Robert L Reece | The University of Texas at Austin (original) (raw)

Papers by Robert L Reece

Journal of Black Studies, 2022

As questions about racial reparations have entered public and political discourse again, research... more As questions about racial reparations have entered public and political discourse again, research about the long-term impact of chattel slavery-so called "legacy of slavery" research-has taken on new significance. Over the past two decades researchers have identified direct quantitative links between slavery and a number of contemporary social and economic outcomes, including income, poverty, home ownership, school segregation, crime, educational inequality, and political polarization. Recently, however, researchers have begun to connect slavery to contemporary health outcomes, showing the legacy of slavery seems to stunt the health of black Americans while bolstering the health of white Americans. This manuscript builds on that recent research by examining the connection between subnational variation in the density of slavery and life expectancy in the American South.

Interface: a journal for and about social movements , 2021

As social movements have been sparked across the United States over recent years to bring attenti... more As social movements have been sparked across the United States over recent years to bring attention to and combat various forms of racial inequality, from police violence to mass incarceration to economics, one issue has been conspicuously absent as a target: colorism. Among black Americans colorism is almost ubiquitous, creating vast skin tone disparities. Recent studies reveal that darker skinned black Americans are considerably more likely to experience violence at the hands of law enforcement, receive longer criminal convictions for the same crimes, and suffer an economic penalty of thousands of dollars relative to their lighter skinned counterparts, among a wide variety of other social and economic inequities. In some cases, the gap between the social and economic outcomes of light skinned black Americans and darkskinned black Americans are as large as the gap between white Americans and black Americans. This leaves an important outstanding question: why, then, have racial social movements in the United States consistently neglected not just to center a discussion of color but to even emphasize it as an important factor shaping the lives of black Americans? This manuscript will answer this question by using theories of durable inequality and path dependence to explore the history of color in the United States to explain how skin color stratification became cemented among black Americans and how it became so taken-for-granted that it has neglected to attract significant social movement attention. I argue that the crux of the issue builds from the United States' historical infatuation with fixed and immovable racial categories as the country sought to institute Jim Crow segregation laws in the wake of Emancipation and Reconstruction. This led black Americans to counter with calls for black collectivism that decentered the importance of color in favor of presenting a unified front to combat segregation. This "black is black" orientation remains dominant among black and white Americans leading both to ignore vast intraracial color disparities in favor of a focus on race that fails to adequately address the needs of the most vulnerable: dark skinned black Americans.

The Review of Black Political Economy, 2021

This manuscript leverages the plethora of research on colorism and skin tone stratification among... more This manuscript leverages the plethora of research on colorism and skin tone stratification among Black Americans to consider how the “Black” racial category may change going forward. I build on ideas about path dependence, racial and ethnic boundary formations, racial reorganization, and a case study on race and body size to explore how extant group-level differences in social outcomes and emerging differences in political attitudes between lighter skinned and darker skinned Black Americans may lead to a schism between the two groups that forces us to question what it means to identify or be identified as “Black.” The idea that “Black is Black” has become thoroughly engrained in the American imagination, facilitated by the history of “one-drop rules” and encouraged by racial segregation. This drives our racial categorization and fuels resistance to many public discussions of colorism. However, we may have reached an even more important crossroads in our examination of colorism that forces us to reckon with the question “what is a racial group?”

Journal of Economics, Race, and Policy, 2020

Although researchers have made great strides in understanding colorism and skin tone stratificati... more Although researchers have made great strides in understanding colorism and skin tone stratification in the USA, important connections are still outstanding. One of these connections lies at the intersection of skin tone and gender stratification among black Americans, a place where researchers have certainly visited but work remains to be done. This manuscript builds on previous work to examine how gender and skin tone combine to influence black Americans’ social outcomes. To that end, I leverage data from the National Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) and regression analysis to test the effect of
skin tone and gender on black Americans’ individual incomes. My results suggest a three-tiered hierarchy of income stratification. Light-skinned men sit atop this hierarchy with higher incomes than other black Americans after controlling for other relevant factors. Dark-skinned people suffer at the bottom of this hierarchy with lower incomes than the other gender and skin tone combinations (medium-skinned men, light-skinned women, and medium-skinned women).

