Rethinking the Color Line: Readings in Race and Ethnicity

User-friendly without sacrificing intellectual or theoretical rigor, this anthology of current research examines contemporary issues and explores new approaches to the study of race and ethnic relations. The featured readings effectively engage students by helping them understand theories and concepts. Active learning in the classroom is encouraged while providing relevance for students from all ethnic, cultural, and economic backgrounds. The fifth edition features ten new articles on such timely topics as:
• The U.S. Census’ changing definition of race and ethnicity
• Race-based disparities in health
• Racial and gender discrimination among racial minorities and women
• Being Arab and American
• How social control maintains racial inequality
• The increase in black and brown incarceration
• How racial bias may affect the use of DNA to locate suspects of crimes
• How derogatory ethnic and racial images are created and disseminated by the media
• The sexualization of African American women through the use of gender stereotypes
• The portrayal of light- and dark-skinned biracial characters

Table of Contents

About the Author

Preface

Introduction: Rethinking the Color Line: Understanding How Boundaries Shift

Part I: Sorting By Color: Why We Attach Meaning To Race

Race and Ethnicity: Sociohistoric Constructions and …

1. How Our Skins Got Their Color

2. Drawing the Color Line

3. Racial Formations

4. Theoretical Perspectives in Race and Ethnic Relations

5. Racialized Social Systems: Understanding Racism

Seeing the Big Picture: The Social Construction of Race 1790-2000

…Contemporary Socioeconomic Trends

6. An Overview of Trends in Social and Economic Well-Being, by Race

Seeing the Big Picture: The Role of Race in Social Mobility

7. The Color of Health in the United States

Seeing the Big Picture: How Race Can Be Hazardous to Your Health

8. Transformative Assets, The Racial Wealth Gap and the American Dream

Seeing the Big Picture: The Color of Money

Race as Chameleon: How the Idea of Race Changes Over Time and Place

9. Defining Race: Comparative Perspectives

Seeing the Big Picture: What was YOUR race in 1890?

10. A Tour of Indian People and Indian Lands

Seeing the Big Picture: From Riches to the “Res” (Reservation System)

11. Asian American Panethnicity: Contemporary National and Transnational Possibilities

Seeing the Big Picture: Panethnic Riches, Panethnic Poverty

12. Beyond Black and White: Remaking Race in America

Seeing the Big Picture: Check All That Apply (Finally!): The Institutionalization of Mixed Race Identity

Colorblind America: Fact, Fantasy or Our Future?

13. Color Blind Privilege: The Social and Political Functions of Erasing the Color Line in Post Race America

14. The Ideology of Colorblindness

15. The Possibility of a New Racial Hierarchy in the Twenty-First-Century United States

Seeing the Big Picture: Colorblind or Blind to Color?

Part II: Prejudice, Discrimination, and Racism

Understanding Racism

16. Race Prejudice as a Sense of Group Position

Seeing the Big Picture: Racism: Group Position or Individual Belief?

17. Discrimination and the American Creed

18. Race and Civil Rights Pre-September 11, 2001: The Targeting of Arabs and Muslims

Seeing the Big Picture: America’s New Public Enemy?

19. The Possessive Investment in Whiteness

Seeing the Big Picture: Race As an Investment

20. Laissez-Fair Racism, Racial Inequality and the Role of the Social Sciences

How Space Gets Raced

21. Residential Segregation and Neighborhood Conditions in U.S. Metropolitan Areas

Seeing the Big Picture: How Integrated is Your Neighborhood?

22. The Code of the Streets

23. Environmental Justice in the 21st Century: Race Still Matters

24. Race, Religion, and the Color Line (or is that the Color Wall?)

25. Why Are There No Supermarkets in my Neighborhood: The Long Search for Fresh Fruit, Produce and Inexpensive Healthy Food

Seeing the Big Picture: Urban Food Deserts: Race, Health and the Lack of “Real” Food

Part III: Racialized Opportunity in Social Institutions

Race and Criminal Justice: Oxymoron or an American Tragedy

26. No Equal Justice: The Color of Punishment

Seeing the Big Picture: How Race Tips the Scales of Justice

27. Everyday Racism on the Police Force

28. .…and the Poor Get Prison

29. The Mark of a Criminal Record

Seeing the Big Picture: The Link Between Race, Education, Employment and Crime

How Race Shapes the Workplace

30. Kristin v. Aisha; Brad v. Rasheed: What’s in a Name and How it Effects Getting a Job

31. When the Pot Boils Over; The Irish, Jews, Blacks and Koreans of New York

Seeing the Big Picture: Whose Got the “Good” Jobs and Why.

32. “There’s No Shame in My Game”: Status and Stigma Among Harlem’s Working Poor

33. Sweatshops in Sunset Park: A Variation of Late Twentieth-Century Chinese Garment Shops in New York City

34. Hispanics in the American South and the Transformation of the Poultry Industry

Seeing the Big Picture: How Do Segregated Newsrooms Create Biased News?

Race, Representations and the Media

Drug Dealers, Maids and Mammies: The Role of Stereotypes in the Media

35. Broadcast News Portrayal of Minorities: Accuracy in Reporting

Seeing the Big Picture: How the Media Shapes Race Relations.

36. Television and the Politics of Representation

37. Distorted Reality: Hispanic Characters in TV Entertainment

Crazy Horse Malt Liquor and Athletes: The Tenacity of Stereotypes

38. Winnebagos, Cherokees, Apaches and Dakotas: The Persistence of Stereotyping of American Indians in American Advertising

Seeing the Big Picture: The Tomahawk Chop: Racism in Image and Action

39. Sport in America: The New Racial Stereotypes

Seeing the Big Picture: Television’s Interracial Images: Some Fact, Mostly Fiction

Part IV: How America’s Complexion Changes

Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration

40. The Melting Pot and the Color Line

Seeing the Big Picture: Who is Allowed to “Melt” in the Pot? Who Wants to?

41. Who are the Other African Americans? Contemporary African and Caribbean Immigrants in the United States

42. The Arab Immigrant Experience

43. Ethnic and Racial Identities of Second-Generation Black Immigrants in New York City

Seeing the Big Picture: Is a Non-ethnic Racial Identity Possible?

Race and Romance: Blurring Boundaries

44. Guess Who’s Been Coming to Dinner? Trends in Interracial Marriage over the 20th Century

45. Captain Kirk Kisses Lieutenant Uhura: Interracial Intimacies From Hollywood

Seeing the Big Picture: Love May be Blind, But It’s Not Colorblind

46. Discovering Racial Borders

47. Redrawing the Color-Line? : The Problems and Possibilities of Multiracial Families and Group Making

Seeing the Big Picture: Interracial Marriage and the Blurring of the Color Line

Living With Less Racism: Strategies for Individual Action

48. Closing the Racial Inequality Gap: A Plan For Action

49. Ten Things You Can Do To Improve Race Relations

Appendix

Race by the Numbers—America’s Racial Report Card