822335
research-article2019
ASRXXX10.1177/0003122418822335American Sociological ReviewRay
American Sociological Review
2019, Vol. 84(1) 26–53
© American Sociological
Association 2019
DOI:
10.1177/0003122418822335
https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122418822335
journals.sagepub.com/home/asr
A Theory of Racialized
Organizations
Victor Raya
Abstract
Organizational theory scholars typically see organizations as race-neutral bureaucratic
structures, while race and ethnicity scholars have largely neglected the role of organizations
in the social construction of race. The theory developed in this article bridges these subfields,
arguing that organizations are racial structures—cognitive schemas connecting organizational
rules to social and material resources. I begin with the proposition that race is constitutive
of organizational foundations, hierarchies, and processes. Next, I develop four tenets: (1)
racialized organizations enhance or diminish the agency of racial groups; (2) racialized
organizations legitimate the unequal distribution of resources; (3) Whiteness is a credential;
and (4) the decoupling of formal rules from organizational practice is often racialized. I argue
that racialization theory must account for how both state policy and individual attitudes are
filtered through—and changed by—organizations. Seeing race as constitutive of organizations
helps us better understand the formation and everyday functioning of organizations.
Incorporating organizations into a structural theory of racial inequality can help us better
understand stability, change, and the institutionalization of racial inequality. I conclude with
an overview of internal and external sources of organizational change and a discussion of how
the theory of racialized organizations may set the agenda for future research.
Keywords
race and ethnicity, organizational theory, critical race theory, agency, racism
“After a social formation is racialized, its
‘normal’ dynamics always include a racial
component.”—Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (1997)
“Organizational theory could benefit from a
hostile perspective; it has been altogether
too accommodating to organizations and
their power.”—Charles Perrow (1979)
Scholars of organizations typically see organizations as race-neutral bureaucratic structures.
Scholars of race and ethnicity have largely
neglected the role of organizations in the social
construction of race. Claiming that organizational theory relies on a relatively superficial
understanding of race as an individual demographic characteristic, Wooten (2006) argues for
a rethinking of organizational theory grounded
in structural explanations (Bonilla-Silva 1997),
a standard among race scholars. Yet mainstream
organizational theory typically sees organizational formation, hierarchies, and processes as
race-neutral and operationalizes race as a personal identity. Similarly, scholars of race and
ethnicity often focus on the state, individuals, or
ideologies unconnected to material structures
a
The University of Tennessee-Knoxville
Corresponding Author:
Victor Ray, The University of TennesseeKnoxville, Department of Sociology, McClung
Tower, Knoxville, TN 37996-0490
Email: victorerikray@gmail.com
Ray
(Burke 2016). Leading scholars lament the lack
of a structural theory of race and organizations
(Bonilla-Silva 2015; Gans 2017), as organizations are key to understanding racialization
processes spanning macro-, meso-, and microsocial levels. This article answers these calls by
developing a theoretical framework of racialized organizations.
The goal of this theory is to bridge subfields
via critique and synthesis. Rather than developing an oppositional theoretical apparatus, I
briefly engage the literature on race and organizations to argue that each body of literature
misses key insights that would ultimately
strengthen theoretical development in the given
subfield. I then move toward synthesis by
extending Jung’s (2015) blend of BonillaSilva’s (1997) racialized social systems framework and Sewell’s (1992) dual theory of social
structure to argue that organizations are racial
structures that reproduce (and challenge) racialization processes. Schemas of sub- and superordination are encoded in the concept of race
(Bonilla-Silva 1997; Ray and Seamster 2016),
providing a template for organizational action.
Race connects cultural rules to social and material resources through organizational formation, hierarchy, and processes (Bonilla-Silva
1997; Sewell 1992). This template constructs
racial hierarchy between organizations at the
macro-institutional level, such that non-White
organizations are typically disadvantaged relative to White organizations. Within meso-level
organizations, these schematic relations are
recreated as hierarchies are racialized.1
Following these propositions, I develop
four lower-order tenets: (1) racialized organizations enhance or diminish the agency of
racial groups; (2) racialized organizations
legitimate the unequal distribution of
resources; (3) Whiteness is a credential; and
(4) decoupling is racialized. Each of these
tenets highlights the connection of racial
schemas to a particular set of material and
social resources. Seeing organizations as
racial structures provides a descriptively more
realistic picture of organizational formation,
hierarchies, and processes.
I then discuss changes in organizational
racialization.
Institutionally,
exogenous
27
sources of change result from the racial conflicts of constituents and social movements
(Bell 2014). Meso-level organizational changes
in racialization may stem from competitive
pressures—for example, attempts at gaining
market share (Skrentny 2013) or the ability to
recruit or discipline labor (Ngai 2003). Mesolevel racial change may also arise endogenously from changes in organizational routines
(Feldman and Pentland 2003). Finally, individual acts of discrimination, aggregated
across the organizational landscape, magnify
the power of local racial projects. Because the
outcome of racial conflict is unknowable
beforehand, organizational racialization is not
simply a reflection of an underlying racialized
social system (Bonilla-Silva 1997).
My approach replaces the notion of organizations as race-neutral with a view of organizations as constituting and constituted by
racial processes that may shape both the policies of the racial state and individual prejudice. For example, as Table 1 shows,
individual racial biases are empowered by
their connection to meso-level organizational
resources. Thus, the racial order is reproduced via multiple organizational mechanisms (Ray and Seamster 2016). Indeed, the
resilience of racial inequality depends on
mechanisms being thought of not as a single
“thing” but rather, as Gross (2009) claims,
habituated responses accounting for both the
stability of a racialized social system and,
under situations of unpredictability, changes
in that system, as people respond creatively to
emergent problems. In isolation, individual
prejudice and racial animus may matter little;
but when these are put into practice in connection to organizational processes such as
racialized tracking, job-typing, or exclusion,
they help shape the larger racial order.
Recently, sociological theory has taken a turn
toward meso-level analysis (Fine 2012; Sewell
2016). In practice, as systems theorists show
(McLeod and Lively 2006), it is often difficult to
empirically separate the effects of macro, micro,
and meso levels. Nevertheless, systems theorists
maintain that this analytic distinction allows
scholars to focus attention on specific features of
the social order while recognizing that social
American Sociological Review 84(1)
28
Table 1. Levels of Analysis in the Study of Race and Ethnicity
Typical Analytic
Frames
Representative
Features
Institutional (Macro)
The racial state
Institutionalized racism
State racial categorization
Racialized laws (explicit
or implicit)
Expropriation
Group membership
State resources
National inclusion
Organizational (Meso)
Individual workplaces
Schools
Churches
Wage differentials
Racialized tracking
Racial segregation
Jobs, equal pay
Equitable education
Enforcement of antidiscrimination law
Stereotypes
In-group favoritism
Interactions
Exclusion
Unequal treatment
Level of Analysis
Individual Level (Micro) Prejudice
Racial attitudes
Implicit bias
Conflict Over
Note: This table highlights typical sites for empirical analysis in the study of race and ethnicity. As I show
in the text, race scholars often conflate macro-level institutions and meso-level organizations. This table
shows the analytic distinction between levels and illustrates the possibility of multiply-determined racial
conflict, as clashes at one level—for instance, over jobs and equal pay—can have implications for conflicts
over national inclusion or personal interactions. Organizations can shape the distribution of resources
along racial lines and can influence state-level processes and individual expressions of racial animus.
processes are often multiply-determined. This
makes the project of empirically distinguishing
among institutional, organizational, and individual effects more important. Definitionally, this
shift to the meso level revolves around two primary explanations.
One explanation sees the meso level as
composed of interactive groups (Fine 2012);
the second focuses on intermediate social
arrangements, like the neighborhood (Sewell
2016) or organizations (Hallett and Ventresca
2006; Rojas 2017), as meso-level structures.
The meso level is conceptualized as an
“inhabited institution” (Hallett and Ventresca
2006), which helps explain both reproduction
and change as people interact in response to
institutional imperatives. Focusing on the
meso level allows for greater attention to the
multiple mechanisms reproducing inequality
(Gross 2009; Reskin 2003). My approach
centers the role of human agency in generating new mechanisms while also explaining
the stability of organizational inequality.
Thus, race joins class and gender as a foundational category in organizational theory.
Of course, I do not claim to be the first to notice
that organizations are racialized. Many scholars
have highlighted aspects of organizational racialization (Bhatt 2013; Tomaskovic-Devey 1993;
Wooten 2006), and the theory developed here is
indebted to their work. Intersectionality scholars, in particular, have shown that stigmatized
racial and gender statuses disadvantage women
of color in organizations (Acker 2006; Bhatt
2013). Yet the way race influences organizational formation, hierarchies, and processes
remains largely under-theorized (Wooten and
Couloute 2017). Organizations are central to
the “process by which racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed, and destroyed”
(Omi and Winant 2015:109), hence the need
for theory explaining the central role of organizations in the reproduction of racial inequality.
Omitting Race From
Organizational
Formation
Organizational theorists see racial matters as
epiphenomena secondary to more fundamental organizational concerns like market efficiency (Omi and Winant 2015). Weber saw
“racial and ethnic characteristics . . . as convenient” axes of exclusionary boundary
maintenance (Stone 2003:31). Yet when outlining the features of rational bureaucracies,
Weber replaces the particularities of racial
Ray
and ethnic monopolization with race-neutral
abstractions such as bureaucratic rationality,
interchangeable hierarchical positions, and
meritocracy (Weber 1978).
