My current research...

I think there's some misconceptions out there about what graduate students do. I don't really know why I think there's misconceptions; I just get the impression that most people think grad students sit around on their butts and read books and drink coffee... I just finished most of my finals and junk today, so I thought I'd let you know what projects I've been working on sociologically speaking. They all involve a whole ton of statistics... woohoo...

My advisor Michael (Emerson) and I are working on a project that looks at the causes of residential segregation (residential segregation being the vast majority of neighborhoods that are all black, or all white, or all Hispanic). A lot of times whites say they don't want to move into a black neighborhood not because of the racial composition, but because black neighborhoods tend to have higher crime or worse schools or something like it. We did a study that pulls apart these non-race factors from race, to see if the racial composition of a neighborhood really does have an effect (even though everyone claims it doesn't). We find that for whites, the higher percent black or Hispanic a neighborhood is, the less likely they are to say they'd buy a house there, regardless of whether schools are great and crime is low and home values are high.
On the flip side, some people say that racial segregation is perpetuated by minorities who want to live together. You know, blacks want to live with blacks, and Hispanics want to live with Hispanics. Our study looks at that, too, and finds that it's simply not true: blacks' and Hispanics' likelihood of buying homes doesn't change based on the racial composition of a neighborhood (unlike whites). Interesting, I think.

I just finished the first draft of a paper yesterday that looks at how the racial composition of a student's high school affects where he or she applies and goes to college. I find that for both black and Hispanic students, the higher the percent minority at their high school, the greater likelihood students will apply (and go) to colleges that are a higher percent minority. I don't know if they are avoiding predominantly white colleges or seeking out predominantly minority colleges, but that's what's going on. And it's controlling for a student's academic achievement and all sorts of other school and individual characteristics. (Sure, this seems like "duh!" but no one has actually shown this phenomenon with data before).

Today I'm working on statistics for a paper Michael is writing with a professor from University of California, Irvine. It looks at health outcomes for foreign born blacks versus American born blacks. (Did you know that America is bad for your health?) In particular, it looks at where these foreign born blacks come from, and it finds that blacks that come from all-black regions (i.e. Africa, the Caribbean) have better health outcomes than blacks from more white regions (i.e. Europe).

A paper I wrote earlier this semester looks at how first, second, and third generation Hispanics' morals and attitudes differ. (The first generation is foreign born Hispanic immigrants, the second generation have foreign born parents but were US born themselves, and third generation means having foreign born grandparents but US born parents). I looked at attitudes toward homosexuality and abortion. The basic finding is that there's no difference between the generations in moral beliefs (i.e. Homosexuality is morally unacceptable, or abortion is morally unacceptable). However, there's a huge difference in attitudes toward policy on these things. The second and third generation are much more likely to support gay rights or legalized abortion, even though they are just as likely to say those things are morally unacceptable.

One other project I'm about to start looks at how feminist attitudes differ by race. Black men tend to be much more conservative than white men in feminist attitudes, whereas black women tend to be much more liberal than white women. We're trying to figure out: why this difference?

Lastly, my big project I'm putting together looks at people we call "Sixth Americans". (we = Michael and I). Most Americans fall into one of the five big racial categories: whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and American Indians. Not only are most people one race physically, but most people also live in social worlds comprised of people only their race. People tend to live in neighborhoods with people their race, go to church with people of their race, go to school with people of their race, have friends almost entirely of their own race, be married to people of their own race... It's true for all the racial groups: most people just are in a social world that is almost entirely their own race. Unfortunately, tons of research shows that this segregation is what perpetuates racial inequality (for instance, differences by race in income, wealth, health outcomes, educational attainment, etc).
There is a small minority of Americans (we estimate 15% or less) who are different. These people are in diverse social worlds, including living in multiracial neighborhoods, sending their kids to integrated schools, have friends of many races, maybe even have family members of another race. We call these people "Sixth Americans" because they are living outside the social boundaries of the five big racial groups; even though they come from one race, their social lives are not contained by racial boundaries. If segregation perpetuates inequality, then perhaps Sixth Americans could hold a clue to dismantling inequality. For the beginning, I'm working on stuff that looks at how people become comfortable in multiracial worlds, why they prefer multiracial to uniracial worlds, how they differ from people in uniracial worlds, etc. This is going to be my master's thesis, most likely.

Well, I guess it's obvious that I'm up to my ears in research on race! I love it, and find it really interesting. My next entry I'll explain what "I'm working on research..." actually entails day to day.