Race-Relations Theories and the Racial Dynamics of Basketball Performance

Does the local, racial context influence racial differences in culture? I answer this question by testing predictions from group threat theory and the cultural division of labor about which high schools have greater black-white differences in basketball performance. Data are from the National Education Longitudinal Study are analyzed with multilevel ordered probit models. After controlling for predictors of sports performance in students’ families, schools, and neighborhoods, we find evidence for both theories. Black-white differences in basketball performance is greater in schools that are about 50% black, as group threat predicts, and in schools with more hierarchical segregation within them, as the cultural division of labor predicts. We also find that racial conflict within the schools mediates the effect of group threat. The theoretical implications of the findings are discussed.

Proving the proverbial gadfly: situating the historical and racial context of Southern medical works by Mary Louise Marshall

Health sciences librarianship has historically benefited from avoiding critical conversations around the role of race in the profession, reflected through a select few number of articles on the topic. The purpose of this study was to add to this body of literature and apply a critical librarianship framework on the early scholarly record of health sciences librarianship and the legacy of integration within the Medical Library Association (MLA). Three Southern medical works and the integration views of Mary Louise Marshall, the longest-serving president of MLA from 1941 to 1946, were thematically and textually analyzed to redress the profession’s long-standing legacy with Whiteness and Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) representation. In reframing the historic past of MLA both through Marshall’s works and her views, the goal is to acknowledge ways in which the profession has impeded progress and present steps to remedy appropriate outreach for the future.

“WHITENESS” IN CONTEXT

Using data from the 2008–2016 American Community Survey, we compare the racial identification responses of the Mexican-origin population residing in California to their counterparts in Texas, the two states with the largest and most established Mexican-origin populations. We draw on existing theory and research in order to derive a theoretical account of state-level historical mechanisms that are likely to lead to varying patterns of racial identification within the two states and a set of propositions predicting the nature of this variation. Results indicate that the Mexican-origin population in Texas is substantially more likely to claim White racial identification than their counterparts in California, even after accounting for factors related to racial identity formation. Further analysis indicates that this result is robust and buffets the notion that the historical development of the racial context in Texas has engendered a present-day context in which “Whiteness” carries a distinctive social value, relative to California’s ethnoracial context, and that this social value is reflected in the ways in which individuals of Mexican origin respond to race questions on U.S. Census surveys.

Suki Kim’s The Interpreter

This article argues that Suki Kim’s The Interpreter (2003) is influenced by and, at the same time, critically revises early American hard-boiled crime fiction, the genre with which it is least likely to be associated. Although dead bodies do not pile up in the novel, the urban world in which Kim’s protagonist operates, attempting to solve the case of her parents’ murder, is as treacherous as the world portrayed in early hard-boiled detective fiction. Kim has inherited from early hard-boiled crime fiction such elements as its rugged individualism, a cynical-but-sentimental worldview, and not least, its social concerns about economic inequality and corruption among the powerful. At the same time, Kim’s novel subtly reconfigures her hard-boiled sleuth as well as adapts the genre to a contemporary racial context. In this revision, both the institutional and personal practices of racism are placed on trial. Female solidarity is also celebrated as a means to counter the violence and corruption of a racialized society. In so doing, Kim’s novel subverts both the sexism and racism of the traditional detective genre. The conclusion of this article is that the novel legitimates a female immigrant and person of color’s right to belong and challenges the white masculine hegemony that the traditional hard-boiled genre maintains.