Scholars drawing on Weber’s formulation
define organizations as groups coming
together to accomplish extra-individual goals
(Aldrich 1999). Stinchcombe’s (1965) classic
“Social Structure and Organizations” highlights property and contract laws, urbanization, and general educational systems as
institutional prerequisites of organizational
formation. Once these conditions hold, organizations form among those possessing literacy, capital, the ability to monopolize benefits,
and some guarantee of organizational continuity. Perrow’s (2002) general account of
corporations’ rise begins with nineteenthcentury New England mills, glossing over
their dependence on slave-produced cotton
(Beckert 2015) and the plantation’s central
role in the development of scientific management and bureaucratic procedures (Roediger
and Esch 2012; Rosenthal 2012). Perrow
defines wage labor as an organizational criterion, excluding slavery’s role in organizational formation by definitional fiat. These
canonical accounts neglect that organizational
formation was partially premised on the
expropriation and exclusion of racial others.2
Institutionalists move beyond the early epiphenomenal view, highlighting the historical
continuity of racial discrimination (Stainback
and Tomaskovic-Devey 2012) and organizational reliance on cultural rules. Institutionalists argue that organizations are nested within
“institutional logics” (Thornton and Ocasio
1999) or “broad, ‘supraorganizational’ logics
or ‘symbolic systems’ that order reality” (Hallett and Ventresca 2006:214). Institutionalization, in both organizational theory and race
scholarship, is tied to the state through laws
and regulations and enforced, in the last
instance, by violence (Martin 2004). Institutional logics are not simply coercive: organizational action can reshape the institutional
environment (Perrow 2002), and organizations’ power to shape social life now rivals the
state (Meyer and Bromley 2014; Perrow
1991).
29
Institutionalists convincingly show that
external factors such as legislation and professional organizations partially dictate organizational forms (Abbott 1988; DiMaggio and
Powell 1983). Yet institutionalists rarely see
the racial homogeneity of mainstream organizations as a foundational abstract principle.
From a racialized organizations perspective,
organizational formation is nested within the
institutionalized field of race. Recent mainstream race theory has joined the long-standing tradition in more radical scholarship
(Bonilla-Silva 1997; Ture and Hamilton 1967)
of arguing that race is an institutionalized
“field” (Emirbayer and Desmond 2015; Jung
2015). Organizational analysts should begin
with a similar understanding of racialized
social systems (Bonilla-Silva 1997) as the
background in which organizations operate.
Organizational
Invisibility In Race
Theory
Despite their shared concerns with the origins
of social differentiation among groups (Barth
1969; Stone 2003), the legitimation of hierarchies (Elliott and Smith 2004; Weber 1978),
and justifications of resource inequality
(Bonilla-Silva 2010; Feagin 2000), the literatures on race and organizational theory have
largely developed independently. As I will
show, race theorists have also neglected key
insights from organizational theory, lessening
the explanatory power of their central theories.
Race is a multidimensional, hierarchical,
sociopolitical construction (Baker 1998; Omi
and Winant 2015). Paraphrasing Marx (1977), I
define race not as a thing but as a relationship
between persons mediated through things. This
definition of race eschews biological essentialism and highlights that race is constructed relationally via the distribution of social,
psychological, and material resources. Racialization is the extension of racial meaning to
resources, cultural objects, emotions, bodies—
and for our purposes, organizations—previously seen as non-racial (Omi and Winant
2015). Racism, or “the racial ideology of a
30
racialized social system” (Bonilla-Silva 2010:
218), is a justification of racial inequality.
The theory I develop here extends structural theories of race (Bonilla-Silva 1997;
Jung 2015) while engaging certain theoretical
concerns of critical race theorists (Crenshaw
et al. 1995; Mills 1997). Race theory typically
focuses on the state (Feagin and Elias 2013),
individual animus, or ideology (Bonilla-Silva
1997) as primary loci of racial processes,
downplaying the role of organizations in the
production of racial ideologies and the social
construction of race itself. Golash-Boza’s
(2016) diagrams of the current state of race
theory show the overarching focus on macromicro linkages. These diagrams combine
“institutions that reproduce racial inequality”
and “laws, policies, and practices” (GolashBoza 2016:131) into an encompassing macro
unit. Despite a consensus among race scholars that racial inequality is “institutionalized,”
“structural,” or “systemic” (Bonilla-Silva
1997; Feagin 2000; Ture and Hamilton 1967),
the role of organizations in institutionalizing
race remains under-theorized.
Collapsing macro-level institutions (e.g., the
racial state, legislation) and meso-level organizations (e.g., corporations, schools) has the
benefit of showing the pervasive and totalizing
aspects of racial phenomena. Yet compressing
these social levels elides how meso-level
organizations can influence both the policies of
the racial state and individual animus. Racialization processes, occurring in “large-scale and
small-scale ways, macro- and micro-socially”
(Omi and Winant 2015:111) are enacted
through meso-level organizations reinforcing,
challenging, or altering racial meanings.
At the macro level, segregation between
organizations allows for the consolidation of
resources in the hands of dominant racial
groups. Meso-level internal hierarchies and
occupational segregation contribute to the
mundane reproduction of racial stratification.
Individual racial attitudes and discrimination
are enabled or constrained by organizational
routines. More than a mere “link” between
macro- and micro-level processes, organizations are key to stability and change for the
American Sociological Review 84(1)
entire racial order. Organizations magnify the
power and depth of racial projects and are a
primary terrain of racial contestation.
An adequate theory of organizational racialization must also contend with the unmarked
Whiteness of mainstream organizations. Critical race theorists consider Whiteness a form of
property: a resource encompassing “all of a
person’s legal rights” (Harris 1995:279). Harris
(1995:278) traces “the merger of white identity
and property” to notions of freedom and personal sovereignty constructed in opposition to
racial slavery and the conquest and appropriation of Native American land. Seeing Whiteness as property is not simply metaphorical:
access to capital, the distribution of labor, and
ultimately freedom itself were all bound by
Whiteness. An implicit property interest in
Whiteness was a prerequisite for the formation
of complex organizations.
Race theory and organizational theory pay
insufficient attention to their shared concerns.
This is unfortunate, because there is a large
potential payoff from a theoretical bridge
between these subfields. Seeing racialized
relations as constitutive of organizations
helps us better understand the formation and
everyday function of organizations. Incorporating organizations into a structural theory of
racial inequality can help us better understand
stability, change, and the “institutionalization” of racism (Ture and Hamilton 1967).
I will argue that seeing organizations as racial
structures—that is, cultural schemas connected
to social resources—can help link the subfields.
Scholars with otherwise highly divergent theoretical perspectives agree that schemas should
have a central place in explanations of the ubiquity of racial and ethnic phenomena. Ethnicity
theorists claim cultural schemas are hierarchically organized, widely shared, and contextually
activated (Brubaker, Loveman, and Stamatov
2004). Critical race theorists such as Jung (2015)
see schemas as a theoretical linchpin that can
explain the ubiquity of racial structures. Cognitive (DiMaggio 1997) and cultural (Lamont,
Beljean, and Clair 2014) sociologists have long
seen schemas as “taken-for-granted” mental representations generating and legitimating
Ray
31
inequality. An extension of Bonilla-Silva’s
(1997) racialized social systems theory and
Sewell’s theory of dual structures (Jung 2015)
can help better explain the centrality of organizations in accumulating, managing, monopolizing,
and apportioning the resources that make up
racial structures.
or nationalism (Brubaker 2009). I revisit
Sewell’s work to show how thinking about
structures as simultaneously composed of
“rules and resources” allows us to see organizations as meso-level racial structures.
Organizations Are
Racial Structures
Sewell (1992) is concerned with the emergence and continuity of social structures and
how social structures shape agency. For
Sewell (1992), social structures are “dual” in
that they are simultaneous expressions of cultural schemas and the mobilization of
resources. Schemas are generalizable, often
unconscious, cognitive “default assumptions”
(DiMaggio 1997:269) acting as situationallyapplicable templates for social action. Put
simply, schemas can be thought of as a kind of
unwritten rulebook explaining how to write
rules. For our purposes, racial schemas provide a set of “fundamental tools of thought”
(Sewell 1992:7) for the accumulation and
distribution of organizational resources.
Sewell’s (1992:9) definition of resources
is expansive, including not only material
resources, but any “media of power” used to
gain, enhance, contest, or maintain social
position. Resources include objects philosophical materialists consider resources
(physical capital, raw materials, commodities) and more intangible human resources
such as “physical strength, dexterity, knowledge” or explicit rules of social interaction
(Sewell 1992:9). Both material and social
resources are often expressed or used in
accordance with underlying schematic maps.
The baroque racial etiquette under Jim Crow,
which reinforced hierarchical relations among
individuals and racial groups, is an example
of a schema of racial subordination expressed
via rules of social interaction.
When schemas are connected to resources,
they become durable structures. Sewell
(1992:9) illustrates the connection between
schemas and resources by focusing on the
schema of commodification, or “the conversion of use value to exchange value.” Commodification involves the capture and sale of
My theory of racialized organizations moves
beyond models using race as merely a demographic variable, focusing instead on the
mechanisms reproducing racial inequality
and the relation between racial structures and
agency. I begin with Jung’s (2015) reformulation of Bonilla-Silva’s (1997) racialized
social system theory, which describes a social
system as racialized when “a set of social
relations and practices based on racial distinctions develops at all societal levels” (BonillaSilva 1997:474).
