Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Making Space Behind The Veil: Black Agency Within A Predominantly White Religion, Michael Wood, Grace Ann Soelberg, Jacob Rugh

Faculty Publications

The work of W.E.B. Du Bois highlights the significance of Christian religion in Black American life. According to Du Bois, the Black Church serves as a site of self-formation and affirmation, and the White Church as a source of racist beliefs and justifications for inequality. In this paper, we expand Du Bois’ inquiry about the influence of religion with a study of Black Americans who belong to a predominantly White religion. For those whose religious experience is almost wholly within the “white world,” what role does religion play in their lives? We analyze a set of 52 public accounts by …

Signals From On High And The Power Of Growth Mindset: A Natural Field Experiment In Attracting Minorities To High-Profile Position, Jeffrey A. Flory, Andreas Leibbrandt, Christina Rott, Olga B. Stoddard

Faculty Publications

We conduct a large-scale natural field experiment with a Fortune 500 company to test several approaches to attract minorities to high-profile positions. 5,000 prospective applicants were randomized into treatments varying a portion of recruiting materials. We find that self-selection at two early-career stages exhibits a substantial race gap. Importantly, we show that this gap can be strongly influenced by several treatments, with some increasing application rates by minorities by 40 percent and others being particularly effective for minority women. The heterogeneities we find by gender, race, and career stage shed light on the underlying drivers of self-selection barriers among minorities.

Increasing Workplace Diversity: Evidence From A Recruiting Experiment At A Fortune 500 Company, Jeffrey A. Flory, Andreas Leibbrandt, Christina Rott, Olga B. Stoddard

Faculty Publications

While many firms have set ambitious goals to increase diversity in their ranks, there is a dearth of empirical evidence on effective ways to reach them. We use a natural field experiment to test several hypotheses on effective means to attract minority candidates for top professional careers. By randomly varying the content in recruiting materials of a major financial services corporation with more than 10,000 employees, we find that signaling explicit interest in employee diversity more than doubles the interest in openings among racial minority candidates, as well as the likelihood that they apply and are selected. Impacts on gender …

Not So Minor Feelings, Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt

Faculty Publications

This creative nonfiction essay by Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt about race, silencing, and families originally appeared in Entropy.

Ethnic-Racial Socialization In Early Childhood: The Implications Of Color-Consciousness And Colorblindness For Prejudice Development, Flora Farago, Kimberly Leah Davidson, Christy M. Byrd

Faculty Publications

This chapter outlines how early childhood teachers can bring children into conversations surrounding race and racism by drawing on literature on how parents of color discuss these topics. Although educators’ practices surrounding race and racism remain largely unexplored, decades of developmental psychological research indicate that parents of color engage in ethnic-racial socialization practices that are beneficial for children (Hughes et al., 2006). The established dimensions of parental ethnic-racial socialization include (1) cultural socialization, or teaching children about their ethnic heritage and instilling ethnic pride; (2) preparation for bias, or teaching children about racism and preparing them to face discrimination; (3) …

Supbrime Lending/Foreclosure Crisis, Jacob Rugh

Faculty Publications

Subprime mortgage lending in the USA rose alongside home prices and lasted about 15 years, ending abruptly in late 2007, setting off a national foreclosure crisis. Between 2007 and 2012 there were 9 to 12 million foreclosures filings and 4 to 5 million completed foreclosures. The ensuing foreclosure crisis stemmed more from falling home prices but its unequal distribution across society by race and space was also the product of legacies of exclusion and a shared consensus on the expansion of mortgage credit and home ownership. Modest federal interventions to buffer communities and homeowners from the crisis likely reinforced the …

The Great Recession And The Destruction Of Minority Wealth, Douglas S. Massey, Jacob S. Rugh

Faculty Publications

It seems obvious now, but there was a time when social scientists paid little attention to wealth as a factor in America's system of racial stratification. For many years, researchers focused primarily on black-white differentials in education, employment, and earnings; and in these dimensions progress was clearly being made. From 1963 (just before the passage of major civil rights legislation) to 2001 (just after the economic boom of the 1990s), the ratio of black-to-white median household income rose from 33 percent to 64 percent. Over the same period, the black-white ratio for high school graduates climbed from 51% to 89%, …

Attractiveness As A Function Of Skin Tone And Facial Features: Evidence From Categorization Studies, Elena V. Stepanova, Michael J. Strube

Faculty Publications

Participants rated the attractiveness and racial typicality of male faces varying in their facial features from Afrocentric to Eurocentric and in skin tone from dark to light in two experiments. Experiment 1 provided evidence that facial features and skin tone have an interactive effect on perceptions of attractiveness and mixed-race faces are perceived as more attractive than single-race faces. Experiment 2 further confirmed that faces with medium levels of skin tone and facial features are perceived as more attractive than faces with extreme levels of these factors. Black phenotypes (combinations of dark skin tone and Afrocentric facial features) were rated …

Studying Guilt Perception In Millennials: Unexpected Effects Of Suspects' Race And Attractiveness, D. Lisa Cothran, Elena V. Stepanova, K. Raquel Barlow

Faculty Publications

The present study explored mock jurors’ guilt judgments with a 2 (Jurors’ Race: Black vs. White) × 2 (Suspects’ Race: Black vs. White) × 2 (Suspects’ Attractiveness: High vs. Low) design in a group of Millennials (N = 331). Black jurors were more lenient; all jurors were more lenient toward Black suspects; and White jurors were less lenient toward Black unattractive suspects. The current study contributes the following novel findings to the literature: documentation of a possible Black experimenter effect in mock jurors; an interaction among suspects’ race, suspects’ attractiveness, and jurors’ race, suggesting that racial bias exhibited by …

Freedomland, Lindsey Mantoan

Faculty Publications

Lindsey Mantoan reviews a performance of Freedomland (by Michael Gene Sullivan) for Theatre Journal.

