Somewhere between Jim Crow &

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

Lawrence D. Bobo

In assessing the results of the Negro revolution so
far, 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 older
than most institutions, including the federal govern-
ment itself. More important, it informed the con-
tent and shaped the lives of those institutions and
the 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 election
Zyklus, or with a single candidacy–particularly a
candidacy as imperfect as my own.

–Barack H. Obama, “A More Perfect Union”

(Mai 18, 2008)1

The year 1965 marked an important inflection

point in the struggle for racial justice in the Unit-
ed Staaten, underscoring two fundamental points

© 2011 von der American Academy of Arts & Wissenschaften

LAWRENCE D. BOBO, a Fellow
of the American Academy since
2006, is the W.E.B. Du Bois Pro-
fessor of the Social Sciences at
Harvard University and a found-
ing editor of the Du Bois Review.
His publications include Racialized
Politik: The Debate about Racism in
Amerika (with David O. Sears and
James Sidanius, 2000), Urban In-
equality: Evidence from Four Cities
(with Alice O’Connor and Chris
Tilly, 2001), and Prejudice in Poli-
Tics: Group Position, Public Opinion,
and the Wisconsin Treaty Rights Dis-
Hure (with Mia Tuan, 2006).

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11

Somewhere
zwischen
Jim Crow
& Post-
Racialism

about race in America.2 First, that racial
inequality and division were not only
Southern problems attached to Jim Crow
segregation. Zweite, that the nature of
those inequalities and divisions was a
matter not merely of formal civil status
and law, but also of deeply etched eco-
nomic arrangements, social and politi-
cal conditions, and cultural outlooks
and practices. Viewed in full, the racial
divide was a challenge of truly national
reach, multilayered in its complexity
and depth. daher, the achievement
of basic citizenship rights in the South
was a pivotal but far from exhaustive
stage of the struggle.

The positive trend of the times revolved
around the achievement of voting rights.
Marsch 7, 1965, now known as Bloody Sun-
day, saw police and state troopers attack
several hundred peaceful civil rights pro-
testors at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in
Selma, Alabama. The subsequent march
from Selma to Montgomery, participat-
ed in by tens of thousands, along with
other protest actions, provided the pres-
sure that ½nally compelled Congress to
pass 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 triumph
for civil rights.

The long march to freedom seemed to
be 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, die USA. Supreme
Court repudiated the “separate but equal”
doctrine. Subsequently, a major civil rights
movement victory was achieved with the
passage 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, und das
federal government authorized to inter-
vene directly to assure those rights, eins

might have expected 1965 to stand as a
moment of shimmering and untarnished
civil rights progress. Yet the mood of
optimism and triumph did not last for
long.

