularly in a string of re-cent rulings, tilted heavily in the direc-tion of a color-blind set of principlesthat do little to advance the interests ofblack communities. Political scientistDaniel Sabbagh traces the impetus foraf½rmative action and its evolution inthe United States and compares that tohow af½rmative action is now pursued in a number of other countries.

Several essays examine the culturaldynamics of race and racial identities.Anthropologists Marcyliena Morganand Dionne Bennett examine the re-markable dynamism, worldwide spread,and influence of hip-hop music. Socialpsychologists Jennifer A. Richeson andMaureen A. Craig examine the psycho-logical dynamics of identity choices fac-ing minority communities and indi-viduals in this era of rapid populationchange. Political scientist Jennifer L.Hochschild and her colleagues assesshow younger cohorts of Americans arebringing different views of race and itsimportance to politics and social life.

Three essays pivot off the 2008 presi-dential election. Political scientist TaekuLee examines the complex role of race,group identity, and immigrant status inforging new political identities, coalitions,and voting behavior. Political scientistCathy J. Cohen shows the continuingracial consciousness and orientations of black youth. Sociologist Alford A.Young, Jr., examines the special mean-ing of Obama’s candidacy and successfor young black men.

Two ½nal essays push in quite differentdirections. Sociologist Roger Waldingerargues that even as the black-white divideremains an important problem, we as anation are facing deep contradictions inhow we deal with immigration and im-migrants themselves, particularly thosecoming from Latin America. HistorianMartha Biondi muses on continuitieswith and departures from past traditionsin recent discourse surrounding the mis-sion of African American studies pro-grams and departments.

This issue is a companion volume tothe Winter 2011 issue of Dædalus, Race in the Age of Obama, guest edited byGerald Early, the Merle Kling Professorof Modern Letters and Director of theCenter for the Humanities at Washing-ton University in St. Louis. It has beenmy privilege to work with Gerald on this project, and I am grateful to the contributors to this volume for theirinformed analyses.

This essay’s epigraphs from MartinLuther King, Jr., John Hope Franklin, and Barack Obama, each in its own fash-ion, remind us of the depth and com-plexity of race in the United States.Although it is tempting to seek quickand simple assessments of where wehave been and where we are going, it is wise, instead, to wrestle with takingstock of all the variegated and nuanced

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circumstances underlying the black-whitedivide and its associated phenomena. Justas 1965 seemed a point of inflection, ofcontradictory lines of development, fu-ture generations may look back and regard2011 as a similarly fraught moment. Atthe same time that a nation celebratesthe historic election of an African Amer-ican president, the cultural productionof demeaning antiblack images–post-cards featuring watermelons on the WhiteHouse lawn prior to the annual Easter eggroll, Obama featured in loincloth and witha bone through his nose in ads denounc-ing the health care bill, a cartoon showingpolice of½cers shooting an out-of-controlchimpanzee under the heading “They’llhave to ½nd someone else to write thenext stimulus bill”–are ugly remindersof some of the more overtly racializedreactions to the ascendancy of an Afri-can American to the presidency of theUnited States.

As a result of complex and contradic-tory indicators, no pithy phrase or bolddeclaration can possibly do justice to thefull body of research, evidence, and ideasreviewed here. One optimistic trend isthat examinations of the status of blackshave moved to a place of prominence andsophistication in the social sciences thatprobably was never imagined by found-ing ½gures of the tradition, such as W.E.B.Du Bois. That accumulating body ofknowledge and theory, including thenew contributions herein, deepens ourunderstanding of the experience of racein the United States. The con½gurationand salience of the color line some ½ftyor one hundred years from now, however,cannot be forecast with any measure ofcertainty. Perhaps the strongest generaldeclaration one can make at present isthat we stand somewhere between a JimCrow past and the aspiration of a post-racial future.

