692557

research-article2017
SREXXX10.1177/2332649217692557<italic>Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 3(2)</italic>Ray et al.

Feature Review

Sociology of Race and Ethnicity

Critical Race Theory,

112
American Sociological Association 2017
DOI: 10.1177/2332649217692557
https://doi.org/10.1177/2332649217692557

Afro-Pessimism, and Racial sre.sagepub.com

Progress Narratives

Victor Erik Ray1, Antonia Randolph2, Megan Underhill3,

and David Luke4

Abstract
Much work in the sociology of race and ethnicity centers on an underlying narrative of racial progress.
Progress narratives are typically conceptualized as a linear process of slow, yet inevitable, improvement.
Drawing on Critical Race Theory and Afro-Pessimism, theoretical perspectives that emerged outside of
the discipline of sociology, this paper urges a rethinking of linear progress narratives. First we elucidate the
central tenets of these theoretical paradigms. We then apply them to diversity and labor market research,
providing suggestions for how sociology can incorporate these perspectives.

Keywords
critical race theory, Afro-pessimism, labor markets, diversity, organizations

The Limits of Racial environment, scholars of race and ethnicity should

Progress Narratives
In 2008, Barack Obama won the presidency on a
message of hope. His rise was celebrated around
the world as evidence of racial progress in the
United States, a country with a long and brutal his-
tory of slavery and racism. Although some cau-
tioned that Obamas election was not unvarnished
evidence that America was shedding its racist roots
(see Bonilla-Silva 2014), for many Americans
President Obamas election symbolized a postra-
cial era. Donald Trumps election has shattered the
collective hallucination of postracialism. Trumps
campaignfocused on racial fear, intolerance, and
xenophobiasecured the presidency. Trump
embraced an open racism that scholars have
claimed is uncharacteristic of the postcivil rights
era. The so-called alt-rightwhite supremacists
who publicly advocate for the pursuit of a white
nation-statewere key supporters of Trumps
campaign. Trump has refused to distance himself
from these supporters, elevating Steve Bannon, a
key alt-right leader, to chief White House strate-
gist. Given these dramatic changes in the political
critically reevaluate racial progress narratives that
were furthered by Obamas election.
In this essay, we draw on critical race theory
(CRT) and Afro-pessimism, two theoretical per-
spectives that emerged outside of sociology, to
interrogate the idea of racial progress, specifically
as it relates to diversity and labor market research.
Thus, although we are united in our critique of
racial progress narratives as insufficient to explain
the racial order, we apply different theoretical
1
Department of Sociology, The University of Tennessee
at Knoxville, Knoxville, TN, USA
2
Department of Sociology, Christopher Newport
University, Newport News, VA, USA
3
University of North Carolina Asheville, Asheville, NC,
USA
4
University of Kentucky Department of Sociology,
Lexington, Kentucky, USA
Corresponding Author:
Victor Erik Ray, The University of Tennessee at
Knoxville, Department of Sociology, 901 McClung
Tower, Knoxville, TN 37996-0490, USA
Email: victorerikray@gmail.com
2 Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
perspectives to arrive at our shared conclusion.
Victor Ray focuses on works in progresstheoriz-
ing organizations and racial progress through the
lens of CRT (Ray and Seamster 2016). Antonia
Randolph highlights the utility of Afro-pessimism,
a body of theory that is unrelentingly focused on
the historical specificity of antiblackness. Megan
Underhill examines diversitys association with
whiteness and explores how our contemporary
embrace of diversity should not be understood as a
postracial victory, as it is often whites rather than
minorities whom diversity benefits most. David
Luke revisits the well-known debates on the pri-
macy of race, class, or culture as determinants of
economic inequality, illustrating how this long-
standing conflict shapes current scholarship and
delineating where this research should go next.
CRT and Racial Progress
Sociologists of race and ethnicity typically eschew
the prejudice paradigm in favor of structural cri-
tiques of racial inequality (Golash-Boza 2016).
Although structural understandings of racial inequal-
ity share intellectual precursors with the legal schol-
arship known as CRT, these two literatures differ on
some key theoretical assumptions. Arising to explain
the massive white resistance to civil rights era
changes, CRT examines central sociological con-
cerns, such as the relationship between institutional-
ized discrimination and organizational processes
(Moore 2008) and the social force of whiteness
(Hughey 2010; Lewis 2004). Unlike the tradition of
sociological scholarship focused on racial progress
(Myrdal 1944; Wilson 1978), which tends toward
optimism, CRT sees progress as conflicted, contin-
gent, and reversible. Bracey (2015) argued that CRT,
because of its refusal to accept linear notions of
progress, better explains reversals of legislation such
as the Voting Rights Act. We join several scholars
who have recently pushed for a greater cross-fertil-
ization between CRT and sociological theories of
race (Brown 2004; Burton et al. 2010; Moore 2007),
because CRT provides a theoretically consistent
explanation for empirical patterns.
