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"West Indians in the United States are significant not only because of their overrepresentation among prominent or successful blacks, but also because their very different background makes them a test case of the explanatory importance of color, as such, in analyzing socioeconomic progress in the American economy and society, as compared to the importance of the cultural traditions of the American Negro.” 1978, Thomas Sowell, Three Black Histories, p. 42
The study of social inequality in general and racial inequality in particular has been a staple question for American sociology since it’s founding at the close of the nineteenth century (DuBois 1899, DuBois 1903). However, after a century of debate, there is still very little if any consensus on the reasons for social, political and economic inequality between blacks and whites in the United States. That is, despite the political and judicial gains of the modern civil rights period, ‘black folk’ continue to struggle for parity with their white peers and there is still much debate concerning the reasons for such persistent inequality. Broadly speaking, there are two primary explanations for this relatively asymmetric social positioning: the somewhat changed, but nonetheless unforgiving presence of an anti-black racial animus that is endemic to social thought and public policy in American society (e.g., Bonilla-Silva 2001, Feagin 2000) or the presence of a deeply ingrained and seemingly cancerous cultural pathology, coursing through the ‘veins’ of black social networks (e.g., Cosby and Puissant 2007, Lewis 1965, Moynihan 1965, Thernstrom and Thernstrom 1997).
According to Thomas Sowell (as quoted above, 1978: 42) the comparative study of African Americans and black Immigrants from the West Indies is representative of a naturally occurring scientific experiment whereby the investigator can isolate the degree to which anti-black animus and/or cultural pathology are responsible for racial inequality. Indeed, Sowell has argued that since both ethnic groups are black, the greater success of black immigrants implicates African American culture as the key factor in the production of black-white racial inequality. While there is much to learn about the relative roles of color and culture in the production of black-white racial inequality vis-à-vis such a black ethnic comparative, there are systematic limitations associated with presenting such a comparative as a ‘naturally occurring scientific experiment’ whereby levels of anti-black animus are controlled. That is, we might ask: does perceived nativity alter the ways in which black people experience anti-black racial animus in the United States? Posed another way, “Are Black Immigrants a Model Minority?”
The chief contribution of this project will therefore be to revise and push forward thinking on the role that race plays in the production and maintenance of black ethnic inequality in the United States. More specifically, I offer the concept of differential racialization in order to argue that much of the black ethnic inequality we observe is the result of a social process whereby the same attitudes and behaviors receive divergent socioeconomic and political consequence – in both kind and degree – based on whether or not the actor in question is perceived to be an African American or a black immigrant. Differential racialization is therefore in service to white supremacy in that it maintains the position of whites at the top and most blacks – native and foreign-born – at the bottom of our racial hierarchy. In short, my thinking on differential racialization is different from the existent explanations for black ethnic inequality because it is deeply informed by those who have worked to theorize the ways in which race structures or organizes societies (e.g., Bobo et al. 1997, Bonilla-Silva 1997, Kim 1999, Omi and Winant 1994, Feagin 2000, Mills 1997) as opposed to queries that are more immediately inspired by the literature on immigration and migration (e.g., Portes and Zhou 1993), identity politics (e.g., Kasinitz 1992, Waters 1999, Vickerman 1998) or labor economics (Butcher 1994, Chiswick 1978, Model 2008, Sowell 1978).
In terms of theoretical background, differential racialization begins with the contention that the most recent shift in U.S. racial discourse has been away fromthe biogenic racial logic of Jim Crow and toward a more colorblind racial ideology of the post civil rights period, where discussions of innate cultural predispositions are often invoked – i.e., the “biologization of culture” (Bonilla-Silva 2003: 39-43, Bobo et. al 1997, Moynihan 1965). This shift from biology to culture has been paralleled by a more general increase in the number of social characteristics that have been assigned certain kinds of racial meaning – i.e., an increase in the number of characteristics that are being used in the racialization process (Blaut 1992, Bonilla-Silva 2004, Gold 2004, Omi and Winant 1994). According to the most recent theorization on racialization, two such social characteristics that have been factored into this process are national origin and perceived foreignness (Kim 1999, Tuan 1998, Ngai 2005). As a result, stable notions of blackness are assigned according to perceived nativity (Benson 2006, Kasinitz 1992, Pierre 2004, Waters 1999). In the end, differential racialization functions to maintain the more general position of all blacks at the bottom of a “triangulated” racial hierarchy (Kim 1999). That is, in comparison to African Africans, black immigrants gain higher levels of socioeconomic attainment yet suffer political disenfranchisement vis-à-vis relative valorization and civic ostracism, respectively (Kim 1999, Pierre 2004, Waters 1999, Rodgers 2006).
In addition to offering a more robust theorization for the role of race in the production of black ethnic inequality, I will also be contributing to the current debate with new data and novel uses of statistical methods. Although those arguing for the selective nature of immigrants have offered fairly adequate data and modeling in support of their thesis, others have been unable to fully address challenges ranging from a heavy reliance on data from the U.S. Census to an overwhelming focus on blacks living in the north and southeast. That is, although the U.S. Census is one of the few datasets with large numbers of black immigrants from the West Indies, it is not well suited for an investigation of the role of race and culture in the production of black ethnic inequality (e.g., Sowell 1978). To the extent that these factors have been considered, it has been in ethnographic studies that have been conducted in the north- and southeast (e.g., Waters 1999, Kasinitz 1992). Therefore, in this study I will conduct a secondary analysis of survey data, using a national multi-stage area probability survey that includes whites, African Americans and black immigrants from the British West Indies. In order to better understand the ways in which the racial and ethnic composition of the metropolitan context might be at play, this survey will be supplemented with data from the U.S. Census (i.e., tokenism and queuing theory, Blalock 1956, Blalock 1957, Kanter 1993). When complete, this single dataset should provide for a more nuanced assessment of the various explanations for black ethnic inequality.
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(full proposal in .pdf)
(proposal bib in .pdf)
(table 1 in .pdf)
(table 2 in .pdf)
(appendix in .pdf)
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