Tag Archives | Race and Ethnicity

Inclusive but Not Integrative: Ethnoracial Boundaries and the Use of Spanish in the Market for Rental Housing

Ariela Schachter, John Kuk, Max Besbris, and Garrett Pekarek

Sociological Science September 26, 2023
10.15195/v10.a21


Increasing Spanish fluency in the United States likely shapes ethnoracial group boundaries and inequality. We study a key site for group boundary negotiations—the housing market—where Spanish usage may represent a key source of information exchange between landlords and prospective renters. Specifically, we examine the use of Spanish in advertisements for online rental housing and its effect on White, Black, and Latinx Americans’ residential preferences. Using a corpus of millions of Craigslist rental listings, we show that Spanish listings are concentrated in majority-Latinx neighborhoods with greater proportions of immigrant and Spanish-speaking residents. Furthermore, units that are advertised in Spanish tend be lower priced relative to non-Spanish ads in the same neighborhood. We then use a survey experiment to demonstrate that Spanish usage decreases White, Black, and non-Spanish-speaking Latinx Americans’ interest in a housing unit and surrounding neighborhood, whereas Spanish-speaking Latinx respondents are less affected. We discuss these findings in light of past work on neighborhood demographic preferences, segregation, and recent theorizing on within-category inequality.
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Identity Override: How Sexual Orientation Reduces the Rigidity of Racial Boundaries

Adam L. Horowitz, Charles J. Gomez

Sociological Science, November 7, 2018
10.15195/v5.a28


Although most Americans have limited interpersonal relations with different-race others, interracial ties are notably more common among gay, lesbian, and bisexual (GLB) individuals. Departing from the modal explanation of intergroup relations theories, which suggests that individual propensities for between-group interactions are driven by demographic groups’ physical location relative to one another, we show that, beyond propinquity, GLB interraciality is spiked through active identification as GLB. We evaluate full romantic/sexual partnership histories along with friendship network racial compositions for respondents in a large, nationally representative sample. We show that GLBs have a greater likelihood and frequency than heterosexuals of forming multiple types of interracial ties and also that this effect applies only to those who actively identify as GLB and not to those who engage in same-sex relations but do not identify as GLB. This discovery refines theories of intergroup relations, isolating how identification serves as a mediating mechanism that can heighten the propensity for intergroup interaction. We argue that active identification with a group that crosses racial boundaries spurs overriding the rigidity of intergroup borders that otherwise dissuade interpersonal diversity.
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Social Influence on Observed Race

Zsófia Boda

Sociological Science, January 18, 2018
DOI 10.15195/v5.a3

This article introduces a novel theoretical approach for understanding racial fluidity, emphasizing the social embeddedness of racial classifications. We propose that social ties affect racial perceptions through within-group micromechanisms, resulting in discrepancies between racial self-identifications and race as classified by others. We demonstrate this empirically on data from 12 Hungarian high school classes with one minority group (the Roma) using stochastic actor-oriented models for the analysis of social network panel data. We find strong evidence for social influence: individuals tend to accept their peers’ judgement about another student’s racial category; opinions of friends have a larger effect than those of nonfriends. Perceived social position also matters: those well-accepted among majority-race peers are likely to be classified as majority students themselves. We argue that similar analyses in other social contexts shall lead to a better understanding of race and interracial processes.

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Growing Farther Apart: Racial and Ethnic Inequality in Household Wealth Across the Distribution

Michelle Maroto

Sociological Science, September 12, 2016
DOI 10.15195/v3.a34

This article investigates net worth disparities by race and ethnicity using pooled data from the 1998–2013 waves of the U.S. Survey of Consumer Finances. I apply unconditional quantile regression models to examine net worth throughout the wealth distribution and decomposition procedures to demonstrate how different factors related to demographics, human capital, financial attitudes, and credit market access contribute to racial wealth disparities. In the aggregate, non-Hispanic black households held $8,000 less in net worth than non-Hispanic white households at the 10th percentile, $204,000 less at the median, and $1,055,000 at the 90th percentile. Hispanic households faced similar disadvantages, holding $4,000 less in net worth at the 10th percentile, $208,000 less at the median, and $1,023,000 less at the 90th percentile. Disparities continued, but declined, after accounting for labor market disadvantages and credit market access, which again varied across the distribution. Decomposition models show that demographic and income differences mattered more for high-wealth households. These variables accounted for 43–55 percent of the gap for high-wealth households at the 90th percentile but only 10–28 percent at the 10th percentile. Among low-wealth households, differential access to credit markets and homeownership was associated with a larger proportion of the gap in net worth.

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