Opposing a definition of racism as personal psychological animus (Allport 1954),
Bonilla-Silva (1997) argues that racism arises
as a set of historically- and contextuallyspecific ideological justifications for a society’s
racialized social system. Yet Bonilla-Silva’s
(1997) break with definitions of racism based
on personal psychology is less stark than it
first appears, as racialized social systems
theory maintains a residual distinction
between “structure” and “culture” (Jung
2015) long abandoned by theorists who see
culture and structure as mutually constitutive
(Bourdieu 1998; Hays 1994; Sewell 1992).
Jung (2015) extends Bonilla-Silva’s work by
drawing on Sewell’s (1992) notion of “dual
structures,” erasing the untenable distinction
between structure and culture.
Although Jung (2015) reconciles the distinction between structure and culture, he
says little about non-state organizations, or
meso-level racial structures operating below
the level of the state. Instead, Jung (2015)
uses his refined definition of racial structure
to focus on the “empire state,” reinforcing the
traditional race-theoretical focus on the state
Sewell on the Duality of Structure
32
resources, or the transformation of personal
into market value. Land closures and the marketing of goods such as bottled water are two
examples of resources formerly considered
commonly held but put to use for personal
profit in accordance with capitalism’s central
schema. What matters for the reproduction of
capitalist relations is not necessarily the particular characteristics of a given commodity,
but rather the logic that patterns the process
of commodification across various types of
resources—that is, a schema.
Organizations and the Emergence of
Racial Structures
Similarly, racial structures are produced when
central schemas connect to resources. Race,
as a multidimensional concept, encodes schemas of sub- and super-ordination that can be
activated when connected to resources. For
instance, segregation is a schema limiting (or
granting) access to material and social
resources. Under Jim Crow, the schema of
segregation was manifest in the expectation
that Blacks work in menial jobs, attend segregated schools, and sit apart on public transportation. It is no accident that many of the
Civil Rights Movement’s most iconic
actions—the Memphis sanitation strike, the
Freedom Rides and Montgomery bus boycott,
and the lunch-counter sit-ins—involved activists’ clever manipulation of these racialized
organizational resources. In each case, the
schema of racial segregation was expressed
via an organizational resource (buses, lunch
counters, wages) that was subsequently legitimated by the laws of the “racial state.” Thus,
segregation is not an unchanging thing: segregation is a relationship with a variable impact
relative to the resources it marshals.
Once racial structures are in place, a racial
ideology—or racism—arises to justify the
unequal distribution of resources along racial
lines. Racial ideologies then reinforce the
underlying cognitive schema. Racist ideologies are explicit defenses of an underlying
racial structure endowing actors with differential forms of agency. Racial schemas, like
American Sociological Review 84(1)
the commodity form, are easily applied to
new organizational resources. Racial ideologies can thus be re-articulated in novel historical conditions as racist ideas adapt to
changing power relations (Kendi 2016).
Figure 1 illustrates the relationship
between racial schemas, resources, and ideology. Racial structures arise any time resources
are (intentionally or passively) distributed
according to racial schemas. For instance,
occupational segregation connects racialized
schemas regarding competence to workplace
hierarchies, time-management rules, and even
informal rituals of interaction between racial
groups. Ideological claims about racial inequality (i.e., biological or cultural racism) are
always expressed in relation to the distribution of resources along racial lines.
Furthermore, as the line from “racial ideology” to “schemas” in Figure 1 shows, these
justifications can reinforce underlying racial
schemas. This view of racial ideology as mediated via resources breaks with literature that
conceptualizes racism as existing independently of underlying material and social conditions (e.g., Allport 1954). Simply put, individual
prejudice unconnected to active discrimination
hoarding resources does little harm. As Sewell
(1992:13) claims, “schemas not empowered or
regenerated by resources would eventually be
abandoned and forgotten.”
Organizations and the Depth and
Power of Structures
The continuity of structures is based on structural depth and power. Depth refers to the
application of a schema to a wide array of
more general, superficial expressions. For
instance, in her classic article on gendered
organizations, Acker (1990) argues that the
schema of the “abstract [male] worker” is
manifest in a host of general organizational
patterns, including gendered hierarchies, the
division between paid work and unpaid
housework, and the distinction between production and reproduction. These relatively
superficial patterns are all surface manifestations of gender’s schematic depth.
Ray
33
Figure 1. The Relation between Schemas, Racial Structures, and Racial Ideology
The power dimension of structures refers to
the ability of schemas to muster material or
social resources. Even socialist critics argue,
for instance, that capitalism, via commodification, is capable of mobilizing a world-historic
amount of resources. This ability to accumulate resources reinforces the underlying commodity schema, making the structure of
capitalism exceptionally powerful. Because
schemas applied to resources generate patterns
of interaction—whether markets under capitalism or deference rituals under Jim Crow—
these become taken-for-granted aspects of
social life.
Organizations consolidate the “resource”
(or power) side of dual racial structures at the
meso level. Organizational development has
been premised on cultural schemas tying nonWhites to menial labor, for example, “subject
races,” “coolies,” or the concatenation of
“slave” and “Black” (Davis 1991). Du Bois
claimed racial caste linked “certain sorts of
work and certain colors of men” (quoted in
Morris 2015:157). Notions of innate biological difference—Blacks’ alleged suitability for
physical labor, or the “mulishness” of Chinese workers (Roediger and Esch 2012:118)—
served to justify racial exploitation.
Inversely, management and leadership are
formulated as White prerogatives, replicating
the hierarchy of the antebellum plantation
(Collins 1993). Organizational routines habitually connect racial schemas to social and
material resources; for instance, bureaucratic
hierarchies helping codify associations
between racial identity and status. From the
deep segregation of emerging organizations
(Ferguson and Koning 2018) to the enduring
Whiteness of university presidents (Gagliardi
et al. 2017) and corporate leaders (Embrick
2011), race shapes occupational attainment in
the United States. Recognizing schemas activated in organizational contexts (Brubaker
et al. 2004; DiMaggio 1997) allows analysts
to examine racism not as an ahistorical constant lodged in individual minds or as a singular ideology, but rather as a variable, adaptive
to organizational niches.
Understanding racial structures as schemaresource couplings allows scholars of race
and ethnicity to examine the meso level. Race
scholarship from a structural perspective typically focuses on macro-level structures with
great depth and power (Golash-Boza 2016).
In contrast to this macro-level focus, the
model I outline in Figure 1 sees racial structures as existing at multiple levels. Just as the
structure of capitalism is expressed in both
the commerce of a child’s lemonade stand
and the massive accretion of resources in a
multinational corporation, racial structures
are produced via individual-, organizational-,
and state-level actions. Racial structures, in
my formulation, are not necessarily institutionalized at the macro level. Racial structures exist when schemas are connected to
34
resources in ways that differentially advantage racial groups at any level. Racial structures are institutionalized when they are
replicated across many organizational forms.3
Racialized organizational structures that
successfully muster resources (gain power, in
Sewell’s language) can be formalized by gatekeepers and exert top-down pressure on subordinates, potentially shifting the relation
between schemas and resources. This can
occur via the adoption of explicitly race-based
(or even colorblind) rules (Ray and Purifoy
n.d.), or by adopting the practices of peer
organizations within a field. Furthermore, the
well-known body of research on judicial deference to anti-discrimination policy (Edelman
et al. 2011) shows that once organizational
gatekeepers develop a new racial structure, it
may diffuse beyond a single organization,
potentially altering other fields.
For instance, in the wake of uncertainty about
compliance with civil rights law, organizational
gatekeepers adopted anti-discrimination policies. Despite little evidence that these policies
prevented or even lessened discrimination,
courts saw them as good-faith efforts at legal
compliance (Dobbin 2009). Law initially
designed to alleviate organizational inequality was, instead, ultimately used to legitimate
said inequality. Thus, once institutionalized,
racialized organizational processes can spread
beyond the field in which they arose and
potentially influence understandings of race
in the entire racial order. Race scholarship,
then, would benefit by adopting organizational theory’s understanding of organizations
as nested within broader fields and institutional logics. Adopting this position helps
clarify how organizations can influence
changes in the larger racial order, as innovative mechanisms for the racialized allocation
of resources spread across an organizational
field.
Adopting this model of racial structure
helps explain mechanisms that reproduce
racial inequality in the absence of conscious
discriminatory intent. Recent work focuses
on the role of human agency in generating
novel social mechanisms (Aviles and Reed
American Sociological Review 84(1)
2017; Gross 2009). Arguing that schemas are
basically a type of “habit,” Gross (2009:375)
claims that social mechanisms are “aggregations of actors, problem situations, and habitual responses” allowing for the machinelike
or nearly automatic reproduction of social
relations. When people act creatively in the
face of new problems, they may generate
novel mechanisms. But this creativity is not
entirely random: it is often constrained by
habitually enacted schemas that are transposable or easily applied to new circumstances.
The Emergence of Novel Mechanisms
of Racial Inequality
To illustrate how schemas connected to
resources in novel ways can generate new
mechanisms of racial inequality, it is helpful to
recall how the schema of segregation was reapplied following the landmark Supreme Court
decision outlawing state-sponsored segregation
in Brown v. Board of Education. Legalized
school segregation coupled the racial schema
of segregation with school resources to create
meso-level structures that entrenched racial
inequality. Following Brown, segregation did
not disappear; rather, the schema of segregation
was expressed via organizational resources in
new ways, such as tracking programs that internally segregated students (Lewis and Diamond
2015; Tyson 2011) and the development of
“segregation academies,” as White parents
enrolled their children in private schools
(Bonastia 2011). In the post-Brown era, organizational forms shifted as underlying schemas of
racial inclusion were paired with emergent
organizational resources. Segregation via
exclusion was replaced by segregation through
unequal incorporation. School organizations,
depending on how they deployed resources in
relation to racial schemas, supported, undermined, or caused innovations in the wider
racialized social system.
