Racial Stratification Research Articles

Mining, Racialisation and the Utopia of Desedimentation in Pedro Castera's Geological Writings

This article examines the close interrelation between racialisation and mining in Pedro Castera's Las minas y los mineros (1882) and Los maduros (1882). Castera's writings critically render mining as a profit‐driven extractive practice that relies on the stratification of inorganic and organic matter across racial lines. Minerals and racialised bodies are conceptualised as inert matter endowed with valued properties in the service of resource extraction. Simultaneously, Castera's ‘El Tildío’ conjures the utopian possibility of destabilising the racial stratification that upholds extractive colonialism and its legacies in the nineteenth century.

The Reign of Racialized Residential Sorting: Gentrification and Residential Mobility in the Twenty-First Century

Despite recent theoretical advances in explaining the persistence of segregation in the United States through structural sorting processes, how the spread and intensification of gentrification intersects with these processes is less clear. Drawing on the 2000–2017 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and fixed effects logistic and linear regression models, we examine gentrification’s relationship with residential mobility patterns and whether this relationship is racially stratified. We do not find evidence that living in gentrifying neighborhoods is associated with higher rates of moving for lower-income respondents compared to those living in nongentrifying neighborhoods nor does this differ by race. However, we find starkly different locational outcomes between Black and White movers across the income spectrum, rather than the gentrification status of one’s neighborhood. We argue that processes of racial stratification in the housing market largely govern residential outcomes, regardless of gentrification.

The Local Welfare State and Differences in Racialized Poverty

ABSTRACT Researchers concerned with the U.S. welfare state have documented that more localized administration allows for greater geographic variation in public policies as well as the greater potential for racial discrimination to influence policy outcomes. I explore whether key attributes of the local welfare state, capacity and spending, are associated with differences in racialized poverty across localities. I develop a conceptual framework drawing on two sociological traditions: spatial inequality framework and local welfare state theory. Spatial inequality scholarship provides a framework for interrogating why poverty varies across localities and racialized groups. Local welfare scholarship conceptualizes the processes by which local governments impact poverty and how those processes may be highly racialized. Drawing on data from the Census of Governments, I examine all local governments’ capacity and spending across counties in the U.S. and their association with poverty rates among white, Black, and Hispanic populations. I find that local governments’ capacity and spending do matter to understanding differences in racialized poverty. Specifically, racialized groups perceived as more deserving are likely to be the beneficiaries of local government interventions and policies. This study calls for greater attention to the local welfare state as a possible mechanism maintaining racial stratification.

The “People’s Tour” as Conflict Pedagogy: Using Site Visits to Engage Students with the Struggle for Civil Rights

Winston-Salem, North Carolina, has a rich history of Civil Rights struggles and its people continue to resist racial oppression in systems of housing, labor, education, policing, transportation, and others. Dating to 1892, Winston-Salem State University (WSSU), a historically Black college/university (HBCU), has attracted students who have become organizers and activists in the fight for social justice in the local community. These include Theodosia Simpson, a leader of the radical Black women-led tobacco workers union; Carl Matthews, who started the first victorious lunch counter sit-in in North Carolina; and Dr. Larry Little, who co-founded the first official Black Panther Party chapter in the South. In that tradition, I have developed a “People’s History Tour of Winston-Salem” that takes current WSSU students outside the classroom to learn about the Civil Rights struggle at a variety of important sites. This critical pedagogy has students apply key sociological concepts that bolster their understanding of racial stratification and efforts to eradicate it. The goals of this assignment are for students to explore classroom curriculum about White supremacy, racial capitalism, and social movements at relevant historical and contemporary sites in Winston-Salem. By doing so, I aim for students to have transformative experiences that tie their readings and classroom discussions to the community spaces where that material comes alive.

Research on Social Stratification in Brazil

ABSTRACTBrazil, as the most unequal and populous country in Latin America, demands a closer examination of its patterns and trends of social stratification. With an emphasis on recent contributions, the paper reviews the literature on four major areas of stratification research: race relations and inequality, educational stratification, intergenerational mobility, and income inequality. The literature on racial stratification focuses on the following subjects: racial classification, discrimination, marital selectivity, educational stratification, and intergenerational mobility. In addition, educational stratification literature concerning trends and patterns is reviewed with special attention to studies advanced by sociologists of social stratification. Intergenerational mobility studies are also presented and discussed. Finally, studies on income and wealth inequality are reviewed. In all these areas the contribution of sociologists is highlighted, and trends and patterns of stratification are presented.

