Changes In Racial Composition Research Articles

The impact of weather on the racial composition of traffic stop and citation issuance in the United States

ABSTRACT We analyze how adverse weather influences the racial composition of traffic stops and the issuance of citations within the context of administrative discretion. The behavior of police officers and drivers may be affected by weather, leading to a change in the composition of stopped drivers. If changes in racial composition are due to police officers choosing to forego traffic stops because those are more costly in wet conditions, it could indicate racial bias. Based on data from 37 city and 11 state police departments, our analysis reveals that the racial composition of drivers stopped and the probability of a citation being issued are not independent of adverse weather conditions, especially for state agencies. These findings contribute to the existing literature on factors influencing police–citizen interactions and provide a foundation for investigating the potential connections among weather, administrative discretion, and racial bias.

Greater Inclusion of Asian Americans in Aging Research on Family Caregiving for Better Understanding of Racial Health Inequities.

With the substantial demographic changes in racial composition in the United States since 1965, research on racial health inequities must build upon the Black-White binary to assess the complex ways "race" affects health and aging. Considering variation in the prevalence and meanings of aging across racialized groups requires concerted efforts to expand and disaggregate samples. Aligned with the goals of the intersectionality framework, we argue that greater inclusion of Asian Americans is critical to advance both theoretical and methodological considerations that enable us to investigate the lived experiences of Asian Americans. Using caregiving as an example, we discuss how systemic, cultural, and interpersonal marginalization from racism and other oppressive systems intertwine with "race" to produce the race effects. Greater inclusion of Asian Americans helps further provide the opportunity to conceptualize culture as dynamic and interacting with structure to produce different racial patterns. Meaningful inclusion of Asian Americans in research requires more systemic effort to collect accurate, reliable, and quality data for Asian Americans that can be disaggregated by other important axes of stratification.

Transit investments and neighborhood change: On the likelihood of change

This paper is focused on the identification of, and the dynamics associated with, neighborhoods that are more prone to undergo socioeconomic and demographic changes following rail transit investments. Utilizing data from 9 metropolitan areas that have invested in light rail between 1980 and 2010, a k-means clustering approach is used to construct discrete multivariate neighborhood typologies. Together with Markov chains, we are able to examine transitions between neighborhood types before and after the opening of a station. Results for affected neighborhoods are compared to city-wide transitions to uncover differences. Our findings suggest that there is a significant difference in transit and non-transit neighborhood transitions. There also appears to be a difference in trajectories between Walk-and-Ride and Park-and-Ride neighborhoods. While neighborhoods are largely stable over time, impoverished neighborhoods are most likely to experience changes (such as gentrification) following the opening of a transit station. The most affluent neighborhoods are the least likely to experience change but are associated with the most probable trajectory of change featuring densification. Finally, there is little evidence that socioeconomic ascent following station openings is associated with significant changes in racial composition. Knowledge about neighborhood dynamics associated with transit investments can aid policy makers and planners in achieving socioeconomic goals of transit investments.

Predicting neighborhood racial change in large US metropolitan areas, 1990-2010.

Neighborhoods in US metropolitan areas experienced dramatic changes in racial composition during the 1990s and again during the 2000s. We ask to what extent does the recent period of neighborhood racial change reflect an extension of the local processes operative in the 1990s, processes characteristic of large metropolitan areas or the nation more generally, or reflect new dynamics. After classifying neighborhoods in US metropolitan areas into different types based on their racial composition and having harmonized a set of tracts to consistent boundaries, we use metropolitan-scale tract transition matrices from the 1990s to predict changes in neighborhood racial mix between 2000 and 2010. To capture scale effects, we repeat this using a set of pooled metropolitan-scale tract transition matrices and again using a national tract transition matrix. We show that the main dynamic at work across the metropolitan system is the underprediction of moderately diverse white majority tracts: i.e., in the 2000s, the rate of increase in the racial diversity of white majority tracts that transitioned from being predominantly white to moderately diverse was much higher than expected based on 1990s trends. In some metropolitan areas, shares of moderately diverse white tracts in 2010 are anticipated by their 1990s neighborhood dynamics, suggesting temporal stability and a locational specificity in these processes. Others experience a temporal rupture in these dynamics, and their moderately diverse white tract share is better anticipated by pooling transition information. The study also invites us to think about the nature of residential change currently taking place that we can capture in 2020 census data.

