TRANSIT AFFINITIES

Much of the scholarship on poor Black urban communities focuses on social disorganization at the neighborhood level and how Blacks experience various institutional inequalities that impact their access to quality education and housing, jobs, and equitable public transportation. But Black social life is not a monolith of chaos, subjugation, and inequalities, nor is it confined to stationary neighborhoods. Black urban life is in fact vibrant, celebratory, and communal. Using two years of ethnographic observations on Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) buses and trains, we highlight the sociality of Black mobile experiences within Black spaces. Specifically, we examine how Blacks, while traveling into and through majority Black communities, form positive intraracial relationships that we refer to as Black transit affinities, which are a type of actively developed, temporal, meaningful interactions that take place on mobile systems. These transit affinities move beyond linked fate and solidarity but are actively formed and have four distinctive features, they are: 1) personal; 2) mutually engaged; 3) actively maintained although interrupted by stops on the bus or train; and, 4) particular to majority-minority areas of the city. These transit affinities are intraracial and were not observed, as defined, interracially or in majority White areas of the city. We do not argue that they are exclusive to Blacks but that they took place among Blacks in Black spaces that have often been ascribed a narrative of disorganization, violence, and social fragmentation.

Gender Matters: Racial Variation and Marital Stability Among Intraracial Couples

Studies assessing differences between intraracial and interracial marriages typically use race data from one time point. Yet because racial identification can vary across time, context, or perspective, whether a relationship is defined as intraracial or interracial can also differ. We use a sample of 2,845 respondents from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997, whose marriages are intraracial (based on 2002 data) to examine whether marital stability differs for those whose racial identification varied across waves and whether this effect is moderated by gender. Approximately 6% of respondents in intraracial relationships had inconsistent racial identities. We also find evidence that the association between racial variation and marital stability differs by gender. Women whose race varied are more likely to divorce than any other group, including static-race couples and men whose race varied. More attention should be given to intraracial heterogeneity, especially as groups that are more likely to have varying racial identities grow in number.

Commitment in Interracial Relationships: Dyadic and Longitudinal Tests of the Investment Model

Empirical research to explain why partners in interracial relationships appear to be less committed than partners in intraracial relationships is scarce. The Investment Model has been shown to be a robust predictor of relationship commitment, but has only been applied to interracial relationships on a few occasions. Using a sample of 232 couples ( n = 172 intraracial; n = 60 interracial), we found the Investment Model performs comparatively well in interracial and intraracial relationships. However, there were some differences in the influence of investments on commitment. Investments were associated with concurrent commitment in intraracial but not interracial relationships, and an interdependent version of the Investment Model (Actor–Partner Interdependence Investment Model) fit intraracial relationships better than interracial relationships. The results suggest there are nuances in applying the Investment Model to interracial relationships, but that the model is promising for understanding the commitment of partners who experience marginalization.