Race in the social sciences

Abstract

Race is often used as a descriptive or analytic category in the social sciences when studying differences between individuals within the United States in social or economic traits. Social scientists routinely classify Americans by race when trying to describe or explain differences in income, employment, health care, crime, school performance, home ownership, drug addiction, or marriage and divorce within the population and often find that the differences in the United States between the races in each of a number of social or economic variables or traits are significant. In particular, they often find that the values of these variables differ more between racial groups than within them. Social scientists have a reason to use race as a descriptive or analytic category in their studies of individual differences in a social or economic trait even if they disapprove of racial classification or dream of a day when people are not classified by race or when a person's race makes no difference to her social or economic status.