Particulate Matter 2.5 Pollution Impact on Comorbid Cancer and Cardiovascular Disease Mortality in the U.S.

BackgroundEvidence regarding the effect of long-term exposure to particulate matter (PM) 2.5 and comorbid cancer and cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality is limited. ObjectivesIn this study, the author report the association between long-term exposure to PM 2.5 and CVD mortality, cancer mortality and comorbid cancer and CVD mortality in the U.S. population. MethodsThe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) WONDER (Wide-Ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research) multiple-cause-of-death database was used to obtain U.S. county-level mortality and population estimates from 2016 to 2020. Data on average daily density of PM 2.5 were abstracted from the 2018 CDC’s National Environmental Public Health Tracking system. Counties were divided into quartiles with Q1 representing counties with least average daily density and Q4 representing counties with maximum average daily density of PM 2.5. Age-adjusted mortality rates were abstracted for each quartile, for the overall population and subgroups of population. ResultsThe age-adjusted mortality rates for CVD, cancer, and comorbid cancer and CVD mortality were 505.3 (range: 505.0-505.7), 210.7 (range: 210.5-210.9), and 62.0 (range: 61.8-62.1) per 100,000 person-years, respectively. CVD mortality had the highest percentage excess mortality in Q4 compared with Q1, followed by comorbid cancer and CVD. Cancer had the least percentage excess mortality. A disproportionate effect of PM 2.5 exposure was noted on vulnerable and minority groups, based on Social Vulnerability Index and race stratification, respectively. ConclusionsHigher levels of long-term PM 2.5 exposure reported increased CVD mortality, cancer mortality and comorbid cancer and CVD disease mortality, with a pronounced detrimental effect in vulnerable and minority population.

Glaucoma is not seen at a higher prevalence in age-related transthyretin amyloidosis after race stratification

Glaucoma is not seen at a higher prevalence in age-related transthyretin amyloidosis after race stratification

Chinese international students’ perspectives on Asian Americans in the U.S. racial hierarchy

This article examines how Chinese international students perceive the racial identity of Asian Americans and how they position this pan-national, pan-ethnic, phenotypical-based group in relation to other oppressed minorities. Drawing upon theoretical frameworks of the world racial system and racial triangulation, this article argues that Chinese students’ ideological socialization in their home country and college experiences in the host country jointly contribute to their knowledge of Asian Americans. To be specific, Chinese students subscribe to the racial stereotype of Asian Americans as ‘perpetual foreigners,’ and insist that they are difficult to unite but they have more racial consciousness as a minority than Asians from Asian countries. The finding further indicates, different from perceived racial stratification that Asian Americans are positioned as a ‘racial middle’ group in relation to White and Black Americans, that Chinese students subjectively think Asian Americans are (politically) positioned at the bottom in the U.S. racial hierarchy.

Clearance rates, arrest rates, and racial stratification: A time series analysis, 1965–2020

ABSTRACT Guided by the etiology of crime and policing literatures, this report presents the exploratory hypothesis that the overemphasis placed upon crime clearance rates as a measure of law enforcement efficiency/effectiveness may help account for longstanding racial disparities in the risk of arrest in the US. In the context of an increasingly quantitative fixation on measurable outputs within policing administration, it is argued that the oversurveillance, contact, and ultimate arrest of racial minorities, through discretionary proactive policing activities, has become embedded in the (sub)culture of policing to illustrate that something is being done about unsolved crime. In assessing this hypothesis, national-level, advanced time series models were estimated from 1965 to 2020 (N = 54), with results indicating that year-to-year increases in the lagged percentages of unsolved criminal offenses were significantly associated with year-to-year increases (decreases) in arrest rates for Black (White) people in the US – net of prior theoretically relevant macro-structural correlates of crime. The reported analyses represent a meaningful first attempt in assessing the validity of the hypothesized relationship between crime clearance percentages and trends in Black and White arrest rates – opening the door for a new line of inquiry within an already important field of stratification and crime.