Similar processes occur in many industries, as racial integration is channeled into
niche, segregated jobs. For instance, jobs
such as “diversity consultants” combined
racial meanings with newly granted access to
Ray
work opportunities; but, because these jobs
are segregated from central organizational
functions, workers are less likely to move up
the organizational hierarchy (Collins 1997).
Children attending a segregated school, or
employees laboring in segregated workplaces,
are habitually enacting schematic rules and
benefitting (or suffering) from the unequal
distribution of resources. Collectivelyenacted organizational routines (Gross 2009),
such as hiring, assessment tests, or even jobtyping are mechanisms of allocation. These
schema-resource couplings operate regardless
of workers’ or students’ awareness, and they
reinforce the racial segregation schema without requiring conscious action (Bourdieu
1998)—that is, a novel mechanism emerges
“organically” from working in a racialized
organization. When schemas and resources
combine in novel ways, the racial structure is
altered. Thus, racialized schematic maps
allow for the development of novel mechanisms of racial control combining schemas
and resources in new ways.
Seeing organizations as racial structures
consolidating resources and social power also
allows us to deal with two typical critiques of
structural theories of racism: the problem of
coordination and the problem of reification.
According to Wimmer (2015), absent collective White coordination, race scholarship
lacks a convincing theoretical mechanism
explaining racial domination across empirical
cases. Placing broadly shared racial schemas
at the center of a structural theory of race
renders conscious coordination unnecessary.
As generative mechanisms, schemas provide
an organizational template for solving problems. In novel situations, people transpose
existing racialized schemas to a new set of
organizational resources. This transposition
need not be conscious or intentional: indeed,
the organizational reproduction of racial inequality may work best if organizational procedures appear impartial. Organizations help
launder racial domination by obscuring or
legitimating unequal processes.4
Other critiques hold that structural theorists reify race by implying race is a natural
35
category and mistakenly seeing racial structures as “things” independent from human
agency. Structural determinists may see
human actions as wholly dependent on structures, but this is a minority view (Emirbayer
and Goodwin 1994). Both the stability of
structures and social change are dependent on
human action (Bourdieu 1998; Sewell 1992).
The definition of racialized organizations I
adopt places agency, motive, and action in
relation to resources and cultural schemas.
Because organizations consolidate resources
along racial lines in ways that constrain (or
enable) human action, seeing organizations as
racial structures describes one domain
through which racial actors express agency.
Take, for instance, police violence directed
disproportionately against non-Whites in the
United States (Ross 2015). When scholars
claim that such violence is “structural,” they
do not mean that joining a police department
invariably implies one will engage in violence
against non-Whites. Rather, they mean the
probability of violence is elevated because of
the resources empowering police (legal protections, a monopoly on violence, guns). When
these resources are combined with diffuse cultural schemas—anti-Blackness, hierarchy, fear
of non-Whites—the risk of violence directed
against non-Whites in general, and Black people in particular, is elevated. “Part of what it
means to conceive of human beings as agents
is to conceive of them as empowered by access
to resources of one kind or another” (Sewell
1992:10). Rather than exonerating actors, my
view of structure explains divergent outcomes
as the result of agency exercised in relation to
organizational resources. In contrast, a reified
view would see disproportionate police violence against people of color as flowing
directly from becoming an officer.
Taking agency seriously as a universal
human trait requires acknowledging that people of color’s participation in racialized
organizations—whether hegemonic (Omi and
Winant 2015) or coercive (Crenshaw 1988)—
may either reproduce or challenge racial hierarchies. “All actors in the system participate
in racial affairs” (Bonilla-Silva 1997:475),
36
but their ability to shape their lives and react
to larger social forces is partially determined
by their location in organizations. Crenshaw’s
(1988) critique of the racially-neutral application of the concept of hegemony is instructive
here. Claiming that people of color in the
United States have never fully consented to
the racial hierarchy, Crenshaw argues that a
coercive dimension must be included in any
discussion of people of color’s collective role
in reproducing the racial order. Rather than
being opposed, structure and agency “presuppose each other” (Sewell 1992:4).
Given the foregoing, I define racialized
organizations as meso-level social structures
that limit the personal agency and collective
efficacy of subordinate racial groups while
magnifying the agency of the dominant racial
group. The ability to act upon the world, to
create, to learn, to express emotion—indeed,
one’s full humanity—is constrained (or enabled) by racialized organizations. All organizations are racialized and “inhabited” by
racialized bodies; yet the specific distribution
of resources, the degree to which organizational dynamics rely on explicit racial criteria,
the deployment of racialized schemas, and
patterns of racial incorporation are variable.
Having defined racialized organizations, I
now show how they enhance or inhibit agency.
Each subsequent component of racialized
organizations (the unequal distribution of
resources, the credentialing of Whiteness, and
racialized decoupling) differentially endows
agency along racial lines.
Racialized Organizations Shape
Agency
Agency is rife with organizationallyproduced power differentials (Sewell 1992).
The concentration of people of color at the
bottom of organizational hierarchies influences a host of extra-organizational outcomes, including health (Sewell 2016), job
access (Wilson 1996), political power, and
life expectancy (Roberts 2013). Lawyers,
doctors, and janitors are produced through
organizations, as are the forms of agency they
American Sociological Review 84(1)
wield. The symbolic meanings conferred by
segregated organizational hierarchies influence
interactions outside of formal organizations.
The relationship between structure and
agency is one of sociology’s most fundamental concerns. Although agency, or independent action, is a “universal human potentiality”
(Hitlin and Elder 2007:177), one’s position in
racialized organizations shapes agency. “The
extent of agency exercised by individual persons depends profoundly upon their position
in collective organizations,” because those at
the top of organizational hierarchies can “bind
the collectivity with their actions” (Sewell
1992:21). Sewell uses the example of a king
whose agency is magnified by the trappings
of divine right to illustrate that participation
in collective organizations requires submitting one’s will to the collective (Wooten and
Couloute 2017), and patterns of submission
are not uniformly distributed.
One way racialized organizations shape
agency is by controlling time use. Agency is a
temporal relationship, as actors plan according
to past experiences and future hopes. “The key
to grasping the dynamic possibilities of human
agency is to view it as composed of variable
and changing orientation within the flow of
time” (Emirbayer and Mische 1998:964).
Individuals’ locations within racialized organizations influence the amount of control they
exercise over their time, their ability to plan
non-work time, and their ability to plot the
future. As racial structures, organizations partially delineate where, and how, one is to
spend one’s time. Within organizations, segregation or incorporation into the lower tiers of
organizational hierarchies diminishes one’s
ability to influence organizational procedures
and the larger institutional environment. Segregated schools make it harder for non-White
children to actualize their futures. How racialized subordinates spend their time at work, in
school, or at church, is typically delineated by
organizational procedures.
For instance, people in the welfare system often experience time as daily management of permanent “crisis” given insufficient
resources (Roy, Tubbs, and Burton 2004), and
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forced waiting is a “psychological cost” welfare bureaucrats impose on recipients to show
their time has no value (Lipsky 2010). Similarly, non-Whites are over-represented in precarious jobs with highly variable schedules
that make it difficult to manage family obligations and plan the use of their time (Edin and
Shaefer 2015).
Organizations also shape agency via what
amounts to the theft of time from non-Whites
(Kwate 2017). By this, I mean that organizations differentially apportion time along racial
lines or redistribute time from non-Whites to
Whites (Mills 2014). Kwate (2017), focusing
on the health care system, argues that racial
differences in life expectancy are partially
produced by health care organizations that
literally steal time from Black people. But
Kwate’s (2017) central point on the racialized
apportioning of time can be generalized to
organizations more broadly.
Differential wages for equally-qualified
Black and White workers, and the concentration of non-Whites at the bottom of organizational hierarchies, means it takes more labor
time to purchase necessary goods. Hiring discrimination (Quillian et al. 2017) means it takes
more time to find work. Spatial mismatch (Wilson 1996), or firms placing workplaces in predominantly White areas, means people of color
likely spend more time in transit, if hired at all.
Differential access to loans (Sewell 2016) and
housing discrimination means it takes longer
for non-Whites to find housing (Turner et al.
2013). Indeed, “working times, eating and
sleeping times, free times, commuting times,
waiting times, and ultimately, of course, living
and dying times” (Mills 2014:28) are all partially determined by the disproportionate representation of non-Whites at the bottom of
racialized organizational hierarchies. All of
these cases racialize time by shaping future
orientations (Mahadeo 2018).
Racial deference rituals are built into work
hierarchies, shaping “identity agency,” or the
ability to act within socially-proscribed roles
(Hitlin and Elder 2007). Racialized organizations shape habitual actions, as employees are
expected to defer to customers, employers, or
37
the public. Racialized organizations also constrain agency by limiting people of color’s
range of emotional expressions (Wingfield
2009, 2010; Wingfield and Alston 2013).
Wingfield and Alston’s (2013) extremely
promising theory of racial tasks is resonant
with the theoretical orientation forwarded
here, as it connects internal organizational
hierarchies to the ideological, interactional,
and physical labor people of color do in
White organizations. The theory of racial
tasks shows how people of color, by conforming to racialized organizational scripts, can
often reproduce structures of inequality.
