Race and Social Problems

An Official Journal of the Center for Race and Social Problems at the University of Pittsburgh.Selected for coverage in:Social Sciences Citation Index®Journal ...

List of Papers (Total 58)

Racial Differences in Resilience: U.S. College Student’s Mental Health and the COVID-19 Pandemic

Concerns about the mental health of college students have been increasing over the last several decades. The COVID-19 pandemic only served to put more attention on this problem. Prior to the pandemic, minority students bore a heavier burden of mental disorder symptoms, but it is unclear if this racial difference persisted during the COVID-19 pandemic and if the resilience of...

The Structural Origins of Racial Inequality and Attitudes Toward Redistribution

A long line of research demonstrates that priming race undermines support for redistribution by activating negative racial stereotypes that tend to place blame for racial inequalities on individual members of minoritized groups and downplay the systemic causes of racial inequality. Here we suggest that information emphasizing the structural origins of racial disparities can...

American Entrepreneur 1990–2010: Black Business Ownership as a Path Way Out of Poverty & Violence

Entrepreneurship is touted as a pathway to achieve economic mobility and this is particularly true among immigrants and Black Americans. There is little research on whether the rise in Black entrepreneuership is linked to the declining rates of violernce in urban areas, net of effects associated with the concentration of disadvantage. After generating two distinct measures of...

Cultural Socialization and Civic Engagement Among Racially Diverse Students of Color: Examining Ethnic-Racial Identity Components as Mediators and Neighborhood Racial Composition as a Moderator

Understanding the factors that promote civic engagement among emerging adult college students is crucial, especially considering its association with positive youth development. The current study examined ethnic-racial identity (ERI) exploration, resolution, and affirmation as mediators of the relation between cultural socialization and civic engagement. Additionally, the extent...

The Roles of Race and Mental Health in the On-scene Outcomes of Public Mass Shootings

Mass shootings are most frequently committed by white men. Yet, these white perpetrators often do not meet the same fatal fate as Black people who have committed lesser crimes, particularly in the United States. Furthermore, Black people with mental health issues in such situations are more commonly met with lethal force. This study investigates if disparities exist in the...

Social Cognitive Predictors of Bystander Intervention in Racial Microaggressions Among College Students

Integrating microintervention strategies and the bystander intervention model, we examined social cognitive predictors (i.e., moral disengagement, empathy, and self-efficacy) of the five steps of the bystander intervention model (i.e., Notice, Interpret, Accept, Know, and Act) to address racial microaggressions in a sample of 452 racially diverse college students. Data were...

The Penalty of Party on Black Homeownership: The Impacts of Judicial Institutional Settings on the Black Political Economy

Black homeownership declines across the U.S.A. at significantly higher rates than white, Hispanic, or Asian homeownership. Although the cost to own a home is lower in Republican states, Black Americans are much less likely to maintain homeownership in those areas. This article attempts to gain leverage on the following question: “what is the penalty of political parties on Black...

Smoking at the Intersections of Race/Ethnicity and Sexual Orientation

Research has tended to document smoking disparities separately by race/ethnicity and sexual orientation, with relatively less work examining the intersections of both identities. As such, we draw on data from the 2010 Social Justice Sexuality Project to demonstrate how cigarette smoking disparities manifest across detailed intersections of race/ethnicity and sexual orientation...

Raising “Antiracist Disruptors”: Illuminating Socialization Practices that Support Antiracism in Multiracial Households

Although an emerging body of literature has advanced our knowledge of how monoracial parents can support their multiracial children in understanding the ethnic-racial identities they hold, there is a dearth of research exploring how parents socialize their children towards antiracism. Drawing from ten interviews with monoracial parents of multiracial children, this paper...

Family Racial/Ethnic Socialization Through the Lens of Multiracial Black Identity: A M(ai)cro Analysis of Meaning-Making

The role of family members in racial identity development is often constrained to conceptualizations of parental socialization, with a focus on socialization during childhood and adolescence. However, parents may continue to play a role in racial identity development as youth enter young adulthood and continue to explore who they are. Our study investigates how parents feature in...

