Gunnar Myrdal’s 1963 notion of the bottom of society is now over fifty years old and we still know virtually nothing about of the people living at that bottom or the people living there on incomes far below the federal poverty line. Since Blacks are, as always, proportionally the prime victims, the dreadful possibility of a Black population permanently at the bottom of society cannot be ruled out. This article discusses some of the questions researchers must answer to obtain an informed understanding of their problems and needs, as well as of the policies and politics, if any, that could help them.

This essay reconsiders the prospects for postracialist discourse. Critics tend not to take seriously enough the strongest case that can be made for viewing contemporary U.S. racial politics through the postracial lens. As a result, some important criticisms—the ones that survive postracialism’s reformulation in these stronger terms—have yet to be fully developed. It is important to develop a critique of the strongest form of postracialism, because this form of the view shares, or exemplifies, certain problems in garden-variety liberal antiracisms. Clarifying these problems in the more extreme conceptual environment of postracialism may help clarify their implications for the much more widespread commitments of mainstream post-civil rights thinking.

The racialization of space is the subject of a huge body of literature, most recently in George Lipsitz’s (2011) How Racism Takes Place. But less has been done on the ways in which time could be racialized. Inspired by provocative treatments of the subject in writings by Michael Hanchard (1999) and Lawrie Balfour (2011), I suggest in this paper that we need to explore the workings of a “White temporal imaginary” analogous to Lipsitz’s “White spatial imaginary,” which likewise serves to protect White racial privilege from the threatening encroachments of racial justice. Using Eviatar Zerubavel’s (2003) Time Maps as a jumping-off point, I argue accordingly for the recognition of a “White time,” a “sociomental” representation of temporality shaped by the interests and experience of the White “mnemonic community.” The concept is obviously one of potentially very general usefulness, but in this essay I seek to apply it specifically to the dominant discourse on justice in political philosophy, as framed for the past forty years by John Rawls’ ([1971] 1999c) “ideal theory.” The relevance to the postracial theme of this issue is that, because of the peculiarity of philosophy as a discipline, it can claim it was always, or always-already, postracial, dealing as it ostensibly does with the (timeless) human condition as such. By making ideal theory—the normative theory of a perfectly just society—central to the conceptualization of social justice, by never exploring how radically different actual societies are from the ideal of society as “a cooperative venture for mutual advantage,” an exclusionary sociohistorical framework is established that makes the Euro-time of the West—abstracted out of the West’s relations of domination over people of color—the Greenwich Mean Time of normativity, while the alternative non-White temporality of structurally unjust societies requiring rectificatory racial justice remains a subject permanently untimely.

In this paper we adjudicate between competing claims of persisting segregation and rapid integration by analyzing trends in residential dissimilarity and spatial isolation for African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians living in 287 consistently defined metropolitan areas from 1970 to 2010. On average, Black segregation and isolation have fallen steadily but still remain very high in many areas, particularly those areas historically characterized by hypersegregation. In contrast, Hispanic segregation has increased slightly but Hispanic isolation has risen substantially owing to rapid population growth. Asian segregation has changed little and remains moderate, and although Asian isolation has increased it remains at low levels compared with other groups. Whites remain quite isolated from all three minority groups in metropolitan America, despite rising diversity and some shifts toward integration from the minority viewpoint.

Multivariate analyses reveal that minority segregation and spatial isolation are actively produced in some areas by restrictive density zoning regimes, large and/or rising minority percentages, lagging minority socioeconomic status, and active expressions of anti-Black and anti-Latino sentiment, especially in large metropolitan areas. Areas displaying these characteristics are either integrating very slowly (in the case of Blacks) or becoming more segregated (in the case of Hispanics), whereas those lacking these attributes are clearly moving toward integration, often quite rapidly.