However, there are several points of difference between the theory of racial tasks and the
racialized organizations perspective. First,
because the theory of racial tasks draws heavily from the sociology of emotions, particularly the idea of “emotional labor” (Hochschild
1979), it is largely concerned with the emotional responses of people of color. Racial
tasks are defined as “the work minorities do
that is associated with their position in the
organizational hierarchy and reinforces Whites’
position of power within the workplace”
(Wingfield and Alston 2013:276). By obscuring the racial tasks Whites perform—that is,
expectations of deference, or the assumption of
menial status for people of color—focusing on
the racial tasks of people of color (unintentionally) reinforces the sense that racial identity
and conflict are things non-Whites bring into
otherwise race-neutral organizations.
The racialized organizations perspective,
in contrast, sees Whites’ emotional expectations—as the primary beneficiaries of the
racial system—as equally if not more important in reinforcing that system (Ioanide 2015).
Second, the theory of racial tasks provides
sharp theoretical tools for analyzing racial
interactions and their connection to organizational hierarchies, but it neglects the racial
foundation of organizational prerequisites,
the mediating role of organizations in the
distribution of resources along racial lines,
and organizational influences on state policy.
Moore’s (2008:27) theory of “White institutional space” provides a broader frame for
38
thinking about how the unmarked Whiteness
of organizations shapes agency. Moore’s
descriptive elements of White institutional
space (racialized exclusion, racial symbolism,
explicit and tacit discrimination, and the normative elements of White institutions) are
largely congruent with my position. I build on
this work by adding a clear distinction
between institutional and organizational processes, as meso-level organizations can alter
macro-level patterns of institutionalization.
Crenshaw’s (2011) discussion of the early
Critical Race Theory movement highlights
the importance of this last distinction. As a
founder of Critical Race Theory, Crenshaw
undoubtedly faced the “impossible burdens”
(Evans and Moore 2015) of navigating law
school as a woman of color. Yet through collective action with a group of like-minded
peers, Crenshaw shows, local organizational
contexts shaped the subjective experience of
White institutional spaces. Individual White
professors, with access to resources, provided
mentorship and physical space that allowed
Critical Race Theory to gain an organizational foothold. Collective, creative agency
led to a redistribution of organizational
resources and the (partial) institutionalization
of Critical Race Theory.
One could object that individuals can
(almost) always exert agency by opting out of
organizations, for example, by quitting work
or school. Yet the potential results of these
actions—exacerbated poverty, lack of money,
reduced social support—reinforce the point
that inclusion (or exclusion) in racialized
organizations shapes agency. Unemployment
and under-education disrupt the ability to use
time as one chooses over the long run, making
it more time consuming to meet daily needs.
Racialized Organizations Legitimate
the Unequal Distribution of
Resources
Segregation, by design, limits access to organizational resources. Racial segregation is a
defining foundational characteristic of most
organizations, historically enforced through
American Sociological Review 84(1)
custom, policy, and law (Kendi 2016; Massey
and Denton 1993). Segregated organizations
maintain racial boundaries, channel resources,
and help direct collective action. This segregation is implicit in Stinchcombe’s (1965:147)
claim that “most people are little motivated to
start organizations if they anticipate the benefits will all be appropriated by others whom
they do not love,” as the historical organizational forms Stinchcombe examined were
founded on the expropriation and exclusion
of racial others.
While White organizations are seen as
normative and neutral, non-White organizations are seen as deviations from the norm
and often stigmatized. The founding scholarship on organizational theory defines organizations universally, but in the United States,
the institutional environment has never guaranteed the rights necessary for organizational
formation on an equal basis with Whites. And
while Stinchcombe (1965) and other scholars
assert that external institutional factors heavily influence the founding and subsequent
trajectory of organizations, the White dominance of the institutional environment and the
property interest in Whiteness remain largely
implicit, legitimate, and unnamed. Institutionalized racial schemas, often laundered
through facially-neutral bureaucratic processes, segregate organizations on a White/
non-White hierarchy.
At the institutional level, segregation typically means organizations with large proportions of people of color are under-resourced
relative to White organizations (Marable
2000; Wooten 2015). Frazier (1957) and Marable (2000) point to the results of this division
of organizational resources. Discussing
“Black capitalism,” Frazier (1957:2) claimed
that “the total assets of all negro banks in the
United States were less than those of a single
small white bank” in New York. Indeed, at
their peak in 1926, Black banks held only
“0.2 percent of all U.S. bank assets” (Baradaran 2017:70). Similarly, Marable (2000)
argues that the combined assets of all Blackowned businesses could be purchased by a
single large oil company. This highly unequal
Ray
distribution of resources continues through
highly segregated businesses that channel
money to White business owners. Blacks
regularly shop in White-owned stores—often
there is no other option. But segregation
ensures Whites rarely shop in Black businesses and are unlikely to work for Black
bosses (Baradaran 2017). Institutionalized
racial exclusion from organizations has
deeply shaped the competitive environment,
disadvantaging non-White organizations.
Post-Reconstruction industrialists, believing in Black intellectual inferiority, supported
an institutional environment that reinforced
the schematic distribution of resources. Black
colleges and universities—under-capitalized
and considered derivative—ensured segregation and a bifurcated labor-force (Wooten
2006). The famous post-Reconstruction
debate between Du Bois and Washington was
precisely over the issue of racialized organizational incorporation, with Washington
advocating for industrial education for menial
work and Du Bois fighting for full inclusion
(Morris 2015). Non-White organizations
often depended on the largess of White institutional (state-level) benefactors. This
dependency constrained collective action for
political and social equality. We can think of
historical Black Wall Streets and historically
Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) as
racialized organizations arising in response to
either tacit or explicit exclusion from
unmarked White organizations.
The long history of political pressure
directed against HBCUs illustrates the coercive power of racialized organizations. Unequal access to the prerequisites of organizational
formation made private and public HBCUs
subordinate to pro-segregation Whites who
recognized HBCUs as potential bastions of
Black political power. Southern legislators
stacked public HBCUs’ boards of trustees with
Jim Crow supporters (Williamson 2004), and
organizational survival often depended on
accommodation: schools challenging the prevailing racial order were threatened and sanctioned, including removal of college presidents
and loss of accreditation (Williamson 2004).
39
Some HBCUs expelled students who participated in the Civil Rights Movement—with
implications for the agency of Black Americans. HBCUs continue to face coercive political and economic pressures. For instance, the
endowment gap between HBCUs and predominantly White institutions doubled over
the past 20 years (Hamilton and Darity 2017).
HBCUs remain underfunded by the state relative to their unmarked White counterparts.
Integrated organizations internally recreate institutional-level segregation, as racial
hierarchies are mapped onto ostensibly nonracial positions. For instance, through job
sorting, positions in the labor hierarchy
become associated with racial groups and
accordingly devalued (Tomaskovic-Devey
1993) or overvalued, and racialized hierarchy
is seen as a basic feature of the world as
opposed to a historically constructed reality.
Academic tracking stigmatizes Black students by associating Blackness with lower
academic achievement. Despite nominal integration, such tracking creates a secondary
educational system (Lewis and Diamond
2015; Tyson 2011).
Even diversity programs can reinforce and
legitimate racial hierarchies they are purportedly designed to undermine. Companies may
see no reason to diversify workers who “drove
trucks, packed boxes on the factory floor, or
cleaned bathrooms” (Berrey 2015:226), as
these are congruent with schemas of racial inferiority. Latino immigrants in Los Angeles have
been relegated to “brown-collar jobs” characterized by a lack of legal protections (Catanzarite 2002). Despite formal diversity policies
in corporations (Embrick 2011) and the military (Burk and Espinoza 2012), people of color
remain clustered near the occupational floor,
pointing to the resilience of this structural form.
Occupational segregation also structures
relations at the top of organizational hierarchies. Despite anti-discrimination and corporate diversity programs, racial change at the
top of corporate hierarchies can still be measured in tenths-of-a percentage-point changes,
with people of color firmly positioned at the
base of the racial pyramid. In Fortune 500
40
companies, Blacks make up just 1 percent of
CEOs and Latinos less than 2 percent
(Embrick 2011). Most Asian American groups
remain underpaid when compared to equallyqualified Whites (Kim and Sakamoto 2010),
and class divisions among Asian Americans—mediated by selective organizational
incorporation—are rising (Sakamoto, Goyette, and Kim 2009).
The naturalization of racial categories, and
their subsequent legitimation, is partially
achieved via what Abigail Sewell (2016:404)
terms the meso-level “reification of racism,”
where institutional actors—in this case mortgage brokers—turn the “abstract idea of race
into a concrete social fact” through the “racist
relational structures” of disparate lending.
This unequal access to economic resources
adversely influences the health of racial
minorities through their connection to residential segregation. Race becomes “real in its
consequences” (Thomas and Thomas 1928)
through the organizationally mediated distribution of economic and social resources.
Building on Sewell’s (2016) account, and
in line with a body of theory on the institutionalization of racism (Lopez 2000), I would
add that much racial inequality is produced
through relatively passive participation in
racialized organizations. As scholars have
shown since at least the Whitehall studies
(Marmot et al. 1991), being at the bottom of
organizational hierarchies has health effects
independent of direct discrimination. The
concentration of people of color at the bottom
of organizational hierarchies has implications
for life expectancy (and thus agency) that are
not reducible to intentional discrimination.
