Sociology

How Have Mainstream U.S. Models Distorted The Sociology Of Race/Ethnicity?

01/26/2012 - Edward Telles is the focus of a feature story in News at Princeton about his research broadening the study of race and ethnicity .

I have sought to understand how race or ethnic groups interact and inequality among them is produced in social contexts beyond the African American (segregated) and the European American (assimilative) experiences, the two models that have driven sociological understandings of race and ethnicity. In Race in Another America I seek to understand a wide range of social phenomena regarding human relations in Brazil based on skin color, including classification, inequality, discrimination, intermarriage, residential segregation, and social policy. In Generations of Exclusion, I address the intergenerational experiences of Mexican Americans on similar dimensions over the past 100 or more years. In both studies, I rely largely on demographic and other empirical evidence, with a grounding in historical context and sociological theory. My findings show that the Brazilian and the Mexican American experiences run contrary to mainstream sociological perspectives. For example, intermarriage across race/ethnicity is fairly common and inequality is substantial in both cases, whereas the dominant paradigm expects inequality to be low or nonexistent when intermarriage is substantial.