Du Bois Review

10/21/2025

New from DBR:
Racial Whitening as a Global ‘Innovation’: Race in the First Brazilian Republic (1889-1930)
- Vitor Barros
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1742058X25100040

This article explores the theory of racial whitening’s role in the political attempt to reshape the national collective in the First Brazilian Republic (1889-1930) to explain the theory’s origins and characteristics and suggest its international relevance. It is argued that this theory—which proposed that Brazil could modernize through in*******al marriage and mass European immigration—was not a Brazilian or Latin American peculiarity but was aligned with a transformist strand of previous scientific racialism. The main novelty came from wide political resonance, not intellectual newness. In addition, the article demonstrates that racial whitening oriented the First Republic to construct ambiguous, yet effective, structures of discrimination, aimed at molding the national collective. These structures seem to have anticipated the transformation of racial relations elsewhere, preceding the global shift in the justification of institutional racism from biological to cultural bases after 1945. The article then underscores the importance of understanding historical dependencies and subtle mechanisms through which racism can be perpetuated, especially in societies that claim to be racially progressive.

🖼: Ham’s Redemption by Brocos y Goméz (1895).

10/20/2025

Congratulations to this year's honorees!

The W. E. B. Du Bois medal ceremony is in 15 days! Tickets available 10/28 via the link in bio.

10/08/2025

New from DBR:
Claiming Citizenship: The Political Labor of Black Women’s Resistance
- Sally Nuamah and Leah Ouellet
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1742058X25100039

In what ways, if any, do justice-involved Black women make political demands? How do they understand their role and rights as citizens? Previous work has focused on identifying forms of political behavior, both formal and deviant (i.e., resistance, subversive acts), and the degree to which different groups participate in these behaviors. Few studies have focused on the sensemaking and ideologies likely motivating the behavior of justice-involved Black women both within and outside the formal political realm (e.g., elections). Drawing on the responses of Black women residents of an urban prison reentry facility, this article illustrates how this group engages in what we describe as “political claimsmaking,” a type of deviant discourse in which participants negotiate the power dynamics informing their social reality to make political demands. Further, we argue that while this political claimsmaking acts as a form of resistance and assertion of citizenship, it is simultaneously a form of inequitable political labor. Understanding Black women’s political claims, and the labor involved in making them, has serious implications for imagining more liberatory futures in which the benefits associated with citizenship are more freely accessed.

📷: PJ Kariko on Unsplash

10/08/2025

Remembering our colleague and friend, Marcy Morgan.

Harvard renames first-of-its-kind archive after its founder Marcyliena Morgan, who died recently at age 75.

07/24/2025

New from DBR:
Factors Associated with Racial Self-classification Among U.S. Latinx Adults
- Victor Figuereo, Robert Rosales, David T. Takeuchi &
Rocío Calvo
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1742058X25000050

This study examined how immigrant status and socioeconomic status influence racial self-classification among U.S. Latinx adults aged eighteen and older across multiple nationalities. Using data from the 2010–2018 National Health Interview Survey, we analyzed a nationally representative sample of Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Central/South American adults (N = 41,133) who identified as White, Black, or Another race. Socioeconomic status was measured using a composite index of income-to-poverty ratio, education, employment status, and homeownership. Multinomial logistic regressions and average marginal effects revealed significant heterogeneity in examined predictors of racial identity. U.S.-born Latinx adults, particularly Puerto Ricans and Central/South Americans, had higher probability of identifying as Black compared to recent immigrants. Latinx adults with low and middle socioeconomic status backgrounds were more likely to identify as Black or Another race across most nationality groups. Findings highlight the complexity of Latinx racial identity, whereby Latinxs may experience racialization differently depending on indicators of acculturation and socioeconomic status. The inclusion of multidimensional measures of race, such as skin color and street race, in future research is needed to better understand Latinx racial identity formation. Findings inform interventions to address race-related stress and anti-Blackness, particularly among AfroLatinx populations, and provide considerations for improving race data collection practices, such as those impacted by recent federal policy changes to the U.S. Census.

