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1. Introduction
Pages 1-20

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From page 1...
... The conference was an historic gathering of the nation's leading scholars on racial and ethnic relations, assembled to assess past and current trends for America's Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and American Indiansand all their multiple and varied national groupings in regard to several key institutional arenas. Topics of discussion included demographics, education, employment, income and wealth, housing and neighborhood characteristics, health access and status, and the criminal justice system.
From page 2...
... They summarized key trends, described gaps in research and data, and suggested research directions for the next decade. These volumes contain updated versions of selected conference papers and, in the case of criminal justice, two discussants' comments.
From page 3...
... As a result, a more realistic, sociocultural conceptualization of race has developed. Although continuing to acknowledge the genetic, demographic, and geographic dimensions of human diversity, most social scientists now give prominence to the principle that both race and ethnicity derive from sociocultural categories that are produced, sustained, and reproduced.
From page 4...
... To appreciate the anomalous consequences of different measures, consider the fact that most "Hispanics," often identified, both popularly and by some social scientists, as a separate racial category, identify themselves as "White" (see Raynard Kington and Herbert Nickens, Volume II, Chapter 11~. Or consider the fact that, by self-report, the population of American Indians tripled between the 1960 and 1990 censuses, a rate far exceeding any increase based on migration or due to births (see Gary Sandefur et al., Volume I, Chapter 3~.
From page 5...
... Noting these Hispanic subgroup differences, Albert Camarillo and Frank Bonilla conclude simply that "Hispanics in the United States at the dawn of the twenty-first century defy generalizations as a single group" (see Camarillo and Bonilla, Volume I, Chapter 4~. As reflected in the pages of this report, all racial and ethnic subcategories manifest enormous differences in income, wealth, education, health, and almost all other social measures.
From page 6...
... of Black-White wage differentials since 1975 breaks down into a mix of both nonracial and racial influences, including rising economic returns on skills, declining industrialization and unionism, social/spatial factors, persistent discrimination, and expectations, alternative income, and illegal activity. The dramatic increase, since the 1980s, in the percentage of Blacks in prisons is traceable in large part to the criminal justice system's intensive crackdown on drug activity which may or may not (see Randall Kennedy, Alfred Blumstein, and Darnell Hawkins, Volume II, Chapters 1, 2, and 3)
From page 7...
... Recent changes introduced by the Census Bureau permit people to chose multiple categories in response to the question of racial identity; but even this change in measurement will not capture the full complexity of group membership. The Omnipotence of Relative Deprivation in Race and Ethnic Relations Committed as we are to tracking the progress of racial and ethnic groups toward conditions of equity and justice, as well as tracking the persisting advantages of others, we often make judgments and assertions about the absolute progress of groups.
From page 8...
... Individual Attributes and Choices Differences in individual skills, motivation, attitudes, and self-selecting "out" i.e., not taking advantage of opportunities are some of the individual attributes and choices that can cause stratified racial outcomes. However, these individual factors, although they are definitely operative causal factors, are themselves shaped by larger structural and cultural forces.
From page 9...
... In reality the indirect causal factors are often so massive in their impact on the social position and experiences of minorities that they deserve full consideration in understanding the forces leading to differential outcomes along racial lines. We would like to take this opportunity to discuss briefly those causes of stratified racial outcomes that advantage or disadvantage people even though there is no deliberate aim or intended effort to do so.
From page 10...
... ,~ the drop in the real value of the minimum wage, and the dramatic decline of union membership in the private sector. Given the relatively large percentage of low-skilled Black workers, the effect of the economy's slow real wage growth, like the impact of the decreased relative demand for low-skilled labor, is strongly felt in the Black community and in other relatively disadvantaged racial minority communities (Wilson, 1999~.
From page 11...
... , including social interaction that results in different racial outcomes. Culture's effects on stratified racial outcomes are therefore indirect, filtered through social relational and collective processes.
From page 12...
... We note the absence of a discussion of indirect or unintended causes of stratified racial outcomes among the excellent papers in this volume. RACIAL TRENDS IN AMERICA: AN OVERVIEW OF THIS VOLUME Attitudes and Institutions As Lawrence Bobo points out, "If one compares the racial attitudes prevalent in the 1940s with those commonly observed today, it is easy to be optimistic" (Volume I, Chapter 9~.
From page 13...
... At the other extreme, Brazil legally encoded neither apartheid nor Jim Crow segregation; nevertheless, Afro-Brazilians did experience pervasive informal discrimination and prejudice. Between these two extremes, the United States featured uneven and locally encoded policies of racial domination over its Black minority population, amid what Marx calls "social discrimination." In all three countries, race relations have been significantly contested, "with the enactment of rules of relations (or debates thereof)
From page 14...
... In addition, the changing composition of the White female labor force now including larger numbers of the very highly skilled may also have contributed to the trends. The decline of relative wages for Asian and Hispanic women workers since 1990 is traceable to productivity-related characteristics such as education, and the immigrant status of many Hispanic women workers plays a role.
From page 15...
... turn to the welfare system. They find very great differences in receipt of welfare benefits, with American Indians and Aleutian Eskimos having the highest probability of receiving receipts, and Black and Hispanic households having very high rates as well.
From page 16...
... Thornton also addresses problems associated with the legal status of tribes, tribal identity, and recent trends in economic development, as well as the anomalous situation of American Indian studies and the politically thorny issue of the repatriation of American Indian human remains and other cultural objects to their tribal sources. In his essay on the Asian Pacific American population, Don Nakanishi (Volume I, Chapter 6)
From page 17...
... Massey concludes that residential segregation of Blacks contributes directly and indirectly to high concentrations of poverty, educational failure, joblessness, unwed parenthood, crime, and mortality. In a related treatment (Volume I, Chapter 14)
From page 18...
... In a closely related treatment (Volume II, Chapter 13) , Renee lenkins addresses the changes in health indicators from the federal government's Healthy People 2000 project, concentrating on racial differences in infant mortality, immunizations, teen births, and violent deaths, and assessing a variety of national and local policies designed to reduce the disparities.
From page 19...
... In his search for contributing factors, he examines acts of discrimination on the part of law enforcement agents, and policies that have intended or unintended racial effects. He also addresses differential involvement (by race)
From page 20...
... 20 INTRODUCTION Weber, M 1968 Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, G


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