Race and Social Problems, 2019

Research on racial fluidity has become increasingly common as researchers seek to understand the ... more Research on racial fluidity has become increasingly common as researchers seek to understand the ways and reasons people change their racial identifications and/or are perceived differently over time and across contexts. Concurrently, researchers have deepened their investigations of the attitudinal and identity aspects of "color," that is the ways that people's racial and political attitudes vary based on skin tone among members of the same racial group, particularly black Americans. This paper attempts to blend research on racial fluidity and color into an exploration of adolescent racial identity formation. I examine the effect skin tone on the likelihood and type of racial identity change among multiracial black adolescents as they transition into adulthood. My results reveal that lighter skinned adolescents are more likely to change their identification to a non-black single race, while darker skinned adolescents are more likely to change their identification to black only.

Social Problems, 2019

Legacy of slavery research has branched out into an important new niche in social science researc... more Legacy of slavery research has branched out into an important new niche in social science research by making empirical connections between the trans-Atlantic slave trade and contemporary social outcomes. However, the vast majority of this research examines black-white inequality or black disadvantage without devoting corresponding attention to the other side of inequality: white advantage. This study expands the legacy of slavery conversation by exploring whether white populations accrue long term benefits from slave labor. Specifically, I deploy historical understandings of racial boundary formation and theories of durable inequality to argue white populations in places that relied more heavily on slave labor should experience better social and economic outcomes than white population in places that relied less on slave labor. I test this argument using OLS regression and county level data from the 1860 United States Census, the 2010-2014 American Community Survey (ACS), and the 2014 United States Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service (USDA ERS). My results offer support for my hypothesis. Historical reliance on slave labor predicts better white outcomes on five of six metrics. I discuss the implications of these findings for race, slavery, whiteness studies, and reparations.

Studies show lighter skinned Black people are advantaged on a number of social indicators-a pheno... more Studies show lighter skinned Black people are advantaged on a number of social indicators-a phenomenon called "colorism." These studies generally contend preferences for light-skinned and/or Mulatto slaves endured the postbellum period to shape social outcomes into today. Following this idea, other studies examine differences in social outcomes between Mulattos and Blacks in the 19th century, but few empirically connect antebellum life to postbellum Mulatto-Black stratification. With that in mind, I examine whether the socio-economic differences between Mulattos and Blacks varied across geographic space in proportion to places' reliance on slave labor and the characteristics of its free African American population. This allows me to examine whether differences in economic status between Mulattos and Blacks are a result of Mulatto advantage in the form of privileged positions during slavery. My results reveal that Mulattos have higher occupational statuses relative to Blacks in places where slavery was more prominent and where free Mulattos were literate. This suggests the intraracial hierarchy established during slavery was more likely to be replicated in places where slavery was more important, and Mulattos were able to capitalize on freedom by leveraging their literacy into better economic statuses after emancipation. These results support the idea that skin color stratification was initiated at least in part by practices during chattel slavery and offers some plausible mechanisms for its transmission.

Critical race theory teaches that racism and racial inequality are constants in American society ... more Critical race theory teaches that racism and racial inequality are constants in American society that stand outside of the prejudices of individuals. It argues that structures and institutions are primarily responsible for the maintenance of racial inequality. However, critical race theorists have neglected to formally examine and theorize colorism, a primary offshoot of racial domination. Although studies of colorism have become increasingly common, they lack a unifying theoretical framework, opting to lean on ideas about prejudice and preference to explain the advantages lighter skinned, Black Americans are afforded relative to darker skinned Black Americans. In this study, I deploy a critical race framework to push back against preference as the only, or primary, mechanism facilitating skin tone stratification. Instead, I use historical Census data and regression analysis to explore the historical role of color-based marriage selection on concentrating economic advantage among lighter skinned Black Americans. I then discuss the policy and legal implications of developing a structural view of colorism and skin tone stratification in the United States and the broader implications for how we conceptualize race in this country.

Studies consistently show that attractiveness is racialized, and in a racial hierarchy that privi... more Studies consistently show that attractiveness is racialized, and in a racial hierarchy that privileges whites at the expense of blacks, white phenotypic characteristics are deemed more attractive than black phenotypic characteristics. This study seeks to examine whether the racialized nature of attractiveness is based on more than just appearance. To that end, I use Add Health data to analyze whether black people who identify as mixed race rather than as a single race are perceived as more attractive even when controlling for phenotype, particularly skin tone, eye color, and hair color.

