Tag Archives | Race/Ethnicity

Some Birds Have Mixed Feathers: Bringing the Multiracial Population into the Study of Race Homophily

David R. Schaefer, Sara I. Villalta, Victoria Vezaldenos, Adriana J. Umaña-Taylor

Sociological Science November 12, 2024
10.15195/v11.a38


Research on race homophily in the United States has yet to meaningfully include the growing multiracial population. The present study confronts this challenge by drawing upon recent conceptualizations of race as a multidimensional construct. In aligning this insight with current understandings of homophily, we identify and address several open questions about the origins of race homophily—namely regarding the possibility of peer influence on racial identity and network selection based on multiple facets of race. Data are from 3,036 youth in two large U.S. high schools with sizable proportions of mixed-race students. Using a stochastic actor-oriented model, we find that students choose friends based on similarity across multiple dimensions of racial identity and that peer influence operates to reinforce multiracial youths’ racial self-classification rather than to induce change. This points to a system where race homophily arises through multiple selection mechanisms and is reinforced by pressure toward conformity.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

David R. Schaefer: Department of Sociology, University of California, Irvine
E-mail: drschaef@uci.edu

Sara I. Villalta: Department of Sociology, Loyola Marymount University
E-mail: sara.villalta@lmu.edu

Victoria Vezaldenos: Combined Program in Education and Psychology, University of Michigan
E-mail: toriavez@umich.edu

Adriana J. Umaña-Taylor: Graduate School of Education, Harvard University
E-mail: adriana_umana-taylor@gse.harvard.edu

Acknowledgements: This research was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (SES No. 1918162, PI: Schaefer; BCS No. 1625277, PI: Umaña-Taylor). We express our appreciation to Jessica Collett, Deja Goodwin, Andrew Penner, and Aliya Saperstein for helpful comments on an earlier draft.

Supplemental Materials

Reproducibility Package: A replication package is available at: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/VOK1UI.

  • Citation: Schaefer, R. David, Sara I. Villalta, Victoria Vezaldenos, and Adriana J. Umaña-Taylor. 2024. “Some Birds Have Mixed Feathers: Bringing the Multiracial Population into the Study of Race Homophily.” Sociological Science 11: 1046-1083.
  • Received: April 30, 2024
  • Accepted: August 28, 2024
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Andreas Wimmer
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a38


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Racially Distinctive Names Signal Both Race/Ethnicity and Social Class

Charles Crabtree, S. Michael Gaddis, John B. Holbein, Edvard Nergård Larsen

Sociological Science December 12, 2022
10.15195/v9.a18


Researchers studying discrimination and bias frequently conduct experiments that use racially distinctive names to signal race or ethnicity. The evidence that these studies provide about racial discrimination depends on the assumption that the names researchers use differ only based on perceived race and not some other factor. In this article, we assess this common assumption using data from five different studies (n = 1,004; 2,002; 1,035; 5,631; 1,858) conducted at different times across four separate survey platforms (Lucid Marketplace, Lucid Theorem, MTurk, and Prolific). We find evidence that names commonly used to signal race/ethnicity also influence perceptions about socioeconomic status and social class. Specifically, we observe that Americans tend to think that individuals with names typically used by Black and Hispanic people have lower educational attainment and income and are of a lower social class. Even when we present respondents with the educational attainment of a named individual, respondents still perceive Black people as lower social class than White people. We discuss the implications of these findings for past and future experimental work that uses names to signal race. We also articulate the importance of choosing names that best approximate the quantity that scholars want to estimate.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Charles Crabtree: Department of Government, Dartmouth College
E-mail: crabtree@dartmouth.edu; URL: charlescrabtree.com

S. Michael Gaddis: Senior Research Scientist, NWEA; Department of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles; and California Center for Population Research
E-mail: mgaddis@soc.ucla.edu; URL: stevenmichaelgaddis.com

John B. Holbein: Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, University of Virginia
E-mail: holbein@virginia.edu; URL: sites.google.com/site/johnbholbein/

Edvard Nergård Larsen: Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo
E-mail: e.n.larsen@sosgeo.uio.no; URL: sv.uio.no/iss/english/people/aca/edvardnl

Acknowledgments: We thank the service workers and small businesses in San Francisco’s Mission District for the bountiful supply of burritos that provided fuel for the authors’ intense writing retreat that resulted in this article. We also thank NBA League Pass.