The negative trend of the times was
epitomized by deep and explosive inequal-
ities and resentments of race smoldering
in many Northern, urban ghettos. Der
extent to which the “race problem” was
not just a Southern problem of civil rights,
but a national problem of inequality wo-
ven deep into our economic and cultural
fabric, would quickly be laid bare follow-
ing passage of the Voting Rights Act.
Scarcely ½ve days after then-President
Johnson signed the bill into law, the Los
Angeles community of Watts erupted
into flames. Quelling the disorder, welche
raged for roughly six days, required the
mobilization of the National Guard and
nearly ½fteen thousand troops. Wann
disorder ½nally subsided, thirty-four
people had died, more than one thou-
sand had been injured, well over three
thousand were arrested, and approxi-
mately $35 million in property damage had been done. Subsequent studies and reports 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 in 1965, Dædalus committed two issues to examining the conditions of “The Negro American.” The essays were wide-rang- ing. The topics addressed spanned ques- tions of power, demographic change, economic conditions, politics and civil status, religion and the church, family and community dynamics, as well as group identity, racial attitudes, and the future of race relations. Scholars from most social scienti½c ½elds, including anthropology, economics, Geschichte, law, 12 Dädalus, das Journal der American Academy of Arts & Sciences l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / Direkte . m i t . / e d u d a e d a r t i c e – p d / l f / / / / / 1 4 0 2 1 1 1 8 3 0 0 1 7 d a e d _ a _ 0 0 0 9 1 p d . f by gu e s t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 political science, Psychologie, and sociol- Ogy, contributed to the volumes. No sin- gle theme or message dominated these essays. Stattdessen, the volumes wrestled with the multidimensional and complex pat- terns of a rapidly changing racial terrain. Some critical observations stand out from two of those earlier essays, which have been ampli½ed and made center- pieces of much subsequent social science scholarship. Sociologist and anthropol- ogist St. Clair Drake drew a distinction between what he termed primary victim- ization and indirect victimization. Primary victimization involved overt discrimina- tion in the labor market that imposed a job ceiling on the economic opportuni- ties available to blacks alongside hous- ing discrimination and segregation that relegated blacks to racially distinct urban ghettos. Indirect or secondary victimi- zation involved the multidimensional and cumulative disadvantages resulting from 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 stressed the central importance of employment prospects in the wake of the civil rights victories that secured the basic citizen- ship rights of African Americans. Both Drake and Moynihan expressed concern about a black class structure marked by signs 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 forces already at work and increased automa- tion, deliberate planning by governmen- tal and private agencies will be necessary.” Striking a similar chord, Moynihan assert- Hrsg: „[T]here would also seem to be no question that opportunities for a large mass of Negro workers in the lower rang- es of training and education have not been improving, that in many ways the circumstances of these workers relative to the white work force have grown worse.” This marginalized economic status, both scholars suggested, would have ramify- ing effects, including weakening family structures in ways likely to worsen the challenges faced by black communities.3 If the scholarly assessments of 1965 occurred against a backdrop of powerful and transformative mass-based movement for civil rights and an inchoate sense of deep but imminent change, the backdrop for most scholarly assessments today is the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States, the rise of a potent narrative of post-racialism, and a sense of stalemate or stagnation in racial change. Many meanings or interpretations can be attached to the term post-racial. In its sim- plest and least controversial form, the term 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 a nation still strive and remain guarded- ly hopeful about fully achieving. Three other meanings of post-racialism are ½lled with more grounds for dispute and controversy. One of these meanings at- taches to the waning salience of what some have portrayed as a “black victim- ology” narrative. From this perspective, black complaints and grievances about inequality and discrimination are well- worn tales, at least passé if not now pointedly false assessments of the main challenges facing blacks in a world large- ly free of the dismal burdens of overt racial divisions and oppression.4 A second and no less controversial view of post-racialism takes the position that the level and pace of change in the demographic makeup and the identity choices and politics of Americans are rendering the traditional black-white Lawrence D. Bobo l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / Direkte . m i t . / e d u d a e d a r t i c e – p d / l f / / / / / 1 4 0 2 1 1 1 8 3 0 0 1 7 d a e d _ a _ 0 0 0 9 1 p d . f by gu e s t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 140 (2) Frühling 2011 13 Somewhere between Jim Crow & Post- Racialism divide irrelevant. Entsprechend, Americans increasingly revere mixture and hybridi- ty and are rushing to embrace a decided- ly “beige” view of themselves and what is good for the body politic. Old-fashioned racial dichotomies pale against the surge toward flexible, deracialized, and mixed ethnoracial identities and outlooks.5 A third, and perhaps the most contro- versial, view of post-racialism has the most in common with the well-rehearsed rhetoric of color blindness. To wit, Amer- ican society, or at least a large and steadi- ly growing fraction of it, has genuinely moved beyond race–so much so that we as a nation are now ready to transcend the disabling racial divisions of the past. From this perspective, nothing symbol- izes better the moment of transcendence than Obama’s election as president. This transcendence is said to be especially true of a younger generation, what New Yorker editor David Remnick has referred to as “the Joshua Generation.” More than any other, this generation is ready to cross the great river of racial identity, division, and acrimony that has for so long de½ned American culture and politics. It is in this context of the ½rst African American president of the United States and the rise to prominence of the narra- tive of post-racialism that a group of social scientists were asked to examine, from many different disciplinary and intellec- tual vantage points, changes in the racial divide since the time of the Dædalus issues focusing on race in 1965 Und 1966. The context today has points of great discontinuity and of great similarity to that mid-1960s inflection point. From the viewpoint of 1965, the election of Obama as the ½rst African American president of the United States, as well as the expan- sion and the cultural prominence and success of the black middle class of which Obama is a member, speak to the enor- mous and enduring successes of the civil rights era. Yet also from the standpoint of 1965, the persistence of deep poverty and joblessness for a large fraction of the black population, slowly changing rates of residential segregation by race, con- tinued evidence of antiblack discrimina- tion in many domains of life, and histor- ically high rates of black incarceration signal a journey toward racial justice that remains, even by super½cial accounting, seriously incomplete. In order to set a context for the essays contained in this volume, I address three key questions in this introduction. The ½rst concerns racial boundaries. In an era of widespread talk of having achieved the post-racial society, do we have real evidence that attention to and the mean- ing of basic race categories are funda- mentally breaking down? The second set of questions concerns the extent of economic inequality along the racial di- vide. Has racial economic inequality nar- rowed to a point where we need no longer think or talk of black disadvantage? Or have the bases of race-linked economic inequality changed so much that, at the least, the dynamics of discrimination and prejudice no longer need concern us? The third question is, how have racial attitudes changed in the period since the mid-1960s Dædalus issues? To foreshadow a bit, I will show that basic racial boundaries are not quickly and inevitably collapsing, though they are changing and under great pressure. Racial economic inequality is less ex- treme today, there is a substantial black middle class, and inequality within the black population itself has probably never been greater. Yet there remain large 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- 14 Dädalus, das Journal der American Academy of Arts & Sciences l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / Direkte . m i t . / e d u d a e d a r t i c e – p d / l f / / / / / 1 4 0 2 1 1 1 8 3 0 0 1 7 d a e d _ a _ 0 0 0 9 1 p d . f by gu e s t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 criminatory social processes. Zusätzlich, I maintain that we continue to witness the erosion and decline of Jim Crow rac- ist attitudes in the United States. Wie- immer, in their place has emerged a new pattern 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 a more covert, sophisticated, culture-cen- tered, and subtle racist ideology, quali- tatively less extreme and more socially permeable than Jim Crow racism with its attendant biological foundations and calls for overt discrimination. But this new racism yields a powerful influence in our culture and politics.6 Consider ½rst the matter of group boundaries. Der 2000 Census broke new ground by allowing individuals to mark more than one box in designating racial background. In der Tat, great politi- cal pressure and tumult led to the deci- sion to move the Census in a direction that more formally and institutionally acknowledged the presence of increas- ing mixture and heterogeneity in the American population with regard to racial background. Nearly seven million people exercised that option in 2000. The successful rise of Obama to the of½ce of president, the ½rst African American to do so, as a child of a white American mother and a black Kenyan father, has only accelerated the sense of the new- found latitude and recognition granted to those who claim more than one racial heritage.7 Despite Obama’s electoral success and the press attention given to the phenom- enon, some will no doubt ½nd it surpris- ing that the overwhelming majority of Americans identify with only one race. As Figure 1 zeigt an, less than 2 percent of the population marked more than one box on the 2000 Census in designating their racial background. Fully 98 percent marked just one. I claim no deep-rooted- ness or profound personal salience for these identities. Eher, my point is that we should be mindful that the level of “discussion” and contention around mix- ture is far out of proportion to the extent to which