How Parents in Multiethnic-Racial Families Share Cultural Assets with Their Children

Relatively little psychology research has investigated racial-ethnic socialization processes in multiethnic-racial families despite the fact that more than 1 in 7 children born in the United States today have parents from different ethnic-racial backgrounds. The present study seeks to contribute to the extant research by exploring how parents in multiethnic-racial families seek...

Examining Racial and Ethnic Disparity in Prosecutor’s Bail Requests and Downstream Decision-making

Although research into prosecutorial and judicial decision-making has been conducted for the past three decades, a great deal still remains unknown. Most research focuses on the ‘back end’ of the adjudication process, leaving decision points prior to the final phases unanalyzed. Drawing on unique data from the New York County District Attorney’s Office that tracks 43,971 felony...

Do Ethnic-Racial Identity Dimensions Moderate the Relations of Outgroup Discrimination and Ingroup Marginalization to Self-esteem in Black and Latinx Undergraduates?

Guided by social identity and intergroup theory, we tested how two facets of ethnic-racial identity—felt typicality (perceived similarity to other ingroup members) and ingroup ties (felt closeness to other ingroup members)—potentially buffer the negative effects of outgroup discrimination and ingroup marginalization on self-esteem. Participants included 407 Latinx (65%) and Black...

Intersecting Race and Gender Across Hardships and Mental Health During COVID-19: A Moderated-Mediation Model of Graduate Students at Two Universities

While the effects of the pandemic on the mental health of college students can vary across race and gender, few studies have explored the role of hardships and university assistance in these disparities, as well as how these disparities can manifest themselves differently across intersections of race and gender. We address this gap by using unique survey data (n = 417) from two...

Racial Discrimination, Black Identity, and Critical Consciousness in Spain

This article analyzes the relationship of racial discrimination on the identity and critical consciousness of 1369 African and Afro-descendant respondents to the first nationwide survey conducted in Spain in 2020. The survey not only showed the scope of experiences of discrimination based on skin color but has also opened the way for testing whether these experiences of racial...

Local TV News Coverage of Racial Disparities in COVID-19 During the First Wave of the Pandemic, March–June 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately impacted health and social outcomes for people of color in the United States. This study examined how local TV news stories attributed causes and solutions for COVID-19-related racial health and social disparities, and whether coverage of such disparities changed after George Floyd’s murder, during the first wave of the COVID-19...

Patterns of Earnings and Employment by Worker Sex, Race, and Ethnicity Using State Administrative Data: Results from a Sample of Workers Connected to Public Assistance Programs

During the strong economic conditions that predated the COVID-19 pandemic, many US workers, especially females and individuals of color, suffered from economic vulnerability. Despite growing research attention, we lack an understanding of how the prevalence and patterns of earnings and job instability vary with worker characteristics, particularly at the intersections between sex...

Social Class also Matters: The Effects of Social Class, Ethnicity, and their Interaction on Prejudice and Discrimination Toward Roma

One of the difficulties in social research has been to disentangle the effects of race/ethnicity from social class. In two experimental studies with samples of both students and general population (total N = 416), we analyzed the effect of social class, ethnicity and their interaction on prejudice and discrimination using experimental methods. Social class (High vs. Low) and...

Discrimination in Context: Examining Neighborhood-Level Variation in the Incidence and Adverse Effects of Perceived Racial and Ethnic Discrimination Among Chicago Youth

A growing body of research links interpersonal racial and ethnic discrimination to adverse youth outcomes. Yet, studies examining the relevance of neighborhood context for discrimination are sparse. This study examines neighborhood-level variation in the incidence and impact of perceived racial and ethnic discrimination on depressive symptoms, suicidal behavior, violent behavior...

Values and Attitudes Toward Immigrants Among School Children in Switzerland and Poland

Research on key determinants of negative attitudes toward immigration has often suggested that values held by individuals systematically explain such sentiments. Universalists appear to have more positive and conservatives more negative attitudes. So far, however, these insights are based on studies using adult samples. In our study, we analyze these relations among children and...