Reflecting Race and Status: The Dynamics of Material Hardship and How People Are Perceived

Abstract

In most stratification research, race is treated as a static and one-dimensional individual characteristic, though a growing literature indicates dynamic and multidimensional measures better represent experiences of racial categorization and inequality. The authors leverage such measures to explore the relationship between material hardship and racial reflected appraisals, or how people report being perceived by others. Results from the New York City Longitudinal Survey of Wellbeing are consistent with a bidirectional relationship: first, people who reported being seen as Black or Hispanic were significantly more likely to experience later material hardship, net of both racial self-identification and earlier hardship; second, people with hardship experience were significantly more likely to report been perceived as Hispanic and significantly less likely to report being perceived as White, no matter how they self-identified. These findings underscore the dynamics of racial categorization and highlight the utility of including reflected race measures in studies of inequality.