Greater engagement with the legal tradition of
CRT helps sociologists better explain the relative
degree and types of racial progress in the United
States (Omi and Winant 2015) and the undertheori-
zation of race in the sociology of organizations
(Wooten 2006). Two ideas in particularBells
(1991) racial realism thesis, which argues that
racism is a permanent structural feature of the
United States, and interest convergence (Bell
1980), which sees changes in the racial order result-
ing from shared white and black interestsprovide
theoretical purchase to these problems. Racial real-
ism directs attention to the changing proximate
mechanisms producing racial inequality, while not
losing sight of the overarching structure of racial
inequality. Interest convergence is predictive,
allowing potentially testable hypotheses regarding
the likelihood of progressive, and regressive,
changes in the racial structure (Bracey 2015).
Racial Progress in American Sociology
The idea of racial progress haunts American sociol-
ogy (Steinberg 2001). Early eugenic accounts
couched ideas of racial progress in evolutionary
metaphors ranking civilizations. Race was con-
sidered immutable biology, and progress was mea-
sured by ones assimilability (Jung 2009). Even Du
Bois, who rejected biological accounts of race
(Morris 2015), often relied on metaphors implying
progress as measured in relation to whiteness.
These accounts of racial progress as a relatively
linear process traveling in only one direction
(Wilson 1978) should be questioned by race schol-
ars. Take for example declines in racial employ-
ment gaps that occurred in the 1970s and into the
early 1980s. Variable-based (Zuberi 2001) and his-
torical accounts (Wilson 1978) of these changes
were interpreted as racial progress, because it
appeared that white and black employment rates
were converging. This artificially simplified a
complex set of interactions that were better under-
stood as reshuffling of relations in a racialized
social system (Bonilla-Silva 1997; Hughey,
Embrick, and Doane 2015) on the basis of funda-
mentally racialized relations of sub- and superordi-
nation (Ray and Seamster 2016). For example, the
rise of mass incarceration as a form of racialized
social control (Alexander 2012; Western and Pettit
2005) co-occurred with an apparent decrease in
black male unemployment. However, many of the
employment gains that prior analyses claimed
resulted from changes in the legal structure were
nearly erased when incarcerated black men were
included in the analysis. Racialized incarceration
masked a fundamental continuity: because institu-
tionalized populations are not included in nation-
ally representative samples, measures of progress
were inflated (Western and Pettit 2005). Yet a
racialized narrative of improvement still grips the
sociological imagination.
Another problem with progress narratives is that
they remain mired in assimilationist paradigms that
Ray et al. 3
accept the fundamental legitimacy of dominant
(white) cultural norms and institutions (Carbado,
Fisk, and Gulati 2008; Jung 2009). Measuring prog-
ress in this manner reifies whiteness as the norm. The
whiteness of mainstream organizations remains an
unquestioned default category, and symbolic inclu-
sion in white cultural organizations stands in for sub-
stantive reform. Ultimately, models that assume the
inevitability of racial progress cannot account for (1)
the long-standing intractability of racial gaps in
nearly every area of social life, (2) changes in forms
and types of racial exclusion, and (3) the many counter-
movements against racial equality.
As the #blacklivesmatter movement has made
clear (Yamahatta-Taylor 2016), many problems
facing communities of color are transformations in
the formnot contentof racial domination.
Racialized policing, economic exclusion, and dif-
ferential access to nearly every mainstream institu-
tion are constants for people of color. Trumps rise,
on a platform of open white nationalism, should, at
a minimum, give proponents of progress narratives
pause. A CRT approach to racial progress simulta-
neously highlights changing mechanisms and hier-
archical stability (Ray and Seamster 2016).
Organizations are a primary domain in which
one can apply this approach. Although the domi-
nant theories in the sociology of race and ethnicity
are focused on macro-level state interactions (Omi
and Winant 2015) or individual level prejudice or
racial ideology, organizations are key meso-level
arbiters in the reproduction of racism and race
itself. Organizations are where most inter- and intr-
aracial interactions occur, shaping both individual
prejudice and state policies allocating resources.
For instance, the addition of a diversity office or
changing legal regulations may be taken as prima
facie evidence of progress (Wimmer 2015).