  • Citation: Crabtree, Charles, S. Michael Gaddis, John B. Holbein, and Edvard Nergård Larsen. 2022. “Racially Distinctive Names Signal Both Race/Ethnicity and Social Class.” Sociological Science 9: 454-472.
  • Received: December 4, 2021
  • Accepted: February 21, 2022
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Jeremy Freese
  • DOI: 10.15195/v9.a18


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Racial and Gender Disparities among Evicted Americans

Peter Hepburn, Renee Louis, Matthew Desmond

Sociological Science December 16, 2020
10.15195/v7.a27


Drawing on millions of court records of eviction cases filed between 2012 and 2016 in 39 states, this study documents the racial and gender demographics of America’s evicted population. Black renters received a disproportionate share of eviction filings and experienced the highest rates of eviction filing and eviction judgment. Black and Latinx female renters faced higher eviction rates than their male counterparts. Black and Latinx renters were also more likely to be serially filed against for eviction at the same address. These findings represent the most comprehensive investigation to date of racial and gender disparities among evicted renters in the United States.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Peter Hepburn: Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Rutgers University-Newark
E-mail: peter.hepburn@rutgers.edu

Renee Louis: Department of Sociology, Princeton University
E-mail: reneel@princeton.edu

Matthew Desmond: Department of Sociology, Princeton University
E-mail: matthew.desmond@princeton.edu

Acknowledgments: Members of the Eviction Lab at Princeton University offered valuable feedback on an early draft of this article. Sandra Park of the American Civil Liberties Union provided guidance on the structure of disparate impact claims and the Fair Housing Act. The Eviction Lab is funded by the JPB, Gates, and Ford Foundations as well as the C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Research reported in this publication was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under award number P2CHD047879. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not represent the official views of the NIH.

  • Citation: Hepburn, Peter, Renee Louis, and Matthew Desmond. 2020. “Racial and Gender Disparities among Evicted Americans.” Sociological Science 7: 649-662.
  • Received: September 21, 2020
  • Accepted: November 14, 2020
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Kim Weeden
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a27


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Household Complexity and Change among Children in the United States, 1984 to 2010

Kristin L. Perkins

Sociological Science, December 6, 2017
DOI 10.15195/v4.a29

Research on family instability typically measures changes in coresident parents, but children also experience changes among other household members. The likelihood of experiencing these changes differs by race and ethnicity, family structure, and cohort. Analyses of the Survey of Income and Program Participation show that the cumulative proportion of children who gain or lose a household member is much higher than the proportion of children whose father or mother leaves the household. The share of children who experience a change in household composition involving a nonparent, nonsibling relative is greater among blacks and Hispanics than among whites and greater among children in single-parent families than in two-parent families. Overall, fewer children in the 1990s and 2000s experienced changes in household composition than in the 1980s. This study advances a broader definition of family instability by including others present in children’s households, better incorporating the changes in developmental environments children experience.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Kristin L. Perkins: Joint Center for Housing Studies, Harvard University
Email: kristin_perkins@harvard.edu

Acknowledgements: I gratefully acknowledge Kathryn Edin, Paula Fomby, Alexandra Killewald, Robert J. Sampson, H. Luke Shaefer, Laura Tach, Bruce Western, and Alix S. Winter for their helpful comments and feedback. J. Bart Stykes generously shared Stata code at the outset of this project and Matthew Arck helped with formatting. Any errors are my own. This research has been supported by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University and a Harvard University grant from the Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality & Social Policy. I also benefited from attending a workshop on the use of the SIPP at the University of Michigan as part of the NSF-Census Research Network (NCRN, NSF SES-1131500).

  • Citation: Perkins, Kristin L. 2017. “Household Complexity and Change among Children in the United States, 1984 to 2010.” Sociological Science 4: 701-724.
  • Received: September 21, 2017
  • Accepted: October 26, 2017
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Stephen L. Morgan
  • DOI: 10.15195/v4.a29

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Friend Effects and Racial Disparities in Academic Achievement

Jennifer Flashman

Sociological Science, July 7, 2014
DOI 10.15195/v1.a17

Racial disparities in achievement are a persistent fact of the US educational system. An often cited but rarely directly studied explanation for these disparities is that adolescents from different racial and ethnic backgrounds are exposed to different peers and have different friends. In this article I identify the impact of friends on racial and ethnic achievement disparities. Using data from Add Health and an instrumental variable approach, I show that the achievement characteristics of youths’ friends drive friend effects; adolescents with friends with higher grades are more likely to increase their grades compared to those with lower-achieving friends. Although these effects do not differ across race/ethnicity, given differences in friendship patterns, if black and Latino adolescents had friends with the achievement characteristics of white students, the GPA gap would be 17 to 19 percent smaller. Although modest, this effect represents an important and often overlooked source of difference among black and Latino youth.

Jennifer Flashman: Center for Research on Educational Opportunity, University of Notre Dame. E-mail: Jennifer.A.Flashman.1@nd.edu

  • Citation: Jennifer Flashman. 2014. “Friend Effects and Racial Disparities in Academic Achievement.” Sociological Science 1: 260-276.
  • Received: March 27, 2014
  • Accepted: April 29, 2014
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Stephen L. Morgan
  • DOI: 10.15195/v1.a17

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