📷: Photo by Liana Young on Unsplash

06/19/2025

05/27/2025

New from DBR:

To Agitate a Southern Audience: Revisiting the Impact of Abolition on Tuskegee Institute’s Institutional Interventions, Anti-Lynching Advocacy, and Sociological Contributions

- Demar F. Lewis IV

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1742058X25000049

Scholars have paid minimal attention to the political and practical objectives that guided Tuskegee Institute’s sociological program and institutional interventions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Leveraging a multi-modal, historical sociological approach grounded in primary and secondary analyses of biographical data, narratives, and archival data, I show that Tuskegee’s institutional interventions illustrate three abolitionist tactics: (1) building consciousness through research dissemination and place-based investment, (2) galvanizing Southern Whites and political elites to abolish lynching locally, and (3) countering the propaganda used to justify lynching to inspire divestment from lynching and carceral punishment. Booker T. Washington’s commitment to eradicating structural racism and resource deprivation in the aftermath of slavery led to Tuskegee Institute’s formation of the first department of applied rural sociology in the United States, and the Negro Farmers’ conference and Movable School interventions supported a comprehensive anti-poverty strategy. Likewise, the research activism of Monroe Work, disseminated via The Negro Year Book and individual publications, sought to galvanize the abolition of lynching and carceral punishment. In the wake of re-emerged visibility of White supremacist terrorism and commitments to practicing Du Boisian sociology across the United States, I argue that reviving the memory of Tuskegee’s institutional practices makes a case for reconsidering the place of abolition in academic sociology in the twenty-first century.

05/16/2025

New from DBR:
From White Supremacy to a Multiracial Mainstream in Hawai‘i: How the Color Line Can Change

- Richard Alba, John Torpey & Juan Dolores Cerna
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1742058X25000037

Contemporary racial theorization about American society assumes the universality of White dominance as its point of departure. We argue here that Hawai‘i is an exception, where White supremacy has given way to a multiracial mainstream, shared by the Chinese, Japanese, and Whites. This was a surprising development in a state founded in settler colonialism and racial capitalism, which was moreover a racially hierarchical plantation society until the middle of the twentieth century. The pivot, in Hawai‘i as on the mainland, occurred during the post-World War II period, when the economy underwent a transformation requiring a more educated workforce. On the mainland, this socioeconomic shift opened up the mainstream to the so-called White ethnics. But these were few in number in Hawai‘i, and so the Chinese and Japanese ascended socioeconomically and socially instead. The ethnoracial hierarchy created in this period is still in evidence, as shown by pronounced inequalities among Hawaiian groups. However, the end of White supremacy has been associated with very widespread ethnoracial mixing in families. We discuss some ways in which Hawai‘i may offer a preview of twenty-first-century changes in the U.S. as a whole.

📷: Four young women “of Japanese, Hawaiian, Chinese and Filipino ethnicity” wearing coconut hats, Waikiki Beach ca. 1950's. Photo by Hideo Niiyama of Kroshaw Studio, Honolulu. Digital Archives of Hawai'i, digitalarchives.hawaii.gov

03/31/2025

New from DBR:
What Effect Does Being a Have on ? Some Counterfactuals and Decompositions
- Gregory Price
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1742058X25000025

This article estimates several causal counterfactual parameters of the effect of being an Historically Black College/University (HBCU) on college/university endowment, and on the probability of a college/university failing as a function of its financial health, which is proportional to endowment. Our various counterfactual causal parameter decomposition estimates suggest that the racial distinctiveness of HBCUs causes, and can account for cumulative HBCU/non-HBCU endowment disparities between $11.5 billion and $58.9 billion for the HBCUs in our estimating sample. This is consistent with, at least in part, racial discrimination against HBCUs in philanthropic endowment contributions/gifts. With respect to failure, as HBCU status contributes to higher failure probabilities that are a function of college/university financial health, reducing the HBCU/non-HBCU endowment disparity would also enhance the ability of HBCUs to continuously exist. We suggest two public policy interventions to close the endowment disparity. First, increase the tax subsidy for contributions/gifts to HBCUs relative to non-HBCUs, as a way to incentivize more gifts to HBCUs from wealthy foundations and individuals. Secondly, to the extent that the wealth of HBCU alumni—who give back to their alma mater at higher rates than their non-HBCU peers—has been constrained due to the legacy of Slavery and discrimination, a distribution of reparations to the descendants of Black American Slaves would close Black-White wealth disparities that could translate into larger endowment contributions/gifts from HBCU alumni.

