Unequal Positions: A Relational Approach to Racial Inequality Trends in the US States, 1940–2010

Abstract

Racial inequality remains a painful and central feature of daily life in the United States. Yet few would deny that decades of political struggle have transformed the nation’s racial landscape. In this article, we seek to advance long-standing sociological efforts to disentangle this braiding of persistence and change. Specifically, we intervene in two ways designed to build on national studies of inequality trends for black and white Americans. First, by shifting measurement to the state level, we reveal distinctive subnational trajectories and dynamics of convergence that have been obscured by the field’s emphasis on aggregate national trends. Second, by drawing on relational theories of boundaries and positions, we develop a new empirical strategy for measuring racial inequalities over time. Identifying two key analytic dimensions (exclusion and subordination), we analyze the relative positions of whites and blacks in two domains (work and housing) across the decades from 1940 to 2010. Our results suggest that racial inequalities rooted in boundary-based dynamics of social closure (exclusion) proved far more durable than inequalities tied to inferior positions alone (subordination). Moreover, we find evidence of a significant nationalization of racial relations, with subnational units converging on a more uniform structure of racialized relations over time. We conclude that the period from 1940 to 2010 was marked by a “consolidation” of racial exclusion (i.e., convergence around relatively stable levels of inequality) paired with the comparatively greater “equalization” of racial subordination (i.e., stronger convergence around more substantial declines).

Empirical evidence on structural racism as a driver of racial inequities in COVID-19 mortality

“…While structural racism is embedded in all states, results from this study reveal that states vary in their degrees of structurally racist contexts see also Siegel et al ( 30 ). This is consistent with Bruch and colleagues' (57:163) contention that, “The state in which one resides has significant consequences for one's opportunities and life conditions and… for the structure of racial relations one must traverse” ( 56 ). Indeed, since the founding of the country states have been influential in sanctioning, exacerbating and alleviating racial oppression—from the historical roles they played with respect to policies on slavery, Jim Crow, and anti-miscegenation to their contemporary “race-neutral” policies that perpetuate racial domination such as voter disenfranchisement, gerrymandering, welfare state contraction and criminal sentencing laws ( 45 , 57 – 59 ).…”

Frontiers in measuring structural racism and its health effects

“…Both theoretical and empirical researches suggest that structural racism operates on multiple spatial scales or levels. 8,19,38,39 For example, quantitative studies have measured structural racism across a range of geographic levels, from census tracts, to PUMAs, to counties, to designated market areas, to states. 21,34,[40][41][42] Although a plethora of studies point to structural racism being a multilevel phenomenon, health equity research on racism often only examines a single level.…”

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