most Americans actually desig- nate and see themselves in these terms. Darüber hinaus, even if we restrict attention to just those who marked more than one box, two-thirds of these respondents des- ignated two groups other than blacks (nämlich, Hispanic-white, Asian-white, or Hispanic and Asian mixtures), as Fig- ure 2 zeigt an. Some degree of mixture with black constituted just under a third of mixed race identi½ers in 2000. Given the historic size of the black population and the extended length of contact with white Americans, this remarkable result says something powerful about the potency and durability of the historic black-white divide. It is worth recalling that sexual rela- tions and childbearing across the racial divide are not recent phenomena. Der 1890 UNS. Census contained categories for not only “Negro” but also “Mulatto,” “Quadroon,” and even “Octoroon”; these were clear signs of the extent of “mixing” that had taken place in the United States. In der Tat, well over one million individuals fell into one of the mixed race categories at that time. In order to protect the institution of slav- ery and to prevent the offspring of white slave masters and exploited black slave women from having a claim on freedom as well as on the property of the master, slave status, as de½ned by law, followed the mother’s status, not the father’s. For most of its history, the United States legally 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 Lawrence D. Bobo l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / Direkte . m i t . / e d u d a e d a r t i c e – p d / l f / / / / / 1 4 0 2 1 1 1 8 3 0 0 1 7 d a e d _ a _ 0 0 0 9 1 p d . f by gu e s t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 140 (2) Frühling 2011 15 Somewhere between Jim Crow & Post- Racialism Figure 1 Percent of Respondents to U.S. Census 2000 Identifying with One Race or Two or More Races (Non-Hispanic) Quelle: Author’s analysis of data from U.S. Census Bureau, Census 2000 Redistricting (Public Law 94-171) Summary File, 2001, Table PL1. Figur 2 Percent of Respondents to U.S. Census 2000 Identifying with Two or More Races Who Chose Black in Combination with One or More Other Races (Non-Hispanic) l D o w n o a d e d von h t t p : / / Direkte . m i t . / e d u d a e d a r t i c e – p d / l f / / / / / 1 4 0 2 1 1 1 8 3 0 0 1 7 d a e d _ a _ 0 0 0 9 1 p d . f by gu e s t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Quelle: Author’s analysis of data from U.S. Census Bureau, Census 2000 Summary File 1, 2001, Matrices P8 and P10. 16 Dädalus, das Journal der American Academy of Arts & Sciences Formal, legal de½nitions of who was black, 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 together race 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 the denial to blacks residing in many states with large black populations of any opportunity for legal marriage to whites ensured that the color line would long remain to a very large extent a property line. Hence the dy- namics of race formation and the dynam- ics of class formation were, in this most crucial of all American cases, largely the same. This is one of the most important truths about the history of the United States brought into sharper focus when that 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 is changing. As of the 2000 Census, whites constituted just 69 percent of the U.S. Bevölkerung, with Hispanics and blacks each around 12 Prozent. This distribu- tion represents a substantial decline in the percentage of whites from twenty or, even more so, forty years ago. With continued immigration, differ- ential group fertility patterns, and the continued degree of intermarriage and mixing, these patterns will not remain stable. Figur 3 shows the Census racial distribution projections out to the year 2050. The ½gure clearly shows a contin- ued steady and rapid decline in the rela- tive size of the white population; Vordergrund- casts predict that somewhere between 2040 Und 2045, whites will cease to be a numerical majority of the population. (This change could possibly happen much sooner than that.) The relative size of the Hispanic population is expected to grow substantially, with the black, Asian, Native Hawaiian and other Paci½c Island- er, American Indian, and Alaska Native groups remaining relatively constant. Figur 3 strongly implies that pressure to transform our understanding of ra- cial categories will continue. Does that pressure for change foretell the ultimate undoing of the black-white divide? At least three lines of research raise doubts about such a forecast. Erste, studies of the perceptions of and identi- ties among those of mixed racial back- grounds point to strong evidence of the cultural persistence of the one-drop rule. Systematic experiments by sociologists and social psychologists are intriguing in this regard. Zum Beispiel, sociologist Melissa Herman’s recent research con- cluded that “others’ perceptions shape a person’s identity and social understand- ings of race. My study found that part- black multiracial youth are more likely to be seen as black by observers and to de½ne themselves as black when forced to choose one race.”10 Second, studies of patterns in racial intermarriage point to a highly durable if somewhat less extreme black-white divide today. A careful assessment of ra- cial intermarriage patterns in 1990 by demographer Vincent Kang Fu found that “one key feature of the data is over- whelming endogamy for blacks and whites. At least 92 percent of white men, white women, black women and black men are married to members of their own group.”11 Rates of intermarriage rose for blacks and whites over the course of the 1990s. Jedoch, subsequent analysts con- tinued to stress the degree to which a fun- damental black-white divide persists. As demographers Zhenchao Qian and Daniel Lichter conclude in their analyses of U.S. Census data from 1990 Und 2000: Lawrence D. Bobo l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / Direkte . m i t . / e d u d a e d a r t i c e – p d / l f / / / / / 1 4 0 2 1 1 1 8 3 0 0 1 7 d a e d _ a _ 0 0 0 9 1 p d . f by gu e s t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 140 (2) Frühling 2011 17 Figur 3 Population Projections by Race and Ethnicity, 2000 Zu 2050 Somewhere between Jim Crow & Post- Racialism l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / Direkte . m i t . / e d u d a e d a r t i c e – p d / l f / / / / / 1 4 0 2 1 1 1 8 3 0 0 1 7 d a e d _ a _ 0 0 0 9 1 p d . f by gu e s t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Quelle: Author’s analysis of data on race from Population Division, UNS. Census Bureau, Projected Popula- tion by Single Year of Age, Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin for the United States: Juli 1, 2000 to July 1, 2050 (August 14, 2008). [Ö]ur results also highlight a singularly persistent substantive lesson: African Americans are least likely of all racial/ ethnic minorities to marry whites. And, although the pace of marital assimilation among African Americans proceeded more rapidly over the 1990s than it did in earlier decades, the social boundaries between African American and whites re- main highly rigid and resilient to change. The “one-drop” rule apparently persists for African Americans.12 Third, some key synthetic works argue for an evolving racial scheme in the Unit- ed Staaten, but a scheme that nonetheless preserves a heavily stigmatized black cat- egory. A decade ago, sociologist Herbert Gans offered the provocative but well- grounded speculation that the United States would witness a transition from a society de½ned by a great white–non- white divide to one increasingly de½ned by a black–non-black ½ssure, with an in-between or residual category for those granted provisional or “honorary white” status. As Gans explained: “If current trends persist, today’s multiracial hierar- chy could be replaced by what I think of as a dual or bimodal one consisting of ‘nonblack’ and ‘black’ population cate- gories, with a third ‘residual’ category for the groups that do not, or do not yet, ½t into the basic dualism.” Most trou- bling, this new dualism would, in Gans’s expectations, continue to bring a pro- found sense of undeservingness and stig- ma for those assigned its bottom rung.13 Gans’s remarks have recently received substantial support from demographer Frank Bean and his colleagues. Based on their extensive analyses of population trends across a variety of indicators, Bean and colleagues write: “A black-nonblack divide appears to be taking shape in the United States, in which Asians and Lati- nos are closer to whites. Somit, Ameri- 18 Dädalus, das Journal der American Academy of Arts & Sciences ca’s color lines are moving toward a new demarcation that places many blacks in a position of disadvantage similar to that resulting from the traditional black-white divide.” If basic racial categories and identities are not soon to dissolve, then let me now address that second set of questions, con- cerning the degree of racial economic in- equality. I should begin by noting that there has been considerable expansion in the size, security, Und, arguably, salience and influence of the black middle class.14 Turning to the question of income, we ½nd a similar trend. Figur 4 reports on the distribution of the population by race since 1968 across several ways of slicing the family income distribution. At the very bottom are those who the Census would designate as the “very poor”: das ist, having a family income that is 50 pro- cent or less of the poverty level. At the very top are those in the “comfortable” cate- gory, having family incomes that are ½ve times or more the poverty level. Der Profi- portion of whites in this upper category exceeded 10 Prozent in 1960 and rose to nearly 30 percent by 2008. For blacks, the proportion was less than 5 Prozent in 1968 but about 12 Prozent in 2008. Likewise, the fraction in the middle class (those with family incomes more than twice the poverty level) grows for both groups. But crucially, the proportion of blacks in the “poor” (at the poverty line) or “very poor” categories remains large, at a com- bined ½gure of nearly 40 Prozent in 2008. This contrasts with the roughly 20 pro- 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 declined during the economic boom years of the 1990s but remained substantial. As pub- lic policy analyst Michael Stoll explains: “Among all black families, the poverty rate declined from a 20 year high of about 40 Prozent in 1982 Und 1993 Zu 25 Prozent in 2000. Während dieser Zeit, the poverty rate for white families remained fairly constant, at about 10 percent.” That ½g- ure of 25 percent remains true through more recent estimates. Zusätzlich, the Great Recession has taken a particular- ly heavy toll on minority communities, African Americans perhaps most of all. As the Center for American Progress declared in a recent report: “Economic security and losses during the recession and recovery exacerbated the already weak situation for African Americans. They experienced declining employment rates, rising poverty rates, falling home- ownership rates, decreasing health in- surance and retirement coverage during the last business cycle from 2001 Zu 2007. The recession