Racial Feudalism

Recent scholarship has examined Alexis de Tocqueville's underexplored assertion that American racial stratification functioned as an extension of European feudalism. However, Tocqueville was not alone in his insights. At least a half-dozen nineteenth-century African American writers and thinkers, including Frederick Douglass, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Maria Stewart, Harriet Jacobs, Sojourner Truth, and especially Hosea Easton, have also described America's racial hierarchy as a continuation of antecedent European feudal social structures. Not only do their perspectives on what I call racial feudalism in America lend credence to Tocqueville's hypothesis that the afterlife of medieval social frameworks continued to persist in the post-Enlightenment United States, but also black Americans establish a distinctive body of knowledge that must be read alongside Tocqueville to render a more complete understanding of antebellum US social hierarchy.

Association between triglyceride glucose index and total bone mineral density: a cross-sectional study from NHANES 2011–2018

The Homeostatic Model Assessment for Triglyceride Glucose Index (TyG) and its related indices, including triglyceride glucose-waist circumference (TyG-WC), triglyceride glucose-waist-to-height ratio (TyG-WHtR) and triglyceride glucose-body mass index (TyG-BMI), has emerged as a practical tool for assessing insulin resistance in metabolic disorders. However, limited studies have explored the connection between TyG, TyG-related indices and osteoporosis. This population-based study, utilizing data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2011–2018, involved 5456 participants. Through weighted multivariate linear regression and smoothed curve fitting, a significant positive correlation was found between TyG, TyG-related indices and total bone mineral density (BMD) after adjusting for covariates [β = 0.0124, 95% CI (0.0006, 0.0242), P = 0.0390; β = 0.0004, 95% CI (0.0003, 0.0004), P < 0.0001; β = 0.0116, 95% CI (0.0076, 0.0156), P < 0.0001; β = 0.0001, 95% CI (0.0001, 0.0001), P < 0.0001]. In subgroup analysis, race stratification significantly affected the relationship between TyG and total BMD. Additionally, gender and race were both significant for TyG-related indices. Non-linear relationships and threshold effects with inflection points at 9.106, 193.9265, 4.065, and 667.5304 (TyG, TyG-BMI, TyG-WHtR, TyG-WC) were identified. Saturation phenomena were observed between TyG-BMI, TyG-WC and total BMD with saturation thresholds at 314.177 and 1022.0428. These findings contributed to understanding the association between TyG, TyG-related indices and total BMD, offering insights for osteoporosis prevention and treatment.

Uncertainty in Breast Cancer Risk Prediction: A Conformal Prediction Study of Race Stratification.

The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in medicine has attracted a great deal of attention in the medical literature, but less is known about how to assess the uncertainty of individual predictions in clinical applications. This paper demonstrates the use of Conformal Prediction (CP) to provide insight on racial stratification of uncertainty quantification for breast cancer risk prediction. The results presented here show that CP methods provide important information about the diminished quality of predictions for individuals of minority racial backgrounds.

“Everybody that's here, is legal” white employers' racial ideologies in the workplace and justifications for hiring undocumented Latino laborers

AbstractWhite employers routinely hire undocumented Latino immigrant workers based on their perceived racializations about their subservience. Researchers have explored how employers racialize Latinos, yet there is less understanding of how white employers justify breaking immigration labor policies. This study analyzes the justifications of both racialized exploitation and organizational decoupling that supports violations of immigration laws. Using in‐depth interviews with 20 white employers, this study explores employer racializations of Latinos, views of whiteness in the workplace, and justifications to hire undocumented immigrants. White employers praise Latinos for their perceived subservience, favor whites for management, and neutralize their own unlawful actions of hiring undocumented laborers. White employers frame themselves as rational, innocent, and virtuous while reinforcing racial stratification and breaking immigration laws. This study provides insights on employer labor practices with implications for labor mobility, migration reform, and racial inequality in the workplace.