Journal of Black Studies, 2022

As questions about racial reparations have entered public and political discourse again, research... more As questions about racial reparations have entered public and political discourse again, research about the long-term impact of chattel slavery-so called "legacy of slavery" research-has taken on new significance. Over the past two decades researchers have identified direct quantitative links between slavery and a number of contemporary social and economic outcomes, including income, poverty, home ownership, school segregation, crime, educational inequality, and political polarization. Recently, however, researchers have begun to connect slavery to contemporary health outcomes, showing the legacy of slavery seems to stunt the health of black Americans while bolstering the health of white Americans. This manuscript builds on that recent research by examining the connection between subnational variation in the density of slavery and life expectancy in the American South.

Interface: a journal for and about social movements , 2021

As social movements have been sparked across the United States over recent years to bring attenti... more As social movements have been sparked across the United States over recent years to bring attention to and combat various forms of racial inequality, from police violence to mass incarceration to economics, one issue has been conspicuously absent as a target: colorism. Among black Americans colorism is almost ubiquitous, creating vast skin tone disparities. Recent studies reveal that darker skinned black Americans are considerably more likely to experience violence at the hands of law enforcement, receive longer criminal convictions for the same crimes, and suffer an economic penalty of thousands of dollars relative to their lighter skinned counterparts, among a wide variety of other social and economic inequities. In some cases, the gap between the social and economic outcomes of light skinned black Americans and darkskinned black Americans are as large as the gap between white Americans and black Americans. This leaves an important outstanding question: why, then, have racial social movements in the United States consistently neglected not just to center a discussion of color but to even emphasize it as an important factor shaping the lives of black Americans? This manuscript will answer this question by using theories of durable inequality and path dependence to explore the history of color in the United States to explain how skin color stratification became cemented among black Americans and how it became so taken-for-granted that it has neglected to attract significant social movement attention. I argue that the crux of the issue builds from the United States' historical infatuation with fixed and immovable racial categories as the country sought to institute Jim Crow segregation laws in the wake of Emancipation and Reconstruction. This led black Americans to counter with calls for black collectivism that decentered the importance of color in favor of presenting a unified front to combat segregation. This "black is black" orientation remains dominant among black and white Americans leading both to ignore vast intraracial color disparities in favor of a focus on race that fails to adequately address the needs of the most vulnerable: dark skinned black Americans.

The Review of Black Political Economy, 2021

This manuscript leverages the plethora of research on colorism and skin tone stratification among... more This manuscript leverages the plethora of research on colorism and skin tone stratification among Black Americans to consider how the “Black” racial category may change going forward. I build on ideas about path dependence, racial and ethnic boundary formations, racial reorganization, and a case study on race and body size to explore how extant group-level differences in social outcomes and emerging differences in political attitudes between lighter skinned and darker skinned Black Americans may lead to a schism between the two groups that forces us to question what it means to identify or be identified as “Black.” The idea that “Black is Black” has become thoroughly engrained in the American imagination, facilitated by the history of “one-drop rules” and encouraged by racial segregation. This drives our racial categorization and fuels resistance to many public discussions of colorism. However, we may have reached an even more important crossroads in our examination of colorism that forces us to reckon with the question “what is a racial group?”

Journal of Economics, Race, and Policy, 2020

Although researchers have made great strides in understanding colorism and skin tone stratificati... more Although researchers have made great strides in understanding colorism and skin tone stratification in the USA, important connections are still outstanding. One of these connections lies at the intersection of skin tone and gender stratification among black Americans, a place where researchers have certainly visited but work remains to be done. This manuscript builds on previous work to examine how gender and skin tone combine to influence black Americans’ social outcomes. To that end, I leverage data from the National Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) and regression analysis to test the effect of
skin tone and gender on black Americans’ individual incomes. My results suggest a three-tiered hierarchy of income stratification. Light-skinned men sit atop this hierarchy with higher incomes than other black Americans after controlling for other relevant factors. Dark-skinned people suffer at the bottom of this hierarchy with lower incomes than the other gender and skin tone combinations (medium-skinned men, light-skinned women, and medium-skinned women).

