Race and Status
| Mon Dec. 8, 2008 8:31 PM PST
RACE AND STATUS....Blacks are often stereotyped as having lower status than whites. That won't surprise anyone. But does it work in the other direction too?
Apparently so. The LA Times reports today on a study suggesting that people are more likely to be identified as black if their status changes for the worse. In a review of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, in which subjects are interviewed annually (biannually after 1994), a pair of researchers found that people who had been identified by interviewers in one year as white were less likely to be identified as white the next year if they were in jail, unemployed, or impoverished:
"Race isn't a characteristic that's fixed at birth," said UC Irvine sociologist Andrew Penner, one of the study's authors. "We're perceived a certain way and identify a certain way depending on widely held stereotypes about how people believe we should behave."
....For example, 10% of people previously described as white were reclassified as belonging to another race if they became incarcerated. But if they stayed out of jail, 4% were reclassified as something other than white, the study said.
I don't have any special views on the "race is a social construct" question, but this certainly suggests, at the margins at least, that social status does indeed have an effect on how race is perceived. The full study is here.
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Comments
Submitted by Keith M Ellis (not verified) on Tue Dec. 9, 2008 2:12 PM PST.
"I don't have any special views on the 'race is a social construct' question..."
You should, because it's more scientifically correct to say that it's a "social construct" than to say that it is a biologically meaningful concept.
"When we have acknowledged genetics and statistical experts like Neil Risch, saying he thinks there may be scientific/medical underpinnings to race and racial differences, studying them and apparently finding interesting results, it's not so easy for me to glibly say, in a smug, knowing, politically correct manner, that it is nothing other than a social construct."
Look, there's no doubt that in many, but not all, contexts that the superficial characteristics which people ordinarily use to make the heuristic determination of "race" does, in fact, imply genetic relatedness. Genetic relatedness implies similar genetic predilections.
The problem is that this heuristic that people use to identify race is very imperfect. Particularly in the case of very dark-skinned people, when the context is all worldwide populations, then this heuristic is simply entirely misleading?all very dark-skinned people are not genetically related.
It's important to understand that dark pigmentation of the skin is truly superficial?it doesn't imply deeper biological mechanisms. The mutation arises easily and has certainly arisen independently many times throughout human evolution (and, conversely, the light-skinned mutation). It simply doesn't imply any essential relatedness or similarity other than that these people share darkly-colored skin.
The reason that it can be a useful biological distinction is because, in practice, often the context is limited enough such that the heuristic actually words at correctly implying relatedness. And relatedness implies many things.
Almost all "African-Americans" are descendants of slaves taken from west central Africa who have greatly intermarried over the succeeding generations. It's correct to generalize from the race heuristic to assume that they share a genetic heritage. On the other hand, they don't necessarily share a genetic heritage with any random dark-skinned person from Africa. As is often pointed out, there are dark-skinned populations in Africa which are far more genetically related to light-skinned Europeans than they are some other dark-skinned Africans.
The same sorts of things are true for other peoples we identify as "races". Oftentimes, when the context is a sufficiently restricted population, "race" is a useful guide to genetic relatedness. But it's a very fallible guide because it generally doesn't reliably indicate what people think it reliably indicates. Blacks, particularly, really aren't a "type" of human any more than blondes are. It's truly superficial.
The essential notions behind "race" are not nonsense. They just happen to not be true. It's entirely possible that in the course of human evolution very distinctly genetically different subpopulations could have evolved. It just so happen that they didn't. There's apparently never been a population isolated for a long enough time to have diverged in this way. There has always been intermixing of populations on a frequent enough basis. Our genetics don't vary in the way that many other animals genetics do.
Because the common understanding of race involves a cultural heuristic which determines a person's race on the basis of appearance and some other things, and not, importantly, on an actual test for genetic relatedness (which would quite often produce results contrary from the social heuristic), then it's very hard to claim that "race" is biologically valid and that it's not a social construct. It is a social construct more than it is biological construct.
It's especially problematic when we have a perfectly useful term that is more consistent and valid, combining aspects of both biology and culture: "ethnicity". Ethnicity implies genetic relatedness, but does not require it. And it's not burdened with the faux-scientific essentialism that "race" is, which has been the basis of a great deal of socio-political oppression over the last 200 years.
