Jenifer L. Bratter

Is Discrimination an Equal Opportunity Risk? Racial Experiences, Socioeconomic Status, and Health Status among Black and White Adults

Using the 2004 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, we explore the relationship between racial awareness, perceived discrimination, and self-rated health among black (n = 5,902) and white (n = 28,451) adults. We find that adjusting for group differences in racial awareness and discrimination, in addition to socioeconomic status, explains the black-white gap in self-rated health. However, logistic regression models also find evidence for differential vulnerability among black and whites adults, based on socioeconomic status. While both groups are equally harmed by emotional and/or physical reactions to race-based treatment, the negative consequences of discriminatory experiences for black adults are exacerbated by their poorer socioeconomic standing. In contrast, the association between racial awareness and self-rated health is more sensitive to socioeconomic standing among whites. Poorer health is more likely to occur among whites when they reflect at least daily on their own racial status—but only when it happens in tandem with mid-range educational achievement, or among homemakers.

Does Multiracial Matter? A Study of Racial Disparities in Self-Rated Health

How do self-identified multiracial adults fit into documented patterns of racial health disparities? We assess whether the health status of adults who view themselves as multiracial is distinctive from that of adults who maintain a single-race identity, by using a seven-year (2001–2007) pooled sample of the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS). We explore racial differences in self-rated health between whites and several single and multiracial adults with binary logistic regression analyses and investigate whether placing these groups into a self-reported “best race” category alters patterns of health disparities. We propose four hypotheses that predict how the self-rated health status of specific multiracial groups compares with their respective component single-race counterparts, and we find substantial complexity in that no one explanatory model applies to all multiracial combinations. We also find that placing multiracial groups into a single “best race” category likely obscures the pattern of health disparities for selected groups because some multiracial adults (e.g., American Indians) tend to identify with single-race groups whose health experience they do not share.

Measuring the Diverging Components of Race An Introduction

This special issue brings together original research that advances the emerging subfield on the measurement and analysis of varying components of race. The articles provide insight into how social scientists can tease apart the multiple components of race and leverage them to better understand how race continues to divide life chances, creatively using existing and new sources of data. The articles speak to three key themes: how we can better understand the various ways that race is experienced, alternative approaches to measuring the different components of race, and the implications of race measures for understanding social inequality.

Single mother families and employment, race, and poverty in changing economic times ☆

Using American Community Survey data from 2001, 2005, and 2010, this paper assesses the relationships between employment, race, and poverty for households headed by single women across different economic periods. While poverty rates rose dramatically among single-mother families between 2001 and 2010, surprisingly many racial disparities in poverty narrowed by the end of the decade. This was due to a greater increase in poverty among whites, although gaps between whites and Blacks, whites and Hispanics, and whites and American Indians remained quite large in 2010. All employment statuses were at higher risk of poverty in 2010 than 2001 and the risk increased most sharply for those employed part-time, the unemployed, and those not in the labor force. Given the concurrent increase in part-time employment and unemployment between 2000 and 2010, findings paint a bleak picture of the toll the last decade has had on the well being of single-mother families.

Investigating Race, Class and Context through Historical Evidence: Segregation and the Ecology of Aspirations of Black College Students in the 1960s South

In an era of re-segregation among school systems in the United States, we find ourselves revisiting times of forced school segregation (pre Brown v. Board) for a better understanding of explanations and potential consequences. One consequence, depressed aspirations for occupational mobility, is examined here. Using data for Mathews and Prothros Negro Participation Survey, administered to black college students in 1961, we examine this relationship while controlling for various individual level indicators of capital, demographics, political participation, and ecologically-centered organizational and economic factors through the use of Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM). We uncover patterns of aspirations (or lack thereof) concerning social class mobility that are directly related to social class background and the cultural orientations of the environment in which the student hails. Our conclusions link such patterns to the current trajectory of re-segregation in the education system.

