Dark-skinned blacks in the United States have lower socioeconomic status, more punitive relationships with the criminal justice system, diminished prestige, and less likelihood of holding elective office compared with their lighter counterparts. This phenomenon of "colorism" both occurs within the African American community and is expressed by outsiders, and most blacks are aware of it. Nevertheless, blacks' perceptions of discrimination, belief that their fates are linked, or attachment to their race almost never vary by skin color. We identify this disparity between treatment and political attitudes as "the skin color paradox, " and use it as a window into the politics of race in the United States over the past half-century.Using national surveys, we explain the skin color paradox as follows: Blacks' commitment to racial identity overrides the potential for skin color discrimination to have political significance. That is, because most blacks see the fight against racial hierarchy as requiring their primary allegiance, they do not see or do not choose to express concern about the internal hierarchy of skin tone. Thus dark-skinned blacks' widespread experience of harm has no political outlet -which generates the skin color paradox.The article concludes by asking how much concern the skin color paradox really warrants. Without fully resolving that question, we note that policies designed to solve the problem of racial hierarchy are not helpful to and may even make worse the problem of skin color hierarchy within the black population.

No abstract

This article shows the pattern of socioeconomic class differences in schooling outcomes and indicates some of the causes for those differences that lie within the public realm. Those causes include "nested inequalities" across boundaries of states, school districts, schools within a district, classes within a school, and sometimes separation within a class. In addition, urban public schools demonstrate a particular set of problems that generate differential schooling outcomes by economic class. The article also demonstrates ways in which class biases are closely entwined with racial and ethnic inequities. It concludes with the broad outlines of what would be necessary to reduce class (and racial) disparities in American public schools.The American dream will succeed or fail in the 21 st century in direct proportion to our commitment to educate every person in the United States of America. -President Bill Clinton, 1995(Clinton, 1995 There is no greater test of our national responsibility than the quality of the education we provide. -

Between 1850 and 1930, demographic upheaval in the United States was connected to reorganization of the racial order. Socially and politically recognized boundaries between groups shifted, new groups emerged, others disappeared, and notions of who belonged in which category changed. All recognized racial groups-blacks, whites, Indians, Asians, Mexicans and others-were affected. This article investigates how and why census racial classification policies changed during this period, only to stabilize abruptly before World War II. In the context of demographic transformations and their political consequences, we find that census policy in any given year was driven by a combination of scientific, political, and ideological motivations.Based on this analysis, we rethink existing theoretical approaches to censuses and racial classification, arguing that a nation's census is deeply implicated in and helps to construct its social and political order. Censuses provide the concepts, taxonomy, and substantive information by which a nation understands its component parts as well as the contours of the whole; censuses both create the image and provide the mirror of that image for a nation's self-reflection. We conclude by outlining the meaning of this period in American history for current and future debates over race and classification. Between the Civil War and World War II, the United States underwent a profound process of racial reorganization. Officially recognized group categories expanded and contracted; socially recognized boundaries between groups blurred and shifted; citizens and public actors passionately debated who belonged in which group. Basic components of the racial order were revised, revisited, and fundamentally altered. Such debates were highly consequential. While whites never lost their position at the top of the status hierarchy, who belonged in this privileged group was hotly contested. Whether or not a given group or individual was included in the category of "white" profoundly affected that group's or person's social standing. Blacks and Chinese were placed into Our thanks to Traci Burch and Vesla Weaver for their help; this article grows out of a book project co-authored by them and Jennifer Hochschild. Thanks also to K. Miya Woolfalk and Ariel Huerta for their excellent research assistance, to Rodney Ross for assistance at the National Archives, and to

No abstract