However, diversity programs have done little to
change the hierarchy of power and privilege within
organizations (Embrick 2011). Furthermore, diver-
sity programming may reinforce occupational seg-
regation as people of color are cordoned off from
positions with authority and mobility opportunities
(Collins 1997) or be used as a legal mechanism sig-
nifying formal compliance with discrimination law
(Dobbin 2009). Formal compliance with postcivil
rights legal regimes is not a racial panacea. In fact,
compliance may simply make racial inequality
harder to detect and combat as institutional change
is taken as a synonym for progress (Acker 2006).
Instead of viewing racial progress as a linear
affair, an adequate theory of racial progress should
be able to account not only for decreasing economic
gaps (Wilson 1978) but also shifting mechanisms
reproducing changes in racial inequality in response
to minority gains. Taken together, interest conver-
gence and racial realism claim that changes in the
racial order are relatively superficial, and typically
benefit whites as much as, if not more than, people
of color. Furthermore, changes in the racial order
are reversible and analysts should predict backlash
as whites respond in ways that maintain white privi-
lege and power.
Afro-Pessimist Approaches
to Racial Progress
Afro-pessimism is an influential account of anti-
blackness among humanities scholars, which soci-
ologists have been slow to adopt. Although
Afro-pessimism shares CRTs skepticism about the
racial progress narrative, it departs from CRT in
several ways. Afro-pessimism insists upon the dis-
tinctness of antiblackness from other forms of racism.
Antiblackness is the notion that the construction of
blacks as nonhuman structures the status of all
other racial groups (Sexton 2016).
Afro-pessimism also resists the push to abandon
the black-white binary for studying race in the West.
Instead, Afro-pessimism argues that existing schol-
arship inaccurately portrays the black-white binarys
role in structuring racial inequality. Afro-pessimism
replaces the binary between whites and blacks with
an antagonism between blacks and nonblacks.
Therefore, for Afro-pessimism, antiblackness, not
white supremacy, explains the social conditions of
blacks across the globe (Sexton 2016). Afro-
pessimism challenges the idea that a triracial hierar-
chy is emerging and would identify the collective
black as a construct hiding the specificity of being
a person of African descent (Bonilla-Silva 2004).
Additionally, Afro-pessimism critiques the construct
people of color as inadequately conflating largely
incomparable group experiences.
Afro-pessimism is also concerned with slavery
and slaverys afterlife, or how slavery lives on in
modern times (Hartman 1997). A basic tenet of
Afro-pessimism is that slavery has changed form
since its formal abolition (Sexton 2016). Sociologists
such as Loc Wacquant have made similar claims.
Wacquant (2002) outlined four peculiar institu-
tions of black subordination, claiming mass incar-
ceration is the functional surrogate of slavery.
Historians and criminologists have begun to focus
on the legacy of slavery, charting the empirical con-
tinuities and divergences in markets, organizations
(Roediger and Esch 2012), and the penal system
(Wacquant 2002). Mainstream scholars of race and
ethnicity could advance this trend.
4 Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
Social Death and the Afterlife of Slavery
Racial slavery distinguishes the social location of
blacks from that of other racial minorities. Slavery
produced blacks as beings considered nonhuman,
as they lacked human markers: ownership of their
bodies and the ability to reason (Sorentino 2016).
Enlightenment philosophers developed their ideas
about what it means to be human during the era of
the transatlantic slave trade. Definitions of human-
ity excluded the status of being enslaved (Sorentino
2016). The meaning of whiteness as human (free,
rational) developed in antagonism to the meaning of
blackness as nonhuman (enslaved, incapable of rea-
son). Africans emerged from the middle passage
and slavery as blacks, a racialized group of not quite
humans and the permanently subjugated property of
whites (Sorentino 2016). Scholars called this per-
manent subjugation social death (Patterson 1982).
The idea that Western democratic ideals are pred-
icated on the exclusion of racialized others is not
new (Mills 1999). What is new is Afro-pessimisms
claim that slavery and the middle passage, through
the experience of social death, gave blacks a differ-
ent ontology than other racial groups. Three charac-
teristics define slavery as social death: natal
alienation, gratuitous violence, and social dishonor
(Patterson 1982). Natal alienation refers to the way
slavery severed Africans ties to their family and to
Africa. Blacks (not Africans) are a people without a
homeland and without a legitimate tie to family
(Sexton 2010b). Gratuitous violence refers to the
structural violence whites used to establish and
maintain slavery. Blacks have been and continue to
be subjected to violence simply because they were
black (Sexton 2010a). Blacks low status in every
corner of society was a manifestation of their social
dishonor. Thus, slavery attempted to turn blacks into
objects to be stockpiled and sold, rather than agentic
human subjects (Spillers 1987). The status of social
death extended to all diasporic blacks, slave or free,
because free blacks could be captured and sold into
slavery, a condition from which even the lowliest of
whites were protected (Sexton 2016).