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endnotes1 Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? (New York:

Bantam, 1968), 19; John Hope Franklin, The Color Line: Legacy for the 21st Century (Colum-bia: University of Missouri Press, 1993), 36; Barack H. Obama, “A More Perfect Union,”speech delivered at the National Constitution Center, Philadelphia, May 18, 2008.

2 I wish to thank Alicia Simmons, Victor Thompson, and Deborah De Laurell for theirinvaluable assistance in preparing this essay. I am responsible for any remaining errors or shortcomings.

3 St. Clair Drake, “The Social and Economic Status of the Negro in the United States,”Dædalus 94 (4) (Fall 1965): 3–46; Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “Employment, Income, and the Ordeal of the Negro Family,” Dædalus 94 (4) (Fall 1965): 134–159.

4 See John McWhorter, Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America (New York: Free Press,2000); and Charles Johnson, “The End of the Black American Narrative,” The AmericanScholar 77 (3) (Summer 2008).

5 See Hua Hsu, “The End of White America?” The Atlantic, January/February 2009; andSusan Saulny, “Black? White? Asian? More Young Americans Choose All of the Above,”The New York Times, January 29, 2011.

6 On laissez-faire racism, see Lawrence D. Bobo, James R. Kluegel, and Ryan A. Smith,“Laissez-Faire Racism: The Crystallization of a Kinder, Gentler, Antiblack Ideology,” inRacial Attitudes in the 1990s: Continuity and Change, ed. Steven A. Tuch and Jack K. Martin(Greenwood, Conn.: Praeger, 1997), 15–44; on modern or symbolic racism, see David O.Sears, “Symbolic Racism,” in Eliminating Racism: Pro½les in Controversy, ed. Phyllis A. Katz

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and Dalmas A. Taylor (New York: Plenum Press, 1988), 53–84; and on color-blind racism,see Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists: Colorblind Racism and Racial Inequality inContemporary America (Boulder, Colo.: Rowman and Little½eld, 2010).

7 See C. Matthew Snipp, “De½ning Race and Ethnicity: The Constitution, the SupremeCourt, and the Census,” in Doing Race: 21 Essays for the 21st Century, ed. Hazel R. Markusand Paula M.L. Moya (New York: W.W. Norton, 2010), 105–122. It is noteworthy thatObama himself checked only the “Black” category rather than marking more than onerace on his 2010 Census form.

8 On the history of “mixing” in the United States, see Gary B. Nash, “The Hidden History ofMestizo America,” Journal of American History 82 (1995): 941–964; and Victor Thompson,“The Strange Career of Racial Science: Racial Categories and African American Identity,”in The Oxford Handbook of African American Citizenship, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., et al.(New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).

9 David A. Hollinger, “Amalgamation and Hypodescent: The Question of Ethnoracial Mix-ture in the History of the United States,” American Historical Review 108 (December 2003):1305–1390.

10 Melissa R. Herman, “Do You See Who I Am?: How Observers’ Background Affects thePerceptions of Multiracial Faces,” Social Psychology Quarterly 73 (2010): 58–78; see alsoArnold K. Ho, Jim Sidanius, Daniel T. Levin, and Mahzarin R. Banaji, “Evidence for Hypo-descent and Racial Hierarchy in the Categorization and Perception of Biracial Individuals,”Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 94 (2010): 1–15.

11 Vincent Kang Fu, “How Many Melting Pots?: Intermarriage, Panethnicity, and the Black/Non-Black Divide in the United States,” Journal of Comparative Family Studies 38 (2007):215–237. On the point of a racial preference hierarchy, see Vincent Kang Fu, “Racial Intermarriage Pairings,” Demography 38 (2001): 147–159.

12 Zenchao Qian and Daniel T. Lichter, “Social Boundaries and Marital Assimilation: Inter-preting Trends in Racial and Ethnic Intermarriage,” American Sociological Review 72 (2007):68–94. See also Zenchao Qian, “Breaking the Last Taboo: Interracial Marriage in Amer-ica,” Contexts 4 (2005): 33–37.

