Despite the rapid expansion of higher education, many young adults still enter the labor market without a college education. However, little research has focused on racial/ethnic earnings disadvantages faced by non-college-educated youth. We analyze the restricted-use data from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 to examine racial/ethnic earnings disparities among non-college-educated young men and women in their early 20s as of 2016, accounting for differences in premarket factors and occupation with an extensive set of controls. Results suggest striking earnings disadvantages for Black men relative to white, Latinx, and Asian men. Compared to white men, Latinx and Asian men do not earn significantly less, yet their earnings likely differ substantially by ethnic origin. While racial/ethnic earnings gaps are less prominent among women than men, women of all racial/ethnic groups have earnings disadvantages compared to white men. The results call for future studies into the heterogeneity within racial/ethnic groups and the intersectionality of race/ethnicity and gender among non-college-educated young adults.

In the study, we engage the question of racial "fluidity" by examining patterns of ethnoracial identification in adolescence and, importantly, in ethnoracial identification between adolescence and adulthood using two waves of data from a nationally representative, longitudinal study of adolescents who were in Grades 7 to 12 during the 1994 to 1995 school year. Our theoretical framework draws from social identity theory and brings together bodies of research in race and immigration to make a case for the importance of phenotype, ancestry, and sociocultural elements as potential mechanisms for patterns among Latinx youth, as shifts in ethnoracial identification are predominantly a Latinx phenomenon. The bulk of the findings suggest that both phenotype and immigration are important factors for ethnoracial self-identification among Latinx youth, as well as shifts in their ethnoracial identification in young adulthood. Given what we know about ethnoracial categorization and ascription, findings suggest that, overall, shifts in ethnoracial identification among Latinx youth are primarily about bringing their self-identification into alignment with how they think they tend to be (and most likely are) perceived by others, which we suggest represents a Sedimentation of the Color Line. We close by discussing the myriad implications of our findings for the U.S. racial order and the ongoing debate about how to "measure" the Latinx population.

Although recent scholarship has enumerated many individual-level consequences of criminal legal citations and sentences involving fines and fees, we know surprisingly little about the structural consequences of monetary sanctions or legal financial obligations (LFOs). We use social disorganization and critical race theories to examine neighborhood-level associations between and among LFO sentence amounts, poverty, and racial and ethnic demographics. Using longitudinal data from the Washington State Administrative Office of the Courts, and the American Community Survey, we find LFOs are more burdensome in high-poverty communities and of color, and that per-capita rates of LFOs sentenced are associated with increased future poverty rates across all neighborhoods.

Of course, ensuring safe environments in the U.S. educational system is paramount. It is also evident, however, inequalities associated with immigration, race/ethnicity, and situational context can impede school safety pursuits. Although prior research has revealed a pattern between "downward" assimilation and increased experiences with student-level violence and disorder for the children of racial/ethnic immigrants (i.e., first- and second-generation), investigations about school-level rates of violence and disorder associated with the context of reception remain uncertain. Our study seeks to contribute to the research about immigration, racial/ethnic inequality, education, and violence by examining the associations between context, school violence, and crime, and the schooling of children of immigrants by drawing on a context of reception conceptual framework to address three research questions. First, is there an association between an increasing proportion of children of immigrants and school crimes (i.e., violence, property damage, and substance use)? Second, are there differences linked to the context of reception (i.e., urban, suburban, town, and rural) in the association between the increasing proportion of children of immigrants and school crime? Third, are there racial/ethnic differences in the association between the increasing proportion of children of immigrants and school crimes in distinct contexts? Findings indicate that the children of racial/ethnic minority immigrants have significantly distinct associations with rates of school violence and crime across all contexts; however, there are important and distinctive nuances that are presented and examined.

How does skin color shape the social networks and integration pathways of phenotypically diverse immigrant groups? Focusing on Dominicans and Puerto Ricans, groups with considerable diversity across the Black-White color line, we explore whether migrants to the United States have greater color homophily in their primary social networks than non-migrants in the sending societies. We analyze egocentric network data, including unique skin color measures for both 114 respondents and 1,702 alters. We test hypotheses derived from ethnic unifier theory and color line racialization theory. The data show evidence of color homophily among Dominicans, but suggest that these patterns may be imported from the sending society rather than fostered by the U.S. context. Further, we find that migrants' skin color is associated with having ties to White or Black Americans, but with different patterns for each ethnic group. We discuss the implications of these findings for economic mobility and U.S. racial hierarchies.

This study examines the mental health significance of Barack Obama's 2008 presidential election for black adults. His election was a milestone moment. Hence, we expect black adults would experience improved mental health after the first self-identified black person wins election to the most powerful position in the United States. Using nationally representative survey data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), we address this expectation by predicting poor mental health days that black adults report pre-election and post-election. We find no overall difference in poor mental health days between the time periods. However, a statistical interaction between gender and time period demonstrates black men report 1.01 fewer poor mental health days after the election, whereas black women report .45 more poor mental health days after the election.

This research concerns the location and stability of highly racially diverse census tracts in the United States. Like some other scholars, the authors define such tracts conservatively, requiring the significant presence of at least three racialized groups. Of the approximately 65,000 tracts in the country, there were 197 highly diverse tracts in 1990 and 998 in 2010. Most were located in large metropolitan areas. Stably integrated highly diverse tracts were the exception rather than the rule. The vast majority of highly diverse tracts transitioned to that state from being predominantly White. Those that transitioned from being highly racially diverse were most likely to transition to being majority Latino. Although the absolute level of metropolitan racial diversity has no effect on the stability of high-diversity tracts, change in both metropolitan-scale racial diversity and population raise the probability of a tract's transitioning to high diversity. Metropolitan-scale racial diversity did not affect the stability of highly diverse tracts, but it did alter the patterns of succession from them. The authors also found that highly diverse tracts were unstable and less likely to form in metropolitan areas with high percentages of Blacks. Increased metropolitan-level diversity mutes this Black population share effect by reducing the probability of high-diversity tract succession to a Black majority.