Once racialized hierarchies become a
taken-for-granted aspect of organizations,
they are enforced by Whites’ “sense of group
position” (Blumer 1958). Threats to the
organizational hierarchy—for example, the
hiring or promotion of non-Whites, affirmative action policies, or diversity programs—
are often seen as illegitimate intrusions into
the normal, meritocratic, neutral functioning
of organizations (Moore and Bell 2011).
Because people of color relatively high up in
American Sociological Review 84(1)
the occupational hierarchy deviate from
expected schematic relations, they experience
racial discrimination, are forced to conform to
White norms of behavior, and must navigate
White emotional expectations (Ioanide 2015;
Thornhill 2015).
Whites’ sense of group position is not
reducible to individual attitudes, because
biases arise and are reinforced through membership in collective organizations. “Environmental triggers” (DiMaggio 1997) and
organizational context can influence variations in discrimination type. The connection
between material resources and organizational routines shows why explicit prejudice
and discrimination are insufficient to explain
continued racial inequality. Moreover, organizational structure and policy—net of individual measures of prejudice or the propensity to
discriminate—may increase personal biases
(for exceptions, see Castilla 2008; Castilla
and Benard 2010) expressed in relation to
organizational resources. Mundane, everyday
organizational processes, such as working in
a race-typed job, reinforce the connection
between racial schemas and resources in the
absence of personal racial animus.
It is important to note that some of the
practices delineated above have little relation
to what is typically considered illegitimate, or
intentional, racial discrimination. In line with
race-neutral theorizing about organizations,
discrimination is often seen as a discrete act
somehow separate from otherwise-neutral
organizational processes. Working a racetyped job, attending a segregated school, and
the basic racial deference rituals of organizational life all reinforce the underlying schemaresource connection. Thus, once racialized
practices are instantiated, the elimination of
all intentionally discriminatory action will not
eliminate unequal outcomes.
In many organizations, the lack of productivity caused by a widely-shared schema of
racial inferiority is used as a neutral justification for continued inequality. For instance,
stereotype threat (Spencer, Steele, and Quinn
1999; Steele 1997) is an individual response
to organizationally-specific environmental
Ray
triggers, where negative performance expectations induce a confirming reaction among
stereotyped groups. This context-specific
reaction is then individualized and taken as
objective, neutral, measurable evidence of
systematic underperformance—rather than as
an example of organizational procedures disadvantaging people of color. The symbolism
of White workplaces, Whites’ emotional
expectations, and the racial hierarchy of
organizations are considered legitimate and
neutral (Carbado and Harris 2008; Sue et al.
2007). Prototypical racialized organizations
thus remain White-dominated in the face of
even good-faith efforts at integration.
Racialization and Credentialing
Whiteness is a credential providing access to
organizational resources, legitimizing work
hierarchies, and expanding White agency.
This credential helps organizations appear
racially neutral in principle, while in practice
institutionalizing the property interest in
Whiteness. Credentials are allegedly objective, organizationally-generated statuses
showing suitability for employment and legitimating modern stratification systems (Collins
1979). According to this narrative, credentials
replaced ascribed status as a legitimate
bureaucratic means of allocating resources by
merit (Pager 2007).
Recent field experiments have generated
important empirical evidence on the credential of Whiteness, showing that hiring discrimination should be considered a general
organizational process (Bertrand and Mullainathan 2004; Moss and Tilly 2003; Pager
2003). When discrimination is examined via
audit methods—isolating racial meanings as
causes of differential treatment (Sen and
Wasow 2016)—racialized5 exclusion exists
across economic sectors and despite matched
formal credentials (Bertrand and Mullainathan 2004; Correll, Benard, and Paik 2007).
Regardless of legal restrictions on racial discrimination, many employers still oppose hiring people of color due to schemas related to
allegedly poor work ethics and attitudes
(Moss and Tilly 2003; Neckerman and
41
Kirschenman 1991; Pager and Karafin 2009;
Pager, Western, and Bonikowski 2009). Yet
researchers continue to conceptualize credentials themselves as race-neutral.
When describing the effect of racial identity on credentials, scholars operationalize discrimination as differential returns to the same
credential. But the problem with interpreting
this as a differential return to the same credential is that, typically, perceived racial identity
trumps the credential. For instance, Pager
(2007) discusses the “negative credential” of a
criminal record. Her research shows that
incarceration profoundly influences subsequent employment opportunities and that
much discrimination based on this negative
credential is not apparent to victims (Pager et
al. 2009). Conceptualizing a criminal record
as a “negative credential” illustrates the longterm consequences of incomplete organizational incorporation. However, her findings
show that Blackness is another negative credential. Black men without criminal records
were less likely than formerly incarcerated
White men to be called back for a job interview. Similar, although less dramatic, results
hold for Latino job-seekers (Pager et al. 2009).
Organizational racialization is thus a credentialing process. Typically, formal credentials are considered neutral because they are
bureaucratically conferred, whereas ascribed
categories are not highly formalized and are
socially illegitimate means of status differentiation (Pager 2007). However, constructionist accounts of race claim that race is produced
via precisely such bureaucratic processes. For
instance, the “one-drop” rule assigning race at
birth was institutionally formalized through
state laws applied unevenly through locallevel organizations (Davis 1991). Historically, census categories have been highly
malleable (Nobles 2000; Rodriguez 2000)
and contested or consolidated through organizational processes (Mora 2014).
Seeing racialization as a relational credentialing process resonates with Harris’s (1995)
original conceptualization of Whiteness as a
form of property. Harris illustrates the credential of Whiteness by recounting the experience
of her grandmother, who passed for White to
42
gain access to clerical work but maintained a
strong Black identity in her personal life. In this
way, the credential of Whiteness expands
agency. The access provided by phenotypical
Whiteness was at odds with her personal (and
state-imposed) racial identity, but organizational access nonetheless expanded her personal agency. Thus, access to mainstream
organizations facilitates cumulative advantage
processes stretching across the life course, as
much of what counts as “merit” in hiring or
access to education is produced through prior
access to credentialing organizations.
Affirmative action policies recognize the
credential of Whiteness and attempt to alter
the nearly taken-for-granted link between
Whiteness and organizational incorporation.
Strong affirmative action policies implicitly
acknowledge that Whiteness is connected to
organizational resources through hiring and
admissions procedures. Thus, representational
goals proportional to a minority group’s presence in the general population are evidence of
attempts to change the connection between
racial schemas and organizational resources.
Racialized Decoupling
Racialized organizations often decouple formal commitments to equity, access, and inclusion from policies and practices that reinforce,
or at least do not challenge, existing racial
hierarchies. “Objective” rules and practices
may be enforced in ways that disadvantage
non-Whites, or rules aimed at diversifying or
ending discrimination may be ignored. This
decoupling allows organizations to maintain
legitimacy and appear neutral or even progressive while doing little to intervene in
pervasive patterns of racial inequality.
Organizational rules designed to protect
minority classes from discrimination are routinely broken, and racialized organizations
are likely to apply rules differentially based
on the race of the rule-breaker. Neoinstitutionalists have long argued that formal organizational rules are often decoupled from
practice (Meyer and Rowan 1977). Decoupling occurs when there is a contradiction
American Sociological Review 84(1)
between existing organizational routines and
policies adopted to placate external constituencies. Yet many descriptions of bureaucratic
rule-breaking leave out the importance of
rules and hierarchy in shaping who is allowed
to break the rules (Martin et al. 2012).
In many cases, organizations adopt affirmative action, diversity, and anti-discrimination
policies out of fear of government sanctions
(Collins 2011; Kelly and Dobbin 1998) but
retroactively claim benevolent intent. Diversity policies often serve a ceremonial publicrelations function but do little to change the
racial distribution of organizational power, as
most diversity policies lack the formal
enforcement measures that, for a short historical moment, made affirmative action effective
(Embrick 2008, 2011). Whether this is through
lack of commitment or design is an empirical
question; however, there is an “assumed white
center in most discourse on diversity” (Bell
and Hartmann 2007:908), with organizations
expecting minorities to conform to established
(White) norms and standards.
Similarly, organizational policies for
reporting and resolving discrimination cases
are often decoupled from enforcement mechanisms. In an implicit nod to the racialization
of organizations, many workplaces and
schools have discrimination procedures in
place to protect minorities. Officially, and as
a formal procedure, victims of discrimination
file a complaint, which is examined internally
by a specific department. In practice, workers
who come forward with even heavilysubstantiated complaints tend to be ostracized,
hazed, or, at worst, fired (Roscigno 2007).
Many claim that organizational responses to
discrimination are worse than the initial discrimination (Roscigno 2007), as diversity
policies and discrimination reporting procedures are often decoupled. Legal protections
have been insufficient to eliminate systematic
discrimination across many organizations.
Seeing decoupling as racialized reinforces
the notion that Whiteness is a credential.
Many studies of credentialing and discrimination focus on access at the point of hire. But
credentials also facilitate mobility and
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potentially shield one from the consequences
of rule-breaking. The loose coupling between
anti-discrimination policies and enforcement
is another example of organizations expanding or limiting agency. Because discrimination policies are loosely enforced, targets of
discrimination may face a hostile environment because they understand that those
above them in the hierarchy are unlikely to
support their claim. Furthermore, the typical
resource differences between individuals and
organizations ensure that litigious appeals to
institutions are rarely successful.
Sources Of Change
In Racialized
Organizations
Thus far, I have established that organizations
are racial structures and a primary domain of
contestation over racial meanings and
resources. This definition of organizations as
racial structures accounts for both organizational stability, which occurs during periods
of habituation as schemas accumulate organizational resources, and racialized organizational change through the creative application
of schemas to resources in novel ways to
solve emergent problems. I now highlight the
need to focus on the implicit Whiteness of
organizational theory, which may allow for
the appearance of neutrality while promoting
group-based interests. I also show how
changes in organizational racialization may
happen through overt conflicts over resources,
or through more prosaic processes that utilize
racial meanings to gain market share.