13 Herbert J. Gans, “The Possibility of a New Racial Hierarchy in the Twenty-First CenturyUnited States,” in The Cultural Territories of Race: Black and White Boundaries, ed. MichèleLamont (New York: Russell Sage, 1999), 371–390; and Frank D. Bean et al., “The NewU.S. Immigrants: How Do They Affect Our Understanding of the African American Expe-rience?” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 621 (2009): 202–220.For closely related discussions, see Mary C. Waters, Black Identities: West Indian ImmigrantDreams and American Realities (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999); andMilton Vickerman, “Recent Immigration and Race: Continuity and Change,” Du BoisReview 4 (2007): 141–165.

14 See Bart Landry, The New Black Middle Class (Berkeley: University of California Press,1987); Karyn Lacy, Blue Chip Black: Race, Class and Status in the New Black Middle Class(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007); and Mary Pattillo, Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).

15 See Michael A. Stoll, “African Americans and the Color Line,” in The American People: Census 2000, ed. Reynolds Farley and John Haaga (New York: Russell Sage, 2005), 380–414, esp. 395; and Lawrence D. Bobo, “An American Conundrum: Race, Sociology, and the African American Road to Citizenship,” in The Oxford Handbook of African American Citizenship, ed. Gates.

16 Christian E. Weller, Jaryn Fields, and Folayemi Agbede, “The State of Communitiesof Color in the U.S. Economy” (Washington, D.C.: Center for American Progress, January 21, 2011), http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/01/coc_snapshot.html/print.html (accessed January 23, 2011).

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17 William Julius Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); William Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor (New York: Knopf, 1996); and Robert J. Sampson, “Urban Black Violence: The Effect of Male Joblessness and Family Disruption,”American Journal of Sociology 93 (1987): 348–382.

18 Patrick Sharkey, “The Intergenerational Transmission of Context,” American Journal ofSociology 113 (4): 931–969. See also Tom Hertz, “Rags, Riches, and Race: The Intergenera-tional Economic Mobility of Black and White Families in the United States,” in UnequalChances: Family Background and Economic Success, ed. Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis, andMelissa Osborne Groves (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005).

19 See Michael B. Katz, Mark J. Stern, and Jamie J. Fader, “The New African AmericanInequality,” The Journal of American History 92 (1) (2005): 75–108.

20 Linda Darling Hammond, “The Color Line in American Education: Race, Resources, andStudent Achievement,” Du Bois Review 1 (2004): 213–246; and Linda Darling Hammond,“Structured for Failure: Race, Resources, and Student Achievement,” in Doing Race, ed.Markus and Moya, 295–321.

21 Alfred Blumstein, “Race and Criminal Justice,” in America Becoming: Racial Trends and Their Consequences, Volume II, ed. Neil J. Smelser, William Julius Wilson, and Faith Mitchell(Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2001), 21–31; and Pew Center on theStates, “One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008” (Washington, D.C.: Pew CharitableTrusts, 2008).

22 Generally, see Bruce Western, Punishment and Inequality in America (New York: RussellSage, 2006). On changes in the normative life trajectories, see Becky Pettit and BruceWestern, “Mass Imprisonment and the Life-Course: Race and Class Inequality in U.S.Incarceration,” American Sociological Review 69 (2004): 151–169. On the social costs ofheavy police scrutiny of poor neighborhoods, see Loïc Wacquant, “Deadly Symbiosis:When Ghetto and Prison Meet and Mesh,” Punishment and Society 3 (2001): 95–135; and Alice Goffman, “On the Run: Wanted Men in a Philadelphia Ghetto,” American Sociological Review 74 (2009): 339–357. On the rising incarceration rates for blacks morebroadly, see Lawrence D. Bobo and Victor Thompson, “Racialized Mass Incarceration:Poverty, Prejudice, and Punitiveness,” in Doing Race, ed. Markus and Moya, 322–355; and Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness(New York: The New Press, 2010).

