Papers by Whitney N Laster Pirtle
Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
Urban Education
Amidst institutional reckonings with anti-blackness, minority-serving institutions (MSIs) are tho... more Amidst institutional reckonings with anti-blackness, minority-serving institutions (MSIs) are thought to be an intervention. But, how do Black students perceive being served at Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs)? Analyzing focus groups ( n= 33), we find Black students perceived anti-blackness at an HSI from: overrepresentation of white personnel in power; lack of culturally attuned and financial support; racially hostile climate; and little solidarity from non-Black Latinx and other peers. We show that HSIs contend with anti-Black institutional embeddedness, too, and argue that the goals of HSIs to serve racially minoritized students will not be achieved unless they address institutional, organizational, and interpersonal anti-Blackness.
The Journal of General Education, 2019
This article examines the relationship between academic specialization and student exposure to a ... more This article examines the relationship between academic specialization and student exposure to a range of academic domains of knowledge. It uses a concentration measure—the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index—to investigate whether students who choose single majors or double major are more or less concentrated in nine domains of knowledge most postsecondary institutions consider to be the intellectual core of a liberal arts general education. The results, based on an analysis of 240 undergraduate transcripts, indicate that—relative to single majoring—choosing similar majors (hyperspecialization) significantly concentrates student learning and choosing very different majors (hypospecialization) leads to more breadth.
Social Sciences, 2022
White supremacy shaped both the formation of the South African racial state and the formation of ... more White supremacy shaped both the formation of the South African racial state and the formation of racial groups, including the creation of the Coloured category as mixed and liminal between White and Black. There are, however, debates about the continuing legacy of white supremacy in post-apartheid, contemporary South Africa. This paper joins others in the important task of delineating racial hierarchies within contemporary South African society to help reveal the form of oppression, and the accompanying underlying assumptions and ideologies, such as white supremacy, that allows racial difference and deprivation to remain. In this paper, I analyze semi-structured interview data from 50 “Coloured” adults in order to explore their understanding of white supremacy, the racial hierarchy, and contemporary racism. I find that white supremacy negatively impacts Coloureds’ lived experiences through shaping their experiences of structural and interpersonal discrimination from White South Afri...
Feminist Anthropology, 2021
This collective statement provides a general overview of the Cite Black Women movement, its princ... more This collective statement provides a general overview of the Cite Black Women movement, its principles, intellectual genealogy, charge, and history. It is both a reflection and an outline of the project's primary principles, hopes, and dreams.
Health Education & Behavior, 2020
Racial capitalism is a fundamental cause of the racial and socioeconomic inequities within the no... more Racial capitalism is a fundamental cause of the racial and socioeconomic inequities within the novel coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) in the United States. The overrepresentation of Black death reported in Detroit, Michigan is a case study for this argument. Racism and capitalism mutually construct harmful social conditions that fundamentally shape COVID-19 disease inequities because they (a) shape multiple diseases that interact with COVID-19 to influence poor health outcomes; (b) affect disease outcomes through increasing multiple risk factors for poor, people of color, including racial residential segregation, homelessness, and medical bias; (c) shape access to flexible resources, such as medical knowledge and freedom, which can be used to minimize both risks and the consequences of disease; and (d) replicate historical patterns of inequities within pandemics, despite newer intervening mechanisms thought to ameliorate health consequences. Interventions should address social inequa...
Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2019
ABSTRACT Hair is an easily changeable “racial marker” feature. Although growing interdisciplinary... more ABSTRACT Hair is an easily changeable “racial marker” feature. Although growing interdisciplinary research suggests that hairstyle influences how one is racially perceived, extant methodological practices in racial perception research reduce external validity. This study introduces new experimental and analytical procedures to test the effect of hairstyle on racial perception across racial contexts. Over 1,000 participants from primarily white, black and multiracial test sites racially categorized a diverse group of women from matched pairs of pictures in which the women have different hairstyles. Results from multilevel regression show that altering hairstyle significantly alters how participants perceive mixed-race women, Latinas, most black and some white women and that this varies by racial context with perceptions of race being less swayed by hairstyle in the multiracial context. Our research thus demonstrates that doing hair is a context-dependent part of “doing race” that has theoretical, methodological, and legal implications.
Social Science & Medicine, 2017
Exclusionary immigration policies, as a form of structural racism, have led to a sizeable undocum... more Exclusionary immigration policies, as a form of structural racism, have led to a sizeable undocumented population that is largely barred from access to resources in the United States. Existing research suggests that undocumented immigration status detrimentally impacts mobility, yet few studies have tested the impacts of legal status on psychological wellbeing. Most importantly, we know little about how changes to legal status impact wellbeing. Announced in 2012, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program allows eligible undocumented youth to apply for temporary lawful status. Drawing on crosssectional survey data from 487 Latino immigrant young adults in California collected in 2014 and 2015, we analyze the predictors of three specialized outcomes related to immigrants' psychological wellbeingddistress, negative emotions, and deportation worry before and after a transition from undocumented to lawfully present status. Results show that retrospective reports of past psychological wellness, when all respondents were undocumented, are predicted primarily by socioeconomic status. However, reports of current psychological wellness are predicted by DACA status. Our results demonstrate, for the first time, the positive emotional consequences of transitioning out of undocumented status for immigrant young adults.