that followed made a bad situation much worse.”16 Overall trends in poverty, Jedoch, do not fully capture the cumulative and multidimensional nature of black eco- nomic disadvantage. Sociologist William Julius Wilson stresses how circumstances of persistently weak employment pros- pects and joblessness, particularly for low-skilled black men, weaken the for- mation of stable two-parent households and undermine other community struc- tures. Persistent economic hardship and weakened social institutions then create circumstances that lead to rising rates of single-parent households, out-of-wed- lock childbearing, welfare dependency, and greater risk of juvenile delinquency and involvement in crime. Harvard so- ciologist Robert Sampson points to an extraordinary circumstance of exposure to living in deeply disadvantaged com- munities for large segments of the Afri- can American population. This disad- vantage involves living in conditions that expose residents to high surround- Lawrence D. Bobo l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / Direkte . m i t . / e d u d a e d a r t i c e – p d / l f / / / / / 1 4 0 2 1 1 1 8 3 0 0 1 7 d a e d _ a _ 0 0 0 9 1 p d . f by gu e s t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 140 (2) Frühling 2011 19 Figur 4 Economic Status of the Black and White Population, 1968 Zu 2008 Somewhere between Jim Crow & Post- Racialism l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / Direkte . m i t . / e d u d a e d a r t i c e – p d / l f / / / / / 1 4 0 2 1 1 1 8 3 0 0 1 7 d a e d _ a _ 0 0 0 9 1 p d . f by gu e s t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Very poor denotes below 50 percent of the poverty line; poor, 50 Zu 90 percent of the poverty line; near poor, 100 Zu 199 percent of the poverty line; middle class, 200 Zu 499 percent of the poverty line; and comfortable, 500 percent of poverty line. Quelle: Author’s analysis of data from Miriam King, Steven Ruggles, Trent Alexander, Donna Leicach, and Matthew Sobek, Integrated Public Use Microdata Series, Current Population Survey: Version 2.0 (Minneapolis: Minnesota Population Center, 2008). ing rates of unemployment, family break- hoch, individuals and families reliant on welfare, poor-performing schools, juve- nile delinquency, and crime. As Sampson explains: [A]lthough we knew that the average na- tional rate of family disruption and pov- erty among blacks was two to four times higher 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 in the United States do blacks live in ecologi- cal equality with whites when it comes to these basic features of economic and fami- ly organization. Entsprechend, racial differ- ences in poverty and family disruption are so strong that the “worst” urban contexts in which whites reside are considerably better than the average context of black communities.17 20 Dädalus, das Journal der American Academy of Arts & Sciences Recent work published by sociologist Patrick Sharkey assesses race differences in the chances of mobility out of impov- erished neighborhoods. The result is a very depressing one. He ½nds evidence of little upward social mobility for disad- vantaged blacks and a fragile capacity to maintain advantaged status among even the most well-off African Americans. He writes: „[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 of neighborhoods as adults. Since the 1970s, more than half of black families have lived 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, nur 35% remain there in the second generation. By themselves, these ½gures reveal the striking persistence of neighborhood disadvantage among black families.” This ½gure of 35 percent remaining in the top quartile across generations for blacks contrasts to 63 percent among whites. Daher, “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 of African Americans have undergone key changes in the last several decades. Three patterns loom large. There is far more in- ternal differentiation and inequality with- in the black population than was true at the close of World War II, or even during our baseline of the mid-1960s. The for- tunes of men and women have recently diverged within the black community. Black women have considerably narrowed the gap between themselves and white women in terms of educational attain- ment, major occupational categories, and earnings. Black men have faced a growing problem of economic marginalization. Wichtig, this is contingent on levels of education; education has become a far sharper dividing line, shaping life chances more heavily than ever before in the black community.19 Several other dimensions of socioeco- nomic status bear mentioning. Even by conservative estimates, the high school dropout rate among blacks is twice that of whites, bei 20 percent versus 11 Prozent. Blacks also have much lower college com- pletion rates (17 percent versus 30 pro- cent) and lower advanced degree com- pletion rates (6 percent versus 11 Prozent). These differences are enormously conse- quential. As the essays in this volume by economist James Heckman and social psychologist Richard Nisbett emphasize, educational attainment and achievement increasingly de½ne access to the good life, broadly de½ned. Darüber hinaus, some scholars make a strong case that impor- tant inequalities in resources still plague the educational experiences of many black school children, involving such factors as fewer well-trained teachers and less access to ap courses and other curriculum-enriching materials and experiences.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 in the American criminal justice system. Between 1980 Und 2000, the rate of black incarceration nearly tripled. The black- to-white incarceration ratio increased to above eight to one during this time peri- od. Actuarial forecasts, or lifetime esti- Kumpels, of the risk of incarceration for black males born in the 1990s approach one in three, as compared to below one in ten for non-Hispanic white males. A recent major study by the Pew Founda- Lawrence D. Bobo l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / Direkte . m i t . / e d u d a e d a r t i c e – p d / l f / / / / / 1 4 0 2 1 1 1 8 3 0 0 1 7 d a e d _ a _ 0 0 0 9 1 p d . f by gu e s t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 140 (2) Frühling 2011 21 Somewhere between Jim Crow & Post- Racialism tion reported that as of 2007, one in ½f- teen black males age eighteen and above was in jail or prison, and one in nine black males between the ages of twenty and thirty-four was in jail or prison. Blacks constitute a hugely disproportionate share of those incarcerated relative to their numbers in the general population.21 The reach of mass incarceration has risen to such levels that some analysts view it as altering normative life-course experiences for blacks in low-income neighborhoods. In der Tat, the fabric of so- cial life changes in heavily policed, niedrig- income urban communities. The degree of incarceration has prompted scholars to describe the change as ushering in a new fourth stage of racial oppression, “the carceral state,” constituted by the emergence of “the new Jim Crow” or, more narrowly, racialized mass incar- ceration. Whichever label one employs, there is no denying that exposure to the criminal justice system touches the lives of a large fraction of the African Ameri- can population, especially young men of low education and skill levels. These low levels of education and greater exposure to poverty, along with what many regard as the racially biased conduct of the War on Drugs, play a huge role in black over- representation in jails or federal and state prisons.22 Processes of racial residential segrega- tion are a key factor in contemporary ra- cial inequality. Despite important declines in overall rates of segregation over the past three decades and blacks’ increasing suburbanization, blacks remain highly segregated from whites. Some have sug- gested that active self-segregation on the part of blacks is now a major factor sus- taining residential segregation. A num- ber of careful investigations of prefer- ences for neighborhood characteristics and makeup and of the housing search process strongly challenge such claims. Stattdessen, there is substantial evidence that, particularly among white Ameri- cans, neighborhoods and social spaces are strongly racially coded, with negative racial stereotypes playing a powerful role in shaping the degree of willingness to enter (or remain) in racially integrated living spaces. Darüber hinaus, careful auditing studies continue to show lower, but still signi½cant, 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 (or accumulated assets) is a crucial determi- nant of quality of life. Blacks at all levels of the class hierarchy typically possess far less wealth than otherwise compara- ble whites. Darüber hinaus, the composition of black wealth is more heavily based in homes and automobiles as compared to white wealth, which includes a more even spread across savings, stocks and bonds, business ownership, and other more readily liquidated assets. Whereas approximately 75 percent of whites own their homes, nur 47 percent of blacks do. Looking beyond homeownership to the full range of ½nancial assets, analy- ses from sociologists Melvin Oliver and Tom Shapiro put the black-to-white wealth gap ratio in the range of ten or eleven to one. Other estimates, such as those based on Panel Study of Income Dynamics data, are lower but still repre- sent gaping disparities.24 In order to provide a more concrete picture of the current state of the wealth gap, Figur 5 reproduces results from a recent Brandeis University study. It shows that over the past twenty-three years, the black-white gap in median wealth rose dramatically, moving from $20,000 In
1984 to nearly $100,000 von 2007. The study also revealed that for much of this 22 Dädalus, das Journal der American Academy of Arts & Sciences l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / Direkte . m i t . / e d u d a e d a r t i c e – p d / l f / / / / / 1 4 0 2 1 1 1 8 3 0 0 1 7 d a e d _ a _ 0 0 0 9 1 p d . f by gu e s t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Figur 5 Median Wealth Holdings of White Families and African American Families, 1984 Zu 2007 Lawrence D. Bobo l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / Direkte . m i t . Data do not include home equity. Quelle: Thomas Shapiro, Tatjana Meschede, and Laura Sullivan, “The Racial Wealth Gap Increases Fourfold,” Research and Policy Brief, Institute on Assets and Social Policy, Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University, Mai 2010. Zeitraum, middle-income white fami- lies had more wealth than even the high- est income segment of African American families, with that gap rising to $56,000
von 2007. Darüber hinaus, all earners, but espe-
cially African Americans, have fallen far
behind the high-income white families
in median wealth holdings. To the extent
that wealth bears on the capacity to sur-
vive a period of unemployment, to ½nance
college for one’s children, or to endure
a costly illness or other unexpected large
expense, these ½gures point to an enor-
mous and growing disparity in the life
chances of blacks and whites in the
United States.25

