Black American Social Identity and Its Blackness

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lionel K. McPherson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Identity ◽  
African Ancestry ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black American ◽  
Racial Classification

Understanding black American social identity has suffered from association with the race idea. Being black American is not a racial designation. The tendency to reduce color-conscious social identity to racial classification is a mistake. Black American social identity gets its “blackness” from traceable African ancestry and is marked by the legacy of slavery. Yet being black American has become an elective identity: Americans with visible African ancestry no longer must count as black. But this hardly threatens black social identity and black solidarity, which continue to represent resistance to dishonor and mistreatment attaching to blackness in the United States.

Weight Identity Among Older Adults in the United States: Genetic and Environmental Influences

2018 ◽  
pp. 262-274
Author(s):  
Robbee Wedow ◽  
Daniel A. Briley ◽  
Susan E. Short ◽  
Jason Boardman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Older Adults ◽  
Social Identity ◽  
Weight Status ◽  
Environmental Influences ◽  
Subjective Assessment ◽  
The United States ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Perceived Weight ◽  
Midlife Adults

This chapter uses twin pairs from the Midlife in the United States study to investigate the genetic and environmental influences on perceived weight status for midlife adults. The inquiry builds on previous work investigating the same phenomenon in adolescents, and it shows that perceived weight status is not only heritable, but also heritable beyond objective weight. Subjective assessment of physical weight is independent of one’s physical weight and described as “weight identity.” Importantly, significant differences are shown in the heritability of weight identity among men and women. The chapter ends by discussing the potential relevance of these findings for broader social identity research.

scholarly journals Gendered Religiosity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Landon Schnabel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Gender Differences ◽  
Social Identity ◽  
General Social Survey ◽  
The United States ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
Gender Expression ◽  
The Feminine

This study uses measures of cognitive and expressive aspects of gender as a social identity from the General Social Survey to examine whether and how they relate to religiosity. I find that religiosity is clearly gendered, but in different ways for women and men. Consistent with the feminine-typing of religion in the Christian-majority context of the United States, gender expression is linked with more religiousness among women but not men. Consistent with religion being a sometimes patriarchal institution, those with more pride in being men are more religious. I conclude that religiosity is gendered, that degendering and secularization processes could go hand-in-hand, and that future research on gender differences in religiosity should further examine variation among women and among men.

Economic Decline, Social Identity, and Authoritarian Values in the United States

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cameron Ballard-Rosa ◽  
Amalie Jensen ◽  
Kenneth Scheve
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Identity ◽  
Social Norm ◽  
Interactive Effect ◽  
The United States ◽  
Vote Choice ◽  
Economic Decline ◽  
Induced Labor ◽  
The Social ◽  
Negative Effect

Abstract Why does the contemporary backlash against globalization in the United States have such a substantial authoritarian character? We argue that sustained economic decline has a negative effect on the social identity of historically dominant groups. These losses lead individuals to be more likely to want to enforce social norm conformity—that is, adopt more authoritarian values—as a way to preserve social status and this effect is greater the larger the size of other groups in the population. Central to our account is the expectation of an interactive effect of local economic and demographic conditions in forging value responses to economic decline. The article evaluates this argument using an original 2017 representative survey in the United States. We find that individuals living in relatively diverse regions facing more intense competition from Chinese imports have more authoritarian values. We further find that the greater effect of globalization-induced labor market decline in more diverse areas is also evident for vote choice in the 2016 Presidential election.

scholarly journals Ethnic and Racial Identities of Second-Generation Black Immigrants in New York City

1994 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 795-820 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary C. Waters
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
Second Generation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ethnic Identities ◽  
Black American ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Origin Identity

This article explores the types of racial and ethnic identities adopted by a sample of 83 adolescent second-generation West Indian and Haitian Americans in New York City. The subjective understandings these youngsters have of being American, of being black American, and of their ethnic identities are described and contrasted with the identities and reactions of first-generation immigrants from the same countries. Three types of identities are evident among the second generation – a black American identity, an ethnic or hyphenated national origin identity, and an immigrant identity. These different identities are related to different perceptions and understandings of race relations and of opportunities in the United States. Those youngsters who identify as black Americans tend to see more racial discrimination and limits to opportunities for blacks in the United States. Those who identify as ethnic West Indians tend to see more opportunities and rewards for individual effort and initiative. I suggest that assimilation to America for the second-generation black immigrant is complicated by race and class and their interaction, with upwardly mobile second-generation youngsters maintaining ethnic ties to their parents’ national origins and with poor inner city youngsters assimilating to the black American peer culture that surrounds them.

Norm Enforcement in Markets: Group Identity and the Volunteering of Feedback

2020 ◽  
Vol 130 (629) ◽  
pp. 1248-1261
Author(s):  
Gary E Bolton ◽  
Johannes Mans ◽  
Axel Ockenfels
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Identity ◽  
Group Identity ◽  
The United States ◽  
Home Market ◽  
Feedback Information ◽  
Norm Enforcement ◽  
Common Group ◽  
Market Experiment ◽  
Market Identity

Abstract The provision of trader feedback is critical to the functioning of many markets. We examine the influence of group identity on the volunteering and informativeness of feedback. In a market experiment conducted simultaneously in Germany and the United States, we manipulate the interaction of traders based on natural social and induced home market identities. Traders are more likely to provide feedback information on a trader with whom they share a common group identity, and the effect is more pronounced for social identity than for home market identity. Both kinds of group identity promote rewarding good performance and punishing bad performance.