SSM - Population Health, 2016
Despite a general acceptance of "race" as a social, rather than biological construct in the socia... more Despite a general acceptance of "race" as a social, rather than biological construct in the social sciences, racial health disparities research has given less consideration to the dimensions of race that may be most important for shaping persistent disparities in adult physical health status. In this study, we incorporate the social constructionist view that race is multidimensional to evaluate the health significance of two measures of race, racial self-identification and the socially perceived skin tone of black Americans, in a sample of black and white adults in the Nashville Stress and Health Study (N ¼1186). First, we use the approach most common in disparities research-comparing group differences in an outcome-to consider self-identified racial differences in allostatic load (AL), a cumulative biological indicator of physical dysregulation. Second, we examine intragroup variations in AL among blacks by skin tone (i.e. light, brown, or dark skin). Third, we assess whether the magnitude of black-white disparities are equal across black skin tone subgroups. Consistent with prior research, we find significantly higher rates of dysregulation among blacks. However, our results also show that racial differences in AL vary by blacks' skin tone; AL disparities are largest between whites and dark-skinned blacks and smallest between whites and light-skinned blacks. This study highlights the importance of blacks' skin tone as a marker of socially-assigned race for shaping intragroup and intergroup variations in adult physiological dysregulation. These results demonstrate the importance of assessing multiple dimensions of race in disparities research, as this approach may better capture the various mechanisms by which "race" continues to shape health.
Sociological Perspectives, 2015
The present study extends previous work on distress that arises from discrepancy between self and... more The present study extends previous work on distress that arises from discrepancy between self and interviewer racial identifications. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) data, we examine mental health consequences of inconsistency over time within expressed (self) and observed (interviewer) racial identifications among American Indians. Given that phenotype signals race, we also contribute to prior research by examining whether skin color moderates inconsistency’s mental health consequences. Analyses show that observed racial inconsistency increased American Indians’ depressive symptoms and suicidal ideation. That is, when interviewers labeled a respondent “American Indian” at one wave of data but not another, there were deleterious implications for mental health status. In addition, an interaction between observed inconsistency and skin color demonstrated that observed inconsistency tended to be harmful when respondents were observed as ...
Ethnicity & Disease, 2020
Background: This study considers how attributional and relational dimensions of ethnicity affect ... more Background: This study considers how attributional and relational dimensions of ethnicity affect Latinxs’ health outcomes.Methods: Using regression methods to analyze data from the 2006 Portraits of American Life Study, we examined how attributional and relational dimensions of ethnicity affect: 1) intragroup differences in Latinx mental and physical health status, as measured by feelings of worthlessness and self-rated health, respectively; and 2) intergroup differences between Latinxs and non-Hispanic Whites in these health outcomes.Results: Latinxs have higher odds of feelings of worthlessness and lower odds of self-reporting good/excellent health compared with non-Hispanic Whites. Additionally, intragroup differences in health are observed among Latinxs, conditioned on attributional or relational dimensions of ethnicity.Conclusion: Multidimensional measures of ethnicity that distinguish between characteristics associated with ethnicity (attributional) or race (relational) o...
Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, 2015
© 2015, Western Michigan University. All rights reserved. American youth transitioning to adultho... more © 2015, Western Michigan University. All rights reserved. American youth transitioning to adulthood consume more alcoholthan in any other period of the life course. This high level of consumptioncan result in serious consequences, including lost productivity, death and disability, sexual assault, and addiction.Nevertheless, relatively little is known, especially by race andgender, about how prior history of heavy drinking (e.g., in lateadolescence) impacts drinking in young adulthood. Utilizing datafrom the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1994-2004) forAfrican Americans, Latinos, and Whites (N = 2,300), we foundthat Whites and Latinos drink more than African Americans,and men report drinking more than women. However, accountingfor a history of heavy drinking introduces considerable variationin current drinking patterns by race–gender status. A historyof heavy drinking more than doubles the number of drinks consumedby African American women, putting their drinkinglevels on par...
Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 2020
The nation-state is one powerful entity that makes race. For instance, the mid-twentieth-century ... more The nation-state is one powerful entity that makes race. For instance, the mid-twentieth-century South African apartheid racial state cultivated a triracial hierarchy through officially naming three groups into law: White, Black (native African), and Coloured, with Coloured being defined and situated in the “racial middle” as neither White nor Black African. Yet because race is a social construction that is adaptive and dynamic, the state’s role in making race is also malleable and changing. This study offers a case study of how modern racial states re-make racial categories by focusing on the potential for re- or de-formation of the Coloured racial category since the end of apartheid in 1994 and 25 years into democracy. In conducting a critical race discourse analysis of official state forms and laws, the author finds that the post-apartheid nation-state challenges Coloureds’ racial categorization and position in the racial middle. It does this by simultaneously supporting nonracia...
Wellbeing, Space and Society
Feminist Anthropology, 2021
This collective statement provides a general overview of the Cite Black Women movement, its princ... more This collective statement provides a general overview of the Cite Black Women movement, its principles, intellectual genealogy, charge, and history. It is both a reflection and an outline of the project's primary principles, hopes, and dreams.
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Papers by Whitney N Laster Pirtle