Insights

Article Collection

Insights into Structural Racism & Inequality

Experimental inquiry and research is the atomic unit from which all science emerges. 

This article collection shares specific findings and research outcomes about human beings and societies that inform our understanding of racism, brutality and inequality. 

Charles V. Hamilton, 1929-2023: The Philosopher Behind ‘Black Power’

Charles V. Hamilton, 1929-2023: The Philosopher Behind ‘Black Power’

Political scientist Charles V. Hamilton, the tokenizer of the term ‘institutional racism,’ an apostle of the Black Power movement, and at times deemed both too radical and too deferential in how to fight for racial equity, died on November 18, 2023. He was 94.

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Norman B. Anderson, 1955-2024: Pioneering Psychologist and First Director of OBSSR

Norman B. Anderson, 1955-2024: Pioneering Psychologist and First Director of OBSSR

Norman B. Anderson, a clinical psychologist whose work as both a researcher and an administrator saw him serve as the inaugural director of the U.S. National Institute of Health’s Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research and as chief executive officer of the American Psychological Association, died on March 1.

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How African Ubuntu Might Help Decolonize Research

How African Ubuntu Might Help Decolonize Research

The author and her colleagues identified four practical ways that a complementary use of ubuntu can positively shape how research is done.

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Emancipating Women 

Emancipating Women 

In this post, Holly Slay Ferraro, an associate professor in the Villanova School of Business and Academic Director for DEI Research and […]

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As a Black Sociologist and a Mom, What I’ve Learned Listening to Other Black Moms During Pandemic

As a Black Sociologist and a Mom, What I’ve Learned Listening to Other Black Moms During Pandemic

Loren Henderson describes her work with BarBara Scott as part of a small body of descriptive research, mostly by researchers of color, countering negativity and victim-blaming in earlier studies of Black families.

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How Race Influences and Amplifies Backlash Against Outspoken Women

How Race Influences and Amplifies Backlash Against Outspoken Women

When women break gender norms, the most negative reactions may come from people of the same race.

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What Does the Data Tell Us About Black Coaches, the NFL and Discrimination

What Does the Data Tell Us About Black Coaches, the NFL and Discrimination

There are a lot of factors that play into deciding on who to hire as a head coach in the NFL. Looking at the data, race is one of them.

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Indigenous Anthropologists Call for Doing Land Acknowledgement Better

Indigenous Anthropologists Call for Doing Land Acknowledgement Better

The Association of Indigenous Anthropologists requested that the American Anthropological Association officially pause land acknowledgments and the related practice of the welcoming ritual, in which Indigenous persons open conferences with prayers or blessings.

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Making Sense of Religion in America Through Critical Race Theory

Making Sense of Religion in America Through Critical Race Theory

As a scholar of religious studies, I frequently use critical race theory as a tool to better understand how religion operates in American society. While critical race theorists initially focused on how race has been embedded in our legal system, the theory can also help us think about how race is entrenched in religious institutions.

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A Quick Primer on Critical Race Theory

A Quick Primer on Critical Race Theory

The development of critical race theory by legal scholars such as Derrick Bell and Kimberle Crenshaw was largely a response to the slow legal progress and setbacks faced by African Americans from the end of the Civil War, in 1865, through the end of the civil rights era, in 1968.

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It Is Not a Joke: Racist Humor Normalizes Anti-Asian Racism and Must Stop

It Is Not a Joke: Racist Humor Normalizes Anti-Asian Racism and Must Stop

For decades, American society has normalized the presence of anti-Asian humor. Caricatured on television, belittled at comedy clubs, targeted on social media, and mocked in private conversations, this subtle, yet widely accepted form of racism dehumanizes the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community.

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Violence Against Asians in U.S. Rests on Racism. Period.

Violence Against Asians in U.S. Rests on Racism. Period.

Race can play a role in violence and prejudice, even if the offender does not clearly express a racist intent.

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Participants Sought for Colorism in Academia Survey

Participants Sought for Colorism in Academia Survey

Aimee Haynes, a Ph.D. candidate at Florida’s Nova Southeastern University, is conducting research on colorism experiences among non-White women leaders in higher education careers. She’s asking readers of Social Science Space who fit certain criteria to fill out her anonymous online survey by September 30.

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Why Social Science? To Help Dismantle White Supremacy

Why Social Science? To Help Dismantle White Supremacy

A half-century of increasingly sophisticated research (e.g., on early childhood interventions, residential segregation, and neighborhood effects) and conceptual advances (e.g., critical race theory, intergroup relations, and stereotype threat) have given the country a much deeper understanding of inequality’s causes and consequences.