Is Integration a Dream Deferred? Students of Color in Majority White Suburban Schools

Since the Brown v. Board of Education Topeka Kansas I and II rulings (Brown, 1954, 1955) proponents of racial justice have pushed for racially integrated schools to improve the quality of education for students of color (Bell, 1975, 2005; Delgado & Stefancic, 1995). Initial support for integrated schools, where formal and informal learning and activities occur in racially mixed settings, was based on the argument, or as Derrick Bell named it, the siren song (2005), that only when students of color inhabit the same educational spaces as White students would they be able to reap the benefits of resource-rich White educational spaces. As time progresses and researchers study the outcomes of integrated spaces, a more complex, but no less problematic, view of students of color evolves. The discourse of integrated schools has morphed into conversations about the types of social and cultural capital held by White middle class students, and not held by students of color. Deficit discourses of communities of color have become further instantiated because students of color are seen as reliant upon White students to access both rigorous academic curricula and the hidden curricula of college readiness (Delgado & Stefancic, 1995).The ideological illusion (Lawrence, 1983), that integrated spaces are race neutral, prompts researchers to blame communities of color for cultivating less-academically oriented students, rather than to design research studies that explore institutional accountability for students' academic success (Diamond, 2006). Therefore, If Blacks fail under similar treatment, it must be because they are somehow inferior (Lawrence, 1983, p. 850). Yosso (2002) linked the colorblind contexts of racism and inequality in education and discourses to student achievement when she stated,It is important to address the inequality embedded in school curriculum before addressing unequal educational outcomes. Indeed, one of the first mistakes most often made by many educators and policy makers is to look at the inequalities of student outcomes and blame students without looking at the conditions, such as the curricular structures, processes and discourses that create unequal outcomes, (p. 94)Because of the prevailing discourse of racially integrated schools as a primary course of action to create equitable schooling environments for students of color, the uneven outcomes of integrated schools, as derivatives of institutional policies and adult practices, have not been fully explored. To further conversations about the merits and detractors of integration, and to call for a re- assessment of integration as a definitive solution for producing equitable education, the author analyzes the uneven adult-student relationships between teachers, counselors, and students of color in a study of majority White suburban schools.Changing Landscape of Suburban SchoolsThe racial landscape of suburban schools has drastically changed in the past decade. Suburbs are defined as districts outside the city center with a substantial population of residents commuting to the metropolitan center for employment. Suburbs most often have school districts that are independent of the larger metropolitan district. Unlike earlier decades, today's suburban schools are no longer always located in racially homogenous, high-income communities. Instead, the suburbs of the 21st Century often represent the frontier of racial change in America (Tefera, Frankenberg, Hawley, & Chirichigno, 2011, p. 1). In the past 20 years, the suburban population has grown by 20 million new residents, many of whom are families of color (Orfield & Luce, 2012). Changes in suburban racial demographic patterns vary due to neighborhood tax bases, proximity to the metropolitan area, history of racial stability, and economic and political capital (Orfield, 2002; Orfield & Luce, 2012). Across all suburbs, the changes in racial composition were most dynamic regarding the growth of Latino families. …

Multidimensional Racial Inequality in the United States

This paper measures racial inequalities in the US using a multidimensional ‘wellbeing’ approach that simultaneously considers the distributions of income, health and education. The primary objective is to examine trends in US wellbeing inequality with an emphasis on changes in racial composition. Data is taken from 1990 to 2007 and we observe increases in income inequality, a decline in education inequality and unchanged health inequality over the period. Taken together, these results show a slight increase in the dispersion in multidimensional wellbeing. Stratifying by racial groups shows that this increase is due to widening intra-racial inequalities while inter-racial differences remained unchanged. The method is also used to evaluate wellbeing across groups and we estimate black wellbeing to average around 76 % of whites, while persons from other races average approximately 93 %. Some other changes in composition occur through time and the results are shown to be robust to a number of changes in parametric weightings.

