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Many theories of offending have been advanced in an effort to explain the increasing number of women arrested in recent years. In this article, I move away from individual level explanations of offending and attempt to explain this trend with a structural approach. Specifically, I argue that the `war on drugs' has made females more vulnerable to arrest in recent years, regardless of offending behavior. I argue that two arms of the war on drugs, representing direct and ideological aspects of social control, work together to make women more likely to be arrested. This article contributes to the literature in two ways. First, it shows that scholars interested in the gender gap cannot ignore the war on drugs. Second, it shows the utility of a focus on the criminal justice system, and potentially other systems of social control, rather than individual level offending to explain trends in arrests.

Using data from the Education Longitudinal Study, the author investigates racial disparities in high school graduation, four-year college enrollment, and bachelor's degree completion. In addition, the author considers how conditionally relevant college and early adult variables shape bachelor's degree completion. The results indicate that although comparable numbers of black and Hispanic students obtain bachelor's degrees, their educational career trajectories differ substantially. Compared with white students, black students are more likely to end their educational careers after starting college without completing a bachelor's degree, whereas Hispanic students are more likely to end their educational careers without entering a four-year college. Moreover, early adult and college-specific variables have a substantial impact on bachelor's degree completion and explain black-white disparities in bachelor's degree attainment. This research shows the continuing significance of race in shaping the educational outcomes of young adults at all stages of their educational careers.

AbstractThe link between racial identity and biology has long been a topic of fascination within the US popular imagination. After the completion of the Human Genome Project, this fascination has increased as journalists and others have continued to search for a genetic basis of racial classifications. Moreover, the increasing popularity of genetic ancestry testing (GAT) is spurring a geneticization of identity as individuals are encouraged to change their racial identity based on their genetic profiles, rather than their social location. Scholarship suggests white Americans are more likely to take GATs and change their identity based on results. This paper reviews the literature on links between race and genes and GAT. We argue that GAT is a racial project prompting white individuals to engage in an inverse process of constructing race, a process we call "the social deconstruction of whiteness." That is, GATs allow white individuals to use the imprimatur of genetic science to claim alternative identities in an era where the socially constructed category of "white" is losing its salience and the history of white supremacy is becoming more widely recognized. This process could lead society from "racism without racists" and towards "white supremacy without whites."

AbstractOver six decades since the Supreme Court ruled that all American children have the right to a high quality education, the academic achievement gap remains an important social problem in the United States. Researchers interested in understanding the achievement gap generally seek to find the mechanisms that can explain why Black students continue to achieve at lower levels than their White counterparts. This research has shown that differences in socioeconomic status, family cultural resources, school quality and racial composition, and bias and prejudice in schools all act as mechanisms that link race to academic achievement. In this paper, we review studies from the past 10 years on the academic achievement gap. We argue that while all of the factors identified in the literature can add insight to how race structures educational achievement, the fundamental cause of the achievement gap is structural racism, a system of social organization that privileges White Americans and disadvantages Americans of color. We argue that acknowledging structural racism as the fundamental cause of the achievement gap can provide a unifying framework for interpreting findings from studies of specific mechanisms link race to academic outcomes.

AbstractThis research aims to enhance our understanding of the relationship between racial prejudice and White Americans' views on cannabis legalization. The recent legalization of recreational cannabis in a handful of states, along with many other states legalizing medical cannabis in recent years, has catapulted the flowering plant back into the spotlight and nightly news cycles. Given the historically racist propaganda used to criminalize the plant, it follows that Whites' support for legalization may be associated with racial prejudice. Using data from the General Social Survey data from 1972–2018, we find that different forms of racial prejudice have a negative effect on Whites' support for cannabis legalization generally. Additionally, as the negative effect of overt, old-fashioned racism diminishes over time and across birth cohorts it is supplanted by the more subtle laissez-faire racism. In conclusion, we discuss the implication of the relationship between racial prejudice and views on marijuana for the increasingly complicated racial dynamics surrounding cannabis legalization.

This research aims to determine the situational and individual factors that shape perceptions of whether police violence against citizens is justified. Drawing on research on the racialization of crime, modern racism, and the stigma associated with a criminal history, we hypothesize that individuals will view police violence as more justified when targeted at black citizens and those with criminal histories. We further hypothesize that individuals who have higher levels of racial prejudice will view police violence as more justified. Results from a survey experiment using a sample of 595 white respondents show a consistent effect of criminal history, with individuals viewing violence as more justified against a citizen with a previous criminal background. Further, interaction effects indicate that only white respondents who score highly on racial prejudice view violence against a black citizen as more justified compared to violence against a white citizen. These results underscore the importance of how a criminal record serves as an enduring stigma that shapes how individuals are perceived. Additionally, our results are consistent with theories of contemporary racism and show that negative evaluations of black Americans are limited to whites with high levels of racial prejudice.

This research investigates how participation in college-based science-training programs increases student intention to pursue a scientific career. Using identity theory, we delineate three levels of social structure and conceptualize science-training programs as proximate social structures. Results from a sample of 892 undergraduate science students are supportive of identity theory and indicate that participation in proximate social structures leads to increased commitment to a science identity, increased salience of a science identity, and increased intention to pursue a scientific career. This study contributes to the literature on identity theory by demonstrating how participation in proximate social structures can lead to subsequent identity processes, thus refining the understanding of how society shapes the self and clarifying how social positioning affects choices for behavior. Additionally, the conceptualization of proximate social structures provides an avenue for applications of identity theory to investigations of other social interventions as well as mechanisms leading to social inequality.

Scholars have documented harm associated with positive stereotypes about groups that experience inequality. We surveyed five samples from the United States to explore antecedents to dominant group endorsement of positive stereotypes about women, gay men, Asian Americans, Black Americans, and Native Americans. We found more liberal participants, and those with more close contact with members of these groups, were more internally motivated to respond without prejudice, which was then associated with greater endorsement of positive stereotypes about women, gay men, Black Americans, and Native Americans. In contrast, more conservative participants were more likely to believe in system legitimacy, which was then associated with greater endorsement of positive stereotypes about women and Asian Americans. We theorize that positive stereotypes are used by dominant group members in divergent ways, sometimes to legitimate inequality and other times with concern about inequality. The latter likely involves naivety regarding the harmful nature of positive stereotypes.