Identity and Institutions: The Social Construction of Trade Unions in Nineteenth-Century Germany and the United States

1993 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 371-394 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Herrigel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Identity ◽  
Labor Markets ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
The United States ◽  
Functional Adaptation ◽  
Character Structure ◽  
The Social ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
The Face

The aim of this research note is to begin to develop the idea that trade unions are historically constructed as much through considerations of social identity as they are through calculations of economic self-interest, market power, or functional adaptation in the face of changes in the division of labor. By social identity, I mean the desire for group distinction, dignity, and place within historically specific discourses (or frames of understanding) about the character, structure, and boundaries of the polity and the economy. Institutions such as trade unions, in other words, are constituted through and by particular understandings of the structure of the social and political worlds of which they are part. In making this argument, it should be immediately said that I in no way intend to claim that trade unions are only to be understood through the lens of identity or that they do not engage in strategic calculation either in labor markets or in the broader political economy. The point is that action along the latter lines presupposes some kind of commitment on, and even resolution of, issues concerning the former. The discussion below focuses on the emergence of trade union movements in the United States and Germany during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It Attempts first to develope the two cases as constituting a paradox and then, second, explains the paradox with an argument about identity.

Afro-Latina/os

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Ulises Decena
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
African Ancestry ◽  
Racial Diversity ◽  
The United States ◽  
Racial Identification ◽  
Latin Americans ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
Black Populations ◽  
Politics Of Race

The term Afro Latina/os references people in Latin America and in the Latino United States who claim African ancestry. Although the use of the prefix Afrocan be traced back to the work of intellectuals in Cuba, Mexico, and Brazil at the beginning of the 20th century, usages were connected with anti-racist and African Diaspora struggles, organizing, and advocacy in the second half of the 20th century. More recently, the appellation Afro Latina/o has become mobilized in US Latina/o communities as a critique of the processes through which racial diversity and black populations in these communities have been rendered invisible. Because it conjures various meanings and foci, several authors engaged in the study of afrolatinidades suggest that hemispheric, transnational, and comparative approaches are necessary to appreciate the nuances of use, categorization, and experience as Afro Latina/os navigate complex histories and politics of race, ethnicity, and belonging in the United States and the Americas. The author argues that the term appellation does not resolve the complexities of racial subordination, racism, and self-making among Latin Americans and US Latina/os. He further suggests that sites of unintelligibility, confusion, and perplexity are valuable in thinking of “Afro-Latina/o” as a term that points to a cluster of urgent intellectual and political problems stemming from the irreducibility of individual experience to any term or concept. The increase in claims of Afro-Latina/o as a marker of identity must be calibrated by a consideration of how institutional sites and think tanks collaborate in the making and sedimentation of existing and emerging grids of legibility. At the same time, claiming Afro-Latina/o needs to be understood as a project related to yet distinct from one’s racial identification and relationship with blackness, and the experience of US Latina/os and other ethnic/racial minorities suggests that the work continues to be not only to understand how individuals and groups categorize themselves and others, but also to better grasp what it is that terms such as Afro-Latino/a do.

Analysis of Black American Voters in Barack Obama’s Victory

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Kilson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black American ◽  
Unique Contribution ◽  
2008 Presidential Election ◽  
Black Voter ◽  
American President

This chapter probes the electoral attributes of a special political dynamic that contributed significantly to Barack Obama's victory in both the 2008 Democratic primary contests and in the national presidential election. That special political dynamic involved the unique contribution of African American voters (hereafter referred to as the Black Voter Bloc or BVB) in facilitating Obama's election as the first African American President of the United States. It argues that the BVB played a critical electoral role in the Obama campaign's delegate count victory in the Democratic primaries by early July 2008 and in the Obama–Biden Democratic ticket's victory over the McCain–Palin Republican ticket in the November 4, 2008, presidential election.

Perceptions of the heterogeneity of party elites in the United States

2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 444-454 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth N Simas
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Identity ◽  
Social Identity Theory ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Group Membership ◽  
The United States ◽  
Brand Names ◽  
Party Elites ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Psychological Bias

While it is widely accepted that in the United States, political party labels serve as brand names which cue voters about the beliefs and ideologies of members, I explore the possibility that the signals sent by these labels are contingent upon the party membership of the individual voter. More specifically, I draw on social identity theory and hypothesize that individuals will be more likely to perceive heterogeneity among members of their own party. I find support for this hypothesis in perceptions of both the overall ideologies and voting records of US senators. Additionally, I compare respondent perceptions back to actual voting records and find that inpartisans are (1) only more likely to be correct when senators do in fact vote differently and (2) significantly less likely to be correct when senators vote the same way. These results suggest that the partisan differences uncovered are due to psychological bias and not just informational asymmetries and that biases stemming from group membership may lead to distorted opinions of senators and the representation they provide.

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