This afterlife of slavery is also evident in the
way blacks remain subject to gratuitous violence
and natal alienation, as well as in the warehousing
of blacks in prisons and lower income neighbor-
hoods (R.L. 2013). In this light, Michelle
Alexanders (2012) work on the criminal justice
system as the new Jim Crow investigates gratu-
itous violence, while Dorothy Robertss (1998)
work on the criminalization of black drug-addicted
mothers investigates natal alienation. Roberts, for
instance, begins her history of black women being
stripped of their right to parent within slavery.
Roberts recounts the practice of white masters
whipping pregnant black women with their bellies
face down to show that the state was interested in
black women as vessels for reproducing their prop-
erty, rather than as mothers (Roberts 1991).
Critique of People of Color as a
Construct
The experience of slavery and the social death it
engendered give blacks a distinct ontology that has
consequences for civil society and the possibility
of cross-racial coalitions. Like CRT, Afro-
pessimism argues that blacks are excluded from
civil society. This means that a politics seeking
redress from the state will likely fail. Afro-
pessimism argues that racial slavery has no anal-
ogy, and thus the plight of blacks cannot be
compared with the situation of nonblack people of
color (Wilderson 2010). Moreover, Afro-pessimism
argues that coalitional politics do not advance the
interest of blacks. Instead, coalitions result in people-
of-color-blindness that hides the specificity of
antiblackness (Sexton 2010b). Afro-pessimism
argues that nonblack people of color co-opt the tac-
tics of the civil rights movement yet must abandon
blacks to gain rights from the state.
Sociologists have also argued that the emphasis
on the shared subordination of people of color hides
how nonblack minorities reproduce antiblackness.
Gans (1999) opined that the coming racial order
would be defined by a black/nonblack divide, rather
than a white/nonwhite one. Treitler (2013) con-
tended that racialized minorities from Chinese
Americans to Native Americans have undertaken
ethnic projects to distance themselves from African
Americans so that they could be viewed as ethnic
groups, rather than racial ones. Indeed, Waterss
(1999) classic finding that black West Indians strive
to make known their ethnic difference from African
Americans supports the claim that the advancement
of racialized groups requires antiblackness.
Yet although race scholars have noted the speci-
ficity of antiblackness, few have questioned the use-
fulness of the construct of people of color. Generally,
Afro-pessimisms critique of the construct of peo-
ple of color raises an empirical question as to
whether racialized minorities do distance them-
selves or otherwise subordinate African Americans
when pursuing rights from the state. Theoretically,
Afro-pessimism raises questions about how we con-
ceptualize the racial order. Although Gans (1999)
believes that a black/nonblack hierarchy is in the
Ray et al. 5
offing, Afro-pessimism argues that it has always
been in place.
Afro-pessimist theory has not paid much atten-
tion to distinctions among blacks, for instance, by
examining whether native-born blacks are treated
differently than immigrant blacks in the United
States. Scholars have applied the theory to blacks
in other parts of the diaspora, such as Brazil, show-
ing that social death happened wherever blacks
landed in the New World (Alves 2016). In short,
blacks of whatever ethnicity experience the effects
of social death and the afterlife of slavery to the
extent that society views them as black. Still, Afro-
pessimists have argued that those who identify
solely as mixed race rather than as black are trying
to escape the dehumanization that comes with
blackness (Sexton 2008). This suggests that Afro-
pessimists believe that blacks perpetuate antiblack-
ness, just as nonblack people of color do.
The Centrality of Antiblackness
Afro-pessimism pushes us to conceptualize anti-
blackness as a force that is distinct from white
supremacy. Most formulations of race-based sys-
tems of domination treat the subordination of spe-
cific racialized groups as branches off the tree of
white supremacy. Settler colonialism, Islamophobia,
xenophobia, and nativism have their own logics, but
they are rooted in white supremacy. Afro-pessimism
suggests that antiblackness is its own tree that inter-
sects with white supremacy but is always operating
by its own logic of dehumanizing blacks. Other
racial groups achieve their subjectivity and citizen-
ship through othering blacks, because humanity is
measured through distance from blackness (Sexton
2016). Scholars of race and ethnicity would have to
conceptualize this antagonism between blacks and
all other racial groups. The conceptualization of
black debasement is total within Afro-pessimism;
that is what is meant by describing blackness as an
ontology or a structure of being. This sweeping view
of what race means could be a reason that philoso-
phers and other humanities scholars have adopted
Afro-pessimist thought more readily than social sci-
entists. It is hard to measure or prove a racial ontol-
ogy, as opposed to something more familiar to
sociologists, like a racial identity (Sexton 2016).
