White Logic, White Methods Racism and Methodology Edited by Tukufu Zuberi and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Published in the United States of America by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 ww.wrowmanlittlefield.com Estover Road Plymouth PL6 7PY United Kingdom Copyright © 2008 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data White logic, white methods : racism and methodology/ edited by Tukufu Zuberi and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva. p.cm. ISBN-13: 978-0-7425-4280-8 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-7425-4280-7 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-7425-4281-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-7425-4281-5 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Race relations-Research-Methodology. 2. Racism. 3. Prejudices. 4. United States-Race relations-Research-Statistical methods. 5. African Americans­ Research-Statistical methods. I. Zuberi, Tukufu. II. Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo, 1962- HT1521.W445 2008 305.8-dc22 2007046456 Printed in the United States of America @r The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO 239.48-1992. Contents Part I: Introduction 1 Toward a Definition of White Logic and White Methods 3 Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and Tukufu Zuberi Part II: Race as a "Variable" 2 Making Sense of Race and Racial Classification 31 Angela James 3 Methodologically Eliminating Race and Racism 47 Carole Marks 4 Race and Population Statistics in South Africa 63 Akil Kokayi Khalfani, Tukufu Zuberi, Sulaiman Bah, and Pali J. Lehohla Part III: Logic of the Method 5 Causation and Race 93 Paul W. Holland 6 Swimming Upstream: Theory and Methodology 111 in Race Research Quincy Thomas Stewart vi Contents 7 Deracializing Social Statistics: Problems in the 127 Quantification of Race Tukufu Zuberi Part N: Interpreting the Problem 8 Anything but Racism: How Sociologists Limit the Significance of Racism 137 Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and Gianpaolo Baiocchi 9 Experiments in Black and White: Power and Privilege in Experimental Methodology 153 Carla Goar 10 "The End of Racism" as the New Doxa: New Strategies for Researching Race 163 Charles A. Gallagher 11 White Ethnographers on the Experiences of African American Men: Then and Now 179 Alford A. Young Jr. Part V: Dimensions of Segregation and Inequality Typically Missed 12 Indices of Racial Residential Segregation: A Critical Review and Redirection 203 Brent Berry 13 Qui Bono? Explaining-or Defending-Winners and Losers in the Competition for Educational Achievement 217 Walter R. Allen, Susan A. Suh, Gloria Gonzalez, and Joshua Yang 14 Critical Demography and the Measurement of Racism: A Reproduction of Wealth, Status, and Power 239 Hayward Derrick Horton and Lori Latrice Sykes 15 As Racial Boundaries "Fade": Racial Stratification and Interracial Marriage 251 Jenifer L. Bratter and Tukufu Zuberi Part VI: The Practice of Racial Research 16 The Gospel of Feel-Good Sociology: Race Relations as Pseudoscience and the Decline in the Relevance of American Academic Sociology in the Twenty-First Century 271 John H. Stanfield II Contents vii To Win the War: Racial Research and the Pioneer Fund 283 17 William H. Tucker Being a Statistician Means Never Having to 18 Say You're Certain 295 Oscar H. Gandy Jr. Crime Statistics, Disparate Impact Analysis, and the 19 Economic Disenfranchisement of Minority Ex-Offenders 307 Regina Austin Part VII: Conclusion Telling the Real Tale of the Hunt: Toward a Race 20 Conscious Sociology of Racial Stratification 329 Tukufu Zuberi and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva References 343 Index 389 About the Editors and Contributors 411 I INTRODUCTION 1 Toward a Definition of White Logic and White Methods Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and Tukufu Zuberi The best available methods of sociological research are at present so li­ able to inaccuracies that the careful student discloses the results of in­ dividual research with diffidence; he knows that they are liable to error from the seemingly ineradicable faults of the statistical method, to even greater error from the methods of general observation, and, above all, he must ever tremble lest some personal bias, some moral conviction or some unconscious trend of thought due to previous training, has to a degree distorted the picture in his view. Convictions on all great matters of human interest one must have to a greater or less degree, and they will enter to some extent into the most cold-blooded scientific research as a disturbing factor. -W. E. B. Du Bois, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (1899) In most respects, social science today is unrecognizably different from what it was in the years when W. E. B. Du Bois wrote his classic book The Philadel­ phia Negro. The social sciences have developed a whole series of methods of observation and analysis, and on the basis of these developments, have pro­ ceeded to describe the social world with a degree of confidence and con­ sensus that only a few optimists could have expected in Du Bois's time. Many more social scientists are engaged in research, and the resources avail­ able for social research have also greatly increased from the thousands to the billions. The political conformity and development of convincing methods have led to the marriage of social research with social policy to an extent that was not possible in Du Bois's time, especially for a social scien­ tist who was also an African American. The passage of years and positive 3 4 Eduardn Bonilla-Silva and Tukufu Zuberi turn of events have not, however, reduced the relevance ofW. E. B. Du Bois's concerns with sociological methods. Nevertheless, some readers will ask us, "Why did you folks write a book on White logic and methods?" They will likely be incensed and demand to know why we have titled our book White Logic, White Methods. The method­ ologically inclined will say, "Methods are objective research tools beyond race, gender, and class." They will argue that "social science methodology, like genetics, can be applied impartially regardless of the racial background of the individual conducting the investigation." Before we address these burning questions and points of view, we need to explain our motivations for editing a book such as this one. Thus, we begin this book in a very per­ sonal way with two vignettes from our own experiences in academia. We do so because we believe that our experiences showcase how "White logic" and "White methods" work in practice and how they blind (or severely limit) many social scientists from truly appreciating the significance of "race" (or, properly speaking, racial stratification). This book, accordingly, is not just the product of our sociological practice; it also grows out of our concerns with how the White racial logic influences the life chances of all "racial sub­ jects" (Goldberg 1997, 104-9) and the "sociological imagination."1 This book is also "personal" in so far as we, like other sociologists of color, have felt the impact of racial stratification in our own flesh throughout our entire lives-inside and outside of academia. Thus, we regard this as our first col­ laborative effort to attack White supremacy in contemporary research on race as well as in the methods most sociologists employ to examine, accord­ ing to the logic that parades as "objectivity," the so-called race effect. In this book, we will challenge the artificial distinction between analysis and ana­ lysts, individuals doing research and the world of scholarly knowledge, methods, and theory, a fiction of modern social analysis (Agger 2002). In what follows, we do three things. First, we provide vignettes from our experiences in our respective sociological domains that show how White logic and White methods have affected us. Second, we conceptualize White logic and White methods and explain the problems they pose for sociology and its practitioners. Lastly, we conclude this introductory chapter with a brief description of each of the chapters in the book and explain what each brings to the methodological table. TUKUFU ZUBERI ON WHITE LOGIC AND WHITE METHODS In the first set of vignettes, Tukufu Zuberi discusses the reactions to his book Thicker Than Blood: How Racial Statistics Lie. Since the publication of Thicker Than Blood in 2001, I have been invited by the major sociology and population departments in the country to dis-