Gentrification and Neighborhood Housing Wealth: How Gentrification Reproduces the Racial Stratification of Urban Neighborhoods

Few researchers have considered how gentrification affects inequalities of housing wealth between Black and White neighborhoods. Drawing on the U.S. census and the American Community Survey, I test the hypothesis that home values rise more slowly in gentrifying neighborhoods that are majority Black compared to those that are majority White. I find that home values appreciate more quickly in gentrifying neighborhoods that are majority Black, particularly those that are experiencing significant change in their racial-ethnic composition. The findings further suggest that Black gentrifying neighborhoods experiencing racial transition—a large increase in the proportion of White residents and a large decrease in the proportion of Black residents—experience higher rates of home value appreciation than those not experiencing racial transition. I argue that gentrification reproduces the racial stratification of urban neighborhoods because large increases to housing wealth tend to be coupled with the arrival of the White middle-class.

Risk Prediction for Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease With and Without Race Stratification

Use of race-specific risk prediction in clinical medicine is being questioned. Yet, the most commonly used prediction tool for atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD)-pooled cohort risk equations (PCEs)-uses race stratification. To quantify the incremental value of race-specific PCEs and determine whether adding social determinants of health (SDOH) instead of race improves model performance. Included in this analysis were participants from the biracial Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) prospective cohort study. Participants were aged 45 to 79 years, without ASCVD, and with low-density lipoprotein cholesterol level of 70 to 189 mg/dL or non-high-density lipoprotein cholesterol level of 100 to 219 mg/dL at baseline during the period of 2003 to 2007. Participants were followed up to 10 years for incident ASCVD, including myocardial infarction, coronary heart disease death, and fatal and nonfatal stroke. Study data were analyzed from July 2022 to February 2023. Discrimination (C statistic, Net Reclassification Index [NRI]), and calibration (plots, Nam D'Agostino test statistic comparing observed to predicted events) were assessed for the original PCE, then for a set of best-fit, race-stratified equations including the same variables as in the PCE (model C), best-fit equations without race stratification (model D), and best-fit equations without race stratification but including SDOH as covariates (model E). This study included 11 638 participants (mean [SD] age, 61.8 [8.3] years; 6764 female [58.1%]) from the REGARDS cohort. Across all strata (Black female, Black male, White female, and White male participants), C statistics did not change substantively compared with model C (Black female, 0.71; 95% CI, 0.68-0.75; Black male, 0.68; 95% CI, 0.64-0.73; White female, 0.77; 95% CI, 0.74-0.81; White male, 0.68; 95% CI, 0.64-0.71), in model D (Black female, 0.71; 95% CI, 0.67-0.75; Black male, 0.68; 95% CI, 0.63-0.72; White female, 0.76; 95% CI, 0.73-0.80; White male, 0.68; 95% CI, 0.65-0.71), or in model E (Black female, 0.72; 95% CI, 0.68-0.76; Black male, 0.68; 95% CI, 0.64-0.72; White female, 0.77; 95% CI, 0.74-0.80; White male, 0.68; 95% CI, 0.65-0.71). Comparing model D with E using the NRI showed a net percentage decline in the correct assignment to higher risk for male but not female individuals. The Nam D'Agostino test was not significant for all race-sex strata in each model series, indicating good calibration in all groups. Results of this cohort study suggest that PCE performed well overall but had poorer performance in both BM and WM participants compared with female participants regardless of race in the REGARDS cohort. Removal of race or the addition of SDOH did not improve model performance in any subgroup.

Fugitive future making: Empowering voices, amplifying sociopolitical imaginations, and designing transformative futures

In U.S. school systems, anti-Blackness and ableism are organizing principles that constitute a system of exclusion through which to dismiss complex intersectional identities of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) students with and without disabilities. Racialized outcome disparities in the identification of disability and school disciplinary actions are material consequences of the historically sedimented White and ableist legacy that pathologizes and criminalizes BIPOC students. To dismantle the current schooling system that perpetuates racial stratification and injustice, educational scholars and practitioners have collectively dreamed of learning as fugitive action in which they restore human dignity of BIPOC students and communities and envision alternative futures with them. Learning as fugitive action is a subversive approach that not only unveils the oppressive systems of schooling but also restructures them to achieve racial equity and disability justice. As part of the effort to facilitate collective fugitive learning at school, a community-driven systemic design intervention called Learning Lab was developed. Within the Learning Lab, school community members, particularly those from historically marginalized communities, collaborate to imagine possible realities and design a new support system accordingly. Through this collective fugitive learning, they actively address the disproportionality of their BIPOC youth in special education placements and school disciplinary outcomes. The aim of this essay is to explore the potential of Learning Lab as a space for fugitive future-making and to demonstrate how it can be used to dismantle oppressive structures and design transformative school systems.