Abstract

The choice between working as an employee and owning a business is shaped by constraints and opportunities. Among African Americans, understanding why the entrepreneurial path is chosen requires evaluating not only the relative importance of constraints pushing workers toward self-employment versus opportunities pulling entrants into firm ownership, but, more fundamentally, the changing opportunity structures shaping occupational choices. This study focuses on the 1960s and 1970s period when specific constraints historically limiting entrepreneurial alternatives began to change dramatically. Findings indicate that expanding opportunities sharply altered the industry composition of the Black business community.

Because economists view the decision to enter into business ownership as an exercise in freedom of choice made on the basis of one’s preferences, they tend not to appreciate that these decisions are made in specific socio-economic contexts and that changes in context matter. Facing altered opportunity structures, prospective Black entrepreneurs have often chosen to abandon fields offering low remuneration—particularly personal services—entering instead into higher yielding fields where creation of viable firms requires investment of capital by owners possessing appropriate expertise. This transformation has remolded the stagnant business community of the mid-1960s into a profoundly different, more dynamic one.

Considered costly, divisive, and backward-looking, reparations for slavery and Jim Crow appear to have no place in the politics of the “postracial epoch.” This essay proposes that the dismissal of reparations concedes too much. First, I contend that the conjunction of postracial discourse, on the one hand, and deepening racial inequalities, on the other, demands a counter-language, one that ties the analysis of the present to the historical conditions out of which it was produced. I explore reparations as a political language that (1) situates political claims within the historical framework of slavery, reconstruction, and segregation; (2) links past to present to future in its demand for concrete forms of redress; and (3) has played an important role in African American political life and in contemporary democracies in transition. Second, in contrast to much of the reparations scholarship, I focus on the demands of democracy rather than justice. Doing so both helps to evade some of the technical questions that have prevented full consideration of the political work of reparations and provides a vehicle for redefining both governmental and civic responsibility in the shadow of slavery and Jim Crow.

Through a critical engagement with Lawrence Blum’s theory of racism, I defend a “social criticism” model for the philosophical study of racism. This model relies on empirical analyses of social and psychological phenomena but goes beyond this to include the assessment of the warrant of widely held beliefs and the normative evaluation of attitudes, actions, institutions, and social arrangements. I argue that we should give political philosophy theoretical primacy over moral philosophy in normative analyses of racism. I also show how conceptualizing racism as an ideology gives us a unified account of racism and helps us to see what is truly troubling about racism, both in the past and today.

Despite claims by normative theorists that gender diversity in Congress leads to better representation of women’s interests, the results of empirical studies have been largely mixed. While some scholars have found positive effects of gender diversity, others have found very little impact. We argue that it is not the presence of White and minority women alone that makes political institutions more responsive to women’s issues, but rather it is the organizational presence of minority men along with minority women who make similar claims for inclusion, power, and organizational formation to achieve those goals that matters. We examine to what extent gender and racial diversity have led to more attention to issues that directly and indirectly impact women. Using congressional hearings data from 1951–2004, we find that the increased presence of minority men and women legislators in the House, but less so in the Senate, is responsible for keeping women’s interests on the congressional agenda. We demonstrate how an intersectional and additive approach can add both theoretical and empirical value to the study of political representation by demonstrating the impact of women and minorities in Congress.

Latino racial/ethnic intermarriage has grown over time, increases with each generation in the United States, and occurs most frequently with non-Hispanic Whites. This article answers the question: How does intermarriage change racial/ethnic consciousness for both partners? Drawing on in-depth interviews with thirty intermarried Latinos and non-Hispanic Whites, I critique assimilation, Whiteness, and colorblindness theories, finding two predominant racial consciousness outcomes of intermarriage: race cognizance and racial colorblindness. First, intermarriage can enhance Whites’ understanding of race/ethnicity and racism, a phenomenon I call race cognizance. Second, intermarriage can produce colorblind discourse that focuses on similarity, yet in ways inconsistent with colorblind racism. Racial consciousness varies by ethnicity: most intermarried Whites reported race cognizance, an outcome unforeseen by traditional theories of integration, whereas Latinos more often espoused colorblindness. These understandings are used in different contexts: race cognizance is stimulated by the public domain, whereas colorblindness is evoked in private space. These findings demonstrate that racial consciousness is fluid, and influenced by intermarriage and ethnicity.

