The Changing Terrain of Race and Ethnicity

1. Introduction: Assessing Changes in the Meaning and Significance of Race and Ethnicity

1 INTRODUCTION: ASSESSING CHANGES IN THE MEANING AND SIGNIFICANCE OF RACE AND ETHNICITY  Amanda E. Lewis, Maria Krysan, and Nakisha Harris THE MEANING AND significance of race and ethnicity in the United States have been of enduring interest inside and outside the halls of academia. Early social scientific work focused on such concerns as dismantling notions of biological determinism, identifying the deleterious consequences of legal segregation and blatant racial prejudice for individuals, communities, and nations, and understanding the demographic patterns associated with the migration of African Americans from the South to the North (McKee 1993). As we begin the twenty-first century, it is difficult to survey the landscape of race and ethnicity—both the research and the reality—without recognizing that its meaning and significance have fundamentally shifted. These shifts include changes in the demographics of the nation, in the meaning and boundaries of racial categories, and in how race and racism operate in the social world. Although the vestiges of earlier patterns and systems undoubtedly persist, we are now confronted with more subtle and complex causes and consequences associated with racial stratification, discrimination, and prejudice. This becomes apparent in the diverse areas where researchers direct their attention: some examine the patterns and causes of racial inequality across a range of social institutions, while others focus on how people perceive and understand racial and ethnic groups, while still others seek to understand race and ethnicity as a feature of identity and group formation . And these discussions are being shaped by and are reflective of a necessary shift from the “black-white” model that characterizes most earlier work to what is better described as a “prism” (Zubrinsky and Bobo 1996) in light of the increasing immigration from Asia and from Central and South America. Spanning virtually all domains of interest to scholars who focus on race and ethnicity are the common themes of transition and change. Those studying racial attitudes have observed a shift from the blatant “Jim Crow” racism of the past to more subtle forms (see, for example, Bobo, Kluegel, and Smith 1997; Bonilla-Silva and Forman 2000; Forman 2001; Kinder and Sanders 1996; Sears 1988). Scholars who focus on structural and behavioral patterns and their manifestations in social institutions point to new forms of racial segmentation in the workplace (Anderson 1999; Collins 1989, 1993, 1997a, 1997b), new kinds of statistical and indirect discrimination, unconscious stereotyping (Forman, Williams, and Jackson 1997; Neckerman and Kirschenman 1991; Reskin 2000), and more subtle employment and housing discrimination practices (Forman and Harris 1995; Myers 1993; Turner, Fix, and Struyk 1991; Yinger 1995). The boundaries of race and ethnicity themselves and the very terrain upon which racial struggles take place are also changing. Witness the social scientific and political struggles associated with the U.S. government’s attempts to assess racial identity in the 2000 decennial census, including the political and social struggles around the creation of multiracial categories and Arab American and Hawaiian attempts to be reclassified into different categories (Wright 1994). Not surprisingly, all of these changes have shifted the policy landscape, as controversies about racial profiling, zero-tolerance school policies, discrimination lawsuits, immigration policy, and anti–affirmative action referenda readily attest. It is essential for scholars not only to track these changes that have taken place in the real world but also to understand what is happening now and where we are headed (McKee 1993; Steinberg 1995). In October 2001, a national conference convened at the University of Illinois at Chicago brought together prominent scholars to engage these issues directly. The conference, The Changing Terrain of Race and Ethnicity, assembled researchers who individually approach these issues from different angles but collectively push the boundaries of research on race and ethnicity. This volume grew out of that conference. As suggested by its title, the common thread across all of the chapters is an attempt to grapple with and push forward scholarship on race and ethnicity in this changing context. In part I (chapters 2 through 4), this takes the form of figuring out how to understand, measure, and interpret phenomena that have in many cases become more subtle and slippery. Chapters 2 and 3 focus on changes in racial attitudes, racial ideology, and racial politics, while chapter 4 reviews how race and ethnicity operate across a range of other social institutions. The two chapters in part II are the most explicit on the implications of the increasingly multiracial and multiethnic population of...