Social status, yes, but criminality maybe even more. Though the percentage changes are small.
Compare this to one of the most striking things about descriptions of Obama during the election. At first he was "mixed-race" and "not black enough," but now it's axiomatic that he's "black."
To me, it's amazing how completely the media and many others are satisfied to say that someone who identifies himself as a half-and-half "mutt" and who looks most like his white grandfather is just "black." Amazing, really.
As usual we have to realize that most studies are reported in the press in an entirely crappy manner.
Who knows what this study actually studied, or what the authors feel it concluded?
There are two parts to this research: what the interviewers reported and what the participants self-reported.
Going on the LA Times report though, there is no way to generalize conclusions about the "interviewers" that the researchers studied to the general population.
There is no reason to think the interviewers are at all representative of the general population.
We don't know how many interviewers were studied. We don't know how many interviews they conducted.
We know they were all attached to the Bureau of Labor as interviewers at some point. Most likely there is a selection bias.
I have no idea what to make of this study except to point out that:
1) studies are usually reported horribly
2) science is a) "Method" and b) repeated experiments.
Science is not "Aha! Look at this study! Case closed."
Now email on the other hand. Email and cellphones are the tools in which a blogger like Kevin could distinguish himself from all the other crappy reporters of science by actually contacting the researchers before he blogs.
To me, it's amazing how completely the media and many others are satisfied to say that someone who identifies himself as a half-and-half "mutt" and who looks most like his white grandfather is just "black." Amazing, really.
No, what's truly amazing is the number of "white" people who seem to believe that all "black" people are pure blooded Africans. I'll let you in on a secret, nearly all "black" people are "mutts". The only difference is that for most of us the mixing has been going on for 10 generations or more.
Obama has said on more than one occasion that he self-identifies as "black" (unlike, say, Tiger Woods), yet a lot of people simply don't want to hear that. I wonder why?
I've been noticing this myself. About December 2007 I started noticing an uptick in the number of blacks I was coding. This slight shift became a landslide this past September. In factory towns and business districts I started coding blacks where I had never registered them before. Granted, I spent Thanksgiving in the Hamptons where I coded about 99% whites. But I think the overall trend stands.
Statistics are as good as the science behind them. As a person trained in the physical sciences, I find most of these studies to be based on an almost complete lack of understanding of the underlying purposes of statistical studies, especially when the sources are peoples' opinions.
Submitted by stefan (not verified) on Tue Dec. 9, 2008 6:02 AM PST.
On my quick reading of the paper, about 2-6% of whites are reclassified as 'other' when they are incarcerated, poor, unemployed, but they do not become black. The data here mostly see a ambiguous white/other race boundary, not an ambiguous white/black boundary. There are more mixed white/black race people out there than 0.1% of the population, the amount of white/black reclassification seen here.
Which sort of suggests there is less racial reclassifciation by status than I would have expected.
I am with stefan. The effect here at most is very slight, and the figures emphasized are in one direction only -- those who were first identified as white. It is difficult to tell if any effort was made to figure out how much was random change of people on the racial borderline; it would be helpful to be more clear on changes in the other direction. Even if basically valid, the point is weakened by poor quality of the information.
Bottom line: if one ore more of your four grandparents is clearly identifiable as being of African ancestry, for a good proportion of the population you qualify as a "n****r" and, by default, you will be forced to self-identify as "black."
There's absolutely no rational reason to refer to, say, Halle Berry, or Barack Obama as being "black" rather than "white."
How can anyone say that race is anything other than a social construct?
How can anyone say that race is anything other than a social construct?
Your conclusion does not follow from your prior two paragraphs.
When we have acknowledged genetics and statistical experts like Neil Risch, saying he thinks there may be scientific/medical underpinnings to race and racial differences, studying them and apparently finding interesting results, it's not so easy for me to glibly say, in a smug, knowing, politically correct manner, that it is nothing other than a social construct.
Because asking questions and answering them is how science works, not just by demanding everyone agree to the answer demanded by someone in an internet forum and that no one ever ask the question again.