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

Much wealth is inherited; it is not the
product of strictly individual merit or
achievement. Außerdem, social poli-
cy in many ways played a direct role in
facilitating the accumulation of wealth
for many generations of white Ameri-
cans while systematically constraining
or undermining such opportunities for
African Americans. Zum Beispiel, Oliver
and Shapiro and political scientist Ira
Katznelson both point to federal home
mortgage lending guidelines and prac-
tices, which were once openly discrimi-
natory, as playing a crucial role in this
process.26
What do we know about changes in

racial attitudes in the United States? Der
½rst and most consistent ½nding of the
major national studies of racial attitudes
in the United States has been a steady
repudiation of the outlooks that sup-
ported the Jim Crow social order. Jim
Crow racism once reigned in American

140 (2) Frühling 2011

23

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Somewhere
zwischen
Jim Crow
& Post-
Racialism

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

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

society, particularly in the South. Accord-
ingly, blacks were understood as inher-
ently inferior to whites, both intellectu-
ally and temperamentally. Infolge,
society was to be expressly ordered in
terms of white privilege, with blacks rel-
egated to secondary status in education,
access to jobs, and in civic status such as
the right to vote. Above all, racial mix-
ture was to be avoided; somit, society
needed to be segregated. The best survey
data on American public opinion suggest
that this set of ideas has been in steady
retreat since the 1940s.27

Figur 6 contains one telling illustration
of this trend. It shows the percentage of
white Americans in national surveys who
said that they would not be willing to vote
for a quali½ed black candidate for pres-
ident if nominated by their own party.
When ½rst asked in 1958, nearly two out
of three white Americans endorsed such

an openly discriminatory posture. Das
trend has undergone unabated decline,
reaching the point where roughly only
one in ½ve white Americans expressed
this view by the time the Reverend Jesse
Jackson launched his ½rst bid for the
Democratic presidential nomination in
1984. It declined to fewer than one in ten
by the time of Obama’s campaign in 2008.
In broad sweep, though not necessari-
ly in exact levels, the trend seen in Figure
6 is true of most questions on racial atti-
tudes from national surveys that deal with
broad principles of whether American
society should be integrated or segregat-
Hrsg, discriminatory or nondiscriminatory
on the basis of race. Whether the speci½c
domain involved school integration, res-
idential integration, or even racial inter-
Hochzeit, the level of endorsement of
discriminatory, segregationist responses
has continued to decline. To an impor-

24

Dädalus, das Journal der American Academy of Arts & Wissenschaften

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tant degree, these changes have been led
by highly educated whites and those out-
side the South. African Americans have
never endorsed elements of the Jim Crow
outlook to any substantial degree, obwohl
many of these questions were not initial-
ly asked of black respondents out of fear
that the questions would be regarded as
an insult, or to the assumption that their
responses were predictable.