The Canadian ‘War of the Two Sugars’: Homegrown Sugar Beets and the Racial Stratification of Labour

Abstract This paper provides a history of more than a century of efforts to establish and maintain a homegrown Canadian sugar supply – a twentieth-century version of what Eric Williams called the ‘war of the two sugars’, or the global competition between sugar beet and cane. To resolve beet sugar’s so-called ‘labour problem’, the industry has collaborated with the Canadian state to produce new classes of temporary workers, mobilising incarcerated Japanese Canadians, migrant Indigenous families, and Mexican and Caribbean workers employed through the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program. At the same time, the sugar industry has sought to refine itself of the racialised workers upon whom it relies by promoting the figure of the white Canadian worker. The Canadian ‘war of the two sugars’ has been fought through the stratification of the labour force along the lines of citizenship, resulting in the production of unique racial forms.

Solving Crime for America's “Others”: Crime Clearance and Asian American Victims

Based on the theoretical notion that racial hierarchy influences inequality in criminal justice outcomes, previous crime clearance studies have included victims’ race as a salient predictor of clearance. However, Asian American victims are seldom studied, often dropped from the analysis or combined as “other” with smaller racial groups. The unique and dialectical position of Asian Americans in the U.S. racial stratification system, simultaneously considered as “honorary White” and stigmatized as “perpetual foreigner” and “yellow peril,” should attract more research interest in the area of racial inequality in criminal justice outcomes. Using National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) data, the current study examines racial/ethnic differences in crime clearance by arrest, with special attention given to Asian victims in comparison to White, Black, Hispanic, and Native American victims. The survival analysis found no statistically significant difference in crime clearance between White and Asian victims, with their clearance likelihood higher than for victims from other minority groups. The current analysis also found that the use of a simpler White/non-White dichotomy or placement of Asians in a broad “other” category risks obscuring important differences in crime clearance between Asians and other minority groups.

Caracas Is Not Paris: The Moderate Modernity of Mestizaje in Teresa de la Parra’s Ifigenia (1924)

Abstract: Through her epistolary correspondence and her novel Ifigenia 1924, Teresa de la Parra (1889–1936) questions racial stratification systems reminiscent of colonial times and still present in twentieth-century Venezuela. Parra establishes the malleability of racial categories through a moderate racial discourse that intends to re-classify whiteness as the sole marker of economic wealth. Via its young and naïve protagonist, Ifigenia depicts how white elites reluctantly adapted to modernity’s significant socioeconomic changes, leaving previous racial stratification systems—and their whitening projects—obsolete. Parra’s moderate approach to race has been consistently overlooked by numerous scholars who often focus on Ifigenia ’s feminine discourse. However, Parra’s novel thrives in the nuanced juxtaposition between racial purity and mestizaje that mirrors the tension between Paris and Caracas as opposing geographical and racial spaces. Parra’s nuanced discourse reveals a moderate racial theory that underscores the importance of controlled racial mixing and intends to negotiate between a European ideal of racial purity and a Venezuelan mestizo reality at the turn of the twentieth century. Ultimately, her protagonist willingly sacrifices herself for the continuation of a national narrative where modernity has enforced an acceptance of mestizaje .

Dividing Lines: Racial Segregation across Local Government Boundaries

We describe the empirical relationship between local government boundaries and residential segregation in the United States. First, we study recent changes in the distribution of segregation within and between local governments in all metropolitan areas, using census block data on residential demographics over the period 1990–2020. We find that segregation across local government boundaries explains a substantial share of racial stratification, which has changed only little over the last thirty years. Next, we use spatial regression discontinuity methods to distinguish between household sorting due to neighborhood amenities and public goods provided by local governments. The prevalence of demographic discontinuities at local government boundaries suggest that between-jurisdiction segregation patterns cannot be explained solely by proximity to neighborhood amenities. We discuss implications for policy, showing that both between-jurisdiction segregation and jurisdictional discontinuities can partly explain the correlation between total segregation and racial gaps in educational outcomes. (JEL H41, H75, I24, I26, J15, R23)