External Sources of Organizational
Racialization
Three interrelated external factors can alter
the racialization of organizations: social
movements (Bell 2014), changes in macrolevel policies such as immigration (FitzGerald
and Cook-Martin 2014), and the degree and
relative level of organizational reliance on the
state. Each of these changes in patterns of
43
organizational racialization result from altering schema-resource couplings. For example,
among the primary goals of the Civil Rights
Movement were advancing the agency of nonWhite groups, deinstitutionalizing the credential of Whiteness, and undermining the
legitimacy of organizational segregation and
the attendant distribution of resources.
Social movements are perhaps the clearest
attempts to alter racialized organizations. The
success of the “Black Power” (Bell 2014;
Rojas 2007) and “Red Power” (Nagel 1995)
movements have partially been determined
by their incorporation into organizations and
professional associations (Bell 2014) that can
channel material and social resources in ways
that are at odds with dominant schemas,
potentially altering racial structures.
For instance, during the Civil Rights
Movement, attempts to alter associations of
Blackness (schemas) with degraded organizational positions (resources) were often overt
(Bell 2014). Using middle-class protesters as
the public face of the movement, the professional uniforms worn by protesters, and even
the nonviolent tactic of civil disobedience
were all conscious tactics by organizers to
change the institutionalized meaning of race
in public life. Altered racial meanings
reshaped the institutional environment governing organizational life for both Whites and
people of color. Movement goals went beyond
mere attitudinal change, attempting to decenter the credential of Whiteness as a prerequisite for equitable incorporation. “Don’t
shop where you can’t work” campaigns, calls
for school integration, and even the demand
for “Black Power” (Ture and Hamilton 1967)
were attempts to shift the distribution of
resources and alter organizational patterns of
racial sub- and super-ordination.
International conflicts may weaken the
link between the credential of Whiteness and
organizational inclusion. Social movements
highlight the contradiction between racial
exclusion in the United States and “fighting
for freedom” abroad to push for greater inclusion (Parker 2009), and aversion to Nazism
following WWII delegitimated the most
44
brazen forms of racial exclusion (Winant
2000). The Soviet Union used rampant racial
discrimination in the United States for propaganda purposes, highlighting the country’s
hypocrisy and influencing policy change
(Bell 1980). Large-scale conflict may also
influence organizational racialization through
potential labor shortages. For instance, when
WWII created a shortage of White male
workers, northern industrial organizations
responded by recruiting heavily from the
southern Black Belt, which influenced the
Great Migration and changed the racial
makeup of northern industry (Sugrue 1996).
Shifts in state policy, especially for organizations relying heavily on the state, can also
alter the racialization of organizations. Truman’s desegregation orders applied only to
federal contractors and the military (Dobbin
2009). This institutionalized non-discrimination
as an ideal with sanctions for noncompliance.
Similarly, following desegregation orders and
the Civil Rights Acts in the 1960s, publicsector organizations showed greater degrees
of compliance and were largely responsible
for the rising Black middle class (Wilson
1978). Recently, a policy retreat from ideals
of institutional equality (Steinberg 2001) has
led to reduced levels of integration within
public-sector organizations (Wilson, Roscigno,
and Huffman 2015).
Immigration policy can also alter organizational relations. Policies that select on highstatus (Jimenez and Horowitz 2013) or
low-status workers (Catanzarite and Trimble
2008) pit natives against migrants for scarce
resources. More importantly, immigration
policy selecting on certain characteristics can
alter the schematic meanings associated with
racial groups. In contrast to the well-known
association of Latino migrants with devalued
labor (Catanzarite and Trimble 2008), Jimenez and Horowitz (2013) argue that high-status immigrants recast racial meanings largely
through their incorporation into mainstream
organizations. High-status Asians have challenged White norms, recasting achievement as
a distinctly Asian trait. Importantly, Jimenez
and Horowitz’s respondents were able to
American Sociological Review 84(1)
recast schemas associated with Asians through
the real organizational resources accrued from
incorporation into good schools and overrepresentation in high-skilled occupations.
Just as top-down policies have altered
organizational practices, organizations have
also pushed for changes in the policies of the
racial state. Hoffman’s (2003) social Darwinist “extinction hypothesis” (written for Prudential Life Insurance), which held that
African Americans would “naturally” die out,
helped derail progressive health care policy in
the early twentieth century. Agricultural corporations regularly intervene in immigration
policy to maintain access to racialized migrant
workers (Bacon 2008). Most recently, organizations such as Airbnb have undermined federal anti-discrimination law: the Fair Housing
Act carves out exemptions for single-family
and owner-occupied housing, and until
recently Airbnb’s website touted this exemption. Thus, Airbnb, as an organizational “platform,” is formally compliant with federal law
but decoupled in practice: it empowers individuals to skirt a law designed to regulate a
prior organizational form. In each of these
cases, organizations are engaged in racial
contestation as they redistribute or consolidate the connection between resources and
cultural schemas, supporting or undermining
the policies of the racial state.
Organizational practices can co-create
racial categories through interactions with the
state. A complex series of “boundary spanning” interactions between the state, the media,
and social movement organizations led to the
adoption of the census category Hispanic—an
amalgam of national groups with elements of
shared language and culture (Mora 2014).
Once institutionalized, these categories can
filter down to influence the behavior of organizations or individuals (e.g., prior to the state’s
adoption of the organizationally-pushed Hispanic category, these individuals did not necessarily see themselves as a “racial” group).
Similarly, historical examples of incorporation
into mainstream organizations have been central to the whitening of groups such as the Irish
and Jews (Brodkin 1998; Roediger 1999).
Ray
Thus, organizationally-based racial projects—
not only the state or individuals—are central to
racialization and boundary formation processes.
Organizationally-mediated racial contestation
influences the institutional environment by
changing racial categories (Mora 2014), racial
state policies, and potentially even individual
racial identity.
Social movements, macro-level policy
changes, and state-level incorporation can
influence the racialization of organizations,
but these changes are by no means unidirectional. Steps toward incorporation may be
met by counter-moves (Anderson 2016; Ray
and Seamster 2016) seeking continued exclusion. In the United States, many of these
changing policies have had a relatively small
effect on the overall racialized field influencing organizational formation and operation.
Although external factors have, in many
cases, successfully altered racial meanings
within organizations, the underlying schemas
determining sub- and super-ordination have
remained largely stable.
Internal Sources of Organizational
Racialization
Internal changes can also alter patterns of
organizational racialization. Attempts to garner greater market share (Leong 2013), diversity programs (Berrey 2015), and movement
actors’ conscious attempts to alter the distribution of resources (Bell 2014) can all contribute to internal organizational change.
Each of these organizational practices potentially shapes agency as resources are redistributed along racial lines.
Altering hiring processes may partially
change the meaning of race for organizations.
Recognizing the profitability available from
leveraging racial difference, said difference
may be used to appeal to potential customers,
gain market access, or signal compliance to
widely shared ideals about non-discrimination
(Skrentny 2013). For instance, niche marketers may incorporate non-Whites to increase
profits (Cohen 2003). Thus, the selective
incorporation of people of color can be
45
organizationally useful. As with external
pressures for organizational change, internal
sources of change are not necessarily linear:
the hiring of minorities can provide actors
with a “moral credential” (Bendick and Nunes
2012) that makes additional hires less likely.
Organizational change can also come from
movement actors diversifying their strategies
and moving into formal organizations in an
attempt to institutionalize movement ideals.
Black Power activists intentionally fought to
change racialized organizational relations by
entering the professions and developing connections to mainstream organizations (Bell
2014; Rojas 2007). The profession of social
work was profoundly changed by the movement, as Black activists altered the assumptions of the profession (Bell 2014). Black
Power activists changed the organizational
environment of higher education through the
creation of Black Studies programs, the
development of academic journals and professional associations, and calls for diversity
(Rojas 2007). Importantly, Black Studies programs that conformed to the norms of preexisting White organizational practices were
more likely to last than those seeking autonomy, as the latter were unable to accrue the
resources necessary for survival (Rojas 2017).
Work examining shifts in racialized organizations typically focuses on the explicit racial
content of organizational claims-making. Yet
because Whiteness is an implicit norm in
much organizational research, White interests
may be enforced without explicitly naming
Whiteness. White organizational actors have
institutionalized group-based demands, often
in the name of universal interests. Yet scholars
typically do not name White organizations,
preferring the euphemism “mainstream” (Alba
and Nee 2003). Therefore, the organizational
inculcation of values and social norms, and
the incorporation of racial groups formerly
considered non-White (Brodkin 1998), are
considered neutral or net positives.
The tacit refusal to name the Whiteness of
mainstream organizations is a hierarchyreinforcing racial project. Any mainstream
organization engaging in affirmative action or
46
diversity programming (DiTomaso, Post, and
Parks-Yancy 2007; Embrick 2008; Moore and
Bell 2011), downplaying a history of racial
exclusion, or recruiting people of color to gain
market share (Leong 2013) is engaged in
organizationally-mediated racial contestation.
These racial projects can have effects well
beyond the immediate organizational context,
influencing the racial state’s categorization,
legislative processes, and individual attitudes.
