Rethinking the Color Line: Readings in Race and Ethnicity

Rethinking the Color Line is an anthology of current research and writings on race and ethnicity that examines contemporary issues and explores new approaches to the study of race and ethnic relations.

* Indicates New Reading

Introduction: Rethinking the Color Line: Understanding How Boundaries Shift

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

RACE AND ETHNICITY AS SOCIOHISTORIC CONSTRUCTIONS

How Our Skins Got Their Color by Marvin Harris

Racial Formations by Michael Omi and Howard Winant

Theoretical Perspectives in Race and Ethnic Relations by Joe R. Feagin and Clairece Booher Feagin

*An Overview of Trends in Social and Economic Well-Being, by Race by Rebecca M. Blank from America Becoming

Racial Trends and Their Consequences (National Research Council 2001)

*The Possessive Investment in Whiteness by George Lipsitz from American Quarterly, Volume 47, September 1995

*Color Blind Privilege: The Social and Political Functions of Erasing the Color Line in Post Race America by Charles Gallagher

RACE AS CHAMELEON: HOW THE IDEA OF RACE CHANGES OVER TIME

Drawing the Color Line by Howard Zinn

Placing Race in Context by Clara E. Rodriguez and Hector Cordero-Guzman

*A Tour of Indian People and Indian Lands by David E. Wilkins from American Politics and the American Political System (Rowman and Littlefield Publishers 2002)

Asian American Panethnicity by Yen Le Espiritu

Part II: Prejudice and Discrimination

“SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS ARE…”: LINKING GROUP POSITION TO ATTITUDES AND ACTIONS

Race Prejudice as a Sense of Group Position by Herbert Blumer

Discrimination and the American Creed by Robert Merton

*What is Racism? by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva from White Supremacy and Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era (Lynne Rienner 2001)

The Complexity of Race Relations by Schuman, Steeh, Bobo and Krysan

*Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh

THE COLOR OF SPACE

The Continuing Significance of Race: Antiblack

Discrimination in Public Places by Joe Feagin

Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol

Positive Functions of the Deserving Poor: Uses of the Underclass in America

The Anatomy of Racially Motivated Violence in New York City: A Case Study of Youth in Southern Brooklyn by Howard Pinderhughes

*Environmental Justice in the 21st Century: Race Still Matters by Robert D. Bullard from Phylon Volume 49:Numbers 3-4, (2001)

Part III: Race and Ethnicity in Social Institutions

RACIALIZED OPPORTUNITY

RACE AND CRIME

*America’s One Million Nonviolent Prisoners by John Irwin, Vincent Schiraldi, and Jason Ziedenberg in Social Justice Vol. 27, No.2 (2000)

*No Equal Justice: The Color of Punishment by David Cole from No Equal Justice: Race and Class in the American Criminal Justice System (The New Press, 1999)

*Race and Criminalization: The Punishment Industry by Angela Y. Davis in The House That Race Built edited by Wahneema Lubiano (Vintage 1998)

*…and the Poor Get Prison by Jeffrey Reiman from The Rich get Richer and the Poor Get Prison (6th edition Allyn and Bacon 2001)

RACE AND WORK

Race Gender and Work: The History of Asian and Asian American Women by Julie Matthaie and Teresa Amott

*“There’s No Shame in My Game” : Status and Stigma Among Harlem’s Working Poor by Katherine S. Newman and Catherine Ellis from The Cultural Territories of Race edited by Michele Lamont (University of Chicago Press, 1999)

“We’d Love to Hire Them But…”The Meaning of Race for Employers by Kathryn Neckerman and Joleen Kirschenman

When the Pot Boils Over; The Irish, Jews, Blacks and Koreans of New York by Roger Waldinger

When Work Disappears by William J. Wilson

RACE AND RESIDENCE

Residential Segregation and Neighborhood Conditions in U.S. Metropolitan Areas by Douglas S. Massey from America Becoming Racial Trends and Their Consequences (National Research Council 2001)

Local Gatekeeping Practices and Residential Segregation by Judith N. DeSena

The Code of the Streets by Elijah Anderson

RACE AND THE MEDIA

*Television and the Politics of Representation by Justin Lewis and Sut Jhally from Multiculturalism in the United States: Current Issues, Contemporary Voices edited by Peter Kivisto and Georganne Rundblad (Pine forge Press, 2000)

Distorted Reality: Hispanic Characters in TV Entertainment by S. Robert Lichter and Daniel R. Amundson

The 2001 Racial and Gender Report Card on Sport by Richard E. Lapchick with Kevin J. Matthews

Part IV: Color-Blind or Color Bind: Thinking Through the American Dilemma

THE CHANGING COMPLEXION OF THE UNITED STATES: RACE, ETHNICITY, AND IMMIGRATION

*The Changing Face of America: Immigration, Race/Ethnicity, and Social Mobility by Min Zhou from Mass Migration to the United States edited by Pyong Gap Min (Altamira 2002)

*The History of Asians in America by Timothy Fong from The Contemporary Asian American Experience, 2nd edition, (Prentice Hall 2002)

Why Irish Became Domestics and Italians and Jews Did Not by Stephen Steinberg

Ethnic and Racial Identities of Second-Generation Black Immigrants in New York City by Mary C. Waters

*Hispanics in a Multicultural Society: A New American Dilemma? By Albert Camarillo and Frank Bonilla from America

Becoming Racial Trends and Their Consequences, Volume 1, (National Research Council 2001)

RACE AND ROMANCE: BLURRING BOUNDARIES

*Tripping the Color Line: The Multi Racial Future by Heather M. Dalmage from Tripping the Color Line: Black-White Multiracial Families in a Racially Divided World (Rutgers University Press, 2000)

*The Changing Face of America: Intermarriage and the Mixed Race Movement by Frank Wu from Yellow: Race and America Beyond Black and White (Basic Books 2002)

CONSTRUCTING A NONRACIST WORLD: OBSTACLES AND OPPORTUNITIES

*The Possibility of a New Racial Hierarchy in the Twenty-First-Century United States by Herbert Gans from The Cultural Territories of Race edited by Michele Lamont (University of Chicago Press 1999)

* Indicates New Reading