This picture of the repudiation of Jim
Crow is complicated somewhat by evi-
dence of signi½cant social distance pref-
erences. Um sicher zu sein, low and typically
declining percentages of whites objected
when asked about entering into integrat-
ed social settings–neighborhoods or
schools–where one or just a small num-
ber of blacks might be present. But as the
number of blacks involved increased,
and as one shifts from more impersonal
and public domains of life (workplaces,
Schulen, neighborhoods) to more inti-
mate and personal domains (intermar-
riage), expressed levels of white resis-
tance rise and the degree of positive
change is not as great.

The notion of the 1960s as an inflection
point in the struggle for racial change is
reinforced by the growing preoccupation
of studies of racial attitudes in the post-
1960 period with matters of public policy.
These studies consider levels of support
or opposition to public policies designed
to bring about greater racial equality
(antidiscrimination laws and various
forms of af½rmative action) and actual
Integration (open housing laws and meth-
ods of school desegregation such as school
busing). The picture that results is com-
plex but has several recurrent features.
Blacks are typically far more supportive
of social-policy intervention on matters
of race than are whites. Allgemein, sup-
port for policy or governmental interven-
tion to bring about greater integration or
to reduce racial inequality lags well be-

hind endorsement of similar broad prin-
ciples or ideals. This ½nding has led many
scholars to note a “principle-implemen-
tation gap.” Some policies, Jedoch, have
wider appeal than others. Efforts to en-
hance or improve the human capital attri-
butes of blacks and other minority group
members are more popular than policies
that call for group preferences. Forms of
af½rmative action that imply quotas or
otherwise disregard meritocratic criteria
of reward are deeply unpopular.

One important line of investigation
seeking to understand the principle-
implementation gap involved assess-
ments of perceptions and causal attribu-
tions for racial inequality. To the extent
that many individuals do not perceive
much racial inequality, or explain it in
terms of individual dispositions and
choices (as opposed to structural con-
straints and conditions such as discrim-
ination), then there is little need seen
for government action. Tisch 1 zeigt an
responses to a series of questions on
possible causes of black-white econom-
ic inequality that included “less inborn
ability,” “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
(Ausbildung), and ½nally, a strong struc-
tural constraint (discrimination).28

There is low and decreasing support
among whites for the overtly racist belief
that blacks have less inborn ability. Der
most widely endorsed account among
whites points to a lack of motivation or
willpower on the part of blacks as a key
factor in racial inequality, though this
attribution declines over time. Attribu-
tions to discrimination as well as to the
weaker structural account of lack of a
chance for education also decline among
whites. Blacks are generally far more

Lawrence D.
Bobo

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140 (2) Frühling 2011

25

Somewhere
zwischen
Jim Crow
& Post-
Racialism

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

Whites

Inequality is Due to:

Years of Education

Alter

Pooled < 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 l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u d a e d a r t i c e - p d / l f / / / / / 1 4 0 2 1 1 1 8 3 0 0 1 7 d a e d _ a _ 0 0 0 9 1 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Blacks Inequality is Due to: Years of Education Age Pooled < 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. 26 Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences Figure 7 Percent of Respondents Who Said Whites Are More Hardworking or More Intelligent than Blacks, 1990 to 2008 Lawrence D. Bobo White respondents were asked to rate blacks and whites according to whether they thought blacks and whites tended 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 scores blacks are given on each measure. On the resulting scale, positive numbers indicate that blacks are rated as possessing 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 as agreeing. 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. likely than whites to endorse structural accounts of racial inequality, particularly the strongest attribution of discrimina- tion. However, like their white counter- parts, a declining number of blacks point to discrimination as the key factor, and there is actually a rise in the percentage of African Americans attributing racial inequality 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. Among African Americans this growth seems most prominent among somewhat young- er, ideologically conservative, and less well-educated individuals.29 Another line of analysis of racial atti- tudes sparked in part by the principle- implementation gap involved renewed interest in the extent of negative racial stereotyping. Figure 7 shows trends in whites’ stereotype trait ratings of whites as compared to blacks on the dimensions of being hardworking or lazy and intelli- gent or unintelligent. In 1990, when these trait-rating stereotype questions were ½rst posed in national surveys, more than 60 percent of whites rated whites as more likely to be hardworking than blacks, and just under 60 percent rated blacks as less intelligent. 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 levels of patriotism. Whites usually expressed a substantially negative image of blacks relative to how they rated whites across this array of traits. The trends suggest some slight reduction in negative stereo- typing over the past two decades, but such negative images of blacks still re- 140 (2) Spring 2011 27 l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u d a e d a r t i c e - p d / l f / / / / / 1 4 0 2 1 1 1 8 3 0 0 1 7 d a e d _ a _ 0 0 0 9 1 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Somewhere between Jim Crow & Post- Racialism Figure 8 Percent of Respondents Agreeing with the Belief that Blacks Should Overcome Prejudice without Special 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 Social Survey, 1994–2008. main quite commonplace. To the extent that 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 and behavioral choices contribute to low lev- els of white support for signi½cant social- policy interventions to ameliorate racial inequality.30 A third and perhaps most vigorously considered resolution of the principle- implementation gap involves the hypoth- esis that a new form of antiblack racism is at the root of much white opposition to policies aimed at reducing racial in- equality. This scholarship has focused largely on the emergence of attitudes of resentment toward the demands or grievances voiced by African Americans and the expectation of governmental redress for those demands and grievances. Figure 8 shows trends for one question frequently 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 without special favors.” Throughout the 1994 to 2008 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 that blacks need to make it all on their own.31 Throughout the fourteen-year time span, whites were always substantially more likely to endorse this viewpoint than blacks; however, not only did a non- trivial number of blacks agree with it (about 50 percent), but the black-white gap actually narrowed slightly over time. The meaning and effects of this type of outlook vary in important ways depend- 28 Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u d a e d a r t i c e - p d / l f / / / / / 1 4 0 2 1 1 1 8 3 0 0 1 7 d a e d _ a _ 0 0 0 9 1 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 ing on race, usually carrying less potent implications for policy views among blacks than among whites. Indeed, one reason for focusing on this type of atti- tude is that it and similar items are found to correlate with a wide range of social- policy outlooks. And some evidence sug- gests that how attitudes and outlooks connect with partisanship and voting behavior may be strengthening and growing.32 Judged by the trends considered here and in the essays in this volume, declarations of having arrived at the post-racial mo- ment are premature. Much has changed –and unequivocally for the better–in light of where the United States stood in 1965. Indeed, I will speculate that none of the contributors to the 1965/1966 Dæda- lus volumes would have considered likely changes that have now, a mere four or so decades later, been realized, including the election of an African American President of the United States, the appointment of the ½rst black Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the appointment of two differ- ent African American Secretaries of State. Similarly, the size and reach of today’s black middle class were not easy to fore- cast from the scholarly perch of mid-1960s data and understandings. At the same time, troublingly entrenched patterns of poverty, segregation, gaps in educational attainment and achievement, racial iden- tity formation, and disparaging racial stereotypes all endure into the present, even if in somewhat less extreme forms. And the scandalous rise in what is now termed racialized mass incarceration was not foreseen but now adds a new measure of urgency to these concerns. The very complex and contradictory nature of these changes cautions against the urge to make sweeping and simple declarations about where we now stand. But our nation’s “mixed” or ambiguous circumstance–suspended uncomfortably somewhere between the collapse of the Jim Crow social order and a post-racial social order that has yet to be attained– gives rise to many intense exchanges over whether or how much “race matters.” This is true of scholarly discourse, where many see racial division as a deeply en- trenched and tragic American flaw and many others see racial division as a wan- ing exception to the coming triumph of American liberalism.33 Average Americans, both black and white, face and wage much of the same debate in their day-to-day lives. One way of capturing this dynamic is illustrated in Figure 9, which shows the percentage of white and black respondents in a 2009 national survey that 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?” Fielded after the 2008 election and the inauguration of Obama in early 2009, these results are instructive. Almost two out of three white Americans (61.3 per- cent) said that blacks have achieved ra- cial equality. Another 21.5 percent of whites endorse the view that blacks will soon achieve racial equality. Thus, the overwhelming fraction of white Ameri- cans see the post-racial moment as effec- tively here (83.8 percent). Fewer than one in ½ve blacks endorsed the idea that they have already achieved racial equali- ty. A more substantial fraction, 36.2 per- cent, believe that they will soon achieve racial equality. African Americans, then, are divided almost evenly between those doubtful that racial equality will soon be achieved (with more than one in ten say- ing that it will never be achieved) and those 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- Lawrence D. Bobo l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u d a e d a r t i c e - p d / l f / / / / / 1 4 0 2 1 1 1 8 3 0 0 1 7 d a e d _ a _ 0 0 0 9 1 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 140 (2) Spring 2011 29 Figure 9 Whites’ and Blacks’ Beliefs about when Racial Equality will be Achieved Somewhere between Jim Crow & Post- Racialism l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u d a e d a r t i c e - p d / l f / / / / / 1 4 0 2 1 1 1 8 3 0 0 1 7 d a e d _ a _ 0 0 0 9 1 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 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. come polarized and fractious along ra- cial lines. The central tendencies of pub- lic opinion on these issues, despite real increasing overlap, remain enormously far apart between black and white Amer- icans. When such differences in percep- tion and belief are grounded in, or at least reinforced by, wide economic inequality, persistent residential segregation, large- ly racially homogeneous family units and close friendship networks, and a popular culture still suffused with negative ideas and images about African Americans, then there should be little surprise that we still ½nd it enormously dif½cult to have sustained civil discussions about race and racial matters. Despite growing much closer together in recent decades, the gaps in perspective between blacks and whites are still sizable. The ideas and evidence marshaled in this Dædalus issue should help sharpen our focus and open up productive new lines of discourse and inquiry. Four of the essays directly engage central, but changing, features of racial strati½cation in the United States. Sociologist Douglas S. Massey provides a trenchant, broad map of change in the status of African Americans. Sociologist William Julius Wilson reviews and assesses his ½eld- de½ning argument about the “declining signi½cance of race.” The core frame- work is sustained, he maintains, by much subsequent careful research; but Wilson stresses now the special importance of employment in the government sector to the economic well-being of many African Americans. Economist James J. Heckman focuses on education, building the case for enhancing the capacities of families and communities to prepare children to get the most out of school- ing. Social psychologist Richard E. Nis- 30 Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences bett looks closely at the types of early intervention strategies that evidence suggests are most likely to improve ultimate educational attainment and achievement. Three essays put the changing status of African Americans in more explicit political, policy-related, and legal per- spectives. Political scientist Rogers M. Smith and his colleagues identify the pivotal role played by agents of compet- ing racial policy coalitions, pointing to the differing agendas and degrees of political success and influence of those pursuing a color-blind strategy and those pursuing a color-conscious strate- gy. Legal scholar Michael J. Klarman challenges the presumption that the U.S. Supreme Court has been a special ally or supporter of African American interests and claims. He suggests that the Court has often, particularly in a string of re- cent rulings, tilted heavily in the direc- tion of a color-blind set of principles that do little to advance the interests of black communities. Political scientist Daniel Sabbagh traces the impetus for af½rmative action and its evolution in the United States and compares that to how af½rmative action is now pursued in a number of other countries. Several essays examine the cultural dynamics of race and racial identities. Anthropologists