Prevalence of Serious Mental Illness Among Jail Inmates

Prevalence of Serious Mental Illness Among Jail Inmates

Prevalence of Serious Mental Illness Among Jail Inmates

This study estimated current prevalence rates of serious mental illness among adult male and female inmates in five jails during two time periods (four jails in each period). During two data collection phases (2002-2003 and 2005-2006), recently admitted inmates at two jails in Maryland and three jails in New York were selected to receive the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID). Selection was based on systematic sampling of data from a brief screen for symptoms of mental illness that was used at admission for all inmates. The SCID was administered to a total of 822 inmates-358 during phase I and 464 during phase II. To determine the current (past-month) prevalence of serious mental illness (defined as major depressive disorder; depressive disorder not otherwise specified; bipolar disorder I, II, and not otherwise specified; schizophrenia spectrum disorder; schizoaffective disorder; schizophreniform disorder; brief psychotic disorder; delusional disorder; and psychotic disorder not otherwise specified), interview data were weighted against strata constructed from the screening samples for male and female inmates by jail and study phase. Across jails and study phases the rate of current serious mental illness for male inmates was 14.5% (asymmetric 95% confidence interval [CI]=11.0%-18.9%) and for female inmates it was 31.0% (asymmetric CI=21.7%-42.1%). The estimates in this study have profound implications in terms of resource allocation for treatment in jails and in community-based settings for individuals with mental illness who are involved in the justice system.

Unequal crime decline: theorizing race, urban inequality, and criminal violence

2009 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Crime in most urban areas has been falling since 1991. While the decline has been well-documented, few scholars have analyzed which groups have most benefited from the crime decline and which are still on the frontlines of violence-and why that might be. In Unequal Crime Decline, Karen F. Parker presents a structural and theoretical analysis of the various factors that affect the crime decline, looking particularly at the past three decades and the shifts that have taken place, and offers original insight into which trends have declined and why. Taking into account such indicators as employment, labor market opportunities, skill levels, housing, changes in racial composition, family structure, and drug trafficking, Parker provides statistics that illustrate how these factors do or do not affect urban violence, and carefully considers these factors in relation to various crime trends, such as rates involving blacks, whites, but also trends among black males, white females, as well as others. Throughout the book she discusses popular structural theories of crime and their limitations, in the end concentrating on today's issues and important contemporary policy to be considered. Unequal Crime Decline is a comprehensive and theoretically sophisticated look at the relationship among race, urban inequality, and violence in the years leading up to and following America's landmark crime drop.

Residential Mobility of Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Program Recipients: Assessing Changes in Poverty and Racial Composition in Neighborhoods

The Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program is the largest federal low-income housing program serving 1.8 million households nationwide. The HCV program serves to promote economically mixed neighborhoods (deconcentration), residential mobility among the recipients, and desegregation. This study evaluates the locational outcomes of the HCV program recipients in Columbus, Ohio from 1999–2005 against the program's policy goals of deconcentration and desegregation by examining the change in poverty and change in racial composition from pre to post-move neighborhoods. The results reveal that the mobility of recipients does not predict a change in poverty and a recipient's race does not predict a change in racial composition in neighborhoods. The findings suggest that the HCV program policy goals of deconcentration and desegregation are currently being met in Columbus, Ohio.

Managing South African transformation: the story of cricket in KwaZulu Natal, 1994–2004

Sport has historically been an important element of South African popular culture, even though it was divided along racial lines for much of the country's history. In post-apartheid South Africa, sport is seen by politicians, sports officials and many ordinary people as a means to surmount race and class barriers and to forge nationhood. But sport remains a site of acute contestation over what transformation means: ‘merit’ versus ‘affirmative action’, beneficiaries of change, pace of transformation and so on. This conflict reflects the broader tensions over how South African society should be restructured. Change in racial composition at the level of leadership, coaching and players since 1990 has failed to transform cricket into a ‘people's game’. The cricket establishment is following the lead of government in prioritizing the empowerment of a minority. Class privilege has replaced race privilege. At the same time, tensions generated by change are producing further hostility along the fault lines of race and class. There is, for example, a conflict over resources among those previously labelled ‘Black’: Indians, Coloureds and the majority African population. These struggles reveal the fragmented nature of post-apartheid South African society, notwithstanding attempts to define South Africa as a ‘rainbow nation’. The historical, social, economic and cultural legacy of South Africa's conflicting pasts, the impact of globalization—and sport is a principal front of globalization, generating vast economic revenue and creating intolerable pressure to succeed—as well as post-apartheid discrepancies in economic and social conditions are all making it difficult to forge a united national culture, despite the attempt to use sport for the ‘mythic enactment’ of a collective South African identity. The tensions discussed in this article continue to be alive though the ‘patterns of prejudice’ are manifesting themselves in different forms.