23 Generally, see Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation andthe Making of the Underclass (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993); CamilleZ. Charles, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?: Race, Class, and Residence in Los Angeles (New York:Russell Sage, 2006); Robert J. Sampson, “Seeing Disorder: Neighborhood Stigma and theSocial Construction of ‘Broken Windows,’” Social Psychology Quarterly 67 (2004): 319–342;Maria Krysan, Mick Couper, Reynolds Farley, and Tyrone A. Forman, “Does Race Matterin Neighborhood Preferences? Results from a Video Experiment,” American Journal of So-ciology 115 (2) (2009): 527–559; and Devah Pager and Hana Shepherd, “The Sociology ofDiscrimination: Racial Discrimination in Employment, Housing, Credit, and ConsumerMarkets,” Annual Review of Sociology 34 (2008): 181–209.

24 Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro, Black Wealth/White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality (New York: Routledge, 1995); Dalton Conley, Being Black, Living in theRed: Race, Wealth, and Social Policy in America (Berkeley: University of California Press,1999); and Thomas M. Shapiro, The Hidden Cost of Being African American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).

25 Thomas M. Shapiro, Tatjana Meschede, and Laura Sullivan, “The Racial Wealth GapIncreases Fourfold,” Research and Policy Brief, Institute on Assets and Social Policy, Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University, May 2010.

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140 (2) Spring 2011

26 See Ira Katznelson, When Af½rmative Action Was White: An Untold Story of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America (New York: W.W. Norton, 2005).

27 I owe much of this discussion of racial attitudes to Howard Schuman, Charlotte Steeh,Lawrence D. Bobo, and Maria Krysan, Racial Attitudes in America: Trends and Interpretations(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997). See also Lawrence D. Bobo, “RacialAttitudes and Relations at the Close of the Twentieth Century,” in America Becoming:Racial Trends and Their Consequences, Volume 1, ed. Neil J. Smelser, William Julius Wilson,and Faith Mitchell (Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2001), 264–301; andMaria Krysan, “From Color Caste to Color Blind?: Racial Attitudes Since World War II,”in The Oxford Handbook of African American Citizenship, ed. Gates.

28 Important early work on attributions for racial inequality appears in Howard Schuman,“Sociological Racism,” Society 7 (1969): 44–48; Richard Apostle et al., The Anatomy ofRacial Attitudes (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983); James R. Kluegel and Eliot R. Smith, Beliefs About Inequality: Americans’ Views of What Is and What Ought to Be(New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1986); Paul M. Sniderman and Michael G. Hagen, Race and Inequality: A Study in American Values (Chatham, N.J.: Chatham House, 1985); andJames R. Kluegel “Trends in Whites’ Explanations of the Black-White Gap in Socio-economic Status, 1977–1989,” American Sociological Review 55 (1990): 512–525.

29 Matthew O. Hunt, “African-American, Hispanic, and White Beliefs about Black/WhiteInequality, 1977–2004,” American Sociological Review 72 (2007): 390–415; Lawrence D. Bobo et al., “The Real Record on Racial Attitudes,” in Social Trends in the United States1972–2008: Evidence from the General Social Survey, ed. Peter V. Marsden (Princeton, N.J.:Princeton University Press, forthcoming).

30 On the stereotype measures, see Tom W. Smith, “Ethnic Images,” gss Technical ReportNo. 19 (Chicago: National Opinion Research Center, 1990); and Lawrence D. Bobo andJames R. Kluegel, “Status, Ideology, and Dimensions of Whites’ Racial Beliefs and Attitudes:Progress and Stagnation,” in Racial Attitudes in the 1990s, ed. Tuch and Martin, 93–120.On the stereotype connection to public policy views, see Martin I. Gilens, Why AmericansHate Welfare: Race, Media, and the Politics of Antipoverty Policy (Chicago: University of Chi-cago Press, 1999); Lawrence D. Bobo and James R. Kluegel, “Opposition to Race-Targeting:Self-Interest, Strati½cation Ideology, or Racial Attitudes?” American Sociological Review 58(1993): 443–464; and Steven A. Tuch and Michael Hughes, “Whites’ Racial Policy Atti-tudes,” Social Science Quarterly 77 (1996): 723–745.