We went through this about a year ago with the blogosphere, race vs. iq posts. Yes, lots of information pro and con was posted. But lots of people were called racist who were anything but racist.
We need more asking questions, and less demanding of answers.
How can anyone say that race is anything other than a social construct?
I myself am solidly in the "who the fuck am I to say?" category. But when we seem to see clear differences of disease, of athletic ability, and of other traits distributed with what seems to be a correlation to geography and yes, even skin color, than I am not going to say the answer is obvious, or that the people asking the question are wrong and immoral to do so.
Again, I am in no position to say, but I do have enough science and statistics methods to critique this study, as reported, and say, it ain't telling us a thing about it.
Jerry,
I'm not calling anyone a racist. I don't have the scientific background to address your argument point by point. My assertion is based on one simple set of facts.
If I say "Barack Obama is black" most American people -- not just bigots, and not just white people -- will agree. If I say "Barack Obama is white" nobody will agree with me.
How can one of these statements be more true than the other if Barack Obama's race is defined in any other way than socially?
jerry: "...I myself am solidly in the "who the fuck am I to say?" category. But when we seem to see clear differences of disease, of athletic ability, and of other traits distributed with what seems to be a correlation to geography and yes, even skin color, than I am not going to say the answer is obvious, or that the people asking the question are wrong and immoral to do so..."
The problem is that no one has been able to clearly determine what is attributable to plasticity, and what is solely genetically based. Furthermore, there is greater variation within so-called 'racial types' than there is between them. Are there any traits that can be identified that are really specific to or exclusive to racial types? It's been a few years since I was thick into it, but my master's was physical anthropology, and the more I learned about human variation the more it seemed that attempts at establishing concepts of racial typology were futile.
I'm not calling anyone a racist.
I'm glad of that. But people probably will. Speaking of race or similar issues on liberal blogs attracts the thought and speech police.
How can one of these statements be more true than the other if Barack Obama's race is defined in any other way than socially?
Because people are stupid?
People will also tell you that the sun is going down but that doesn't make the earth revolving about the sun solely a social construct either. But certain parts of the earth's relationship with the sun as viewed by humans is a social construct. But the earth still revolves around the sun regardless.
Similarly, it seems possible that race is an conglomeration of many social constructs as well as potentially real genetic constructs and people are addressing that. Recognizing how part of it is socially constructed is a good thing. But the conclusion from that is not that none of it is real.
In the beginning of "the race", we saw some percentage of African Americans questions Obama's "blackness."
How can anyone say that race is anything other than a social construct?
My problem is this question on liberal blogs today is fraught with peril and it should not be. Answer slightly off the mark, and we'll have the ritual denunciations of troll and now bigot.
Apparently one answer though, is that geneticists and epidemiologists like Neil Risch find the concept of race useful in helping to study disease patterns. There's a whole bunch of evidence taking, and math, and statistics in there to critique such a notion, and I have access to none of that.
But I find it laughable listening to (mostly anonymous) internet lawyers, economists and english majors mandate the answer ahead of time.
The study Kevin points to, as reported, is nonsense. Kevin certainly has the chops to understand that and point that out -- and that would have made for a better post because bad science leads to bad policy and bad laws.
The problem is that no one has been able to clearly determine what is attributable to plasticity, and what is solely genetically based.
I think you're right.
Furthermore, there is greater variation within so-called 'racial types' than there is between them.
I've never understood this argument though. Maybe it's my having forgotten the statistics I was taught or just never having learned it well enough.
Two bell curves can overlap quite significantly and yet have different means.
We have short men and tall women, but men as a group are taller than women as a group.
jerry: "...Apparently one answer though, is that geneticists and epidemiologists like Neil Risch find the concept of race useful in helping to study disease patterns..."
Yes, it's certainly useful, but in what other biological taxon is 'disease patterning' a basis of classification? In my humble and admittedly rusty opinion, what it boils down to is that biological taxa are defined by synapomorphies, or shared, derived traits, and people have been trying to find synapomorphies, if you will, that are relevant to racial typologies for some time with unsatisfactory results.
For anyone interested in all the minutia on the human variation and 'racial typology' issue, there is a lot of scholarly literature out there regarding human variation.