As we can see, Afro-pessimism is as suspicious
of the racial progress narrative as CRT is. Afro-
pessimists would endorse the idea that racial real-
ism and interest convergence better explain gains
that people of color have made rather than racial
progress. However, Afro-pessimism adds new
concerns about whether antiblackness subsumes
white supremacy, rather than the inverse, and
whether people of color is a useful construct for
studying race and ethnicity. Although contemporary
research on diversity and on the race-class-culture
matrix resounds with evidence that racial progress
has been overstated, evidence of the claims of Afro-
pessimism is more muted. In the reviews of research
on diversity and on race and economic inequality
below, we show how CRT and Afro-pessimism
could fruitfully shape the current research.
Diversity and Progress
In line with the interest convergence hypothesis,
diversity initiatives rose to prominence in the
1980s in response to the Reagan administrations
dismantling of affirmative action. During this
period, federally supported policies to redress
racial inequality were replaced with voluntary
diversity initiatives promoting the inclusion of
underrepresented groups, racial or otherwise (Kelly
and Dobbin 1998). White conservatives played a
decisive role in limiting affirmative actions resti-
tutive authority often via legal action. Such recent
historical evidence reveals diversitys close asso-
ciation with whiteness. Thus, it is not simply that
diversity is for white people but rather that diver-
sity itself is a product of whiteness (Berrey 2015a).
Given diversitys white roots, it should surprise
few that whites rather than people of color are the
primary beneficiaries of the current diversity
moment (Berrey 2015; Burke 2012; Mayorga-
Gallo 2014; Randolph 2013). Below, we examine
the advantages white individuals and organizations
derive from diversity, identify areas for future
research, and conclude with a brief discussion of
why diversity is not emblematic of racial progress.
Diversitys Individual Value
The insight that American understandings of diver-
sity are informed by whiteness was first asserted by
bell hooks in her 1992 book Black Looks.
Sociologists Joyce Bell and Douglas Hartmann
(2007:909) further developed this perspective,
arguing dominant conceptions of diversity emanate
from a white center wherein racial minorities are
outside contributors or addons to white life.
This idea resonates with CRTs contention that
Western ideas about humanity position people of
color as the eternal other to whites (Mills 1999).
This white framing of diversity means that
many whites, but specifically middle-class whites,
6 Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
construct diversity as a source of personal enrich-
ment (Burke 2012; Reay et al. 2007). By consum-
ing diversityor as hooks (1992) described,
eating the othermiddle-class whites achieve student learning, particularly for whites, by adding
racial and class distinction. Embracing diversity
allows them to position themselves as a different
kind of whiteone who is tolerant, progressive,
and cosmopolitan (Burke 2012; Hughey 2012;
Mayorga-Gallo 2014).
This finding points to a weakness in the diver-
sity literature. To date, most diversity research
focuses on the perceptions and practices of middle-
and upper-class whites. Working- and lower-class
whites are rarely studied. Now is an important time
to investigate how they think about diversity, espe-
cially considering the medias contention that
Trumps antidiversity base (i.e., those supporters
who chant build a wall at his rallies) consists of
less privileged whites. Although perhaps true, the
medias depiction of working- and lower-class
whites as uniformly racist warrants further study,
as some research indicates they (especially women)
are more tolerant of minorities than middle-class
whites (Bonilla-Silva 2014).
Furthermore, scholars focus on white under-
standings of diversity overshadows research on
how racial minorities make sense of diversity.
Drawing from the insights of CRT and racial
socialization research, we know that racialization
varies by racial group and that these differing
experiences often produce distinct ways of seeing
and interpreting the social world (Burton et al.
2010). Consequently, it stands to reason that
minority perspectives of diversity may vary by
racial group and that not all minorities understand
diversity through a lens of white normativity.
Diversity statements by #blacklivesmatter activ-
ists support this contention. They too espouse an
inclusive vision of diversity, but they center their
understanding within the black experience.
Additional research is needed to assess how
minorities from different racial backgrounds and
social structural locations understand diversity.