The Demography of Race and Ethnicity in the United States

The 2008 election of Barack Obama, the nation‘s first non-white president, brought forth a barrage of attempts to identify the root causes of the election. Were we moving into a―post-racial phase of American race relationships? Or was this a demographic phenomenon, driven by the infusion of new, largely young voters who were more racially and ethnically diverse than voting populations had been in the past. One indicator that this was a by-product of demographic changes was the fact that while Obama had won handedly, he had done so with only 55 % of the White vote. Indeed, the voting population had―changed color in demographic terms, suggesting a new social significance of an increasingly diverse population. This chapter aims to bring into focus some of the core themes of the United States race/ethnic demography. Since 2000, there has been a veritable explosion of edited volumes, books, and articles that provide comprehensive overviews of race/ethnicity. Trends from the 2010 Census are likely to produce as many volumes to document the changes. This chapter aims to provide an overview of much of that work and provide a few key updates in those trends. Therefore race/ethnic demography is centered on understanding three thematic issues, the ever-changing population composition by race/ethnicity, indicators of racial inequality, the complexity of race/ethnic identity.

Population Composition by Race and Ethnicity: North America

This article is a revision of the previous edition article by A. Morning, volume 17, pp. 11744–11749,

Biracial in America: Forming and Performing Racial Identity

A growing number of studies are focused on tracing the experiences of multiracial Americans. This scholarship has evolved considerably, moving from questions of identity and classification to investigating the patterns of well-being for multiracial persons compared to single-race respondents. While in some ways this increased interest is driven by a growth in the available data on this group, it also marks a conceptual shift in our understanding of race as a feature of self that is not always easily appraised. Moreso than any other racial group, the multiracial remains a fascination of discussions of sociallyconstructed race as their experiences signify what, beyond sheer claims to ancestry, drives our racial identity. Additionally, the number of Americans indicating multiple races suggests that a biracial or blurred racial existence has become more common. However, has this come to pass? On one hand, those declaring multiple categories are among the fastest growing racial demographics, currently encompassing close to 3 percent of the population. On the other hand, this classification is highly unstable, often capturing only a fraction of those who hail from mixed-race parental ancestry, leaving the question open: what does it mean to say one is publicly multiracial, and what of those who have mixed-race backgrounds but do not indicate such in public? The core of this scholarship has always rested on answering one question, ‘‘What are you?’’ How are multiracial Americans racially understood by themselves, by others, and why? These are the questions of the new engaging book by Nikki Khanna, Biracial in America: Forming and Performing Racial Identity that investigates not only the multiple layers of the racial identity of biracial (black/white) individuals—composed of a public label and an internalized one—but also the specific processes that form this identity. In many ways, Khanna’s book provides a new look on what is now well-trotted territory. A focus on black/white individuals is common in the discourse, as this combination complicates America’s most enduring racial divide. Black-white romantic relationships and identities of the offspring are historically the most heavily regulated, with state-specific laws that laid out how little ‘‘black’’ ancestry was required to make someone black: formal segregation institutionalized the one-drop rule (or any trace of African ancestry). This provides the legal and structural context of Khanna’s work, summarized in the second chapter, and situates the work as a commentary on contemporary race relationships between blacks and whites as well as the nuances of social identity. Khanna’s analysis remains tightly tethered to this discussion, asking to what degree does the ‘‘rule’’ persist today in the absence of institutional mandates? The answer to this question is both yes and no—biracial people in her sample largely embrace a biracial identity in public, thus seemingly defying ‘‘the rule,’’ but many see themselves internally as black or white. She draws on semi-structured interviews with 40 adults in the region of the United States that is most associated with the one-drop rule—the South. The book is divided into seven chapters, with the first two exploring the field of biracial identity research, and the second exploring the history of blackwhite relationships and the emergence and persistence of the one-drop rule. Each of the four analytical chapters outlines a specific process that contributes to this multi-layered identity. The first two chapters cover the two most salient and well-studied aspects of identity formation: the salience of perceived physical appearance or ‘‘reflected appraisals’’ (Chapter Three) and the role of day-to-day interactions in attracting and repelling individuals from identity choices (Chapter Four). Khanna’s analysis reveals how the one-drop rule is a cultural frame for interpreting physical appearance that works differently for different groups but leads to the same conclusion, biracial respondents being ‘‘race’’-ed as black. Interactions are similar in that biracial respondents report prejudiced treatment Reviews 79