Race and Social Problems, 2019

Research on racial fluidity has become increasingly common as researchers seek to understand the ... more Research on racial fluidity has become increasingly common as researchers seek to understand the ways and reasons people change their racial identifications and/or are perceived differently over time and across contexts. Concurrently, researchers have deepened their investigations of the attitudinal and identity aspects of "color," that is the ways that people's racial and political attitudes vary based on skin tone among members of the same racial group, particularly black Americans. This paper attempts to blend research on racial fluidity and color into an exploration of adolescent racial identity formation. I examine the effect skin tone on the likelihood and type of racial identity change among multiracial black adolescents as they transition into adulthood. My results reveal that lighter skinned adolescents are more likely to change their identification to a non-black single race, while darker skinned adolescents are more likely to change their identification to black only.

Social Problems, 2019

Legacy of slavery research has branched out into an important new niche in social science researc... more Legacy of slavery research has branched out into an important new niche in social science research by making empirical connections between the trans-Atlantic slave trade and contemporary social outcomes. However, the vast majority of this research examines black-white inequality or black disadvantage without devoting corresponding attention to the other side of inequality: white advantage. This study expands the legacy of slavery conversation by exploring whether white populations accrue long term benefits from slave labor. Specifically, I deploy historical understandings of racial boundary formation and theories of durable inequality to argue white populations in places that relied more heavily on slave labor should experience better social and economic outcomes than white population in places that relied less on slave labor. I test this argument using OLS regression and county level data from the 1860 United States Census, the 2010-2014 American Community Survey (ACS), and the 2014 United States Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service (USDA ERS). My results offer support for my hypothesis. Historical reliance on slave labor predicts better white outcomes on five of six metrics. I discuss the implications of these findings for race, slavery, whiteness studies, and reparations.

Studies show lighter skinned Black people are advantaged on a number of social indicators-a pheno... more Studies show lighter skinned Black people are advantaged on a number of social indicators-a phenomenon called "colorism." These studies generally contend preferences for light-skinned and/or Mulatto slaves endured the postbellum period to shape social outcomes into today. Following this idea, other studies examine differences in social outcomes between Mulattos and Blacks in the 19th century, but few empirically connect antebellum life to postbellum Mulatto-Black stratification. With that in mind, I examine whether the socio-economic differences between Mulattos and Blacks varied across geographic space in proportion to places' reliance on slave labor and the characteristics of its free African American population. This allows me to examine whether differences in economic status between Mulattos and Blacks are a result of Mulatto advantage in the form of privileged positions during slavery. My results reveal that Mulattos have higher occupational statuses relative to Blacks in places where slavery was more prominent and where free Mulattos were literate. This suggests the intraracial hierarchy established during slavery was more likely to be replicated in places where slavery was more important, and Mulattos were able to capitalize on freedom by leveraging their literacy into better economic statuses after emancipation. These results support the idea that skin color stratification was initiated at least in part by practices during chattel slavery and offers some plausible mechanisms for its transmission.

Critical race theory teaches that racism and racial inequality are constants in American society ... more Critical race theory teaches that racism and racial inequality are constants in American society that stand outside of the prejudices of individuals. It argues that structures and institutions are primarily responsible for the maintenance of racial inequality. However, critical race theorists have neglected to formally examine and theorize colorism, a primary offshoot of racial domination. Although studies of colorism have become increasingly common, they lack a unifying theoretical framework, opting to lean on ideas about prejudice and preference to explain the advantages lighter skinned, Black Americans are afforded relative to darker skinned Black Americans. In this study, I deploy a critical race framework to push back against preference as the only, or primary, mechanism facilitating skin tone stratification. Instead, I use historical Census data and regression analysis to explore the historical role of color-based marriage selection on concentrating economic advantage among lighter skinned Black Americans. I then discuss the policy and legal implications of developing a structural view of colorism and skin tone stratification in the United States and the broader implications for how we conceptualize race in this country.

Studies consistently show that attractiveness is racialized, and in a racial hierarchy that privi... more Studies consistently show that attractiveness is racialized, and in a racial hierarchy that privileges whites at the expense of blacks, white phenotypic characteristics are deemed more attractive than black phenotypic characteristics. This study seeks to examine whether the racialized nature of attractiveness is based on more than just appearance. To that end, I use Add Health data to analyze whether black people who identify as mixed race rather than as a single race are perceived as more attractive even when controlling for phenotype, particularly skin tone, eye color, and hair color.