Strange Fruit: Race, Terror, And The War On Terror, Lisa M. Tillmann Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

This poem examines drone warfare as a form of lynching. “Strange Fruit” links the deaths of Pakistani children Zeerak and Maria Khan to the murders of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, documented in the most infamous lynching photograph in U.S. history.

The Complicity Of Silence: Race And The Hamilton Holt/Corra Harris Friendship, 1899-1935, Jack C. Lane

Faculty Publications

From the perspective of the large race issue in the early twentieth century America, this article closely examines the perplexed personal relationship between Hamilton Holt, 8th president of Rollins College (1925-1949) and Corra Harris, one of Holt's original "Golden Personality" faculty members who carried the unique title of "Professor of Evil" at Rollins.

Racial/Ethnic Matching Of Clients And Therapists In Mental Health Services: A Meta-Analytic Review Of Preferences, Perceptions, And Outcomes, Timothy B. Smith, Raquel R. Cabral

Faculty Publications

The effects of matching clients with therapists of the same race/ethnicity have been explored using a variety of approaches across several decades. We conducted a meta-analysis of three variables frequently used in research on racial/ethnic matching: Clients' preferences for a therapist of their own race/ethnicity, clients' perceptions of therapists, and therapeutic outcomes. Across 52 studies of preferences, the average effect size was d = .63, indicating a moderately strong preference for a therapist of one's own race/ethnicity. Across 81 studies of individuals' perceptions of therapists, the average effect size was d = .32, indicating a tendency to perceive therapists of …

From Rapists To Superpredators: What The Practice Of Capital Punishment Says About Race, Rights And The American Child, Robyn Linde

Faculty Publications

At the turn of the 20^th century, the United States was widely considered to be a world leader in matters of child protection and welfare, a reputation lost by the century’s end. This paper suggests that the United States’ loss of international esteem concerning child welfare was directly related to its practice of executing juvenile offenders. The paper analyzes why the United States continued to carry out the juvenile death penalty after the establishment of juvenile courts and other protections for child criminals. Two factors allowed the United States to continue the juvenile death penalty after most states in …

The 2010 Racial And Gender Report Card: National Basketball Association, Richard Lapchick, Christopher Kaiser, Christina Russell, Natalie Welch

Faculty Publications

The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) at the University of Central Florida publishes the Racial and Gender Report Card to indicate areas of improvement, stagnation, and regression in the racial and gender composition of professional and college sports personnel and to contribute to the improvement of integration in front office and college athletics department positions. Each year the National Basketball Association (NBA) has made progress in almost all categories examined for both race and gender.

The NBA continues to set the standard for the industry as the leader on issues related to race and gender hiring practices. …

Swearing In The Cinema: An Analysis Of Profanity In Us Teen-Oriented Movies, 1980-2006, Dale Cressman, Mark Callister, Tom Robinson, Chris Near

Faculty Publications

The exposure of children to profanity continues to be a concern for parents, media researchers, and policy makers alike. This study examines the types, frequency, and usage of profanity in movies directed at and featuring teenagers. A review of relevant literature explores the nature, use, and psychology of profanity, its potential social effects, and its prevalence in the media. A content analysis was conducted of the ninety top-grossing domestic teen films in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s (thirty from each decade) in the US based on domestic gross box-office amounts. Results indicate no change in preferences in types of profanity …

Racial Bias In The Nba: Implications In Betting Markets, Tim Larsen, Joe Prince, Justin Wolfers

Faculty Publications

Recent studies have documented the existence of an own-race bias on the part of sports officials. In this paper we explore the implications of these biases on betting markets. We use data from the 1991/92 - 2004/05 NBA regular seasons to show that a betting strategy exploiting own-race biases by referees would systematically beat the spread.

Understanding And Addressing Racial/Ethnic Disproportionality, Kathy Lemon Osterling, Amy C. D’Andrade, Michael J. Austin

Faculty Publications

Racial/ethnic disproportionality in the child welfare system is a complicated social problem that is receiving increasing amounts of attention from researchers and practitioners. This review of the literature examines disproportionality in the front-end of the child welfare system and interventions that may address it. While none of the interventions had evidence suggesting that they reduced disproportionality in child welfare front-end processes, some of the interventions may improve child welfare case processes related to disproportionality and outcomes for families of color.

Race And Wealth Disparity: The Role Of Law And The Legal System, Beverly Moran, Stephanie Wildman

Faculty Publications

In response to the prevalent view that American law and legal institutions are class and color blind, this Article provides examples of how legal institutions sometimes do create and maintain racialized wealth disparities. The Article offers examples of this phenomenon by examining a sequence of federal judicial decisions, the federal taxing statutes, the role of legal education, and access to legal services. These examples are instructive because they cut across a broad spectrum of components of the American legal system. By revisiting issues of race and wealth in different legal settings from the Constitution to federal cases, the tax system, …

Race And Ethnic Variation In The Schooling Consequences Of Female Adolescent Sexual Activity, Renata Forste, Marta Tienda

Faculty Publications

Data from the National Survey of Families and Households are used to examine the influence of adolescent childbearing and marriage on the likelihood of high school completion among a cohort of women aged 20 to 29 in 1987. Use of event history techniques reveals striking differences by ethnicity. While the effect of teen marriage on school completion was significant only for whites, adolescent childbearing had much stronger deleterious effects for Latinas than for white or especially black teens. Attitudinal data are presented in an effort to explain these differences.