Wages, Sorting on Skill, and the Racial Composition of Jobs

Wages for black and white workers are substantially lower in occupations with a high density of black employees, following standard controls. Such correlations can exist absent discrimination or as a result of discrimination. In wage level equations, partial correlations fall sharply after controlling for occupational skills. Longitudinal estimates accounting for worker heterogeneity indicate little wage change associated with changes in racial composition. Results support a “quality sorting” rather than discrimination explanation, with racial density serving as an index of unmeasured skills. Discrimination reflected in racial wage gaps occurs within occupations or across occupations in a manner uncorrelated with racial composition.

Race‐Based Redistricting, Core Constituencies, and Legislative Responsiveness to Constituency Change*

Objective. Fenno (1978), Wright (1989), and other scholars suggest that legislators will be particularly responsive to various subgroups in their constituency, i.e., what might be termed the “core constituency.” We explore the degree to which Republican and Democrat House incumbents respond differently to changes in the racial composition of their districts brought about by redistricting. We speculate that (1) Democrat House incumbents will be more responsive in their roll-call behavior to changes in African-American racial composition, since African-American voters are typically a major component of the Democrat core constituency, while (2) Republicans will be less responsive, since African-American voters are typically not part of the Republican coalition. Methods. We utilize data on the roll-call behavior, member characteristics, and constituency characteristics of House members who served during both the 102nd (1991–1992) and 103rd (1993–1994) Congresses. We model roll-call liberalism in 1993 as a function of levels of and changes in district racial composition, along with control variables. To capture the different effects of racial core constituencies, we estimate our models separately for Democratic and Republican House members. Results. Our findings provide strong support for our hypothesis: Democrat incumbents respond strongly both to levels of and changes in the African-American population in their districts, while Republican incumbents respond only modestly to changes in African-American population brought on by redistricting and negatively to African-American population levels. Conclusions. Democrats and Republicans appear to respond differently to constituent groups, depending on whether the groups are part of their core constituency. Our findings suggest the importance of considering core constituencies in studying roll-call behavior and legislative responsiveness.

Wages, Sorting on Skill, and the Racial Composition of Jobs

Wages for black and white workers are substantially lower in occupations with a high density of black employees, following standard controls. Such correlations can exist absent discrimination or as a result of discrimination. In wage level equations, the magnitude of the correlation falls sharply after controlling for occupational skills. Longitudinal estimates accounting for worker heterogeneity indicate little if any wage change associated with changes in racial composition. Results support a quality sorting explanation, with racial density serving as an index of unmeasured skills. Although past discrimination helps determine the present pattern of job sorting, current discrimination cannot explain the relationship between wages and racial density. Current discrimination reflected in racial wage gaps occurs within occupations or across occupations in a manner uncorrelated with racial composition.

Race, Roll Calls, and Redistricting: The Impact of Race-Based Redistricting on Congressional Roll-Call

The congressional redistricting following the 1990 Census resulted in the creation of a number of majority-minority congressional districts. While the descriptive representation of various minority groups in the U.S. House was increased as a result, there is some question about how these changes affected the roll-call behavior of incumbent House members whose districts underwent a change in racial composition following redistricting. We explore the effect of changes in district racial composition associated with the creation of majority-minority districts on the roll-call behavior of members of the U.S. House. Our findings indicate that, as the black population in a district changes following redistricting, House incumbents respond with changes in their roll-call behavior. The strongest effects are found among House incumbents representing districts that underwent large changes (i.e., 10 percent or greater) in black constituency composition; these members exhibit substantial changes in their roll-call liberalism in response to changes in the racial composition of their districts brought on by redistricting. Overall, our findings point to the importance of considering both the dynamic element of representation and possible nonlinear effects in reaching an understanding of the effects of race-based redistricting.