Furthermore, there is greater variation within so-called 'racial types' than there is between them.
jerry: "
I've never understood this argument though. Maybe it's my having forgotten the statistics I was taught or just never having learned it well enough.
Two bell curves can overlap quite significantly and yet have different means.
We have short men and tall women, but men as a group are taller than women as a group."
Well, my first thought is that 'height' is just one characteristic that might be examined regarding sexual dimorphism in humans, but how do you decide what *are* the truly relevant trait(s) that would get at the distinctions? And are they really separate, independent traits, or derived from some underlying trait? This gets at the difficulties in classifications, including racial typologies. Are you looking to base typologies on physical, or phenotypic characteristics, or looking for underlying genotypic distinctions? In general, when I was finishing graduate school things were moving rapidly in the direction of the embryological, developmental basis of organismal variation. Classifications based on conventional examination of physical characteristics in organisms past the very earliest developmental stages were becoming suspect, at least in some camps; i.e., are classifications being made on traits that actually have a similar developmental origin, but because of epigenetic factors end up looking different in mature organisms? It seems to go right back to the old gradist versus cladist perspectives in classification. The most compelling argument I heard regarding the potential validity of racial typology was that researchers looking at variation in many non-human organisms accept taxonomic subdivisions based on much less relative variation than is found in humans.
Submitted by Keith M Ellis (not verified) on Tue Dec. 9, 2008 2:12 PM PST.
"I don't have any special views on the 'race is a social construct' question..."
You should, because it's more scientifically correct to say that it's a "social construct" than to say that it is a biologically meaningful concept.
"When we have acknowledged genetics and statistical experts like Neil Risch, saying he thinks there may be scientific/medical underpinnings to race and racial differences, studying them and apparently finding interesting results, it's not so easy for me to glibly say, in a smug, knowing, politically correct manner, that it is nothing other than a social construct."
Look, there's no doubt that in many, but not all, contexts that the superficial characteristics which people ordinarily use to make the heuristic determination of "race" does, in fact, imply genetic relatedness. Genetic relatedness implies similar genetic predilections.
The problem is that this heuristic that people use to identify race is very imperfect. Particularly in the case of very dark-skinned people, when the context is all worldwide populations, then this heuristic is simply entirely misleadingall very dark-skinned people are not genetically related.
It's important to understand that dark pigmentation of the skin is truly superficialit doesn't imply deeper biological mechanisms. The mutation arises easily and has certainly arisen independently many times throughout human evolution (and, conversely, the light-skinned mutation). It simply doesn't imply any essential relatedness or similarity other than that these people share darkly-colored skin.
The reason that it can be a useful biological distinction is because, in practice, often the context is limited enough such that the heuristic actually words at correctly implying relatedness. And relatedness implies many things.
Almost all "African-Americans" are descendants of slaves taken from west central Africa who have greatly intermarried over the succeeding generations. It's correct to generalize from the race heuristic to assume that they share a genetic heritage. On the other hand, they don't necessarily share a genetic heritage with any random dark-skinned person from Africa. As is often pointed out, there are dark-skinned populations in Africa which are far more genetically related to light-skinned Europeans than they are some other dark-skinned Africans.
The same sorts of things are true for other peoples we identify as "races". Oftentimes, when the context is a sufficiently restricted population, "race" is a useful guide to genetic relatedness. But it's a very fallible guide because it generally doesn't reliably indicate what people think it reliably indicates. Blacks, particularly, really aren't a "type" of human any more than blondes are. It's truly superficial.
The essential notions behind "race" are not nonsense. They just happen to not be true. It's entirely possible that in the course of human evolution very distinctly genetically different subpopulations could have evolved. It just so happen that they didn't. There's apparently never been a population isolated for a long enough time to have diverged in this way. There has always been intermixing of populations on a frequent enough basis. Our genetics don't vary in the way that many other animals genetics do.
Because the common understanding of race involves a cultural heuristic which determines a person's race on the basis of appearance and some other things, and not, importantly, on an actual test for genetic relatedness (which would quite often produce results contrary from the social heuristic), then it's very hard to claim that "race" is biologically valid and that it's not a social construct. It is a social construct more than it is biological construct.