This article offers a critique of the very claim that we live in postracial times, and examines the residue of old systems of racism intermeshed with new forms of racism that perpetuate systematic institutional racism. I argue that to combat institutional racism we need post-racism rather than postracialism. Additionally, I reject the Black-white Binary as the singular or even primary paradigm for understanding racism in order to challenge narrow conceptualizations of racism. Finally, I argue for a more nuanced and complex analysis of Blackness.

Understanding how different dimensions of race relate to the lived experiences of Latinos may shed light on the assimilation trajectories of different segments of the Latino population. Existing research suggests that racial appearance influences Latinos’ socioeconomic outcomes due to discrimination. However, researchers have not examined how Latinos’ perceived race relates to their acceptance of other racial/ethnic groups, thus revealing their agency in the assimilation process and how it is shaped by existing racial structures. Using a sample of over 6000 profiles collected from an internet dating website, this study finds that considering others’ classifications of race in addition to self-identifications changes our understanding of Latinos’ acceptance of other racial/ethnic groups as dates. Latinos who appear White are most likely to exclude Blacks and include Whites as possible dates while the opposite is true for those classified as Black. Latinos perceived as Latino fall somewhere in between those with a White versus Black racial phenotype in their acceptance of Blacks and Whites. These findings suggest that neither external classifications nor self-identifications of race alone can adequately assess the assimilation prospects of self-identified Latinos: those perceived as White may be assuming the position of Whites in the racial hierarchy, those perceived as Black may be assimilating into the bottom of the racial hierarchy along with African Americans, while those perceived as Latino may be maintaining an in-between status.

In this essay we argue that the ideology of colorblind justice has made resisting the retreat from public school desegregation a hard sell in postracial America. We do not believe that desegregation is the silver bullet for solving all the problems with public education. Nor do we believe that it alone can close the racial achievement gap. Yet there is convincing evidence regarding the potential benefits of desegregation and evidence on its negative consequences is weak. Therefore we believe that it is a policy still worth pursuing. Our hope is that by casting light on the anatomy of colorblind justice and its limits we can contribute to ongoing efforts to ensure that desegregation remains in the conversation about how to address the unfinished business of racial justice.

Textbooks are explicitly racial texts that offer important insights into national memories of slavery and colonialism. The Dutch have long engaged in the social forgetting of slavery even as race served as an organizing principal during centuries of colonial domination of the Dutch West Indies and Suriname. While the Dutch have recently begun to address their history of enslavement, they have yet to sufficiently address how the discursive legacies of slavery continue to impact the lives of Afro-Dutch descendants of enslaved2 Africans and White Dutch in The Netherlands today. This paper uses qualitative content and discourse analytic methods to examine the depiction of slavery, The Netherlands’ role in the slave trade and enslavement, and the commemoration of slavery in all Dutch primary school history textbooks published since 1980 to address questions of whether textbooks feature scientific colonialism to perpetuate The Netherlands’ social forgetting of slavery in a nation that denies the existence of race even as racialized socioeconomic inequalities persist. A Eurocentric master narrative of racial Europeanization perpetuates Dutch social forgetting of slavery and scientific colonialism to both essentialize Afro-Dutch and position their nation squarely within Europe’s history of enslavement even while attempting to minimize their role within it. Findings have important implications for both The Netherlands and all nations with histories of enslavement as the discourses and histories presented in textbooks impact generations of students, who shape local and national policy regarding racial minorities, racial identities, and ideologies.