Family Matters in the Fiction of Charles W. Chesnutt

Writing fiction one hundred years ago, Charles W. Chesnutt believed that America's racial future was best embodied in himself, a mixed-race American. A light-skinned mulatto living on the color line, he argued that racial amalgamation, through passing and miscegenation, would slowly erode the rigid white-black dichotomy of America's caste system. Eventually, he foresaw, would become one race, as his stories of light-skinned protagonists on the color line seemed predict. Unfortunately for his literary reputation, this racial prescription for a New was premature. By the time of his death in 1932, the Harlem Renaissance had celebrated a New Negro who was no light-skinned assimilationist, but one who, like Langston Hughes, stood on the racial mountaintop of a proud, culturally distinct, dark-skinned self. It is now a century after Chesnutt's first book publications, and is changing. Racial amalgamation, according federal statistics, occurs at a more rapid pace than ever before. From 1970 1990, marriages between blacks and whites rose from two percent of all marriages six percent. number jumped over twelve percent by 1993 (With This Ring). Nearly ten percent of black men marry white women (Nor Black). now have about two million multi-racial children, this number having quadrupled from 1970. By the middle of the twenty-first century, whites will no longer comprise the population majority, and Hispanics will surpass black Americans in number. browning of America also will include, by the year 2020, more than nineteen million Asians and Pacific Islanders (White 32). These demographics point such a change in racial composition that we might now ask, Did Charles Chesnutt's stories of the color line prophetically hit the mark? In what respects does amalgamation advance, or fail advance, racial progress? Most importantly for the literary historian, how did Chesnutt's most fundamental racial beliefs contribute his most critically intelligent fiction? Chesnutt's core racial beliefs were rooted in his heritage. As a member of both the white and black he saw himself biologically as part of one whole human family. Against his era's virulent, two-fold stigmatizing of mulattoes as biologically unnatural and illegitimate, Chesnutt always perceived the commonality of the human family. idea came be, in his fiction, the benchmark by which he formulated social critique. Throughout his career, the idea of human family was a consistent and continuously articulated assumption, often rendered in popular, democratic tropes such as the brotherhood of In his early speech Self-Made Men, given at age twenty-three a literary society, he portrayed Frederick Douglass and Horace Greeley as equally self-made men both made in God's image (Essays 33-40). In his published essay What Is a White Man?, thirty-year-old Chesnutt argued that laws defining America's thousands of racially-mixed persons as Negro rendered white purity an arbitrary construct (68-73). In 1904, now a published author, he put in four simple words of a speech his central message: Exalt humanity above race. He added, We have carried the distinction between races so far that it has become wellnigh ludicrous (200, 201). In a speech delivered in Boston the following year, Race Prejudice: Its Causes and Cures, Chesnutt articulated most presciently our current view of race as a social construction rather than an and transcendent reality. We scarcely need science, he stated, to teach us a thing so obvious as the unity of mankind--the brotherhood of man. whole idea of difference, he argued at great length, was superficial rather than essential (215). theme persisted his acceptance of the 1925 Spingarn Medal when he stated, We are all one people (514). His most central statement of the issue was a serialized essay The Future American, published in the Boston Evening Transcript in August 1900. …

Race and Violent Crime in the Suburbs

We examine the effects of racial composition on crime rates but we give equal weight to the opposite causal order--the violent crime rate itself could cause a change in racial composition. The authors test the hypothesis using data a national sample of [U.S.] suburbs for the period 1970 to 1990. We find significant and approximately equal causal effects in both directions; specifically it is the robbery component of crime that affects racial composition. High robbery rates are associated with black population growth while stimulating white flight. (EXCERPT)

Violent-Crime Rates and Racial Composition: Covergence Over Time

Considerable research reports that racial composition strongly affects violent-crime rates. Unfortunately, most research ignores the possibility that violent-crime rates may affect racial composition. Using a sample of U. S. cities, the authors examine the reciprocal effects of racial composition and violent-crime rates over the last 40 years. While racial composition strongly affects the change in violent-crime rates from 1980 to 1990, it only minimally affects changes in rates for the previous three decades; but violent-crime rates (especially robbery) substantially affect the change in racial composition for all four decades. Indeed, robbery rates appear to play a significant role in the white flight from central cities.

