This review examines research on white racial and ethnic identity, paying special attention to developments in whiteness studies during the past decade. Although sociologists have long focused on white ethnic identity, considerations of white racial identity are more recent. White racial identity is commonly portrayed as a default racial category, an invisible yet privileged identity formed by centuries of oppression of nonwhite groups. Whiteness has become synonymous with privilege in much scholarly writing, although recent empirical work strives to consider white racial identity as a complex, situated identity rather than a monolithic one. The study of white racial identity can greatly benefit from moving away from simply naming whiteness as an overlooked, privileged identity and by paying closer attention to empirical studies of racial and ethnic identity by those studying social movements, ethnic identity, and social psychology.

Racial/ethnic minorities in the United States are more likely than Whites to have severe and persistent mental disorders and less likely to access mental health care. This comprehensive review evaluates studies of mental health and mental health care disparities funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to provide a benchmark for the 2015 NIMH revised strategic plan. A total of 615 articles were categorized into five pathways underlying mental health care and three pathways underlying mental health disparities. Identified studies demonstrate that socioeconomic mechanisms and demographic moderators of disparities in mental health status and treatment are well described, as are treatment options that support diverse patient needs. In contrast, there is a need for studies that focus on community- and policy-level predictors of mental health care disparities, link discrimination- and trauma-induced neurobiological pathways to disparities in mental illness, assess the cost effectiveness of disparities reduction programs, and scale up culturally adapted interventions.

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As the White populace in the United States moves toward numerical minority status by 2042, how might Whites respond to impending threat of losing their dominant group position? In particular, how will Whites react at selective, elite universities, where Asians are increasingly prominent and other non-Whites are maintaining or capturing a larger share of enrollments? Drawing on group position theory, I test White commitment to meritocracy as a public policy, using a survey-based experiment (599 California adult residents) to examine the importance grade point average should have in public university admissions. Whites decrease the importance that grade point average should have when Asian group threat is primed. However, White Californians increase the importance that grade point average should have when thinking about group threat from either Blacks or Blacks and Asians simultaneously. Ethnoracial outgroup threat shifts White support for meritocracy in different directions.

To account for Latino immigrants' assimilation into the American political mainstream, I derive social psychological factors from the contextual notion of 'modes of incorporation' in the segmented assimilation literature. These social psychological factors, perceptions of racialized opportunities (PROPs), relate to immigrants' adoption of political party identities (i.e. Democrat, Republican). I test these PROPs factors utilizing the 2006 Latino National Survey (N05,717 immigrant Latino respondents). Multinomial logistic regressions predicting party identification, compared to either 'Don't Know' or 'Don't Care' options, indicate that PROPs are significantly related to Latino immigrants' identification as either Democrats or Republicans. High levels of identification with perceived white opportunities are related to Republican identity and high levels of identification with perceived black opportunities differentiate Democrats from Republicans.