How should we explore the relationship between race and educational opportunity? One approach to the Black-White achievement gap explores how race and class cause disparities in access and opportunity. In this paper, I consider how education contributes to the creation of race. Considering examples of classroom micropolitics, I argue that breakdowns of trust and trustworthiness between teachers and students can cause substantial disadvantages and, in the contemporary United States, this happens along racial lines. Some of the disadvantages are academic: high achievement is more difficult when one faces mistrust, ego depletion, effort pessimism, and insult. And within a knowledge economy, exclusion from knowledge work makes one vulnerable to injustice. But the problem goes deeper than achievement, for schools are contexts in which we develop self-understandings and identities that situate us as members of society. If students of color are systematically denied full participation in trusting conversations that create shared knowledge—especially, knowledge that holds power within the dominant culture—they are unjustly deprived resources to form flourishing selves that are suited to the positions of power and authority. The argument suggests that knowledge is not best understood simply as a commodity to be distributed, and opportunity is not just a matter of access. Moreover, even if access is granted, those who are motivated and talented can fail: they drain their willpower by coping with insults, or reasonably lose optimism about their efficacy. Over time, motivation may shift away from achievement, and under the circumstances this can be a rational response. The barriers to achievement are many, but true opportunity is impossible without trust and trustworthiness.

The examination of student group performance is a constant need as American higher education continues to expand and become more racially and ethnically diverse. Recent scholarship on the academic performance of Black students at elite colleges and universities has glossed over possible disparities among these students, particularly among different immigrant groups. The current study clarifies these differences in academic performance by examining four Black student groups at elite colleges and universities in the United States: native Blacks, Black immigrants from Africa, Black immigrants from the Caribbean and Latin America, and Black immigrants from other parts of the globe. The analyses point to many similarities and differences among the four Black student groups in their characteristics and influences on their academic performance in college such as gender, precollege friendships, high school academic preparation, college major, and closeness to Whites and Blacks. Additionally, this study found evidence of possible colorism among Black students at elite colleges.

In the realm of electoral politics, a growing number of women, African Americans, and Latinos now serve at the highest levels of government. For many Americans, the bipartisan presence of representatives who are people of color and/or women is proof that we live in a “post-feminist” and “postracial” era in which institutions are now fundamentally fair and accessible. Rather than assuming that racial presence is synonymous with racial justice, this essay turns to aesthetic theory to advocate for a new understanding of presence—not as proof that racial or gender justice has been achieved but as a kind of beauty that is experienced as a form of visible certitude. Drawing on the work of Hannah Pitkin, alongside writings on descriptive representation for Latinos and African Americans, this essay stresses the importance of judgment, arguing that on questions of social justice, a racially diverse elite is simultaneously ethically valuable and politically indeterminate.

After the overthrow of Jim Crow and the reelection of our first Black president, how should we conceptualize the tasks of a racially progressive politics in the United States? I address this question through (1) the lens of recent philosophical work on the relation between narrative and the justification of political hope and (2) a comparison of two autobiographies, Barack Obama’s Dreams of My Father and W. E. B. Du Bois’s Dusk of Dawn. In light of this comparison, the paper also evaluates some recent contributions to the American Political Science subfield of American Political Development.

Increasingly, scholars have argued that immigration politics are inseparable from racial politics, which implies that organizations and individuals who mobilize around racial group interests influence racial and immigration attitudes and behaviors. How does the racial-political context influence anti-immigration lawmaking? In what ways does this influence vary at different stages of lawmaking? To address these questions, we combine comprehensive datasets of racially conservative organizations and state immigrant legislation and use negative binomial regression to estimate the count of anti-immigrant bills and laws in the fifty states from 1991 to 2010. We find that the presence of racially conservative organizations encourages the introduction of exclusionary proposals, but only in contexts with a Republican-dominated government. At the approval stage, on the other hand, racially conservative organizations foster the passage of exclusionary laws, and this effect is heightened in contexts with a growing foreign-born population or where a majority of voters report anti-immigrant opinions or identify as conservative. This indicates that the institutionalization of the colorblind racial ideology (in the form of racially conservative organizations) resonates with lawmakers, but in a different manner when the stakes are higher. These findings have important implications and challenge previous research on the conditions under which advocacy organizations influence lawmaking and additional forms of group behavior.