It's especially problematic when we have a perfectly useful term that is more consistent and valid, combining aspects of both biology and culture: "ethnicity". Ethnicity implies genetic relatedness, but does not require it. And it's not burdened with the faux-scientific essentialism that "race" is, which has been the basis of a great deal of socio-political oppression over the last 200 years.
Submitted by Keith M Ellis (not verified) on Tue Dec. 9, 2008 2:26 PM PST.
"We have short men and tall women, but men as a group are taller than women as a group."
Yes, but what biologically does it mean that someone is tall? Does it imply other biological characteristics? Are all tall people more related to each other than they are to short people?
I think it's entirely disingenuous to compare race to height or hair color from the perspective of arguing that "race" is biologically meaningful. No one is arguing that all very dark-skinned people aren't very dark-skinned. But the popular idea of race has never been limited to grouping people together on the basis of a superficial characteristic and then restraining itself from making further biological inferences. Rather, the whole notion is an attempt to make huge biological inferences about essential biological nature, particularly behavior. That notion isn't scientifically valid unless there's proof that there's truly genetic relatedness and/or a large quantity of shared genes that arose by parallel evolution. But, as it turns out, this isn't so. That's why the genetic relatedness thing is key. You can't say that all very dark-skinned people are good runners and bad swimmers (two common racial stereotypes that depend upon faux-scientific genetics) because there's no scientific evidence showing that very dark-skin is a reliable guide to genetic relatedness or shared genetic characteristics. It's just dark skin. However, like I said in my previous comment, in limited contexts of certain subpopulations, then this generalization actually does work...not unlike how red-hair in a small midwestern town might imply genetic relatedness and thus, some shared behavioral inclinations. But all red-haired people in the world? No. Being red-haired isn't a human "type". Being very dark-skinned isn't a human "type".
I think it's entirely disingenuous to compare race to height or hair color from the perspective of arguing that "race" is biologically meaningful.
That's good, because I didn't do that. I used one example to explain why I don't understand the argument about statistical differences in groups: "there is more variation within that without, therefore there can't be two separate groups."
I mostly agree with your prior post.
Keith M Ellis: "...However, like I said in my previous comment, in limited contexts of certain subpopulations, then this generalization actually does work...not unlike how red-hair in a small midwestern town might imply genetic relatedness and thus, some shared behavioral inclinations. But all red-haired people in the world? No. Being red-haired isn't a human "type". Being very dark-skinned isn't a human "type"..."
; ) I guess you've never heard Milford Wolpoff talk about the significance of red hair...
jerry: "I used one example to explain why I don't understand the argument about statistical differences in groups: "there is more variation within that without, therefore there can't be two separate groups."
Yep, you did, but it's been so long since I've dealt with it that I was hoping someone else would address it.
In response to this article...
Submitted by pcorona on Sun Mar. 22, 2009 5:14 PM PDT.
I personally agree with Kevin Drum’s point that “social status does indeed have an effect on how race is perceived.” I support this specific point because the study reported by the L.A. Time examined how closely race and status are intertwined when speaking about blacks in America. The study examined how race and status refers to the stereotype that blacks have a lower status than whites, a view that still circulates around the American public and mind. Based on the study, people who are not black have the likelihood to be classified as black if their status becomes lower. When I came across that point, I had to ask myself: How can anyone ever make that type of comparison? Not only is it ignorant but completely invalid for its underlying message. One thing I admire about this study is that it does generate plenty of reaction from the public because it’s a great example to how some of us still rely on stereotypes to justify their views. In addition, they rely on stereotypes because they represent personal judgments directed at people who are believed to act and look a certain way. To read about a study that depicts how some Americans still view other Americans solely by their race and completely disregard how they perform as an individual is ludicrous. Blacks have been targeted with stereotypes that relate to the one mentioned in this article because of the prejudices that have shaped their history. Those who accept the injustice directed at minorities will have a harder time leaving their ideals of a “white America” behind because it is what they merely consider as right. One more point before I leave, studies like this one should be made more often because it is interesting to know how the prejudices we thought we left behind persist on thriving in our world comprised of such diverse populations.