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Diversity Training and the Future

Diversity Training and the Future

Picture a standard corporate meeting room, participants crowded around a video of multi-racial actors acting out hypothetical office scenarios. They fill out […]

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Prejudice, Discrimination, and COVID-19: Excerpt from ‘Together Apart’

Prejudice, Discrimination, and COVID-19: Excerpt from ‘Together Apart’

For the people that are now out of work because of the important and necessary containment policies, for instance the shutting down […]

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Inequality and COVID-19: Excerpt from ‘Together Apart’

Inequality and COVID-19: Excerpt from ‘Together Apart’

Social distancing is a privilege. It means you live in a house large enough to practice it. Hand washing is a privilege […]

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Gurminder K. Bhambra on Postcolonial Social Science

Gurminder K. Bhambra on Postcolonial Social Science

In this Social Science Bites podcast, Gurminder K. Bhambra discusses with interviewer David Edmonds why we should speak about the Haitian revolution in the same breath as the contemporaneous American and French revolutions, how former empires conveniently forget the contributions of their colonies now that those empires have downgraded to mere ‘nations,’ and what lessons we should draw from the current iconoclastic impulse toward imperial statuary.

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The Added Value of Latinx and Black Teachers

The Added Value of Latinx and Black Teachers

As the U.S. Congress debates the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, a new paper in Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences urges lawmakers to focus on provisions aimed at increasing the numbers of black and Latinx teachers.

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Building a Digital Archive of Centuries of Records about Enslaved Peoples

Building a Digital Archive of Centuries of Records about Enslaved Peoples

Paper documents are still priceless records of the past, even in a digital world. Primary sources stored in local archives throughout Latin America, for example, describe a centuries-old multiethnic society grappling with questions of race, class and religion.

However, paper archives are vulnerable to…

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Can Academic Research be a Force for Good?

Can Academic Research be a Force for Good?

The greatest value of research is the positive impact it has on society. In this first blog post from a series looking at seminal academic articles from the SAGE Inspire collection, the editor of ‘Administrative Science Quarterly’ talks about a key 2016 piece on ‘whitening résumés.’

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Richard Wilkinson on How Inequality is Bad

Richard Wilkinson on How Inequality is Bad

In this Social Science Bites podcast, social epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson lays out the case that inequality should be fought specifically because it fosters a litany of ill effects.

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Diversity: Good Intentions Aren’t Same as Evidence

Diversity: Good Intentions Aren’t Same as Evidence

You’d be forgiven for assuming a quick and sure way to multiply profits and amplify organizational success is to increase the gender and racial diversity of any group. According to mainstream media, the effects of gender and racial diversity are universally favorable. However, professor Alice Eagly states, “the truth is there’s no adequate scientific basis for these newsworthy assertions.”

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Is the Concept of Race Science’s Biggest Mistake?

Is the Concept of Race Science’s Biggest Mistake?

There is a clear consensus among anthropologists that races aren’t real, that they don’t reflect biological reality, and that most anthropologists don’t believe there is a place for race categories in science.

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Book Review: Injustice: Why Social Inequality Still Persists

Book Review: Injustice: Why Social Inequality Still Persists

The revised edition of Danny Dorling’s book ‘Injustice: Why Social Inequality Still Persists,’ provides an analysis of contemporary issues and practices underpinning inequality and a concise interpretation of the main causes of the persistence of injustice in rich countries, together with possible solutions.

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Looking at Affirmative Action in a New Light

Looking at Affirmative Action in a New Light

Stereotype threat occurs when an individual is afraid of confirming a negative stereotype about a group to which he or she belongs and, in a cruel irony, performs worse because of it. Research shows the phenomenon is real and can sabotage affirmative action.

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It’s Time to Take the Measure of Social Mobility

It’s Time to Take the Measure of Social Mobility

Despite its obsession with the concept of equal opportunity, the United States hasn’t actively monitored its residents’ social mobility for more than four decades. Now a group of social scientists have proposed an efficient way using existing tools to chart mobility.

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Kate Pickett on the Case for Equality

Kate Pickett on the Case for Equality

Social epidemiologist Kate Pickett, co-author (with Richard Wilkinson) of The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, argues that inequality has bad […]

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The Hidden Costs of the Prison Boom for the Mental Health of Women

The Hidden Costs of the Prison Boom for the Mental Health of Women

In a recent article in the American Sociological Review, sociologists have uncovered a sprawling mental health cost to the massive and rapid increase in incarceration in the United States.

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