📷: Members of the Congressional Black Caucus wearing HBCU gear, 2017. Photo by Terri Sewell, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

03/31/2025

New from DBR:
Pandering Politics? Examining the Effect of Positive, Explicit Racial Appeals on Support for Political Candidates
- Leah Christiani & Jeremiah W. Muhammad

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1742058X25000013

We hypothesize that positive, explicit racial appeals to Black voters from White politicians will be seen as pandering if not accompanied by an endorsement from a Black elite, which would increase credibility of the appeal. To test this, we use a preregistered survey experiment with approximately 400 Black Americans. Contrary to our expectations, we find that pro-Black appeals can function to increase support for the politician, even without an endorsement. In the full sample, the candidate enjoyed increased support when only using a positive appeal, when only receiving an endorsement, and when making an appeal and receiving an endorsement—relative to the control condition. Qualitative analyses of open-ended responses reveal that respondents saw the politician as pandering in all conditions—an appeal was not necessary to evoke pandering. We conclude that campaign strategies like appeals and endorsements can function to boost support even when the candidate is perceived as pandering.

03/29/2025

Free to read for a limited period in the Spring 2025 issue:
Principle-Policy and Principle-Personal Gaps in Americans’ Diversity Attitudes
cup.org/42a0Dw8

New from DBR on :
Principle-Policy and Principle-Personal Gaps in Americans’ Diversity Attitudes
- Neeraj Rajasekar, Evan Stewart & Douglas Hartmann

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1742058X24000079

Americans generally celebrate the abstract principle of diversity, but research suggests that they have a comparatively lower (1) favorability towards policies that promote diversity and (2) sense of personal closeness with others from diverse backgrounds. The current study analyzes nationally representative survey data to assess such “principle-policy gaps” and “principle-personal gaps” in Americans’ diversity attitudes. We find that these attitudinal gaps indeed exist and are substantial in the general population. We also consider how individual-level factors relate to these attitudinal gaps. Following common findings in previous research, we find that participant racial identity and political partisanship have statistically significant relationships with these attitudinal gaps. But our overall findings illustrate that principle-policy gaps and principle-personal gaps in diversity attitudes are fairly substantial and prevalent across Americans who vary by race, politics, and several other individual-level factors. We consider our findings in the current social and political context, and we discuss directions for future inquiry.

📷: Photo by Matheus Viana on Unsplash.

03/26/2025

NEW ISSUE - Spring 2025
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race
Volume 22 - Issue 1

While Americans generally celebrate the abstract principle of diversity, research suggests that they have a comparatively lower 1) favorability towards policies that promote diversity and 2) sense of personal closeness with others from diverse backgrounds. In the Spring 2025 issue (22.1), Neeraj Rajasekar and colleagues analyze nationally representative survey data to assess such “principle-policy gaps” and “principle-personal gaps” in Americans’ diversity attitudes.

Also in the issue, the research of Makeiva Jenkins and Justine Tinkler examines help-seeking behavior among Black and White college women; Cheryl Elman and colleagues look at systemic racial health inequity in the Jim Crow south; and Yao Qu investigates how racial capitalism impacts ethnic minority husbandry communities in Xinjiang, China. Other themes include racialized and gendered linkages between police-initiated contact and help-seeking outcomes; the work of the National Negro Business League (1900-1915); Du Bois, Black masculinity, and young people with diverse sexual identities; how the work of Du Bois and the Black Radical Tradition provides a model for a new historical sociology; and the pioneering social science of James McCune Smith.

Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race