Marcyliena Morgan and Dionne Bennett examine the re- markable dynamism, worldwide spread, and influence of hip-hop music. Social psychologists Jennifer A. Richeson and Maureen A. Craig examine the psycho- logical dynamics of identity choices fac- ing minority communities and indi- viduals in this era of rapid population change. Political scientist Jennifer L. Hochschild and her colleagues assess how younger cohorts of Americans are bringing different views of race and its importance to politics and social life. Three essays pivot off the 2008 presi- dential election. Political scientist Taeku Lee examines the complex role of race, group identity, and immigrant status in forging new political identities, coalitions, and voting behavior. Political scientist Cathy J. Cohen shows the continuing racial consciousness and orientations of black youth. Sociologist Alford A. Young, Jr., examines the special mean- ing of Obama’s candidacy and success for young black men. Two ½nal essays push in quite different directions. Sociologist Roger Waldinger argues that even as the black-white divide remains an important problem, we as a nation are facing deep contradictions in how we deal with immigration and im- migrants themselves, particularly those coming from Latin America. Historian Martha Biondi muses on continuities with and departures from past traditions in recent discourse surrounding the mis- sion of African American studies pro- grams and departments. This issue is a companion volume to the Winter 2011 issue of Dædalus, Race in the Age of Obama, guest edited by Gerald Early, the Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters and Director of the Center for the Humanities at Washing- ton University in St. Louis. It has been my privilege to work with Gerald on this project, and I am grateful to the contributors to this volume for their informed analyses. This essay’s epigraphs from Martin Luther 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 quick and simple assessments of where we have been and where we are going, it is wise, instead, to wrestle with taking stock of all the variegated and nuanced Lawrence D. Bobo l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u d a e d a r t i c e - p d / l f / / / / / 1 4 0 2 1 1 1 8 3 0 0 1 7 d a e d _ a _ 0 0 0 9 1 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 140 (2) Spring 2011 31 Somewhere between Jim Crow & Post- Racialism circumstances underlying the black-white divide and its associated phenomena. Just as 1965 seemed a point of inflection, of contradictory lines of development, fu- ture generations may look back and regard 2011 as a similarly fraught moment. At the same time that a nation celebrates the historic election of an African Amer- ican president, the cultural production of demeaning antiblack images–post- cards featuring watermelons on the White House lawn prior to the annual Easter egg roll, Obama featured in loincloth and with a bone through his nose in ads denounc- ing the health care bill, a cartoon showing police of½cers shooting an out-of-control chimpanzee under the heading “They’ll have to ½nd someone else to write the next stimulus bill”–are ugly reminders of some of the more overtly racialized reactions to the ascendancy of an Afri- can American to the presidency of the United States. As a result of complex and contradic- tory indicators, no pithy phrase or bold declaration can possibly do justice to the full body of research, evidence, and ideas reviewed here. One optimistic trend is that examinations of the status of blacks have moved to a place of prominence and sophistication in the social sciences that probably was never imagined by found- ing ½gures of the tradition, such as W.E.B. Du Bois. That accumulating body of knowledge and theory, including the new contributions herein, deepens our understanding of the experience of race in the United States. The con½guration and salience of the color line some ½fty or one hundred years from now, however, cannot be forecast with any measure of certainty. Perhaps the strongest general declaration one can make at present is that we stand somewhere between a Jim Crow past and the aspiration of a post- racial future. endnotes 1 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 their invaluable 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 American Scholar 77 (3) (Summer 2008). 5 See Hua Hsu, “The End of White America?” The Atlantic, January/February 2009; and Susan 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,” in Racial 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 32 Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u d a e d a r t i c e - p d / l f / / / / / 1 4 0 2 1 1 1 8 3 0 0 1 7 d a e d _ a _ 0 0 0 9 1 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 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 in Contemporary America (Boulder, Colo.: Rowman and Little½eld, 2010). 7 See C. Matthew Snipp, “De½ning Race and Ethnicity: The Constitution, the Supreme Court, and the Census,” in Doing Race: 21 Essays for the 21st Century, ed. Hazel R. Markus and Paula M.L. Moya (New York: W.W. Norton, 2010), 105–122. It is noteworthy that Obama himself checked only the “Black” category rather than marking more than one race on his 2010 Census form. 8 On the history of “mixing” in the United States, see Gary B. Nash, “The Hidden History of Mestizo 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 the Perceptions of Multiracial Faces,” Social Psychology Quarterly 73 (2010): 58–78; see also Arnold 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 Century United States,” in The Cultural Territories of Race: Black and White Boundaries, ed. Michèle Lamont (New York: Russell Sage, 1999), 371–390; and Frank D. Bean et al., “The New U.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 Immigrant Dreams and American Realities (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999); and Milton Vickerman, “Recent Immigration and Race: Continuity and Change,” Du Bois Review 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 Communities of 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). Lawrence D. Bobo l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u d a e d a r t i c e - p d / l f / / / / / 1 4 0 2 1 1 1 8 3 0 0 1 7 d a e d _ a _ 0 0 0 9 1 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 140 (2) Spring 2011 33 Somewhere between Jim Crow & Post- Racialism 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 of Sociology 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 Unequal Chances: Family Background and Economic Success, ed. Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis, and Melissa Osborne Groves (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005). 19 See Michael B. Katz, Mark J. Stern, and Jamie J. Fader, “The New African American Inequality,” The Journal of American History 92 (1) (2005): 75–108. 20 Linda Darling Hammond, “The Color Line in American Education: Race, Resources, and Student 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 the States, “One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008” (Washington, D.C.: Pew Charitable Trusts, 2008). 22 Generally, see Bruce Western, Punishment and Inequality in America (New York: Russell Sage, 2006). On changes in the normative life trajectories, see Becky Pettit and Bruce Western, “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 of heavy 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 more broadly, 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 and the Making of the Underclass (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993); Camille Z. 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 the Social Construction of ‘Broken Windows,’” Social Psychology Quarterly 67 (2004): 319–342; Maria Krysan, Mick Couper, Reynolds Farley, and Tyrone A. Forman, “Does Race Matter in 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 of Discrimination: Racial Discrimination in Employment, Housing, Credit, and Consumer Markets,” 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 the Red: 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 Gap Increases Fourfold,” Research and Policy Brief, Institute on Assets and Social Policy, Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University, May 2010. 34 Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u d a e d a r t i c e - p d / l f / / / / / 1 4 0 2 1 1 1 8 3 0 0 1 7 d a e d _ a _ 0 0 0 9 1 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 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). Lawrence D. Bobo 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, “Racial Attitudes 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; and Maria 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 of Racial 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); and James 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/White Inequality, 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 States 1972–2008: 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 Report No. 19 (Chicago: National Opinion Research Center, 1990); and Lawrence D. Bobo and James 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 Americans Hate 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 review and 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 political behavior, 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 of Political Science 49 (2005): 672–688. For differential effects by race, see Lawrence D. Bobo and Devon Johnson, “A Taste for Punishment: Black and White Americans’ Views on the Death 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., 140 (2) Spring 2011 35 l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u d a e d a r t i c e - p d / l f / / / / / 1 4 0 2 1 1 1 8 3 0 0 1 7 d a e d _ a _ 0 0 0 9 1 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Somewhere between Jim Crow & Post- Racialism White-Washing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003); and Douglas S. Massey, Categorically Unequal: The American Strati½cation Sys- tem (New York: Russell Sage, 2006). Those representative of the “triumph of American liberalism” camp would include Nathan Glazer, “The Emergence of an American Ethnic Pattern,” in From Different Shores: Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity in America, ed. Ronald Takaki (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 11–23; Orlando Patterson, The Ordeal of Integration: Progress and Resentment in America’s “Racial” Crisis (Washington, D.C.: Basic Civitas, 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 Integrated America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009). 34 These numbers point to a sharp rise in the percentage of white Americans endorsing the view 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: while 27 percent endorsed this view in 2000, the ½gure rose to 53 percent in 2009; thus, it nearly doubled. The 2000 survey allowed respondents to answer, “Don’t know”; the 2009 survey did not. These percentages are calculated without the “don’t know” responses. The 2000 results 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 Race and Ethnicity, ed. Maria Krysan and Amanda E. Lewis (New York: Russell Sage, 2004), 13–42. l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u d a e d a r t i c e - p d / l f / / / / / 1 4 0 2 1 1 1 8 3 0 0 1 7 d a e d _ a _ 0 0 0 9 1 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 36 Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesSomewhere between Jim Crow & Bild
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