Collection

Virtual Issue: Modern Abolitionist Struggle

This online-only virtual issue from Social Problems includes an introduction by Irina Chukhray. The virtual issue highlights articles from the journal that discuss modern abolitionist approaches to social problems. While examining the factors that perpetuate racial inequality, the articles are connected thematically through problems such as colorism, segregation, resource deprivation, reproduction of inequalities, and possible solutions to break the cycle.

Introduction to the Virtual Issue

Irina Chukhray
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The 21st century deals with numerous variations of modern slavery. The call to end slavery should ideally be an outdated need. The call to recognize the ways in which social structure divides and disadvantages communities by race should no longer be necessary. However, to discount these critical needs as trite, unessential, and unfounded is to commit a color-blind faux pas (Bonilla-Silva and Forman 2000). The color-blind ideology adheres to the perspective that disadvantages related to race are issues of the past but current research demonstrates the deep flaws of this fallacy by examining factors that perpetuate racial inequality. This first virtual issue by Oxford University Press highlights a few articles published in the Social Problems journal that explore modern abolitionist approaches to social problems. The articles are thematically connected by focusing on issues of colorism, dominance, segregation, resource deprivation, reproduction of inequalities, and possible solutions to break the cycle.

Research paints the story of modern race-related disadvantages with numerous hues, quite literally. Ellis P. Monk suggests that skin color continues to predict educational attainment and occupational status. This finding demonstrates how the physical element of phenotype operates as a life-hindering disadvantage and how research may be underestimating racial inequality by avoiding the study of phenotype. The power attached to phenotype relates to issues of dominance and superiority over the body. Kimberly Kay Hoang highlights the ways in which men use woman’s bodies to assert dominance on either a financial level or a national level. This study implies that those in powerful positions continue to use bodies as affirming tools of dominance and superiority.

To maintain dominance and superiority over a community of people unified by disadvantage, the process requires the reproduction of inequalities. J eremy R. Porter, Frank M. Howell, and Lynn M. Hempel, for example, examine historical patterns of white families enrolling their children in private schools, which facilitates the development of “segregated academies.” This study offers a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of racial segregation and how this contemporary practice reproduces inequalities. A lack of resources aids the reproduction of inequalities. Jessica Halliday Hardie explores how differential access to social capital (i.e. a social tie resource) reproduces inequality in educational and occupational trajectories when the high or low status of the social tie is associated with the quality and quantity of investment in providing guidance about college and future occupations. Most troubling is Hardie’s finding that while black students are more likely to refer to institutional agents for guidance (e.g., teachers and counselors), the quality of that guidance is “questionable” (Hardie 2015: 257). Complementing the work of Porter, Howell, and Hempel article, Hardie demonstrates how resources operate as mechanisms aiding in the reproduction of inequality.

Segregation exacerbates the context of a lack of resources. Examining effects of residential segregation on educational outcomes, Lincoln Quillian finds that black students from racially segregated areas experience lower rates of high school and college graduation. Facilitating the pattern of poor life outcomes, Maria G. Rendón illustrates how mechanisms of residential segregation, such as urban violence, may function as a catalyst forcing youth to partake in behavior that counteracts with educational attainment, thereby hindering further opportunities. Quillian and Rendón highlight the wheels in the ongoing cycle of racial inequality.

The final two articles offer solutions to challenge mechanisms of the reproduction cycle, a cycle in which racial inequality can be traced back to dynamics during slavery. Examining the relationship between losing one’s home and subsequently losing one’s job, Matthew Desmond and Carl Gershenson propose government initiatives as a solution to promote housing stability. Such a solution could help break the cycle of disadvantage by implementing a type of safety net. To implement such initiatives, individuals advocating social change for the benefit of disadvantaged communities must be in positions of power. María Vélez, Christopher Lyons, and Wayne Santoro explore the benefits of black political opportunities and black mobilization for improving neighborhoods. This final study underlines the role of power in the hands of people vying for social change to benefit disadvantaged communities and people with a conscious and explicit interest to tackle ongoing inequalities.