31 For one excellent empirical report, see David O. Sears, Collette van Larr, Mary Carillo,and Rick Kosterman, “Is It Really Racism?: The Origins of White American Opposition to Race-Targeted Policies,” Public Opinion Quarterly 61 (1997): 16–53. For a careful reviewand assessment of debates regarding the new racism hypothesis, see Maria Krysan, “Preju-dice, Politics, and Public Opinion: Understanding the Sources of Racial Policy Attitudes,”Annual Review of Sociology 26 (2000): 135–168.

32 For a discussion of the growing role of such resentments in partisan outlooks and politicalbehavior, see Nicholas A. Valentino and David O. Sears, “Old Times There Are Not For-gotten: Race and Partisan Realignment in the Contemporary South,” American Journal ofPolitical Science 49 (2005): 672–688. For differential effects by race, see Lawrence D. Boboand Devon Johnson, “A Taste for Punishment: Black and White Americans’ Views on theDeath Penalty and the War on Drugs,” Du Bois Review 1 (2004): 151–180.

33 Those representative of the “deeply rooted racial flaw” camp would include Derrick Bell,Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism (New York: Basic Books, 1992);Andrew Hacker, Two Nations: Black and White: Separate, Hostile, Unequal (New York: Scrib-ner, 1992); Donald R. Kinder and Lynn M. Sanders, Divided by Color: Racial Politics and Demo-cratic Ideals (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); Charles W. Mills, The Racial Con-tract (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997); Joe R. Feagin, Racist America: Roots, Cur-rent Realities, and Future Reparations (New York: Routledge, 2000); Michael K. Brown et al.,

36

Somewherebetween

Jim Crow & Post-

Racialism


White-Washing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society (Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 2003); and Douglas S. Massey, Categorically Unequal: The American Strati½cation Sys-tem (New York: Russell Sage, 2006). Those representative of the “triumph of Americanliberalism” camp would include Nathan Glazer, “The Emergence of an American EthnicPattern,” in From Different Shores: Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity in America, ed. RonaldTakaki (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 11–23; Orlando Patterson, The Ordealof Integration: Progress and Resentment in America’s “Racial” Crisis (Washington, D.C.: BasicCivitas, 1997); Paul M. Sniderman and Edward G. Carmines, Reaching Beyond Race (Cam-bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997); Abigail Thernstrom and Stephan Thern-strom, America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible (New York: Simon & Schuster,1997); and Richard D. Alba, Blurring the Color Line: The New Chance for a More IntegratedAmerica (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009).

34 These numbers point to a sharp rise in the percentage of white Americans endorsing theview that we have or will soon achieve racial equality; the ½gure rose from about 66 per-cent in 2000 to over 80 percent in 2009. A similar increase occurred among blacks: while27 percent endorsed this view in 2000, the ½gure rose to 53 percent in 2009; thus, it nearlydoubled. The 2000 survey allowed respondents to answer, “Don’t know”; the 2009 surveydid not. These percentages are calculated without the “don’t know” responses. The 2000results are reported in Lawrence D. Bobo, “Inequalities that Endure? Racial Ideology, Amer-ican Politics, and the Peculiar Role of the Social Sciences,” in The Changing Terrain of Raceand Ethnicity, ed. Maria Krysan and Amanda E. Lewis (New York: Russell Sage, 2004),13–42.

Documents

Somewhere between Jim Crow & Post-Racialism: … · Somewhere between Jim Crow & Post-Racialism Dædalus, the Journal ofthe American Academy of Arts & Sciences. political science,