Diversitys Organizational Value
Diversity enriches (white) organizations. A diverse
constituency helps an organization position itself
as a stalwart supporter of an inclusive work envi-
ronment, even if the organization is less inclusive
than it purports (Embrick 2006). Diversity also
improves business outcomes; employees of color
help businesses expand into emerging markets via
the identification, design, and marketing of
products that appeal to a broader demographic of
consumers (Herring 2009; Kelley and Dobbin
1998). In universities, diversity is thought to enrich
color and complexity to their academic experience
(Berrey 2015). That said, research offers some sup-
port for the singularity of antiblackness, showing
that schools reward immigrant minorities to the
extent that they are different from African
Americans (Randolph 2013).
Diversity researchers are more ambivalent about
the benefits minorities derive from organizational
diversity initiatives. We know, for example, that
white women experienced the greatest educational
and employment gains from affirmative action
(Collins 2011; Kalev, Dobbin, and Kelly 2006).
Thus, the question many struggle with is why minor-
ity outcomes have not been more robust. For some
researchers, the answer is linked to the white center-
ing of organizational culture (Collins 2011; Embrick
2006, 2011; Moore and Bell 2011). Like the individual-
oriented diversity scholarship, white organizations
construct diversity as an addendum to the core
function in a company (Collins 2011:535). For
example, of the 708 private enterprises Kalev et al.
(2006) assessed from 1971 to 2002, most pursued
diversity initiatives focused on bias reduction, even
though such initiatives were expensive and rela-
tively ineffective because of whites perceptions of
reverse discrimination (p. 611). Theoretical and
empirical research is needed to delineate what a suc-
cessful diversity initiative might look like and also
what it is capable of achieving.
More research is also needed to test whether
diversity practices reproduce antiblackness. A
strategy would be to disaggregate diversity prac-
tices toward different racialized groups. That is, do
different racial and ethnic minorities enjoy differ-
ent benefits from the diversity regimes of organiza-
tions? Some research suggests that corporations
make distinctions among minorities that reinforce
the subordination of black Americans. For instance,
research on skilled labor in California finds that
employers prefer Latinos to African Americans
because they believe Latinos are more compliant
(Waldinger and Lichter 2003). Afro-pessimism and
CRT both caution against the practice of lumping
people of color together, because it obscures the
unequal distribution of racial gains.
Diversity as Racial Progress?
The question most diversity researchers grapple
with is whether diversity signals racial progress.
Ray et al. 7
For most researchers, the answer is no. Part of the
problem stems from the white centering of diver-
sity. When whites think about racial diversity only
in terms of the value it adds to white individuals
and organizations, they reduce minority life and
concerns to commodities whites may consume for
pleasure or advantage (hooks 1993; Hughey 2012;
Mayorga-Gallo 2014). This consumption-oriented
embrace of diversity contributes to a white
fetishization of diversity that elevates white indi-
viduals and organizations but does less for the
racial groups they purport to embrace.
Diversitys lack of conceptual specificity also
inhibits progressive change. The term diversity
does not privilege any one identity or relation of
power. Rather, it positions all structural locations
as equal, obfuscating the unique histories of
oppressed racial groups. Individual or organiza-
tional avowals of support for diversity are thus
not necessarily declarations of support for racial
equality. As the meaning of the word has expanded
to signify the inclusion of difference, it has
moved away from affirmative actions mandate to
redress racial inequality (Collins 2011; Embrick
2011; Moore and Bell 2011).
Furthermore, because diversity today represents
racial presence, emphasis is placed on the inten-
tions of individuals and organizations rather than
outcomes (Mayorga-Gallo 2014). This allows indi-
viduals and organizations to avoid the issue of
racial inequality and absolves them of having to
consider or redress racial disparities. The conse-
quence is that racial inequality continues to flour-
ish but within an environment that appears more
sensitive and responsive to race-related matters
(Moore and Bell 2011).
Progress and Backlash in
Labor Market Research
Historically, scholars have followed a racial prog-
ress narrative in their accounts of the trajectory of
the inclusion of people of color into the labor mar-
ket. This research takes the upward mobility of
racialized groups such as Asian Americans and
some Latinos as signs of the success of the open
opportunity structure in the United States (Portes
and Fernndez-Kelly 2008). Yet the consistent lag
of blacks within the labor market has interrupted
the narrative of seamless mobility of racialized
groups (Wilson 1997). CRT challenges the narra-
tive of smooth economic mobility, and Afro-
pessimism highlights the conditions that make
black economic immobility distinct.
W.E.B. Du Bois was one of the first scholars to
examine the economic conditions of the black
community. His pioneering The Philadelphia
Negro (Du Bois [1899] 1996) continues to influ-
ence scholarship in this field, and studies from the
Atlanta Sociological Laboratory helped establish a
legacy of research on the so-called Negro problem
(Wright 2006). More than a century later, many of
the issues identified by Du Boiseconomic exclu-
sion, racialized policing, and disproportionate pov-
ertyremain central areas of sociological inquiry.
