Barack Obama's election as president may be seen as a harbinger of a colorblind society, but a new study suggests that derogatory racial stereotypes are so powerful that merely being unemployed makes people more likely to be viewed by others -- and even themselves -- as black.
In a long-term survey of 12,686 people, changes in social circumstances such as falling below the poverty line or being sent to jail made people more likely to be perceived by interviewers as black and less likely to be seen as white. Altogether, the perceived race of 20% of the people in the study changed at least once over a 19-year period, according to the study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Saturday, December 13, 2008 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 2 inches; 90 words Type of Material: Correction
Racial stereotypes: An article in Tuesday's Section A about a recent study that found that people who fall into poverty or go to jail are more likely to self-identify and be perceived as black included this passage: "Changes in racial perceptions -- whether from outside or within -- were likely concentrated among those of mixed ethnicity, researchers said." That comment was made by researchers who were not a part of the study. The study's authors did not make such a speculation and say their results do not support such conclusions.
Changes in racial perceptions -- whether from outside or within -- were likely concentrated among those of mixed ethnicity, researchers said.
"After [junk bond financier] Michael Milken goes to prison, he'll be no more likely to say he's a black person or any less likely to say he's a white person," said Amon Emeka, a social demographer at USC who was not involved in the study. "[U.S. Supreme Court Justice] Clarence Thomas might say he's transcended race, but he wouldn't say that he's a white person, and certainly no one on the planet would say he's a white person."
Researchers have long recognized that a person's race affects his or her social status, but the study is the first to show that social status also affects the perception of race.
"Race isn't a characteristic that's fixed at birth," said UC Irvine sociologist Andrew Penner, one of the study's authors. "We're perceived a certain way and identify a certain way depending on widely held stereotypes about how people believe we should behave."
Penner and Aliya Saperstein, a sociologist at the University of Oregon, examined data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics' National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Though the ongoing survey is primarily focused on the work history of Americans born in the 1950s and 1960s, participants have also provided interviewers with information on a variety of topics, including health, marital status, insurance coverage and race.
On 18 occasions between 1979 and 1998, interviewers wrote down whether the people they spoke with were "white," "black" or "other."