For example, White evangelicalism is typically considered a religious, not racial, movement; but this group of organizations has been
highly influential in restructuring the racial
state’s institutional environment in ways that
curtail the agency of people of color (Bracey
2016). Similarly, the National Rifle Association (NRA) is not considered primarily White,
even though their deeply racialized activism
has reshaped the institutional environment to
the disadvantage of Black people, who are the
primary victims of gun violence (Zakrison,
Puyana, and Britt 2017). Furthermore, the
abstract universalism of the NRA’s protection
of gun rights is often decoupled when nonWhites’ second amendment rights are abridged.
A final source of internal change is the
redefinition of job categories if they become
increasingly associated with a racial group
through job sorting (Tomaskovic-Devey 1993).
Occupations that become categorized as nonWhite work—typically at the bottom of organizational hierarchies—may confirm and
legitimate the connection between racial schemas and the unequal distribution of organizational resources, as when employers explain
the concentration of Latinos in agriculture as a
natural racial trait (Maldonado 2009).
The “property interest” in Whiteness also
shapes organizational development through
dominant racial groups’ sense of ownership
over jobs (Harris 1995; Moore 2008).
Although Whites may not be cognizant of
shared material interests, threats to group prerogative can quickly transform Whites from a
passive collectivity to an active constituency
(Lewis 2004). Rising numbers of minorities in
the workplace (Huffman and Cohen 2004), the
promotion of people of color (Elliott and
American Sociological Review 84(1)
Smith 2004), or the threat of affirmative action
(Samson 2013) trigger Whites’ latent sense of
group position. The phrase “a Black (or immigrant) man took my job” (Bonilla-Silva,
Lewis, and Embrick 2004) neatly encapsulates the sense that hiring people of color violates organizational order, constructing wage
labor as a White prerogative.
Discussion And
Conclusions: Toward
A Research Agenda
On Racialized
Organizations
I have argued that racialized organizations are
meso-level racial structures central to contestation over racial meaning, the social construction of race, and stability and change in
the racial order. Through daily, routine organizational processes, racial schemas delineating
racial sub- and super-ordination are connected
to material and social resources. Racialized
organizations expand or inhibit agency, legitimate the unequal distribution of resources,
treat Whiteness as a credential, and decouple
organizational procedures in ways that typically advantage dominant racial groups. Social
movements and conflict between states, along
with more mundane processes such as attempts
to gain market share, can alter the connections
between racial schemas and organizational
resources as actors deal with organizational
problems in creative ways.
Several implications flow from the racialized organizations framework. At a minimum, I suggest that organizational theorists
should abandon the notion that organizational
formations, hierarchies, and processes are
race-neutral. In place of the question “Does
discrimination exist?” (Nkomo 1992:498), a
question to which most sociologists know the
answer, we should begin with the assumption
that discrimination, racial sorting, and an
unequal distribution of resources are not
anomalous but rather foundational organizational norms. Although many sociologists of
race and ethnicity study race “in”
Ray
organizations, these studies typically examine
organizations as hermetically sealed from the
wider racialized social system. Studies of
racial ideology and racial attitudes—often
abstracted from the context in which these
attitudes develop and are expressed—should
be contextualized in relation to organizational
processes and the resources they muster.
Researchers should place a greater focus on
how organizations react to changes in the policies of the racial state in ways that enhance or
diminish racial group agency. Here, Tavory
and Eliasoph’s (2013) work on different modes
of “future making” may provide a model, as
both historical understanding and potential
opportunities are shaped by one’s position in
racial hierarchies. How do racialized organizational processes of unequal surveillance and
punishment, coercion and consent, shape the
subjective sense of future possibility? One is
reminded of a passage in The Autobiography
of Malcolm X, where Malcolm’s teacher told
him to lower his ambition, as Black children
rarely became lawyers (X and Haley 1965).
Although perhaps less explicit than in Malcolm X’s day, segregated schools still prepare
students for deeply divergent futures.
Other possible avenues for research focus
on the credential of Whiteness. Does this credential facilitate a similar passage through
non-White organizations? Research on gendered organizations shows that men in socalled women’s roles are afforded more
authority and move up the hierarchy more
quickly (Williams 1992). Do organizations
dominated by people of color provide JimCrow escalators for Whites, akin to the welldocumented glass escalators privileging men
(Williams 1992) in female professions?
A racialized organizations perspective also
calls for greater attention to Whites’ emotional
reactions in organizations. Hochschild (2016)
and Anderson (2016) argue that Whites’ sense
of lost cultural cachet has resulted in White
emotional reactions that have shaped the
national political landscape. But we know little
about how the emotions of Whites shape the
daily operation and distribution of resources
within organizations, or what types of
47
group-based solidarity White organizational
inclusion may foster. How do organizational
processes contribute to the “deep stories”
(Hochschild 2016) Whites tell regarding
deservingness and merit? How do organizations channel and direct the “White rage”
(Anderson 2016) of backlash politics?
Classic work in critical race theory argues
that racial progress occurs when the interests
of Whites and people of color converge (Bell
1980). How do racialized organizations adapt
in ways that support, undermine, or spur
innovations in the wider racialized social system? Research could examine the role of
organizations in constructing group-based
interest, or how organizations undermine the
extension of rights. There is excellent research
in organizational theory on how civil rights
and Black Power activists (Bell 2014; Rojas
2007) institutionalized racial concerns, but no
companion volume on the White Citizens’
Council members who become managers,
teachers, and business owners. Beyond credentialing Whiteness, what racialized policies
and practices did Whites who were opposed
to the Civil Rights Movement carry with
them into the workplace? Finally, a recent
advance in the study of color-blind racism
examines how ignorance of racial inequality
is produced by White actors (Mueller 2017).
Does the naturalized and unmarked Whiteness of mainstream organizations assist in the
production of racial ignorance?
Seeing organizations as fundamentally
racialized also opens questions about continuity and change in the racial order. Organizations’ role in the distribution of social resources
has implications beyond employment; organizational location, for example, influences
community health or may spawn gentrification. Classic accounts of organizational flight
cite non-racial, economic factors as the primary reason “work disappeared” (Wilson
1996) from Black communities. From a racialized organizations perspective, material relations reshuffled through human agency—not
racial attitudes abstracted from social context—are part of the structure in which organizational decision-making happens. As all
American Sociological Review 84(1)
48
“inhabited institutions” (Hallett and Ventresca
2006) are peopled with racialized bodies,
decisions about where to locate and whom to
hire likely include a racial component.
Ultimately, racial inequality is not merely
“in” organizations but “of” them, as racial
processes are foundational to organizational
formation and continuity. A greater integration of race and organizational theory—
focused on sometimes-hidden mechanisms
producing racial stratification—can provide a
better guide for potential interventions into
the stunning consistency of racialized organizational inequality.
Acknowledgments
Early versions of this work were presented at the Seattle
2015 meeting for the Society for the Study of Social Problems; the Sociology Departments at Texas A&M and the
University of Tennessee-Knoxville; the Duke University
Race Workshop; and the 2017 Montreal meeting of the
American Sociological Association. I want to thank Eduardo
Bonilla-Silva, Vincent Roscigno, Steven Foy, Wendy Leo
Moore, Hana Brown, Megan Reynolds, Zandria Robinson, and the anonymous reviewers for pushing me to
think harder and improve various drafts of this paper.
Special thanks to Becki Bach and Collin Mueller, who
read the earliest versions of the paper and gave me the
confidence to expand my arguments and scope. The editors at ASR provided crucial guidance on nearly every part
of the paper, making it more incisive. Most importantly,
thanks to Louise Seamster, who read and commented on
more versions of this than anyone but me. This paper
would not exist without your intellectual companionship.
Notes
1.
Empirical examples illustrating this theory are
drawn from the United States. Thus, the applicability of the theory to organizations in other parts of
the world is an open question. Brazil (Telles 2014)
and South Africa (Fredrickson 1982) have many
similar features, as their organizations are also
likely built on racial foundations. Similarly, historical scholarship shows the importance of racialized,
unpaid, slave labor to British organizations (Beckert 2015; Williams [1944] 1994) and the Industrial
Revolution more generally.
2. For an exception, see Ruef (2014) which is an organizational study that takes slavery seriously.
3. This definition of institutionalization draws on
DiMaggio and Powell’s (1983) discussion of coercive, mimetic, and normative isomorphism leading
to organizational practices becoming increasingly
similar. Coercive isomorphism typically results
4.
5.
from top-down mandates from state legal structures
or concerns about legitimacy in the face of external
constituencies. Mimetic isomorphism is due to organizations mimicking one another as they attempt
to navigate uncertainty. Normative isomorphism
results from professionalization and credentialing
processes that make workers increasingly similar.
As I show in the section on racialized organizational
change, it is an empirical question which type of
isomorphism leads to the overwhelming racial similarity in a given organizational case. However, as
DiMaggio and Powell argue, in practice, these various forms of isomorphism likely overlap.
I would like to thank one of the anonymous reviewers for this language.
There is considerable debate in the literature on the
causal status of race in field experiments and audit
studies. Scholars with widely divergent normative
commitments agree that race—when conceptualized as a personal identity typically conferred at
birth and unchanging over the life course—cannot be randomly assigned, making the construct’s
causal status at best indeterminate (Heckman 1998;
Zuberi 2001). To address this issue, scholars have
suggested disaggregating the various components
of the social construction of “race” into composite
parts to test their causal status (Roth 2016; Sen and
Wasow 2016). My position on this debate follows
Sen and Wasow (2016) in thinking that aspects of
race can be manipulated by organizational actors.
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