Contemporary research on race and the labor mar-
ket has been deeply shaped by the debates sur-
rounding William Julius Wilsons (1978) concept
of the urban underclass. Beginning with his con-
troversial 1978 argument in The Declining
Significance of Race, Wilsons work has changed
somewhat over the years in efforts to clarify his
perspective. Generally, Wilson now contends that
changes to the structure of the labor market and
patterns of migration that produce skill and spatial
mismatch and high levels of joblessness in urban
ghettos are primary causes of racial economic
inequality (Wilson 2009).
However, Wilson (1978, 2009) also says that
these conditions produce cultural adaptations that are
not conducive to upward mobility. Furthermore, he
argues that the liberal reaction to popular culture of
poverty arguments has created a climate in which lib-
eral academics are afraid to explore culture as a pos-
sible component in the stratification of the African
American urban underclass; he argues that culture is
a factor, but not as significant as larger structural
issues (Wilson 1978, 1987, 2009). Considering
black/white inequality in the United States, residen-
tial segregation is certainly a factor when it comes to
job prospects and employment, as skill and spatial
mismatch issues come into play (Janoski, Luke, and
Oliver 2014). Furthermore, residential segregation
also has a tremendous impact on wealth inequality, as
the investments of black families in housing did not
appreciate at nearly the same rates as most white
families in the postWorld War II era of suburbaniza-
tion (Conley 2009; Oliver and Shapiro 2006; Sin and
Krysan 2015).
How Sociologists Study Race and the
Labor Market
Some of the most promising current studies of
labor market inequality include audit studies
(Bertrand and Mullainathan 2003; Dovidio and
Gaertner 2000; Pager 2007). Devah Pagers 2007
book Marked is a classic example of an audit study.
8 Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
In the book, Pager randomizes the race and crimi-
nal justice status of job applicants and finds that in
her study, among other things, a white applicant
with a criminal record is more likely to be called
back for a job he or she applied to than a black
applicant with no criminal record. In this example,
the potential for intersectional examinations of dis-
crimination in the labor market is evident. Studies
using data from the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission (EEOC) complicate the narrative of
white womens disproportionate gains from the
civil rights movement, showing that weakened
enforcement by the EEOC has limited gains from
affirmative action policies (Roscigno 2007;
Stainback and Tomaskovic-Devey 2012).
Furthermore, individuals have used interviews
to explore how social networks perpetuate and
reproduce racial inequality, sometimes systemati-
cally through black applicants lacking access to
referrals, apprenticeships, or other opportunities
(Janoski et al. 2014; Royster and Steinberg 2003).
A CRT perspective informed by interest conver-
gence would ask how decreases in black/white
inequality can lead to white backlash, as whites see
the benefits of other groups as their own losses
(Bell 1980; Feagin and Vera 1995).
Incorporating CRT and Afro-Pessimism
in Sociological Labor Market Research
The work of Wilson and others on the black under-
class is important and problematic, as the focus on
inner-city black poverty neglects the poverty of
rural African Americans, people of other races, and
multiracial individuals (Wilson 1978, 1987).
Although from the perspective of Afro-pessimism,
it makes sense in the United States to pay attention
to black/white gaps in different areas because of
the long history and contemporary realities of black
exceptionalism, this should not be to the neglect of
other groups. Furthermore, cross-national compar-
ative studies of race and economics would enrich
our understanding of commonalities and difference
in the market production of racial inequality.
Similarly, artificially homogenized racial catego-
ries leave little room for variation within the cate-
gories; for example, exploring socioeconomic
status beyond the aggregate categories of Latino or
Asian, or exploring how immigrant groups eco-
nomically assimilate.
Considering the malleability of racial categories
and their change over time, as interracial romantic
relationships have been on a small but significant
rise, the population of individuals who identify as
multiracial has increased (Luke and Oser 2014;
Rockquemore and Brunsma 2002). What are some
of the consequences for this in terms of labor market
research? As just one example, multiracial individu-
als who identify as black with a black parent and a
white parent may have access to some of their white
parents social networks and may be advantaged in
the labor market relative to those who identify as
black. Additionally, research indicates that colorism
affects the wage gap, such that darker skinned black
men are paid less than their fairer skinned counter-
parts (Goldsmith, Hamilton, and Darity 2007).
How might policy be informed by this research?
Some prominent scholars have made a case for rep-
arations (Coates 2014; Conley 2009; Feagin 2010).