Skin tone is a significant marker used by others to evaluate and rank the social position of minorities. While skin color represents a particularly salient dimension of race, its consequences for health remains unclear. This study uses four waves of panel data from the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) Study and random intercept multilevel models to address three research questions critical to understanding the skin color-health relationship among African American adults (N=1,680): what is the relationship between skin color and two global measures of health (cumulative biological risk and self-rated health)? To what extent are these relationships gendered? Do socioeconomic resources, stressors, and discrimination help explain the skin color-health relationship? Findings indicate that dark-skinned women have more physiological deterioration and self-report worse health than lighter-skinned women. These associations are not evident among men, and socioeconomic factors, stressors, and discrimination do not explain the light-dark disparity in physiological deterioration among women. Differences in self-ratings of health among women are partially explained by education and income. Results of this study highlight heterogeneity in determinants of health among African Americans, and provide a more nuanced understanding of health inequality by identifying particularly disadvantaged members of racial groups that are often assumed to have monolithic experiences.

Using the 2015 Latino National Health and Immigration Survey (N= 1,197) we examine the relationship between physical and mental health status and three multidimensional measures of race: 1) "street race," or how you believe other "Americans" perceive your race at the level of the street; 2) socially assigned race or what we call "ascribed race," which refers to how you believe others usually classify your race in the U.S.; and 3) "self-perceived race," or how you usually self-classify your race on questionnaires. We engage in intersectional inquiry by combining street race and gender. We find that only self-perceived race correlates with physical health and that street race is associated with mental health. We also find that men reporting their street race as Latinx or Arab were associated with higher odds of reporting worse mental health outcomes. One surprising finding was that, for physical health, men reporting their street race as Latinx were associated with higher odds of reporting optimal physical health. Among women, those reporting their street race as Mexican were associated with lower odds of reporting optimal physical health when compared to all other women; for mental health status, however, we found no differences among women. We argue that "street race" is a promising multidimensional measure of race for exploring inequality among Latinxs.

Differences in consumption patterns are usually treated as a matter of preferences. In this article, the authors examine consumption from a structural perspective and argue that black households face unique constraints restricting their ability to acquire important goods and services. Using data from the Consumer Expenditure Surveys, the authors examine racial differences in total spending and in spending on major categories of goods and services (food, transportation, utilities, housing, health care, and entertainment). The authors also capture heterogeneous effects of racial stratification across class by modeling racial consumption gaps across household income levels. The results show that black households tend to have lower levels of total spending than their white counterparts and that these disparities tend to persist across income levels. Overall, these analyses indicate that racial disparities in consumption exist independently of other economic disparities and may be a key unexamined factor in the reproduction of racial inequality.

Discrimination based on one's racial or ethnic background is one of the oldest and most perverse practices in the United States. While much of this research has relied on self-reported racial categories, a growing body of research is attempting to measure race through socially-assigned race. Socially-assigned or ascribed race measures how individuals feel they are classified by other people. This paper draws on the socially assigned race literature and explores the impact of socially assigned race on experiences with discrimination using a 2011 nationally representative sample of Latina/os (n=1,200). While much of the current research on Latina/os has been focused on the aggregation across national origin group members, this paper marks a deviation by using socially-assigned race and national origin to understand how being ascribed as Mexican is associated with experiences of discrimination. We find evidence that being ascribed as Mexican increases the likelihood of experiencing discrimination relative to being ascribed as White or Latina/o. Furthermore, we find that being miss-classified as Mexican (ascribed as Mexican, but not of Mexican origin) is associated with a higher likelihood of experiencing discrimination compared to being ascribed as white, ascribed as Latina/o, and correctly ascribed as Mexican. We provide evidence that socially assigned race is a valuable complement to self-identified race/ethnicity for scholars interested in assessing the impact of race/ethnicity on a wide range of outcomes.

Did rising immigration levels change racial and ethnic exogamy patterns for young adults in the United States? Adding local demographics to Qian & Lichter's (2007) national results, we examine the relationship between the size of the local immigrant population in urban and rural areas and U.S.-born individuals' exogamy patterns in heterosexual unions, controlling for the area's racial composition. Using Census 2000 race, ethnicity, and nativity data and log-linear models, we test hypotheses about the relationship between high levels of immigration from Asia and Latin America and endogamy rates for U.S.-born Latino/as and Asians. We find that U.S.-born Latino/as and Asians are not consistently more endogamous in high-immigrant areas once we control for population composition differences across local areas. Surprisingly, U.S.-born Blacks and Native Americans are significantly less endogamous in areas with more immigrants.

Education scholarship on race using quantitative data analysis consists largely of studies on the black-white dichotomy, and more recently, on the experiences of student within conventional racial/ethnic categories (white, Hispanic/Latina/o, Asian, black). Despite substantial shifts in the racial and ethnic composition of American children, studies continue to overlook the diverse racialized experiences for students of Asian and Latina/o descent, the racialization of immigration status, and the educational experiences of Native American students. This study provides one possible strategy for developing multidimensional measures of race using large-scale datasets and demonstrates the utility of multidimensional measures for examining educational inequality, using teacher perceptions of student behavior as a case in point. With data from the first grade wave of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Cohort of 1998-1999, I examine differences in teacher ratings of Externalizing Problem Behaviors and Approaches to Learning across fourteen racialized subgroups at the intersections of race, ethnicity, and immigrant status. Results show substantial subgroup variation in teacher perceptions of problem and learning behaviors, while also highlighting key points of divergence and convergence within conventional racial/ethnic categories.