A Hedonic Approach to Residential Succession

A model of neighborhood turnover drawn from Bond and Coulson (1989) is proposed. The type of turnover process that is obtained is shown to depend mainly on the hedonic bid functions for housing and neighborhood quality. A demand system of four hedonic attributes is estimated. The main results are that the traditional model of filtering by age of unit does not occur and that filtering by housing size does. Tipping due to changes in median neighborhood income is also quite possible. Tipping through changes in racial composition appears less likely. Copyright 1990 by MIT Press.

Racial Segregation Trends in Birmingham, Alabama

Southeastern Geographer Vol. 25, No. 1, May 1985, pp. 30-43 RACIAL SEGREGATION TRENDS IN BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA Bobby M. Wilson The effect of the 1954 Brown I decision on school segregation was the overruling of the "separate but equal" doctrine of the Plessy v. Ferguson decision. (J) It was not until the Brown II and subsequent Supreme Court decisions, however, that the problem of how to desegregate schools was considered. (2) Residential segregation was considered to be one of the main obstacles to desegregation. Although residential segregation may have decreased since the Brown decision and may continue to decrease in the future, its effects, are often being counterbalanced by the decrease in the white proportion of central city populations. It is suggested that the inability of cities to desegregate their schools increasingly evolves out of the process of cities becoming predominantly black. Since the Brown decision major population changes are not only creating the potential for racial separation, but also the potential for social and economic inequality as exemplified by the increasing black central city and predominant white suburbs. This racial polarity is creating racial homogeneity not only among schools, but also among community contacts, stores, and other community facilities . In the same decade in which the Brown decision was handed down, the white population within central cities of U.S. metropolitan areas did not grow. The black population increased over fifty percent. These trends continued throughout the 1960s and 1970s. These changes resulted in almost sixty percent of the black population in 1980 residing in central cities compared to only twenty-five percent of the white population. The combination of a natural increase in the black population , black in-migration and white out-migration is responsible for these changes. However, white out-migration from central cities has been most responsible more recently for the significant changes in the racial composition of inner-cities populations. (3) As a result, blacks now make up twenty-two percent of central city population which is double their proportion in the total population. Dr. Wilson is Associate Professor of Urban Affairs and Geography at the University ofAlabama in Birmingham, AL 35294 Vol. XXV, No. 1 31 The purpose ofthis paper is to determine the influence ofresidential segregation and changing racial composition on municipal desegregation prospects in Birmingham, Alabama since 1970, particularly school desegregation . The problem of municipal segregation is defined as a lack of interracial contacts in the utilization of services or functions offered by the municipality for its citizenry. While municipal boundary lines may mean very little for interracial exposure involving the patronization of stores, and the frequenting of various facilities in the private sector, this is not the case in the utilization of services offered by the municipality . Given the significant change in the racial composition of many large cities, only by redrawing municipal boundary lines to coincide with the larger county or metropolitan area may there exist a racial balance sufficient enough to carry out desegregation. The success of any desegregation plan would depend upon the extent to which it increases interracial contacts. The extent to which there is an increase in interracial contacts would depend not only upon the elimination of residential segregation within the municipality, but also upon the extent to which there is a racially balanced population. CHANGES IN THE RACIAL COMPOSITION OF BIRMINGHAM POPULATION. During the period between 1900 and 1910 Birmingham earned the title "magic city" by experiencing a 245 percent increase in population, the largest increase in the U.S. for any city over 100,000. The growth ofthe steel industy was mainly responsible for this increase. The steel industry depended upon an ever increasing supply of cheap labor during these early years of its expansion. In Birmingham blacks provided much of this labor. (4) From 1890 to 1940 the black population increased 868 percent. The white population increased 964 percent. Because both black and white populations were increasing, there was little change in the city's racial composition (Fig. 1). Racial segregation was fostered by new housing construction designed for occupancy on a segregated basis. Available land provided black households with housing space without having to invade white neighborhoods. Birmingham used de jure forms...