Their primary opposition, beyond white reticence,
is not to the principle of reparations, which can be
justified by referencing historical payments to other
groups (e.g., Japanese internment camp repara-
tions), but the argument that reparations are too dif-
ficult to administer fairly. Difficulties surrounding
the administration of payments and determining
reasonable amounts remain. Darity, Lahiri, and
Frank (2010) showed that poorly administered pay-
ments may exacerbate racial income gaps given
blacks lack of access to productive capital. Critical
race theorists have long supported reparations as an
intervention to both historic and ongoing racial
exclusion (Matsuda 1987). Reparations could be
considered part of what CRT has called radical
emancipation by law (Bell 1995), which reshapes
racial structures through legislation.
Conclusion
We broadly argue that the tools of CRT and Afro-
pessimism are currently underused within the soci-
ology of race and ethnicity. Specifically, we see
promise for further incorporating aspects of these
theoretical traditions into the substantive areas of
research on diversity and race in the labor market
(as two examples). Scholars who study race and
racism should challenge narratives of linear racial
progress. Additionally, we encourage an orienta-
tion toward the radical emancipation by law
when studying racial inequality and its systemic
and legal roots. As interest convergence predicts,
the embrace of diversity benefits whites more than
people of color. Diversity rhetoric and the phrase
people of color obscure differences among
racialized minority groups. Still, there is some
research suggesting that diversity practices repro-
duce antiblackness, as Afro-pessimism would pre-
dict. Diversity discourse may be the height of the
Ray et al. 9
racial progress narrative at the current moment,
with its happy talk of transcending race and
embracing difference (Bell and Hartmann 2007).
Yet this happy talk still revolves around a white
center (Bell and Hartmann 2007:908).
Research on the incorporation of people of color
into the labor market supports the claim that blacks
face distinct obstacles. Racial progress narratives
are inadequate when describing black labor market
participation, given that the black unemployment
rate remains near recessionary levels despite the
United States economic recovery (White 2015).
Antiblackness is an especially useful concept for
explaining the persistent lag in black economic
mobility compared with that of whites and of many
racial and ethnic minorities. Still, conventional
research into labor market inequality has not con-
sidered antiblackness as factor that explains black
economic inequality. Afro-pessimism might help
push sociologists to develop a specific sociology of
antiblackness that refuses to homogenize various
racisms. In sum, we hope this review will help mod-
erate claims about the near inevitability of racial
progress. Instead, we view the racial landscape
through the lens of racial realism, which suggests
that the mechanisms producing racial inequality
mutate, rather than die off.
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Author Biographies
David Luke attended Grand Valley State University and
earned bachelors degrees in Accounting and Sociology,
subsequently working as an accountant and earning his
Certified Public Accountant license. David returned to
school to study sociology and earned his Masters degree
in 2012. He has written about interracial relationships,
race and class inequality, and co-authored the 2014 book
The Causes of Structural Unemployment: Four Factors
that Keep People from the Jobs They Deserve, published
by Polity. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in sociology
with a dissertation focusing on affirmative action and
diversity programs. David also works for the University
of Kentucky as Associate Director of the Martin Luther
King Center.
12 Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
Antonia Randolph is a lecturer in the Department of
Sociology, Social Work, and Anthropology at Christopher
Newport University, Virginia. Her research and teaching
interests include diversity discourse in education, multi-
cultural capital, non-normative black masculinity, and the
production of misogyny in hip-hop culture. She has been
published in Anthropology and Education Quarterly,
Youth and Society, and Race, Gender, and Class. In 2013,
her book The Wrong Kind of Different: Challenging the
Meaning of Diversity in American Schools was published
by Teachers College Press. Her current book project,
Thats My Heart, examines portrayals of intimate rela-
tionships and of black inner-life in hip-hop culture.
Randolph holds a BA in Sociology from Spelman College,
Georgia, and a PhD in Sociology from Northwestern
University, Illinois.
Victor Ray is an assistant professor of sociology at the
University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His work has been
published in the Ethnic and Racial Studies Review,
Socious, Annals of the American Academy of Political
and Social Science, The Journal of Marriage and Family
and Contexts. His work has been funded by the Ford
Foundation Diversity Fellowship, the American
Sociological Association Minority Fellowship, and The
National Science Foundation.
Megan R. Underhill is an assistant professor of sociology
at the University of North Carolina Asheville. Her research
agenda focuses on racial socialization practices among
middle and lower-class white parents, specifically as it
relates to parents understanding of racial inequality and
their negotiation of interracial contact for their children.