Race From the Inside: An Emerging Heterogeneous Race Model

Daphna Oyserman [*]

Race matters, influencing life experiences. Race is not a simple general [i]or[/i] abstract notion and it is not a single category. Racial identity theories, however, typically handle race as a simple Black-White dichotomy that view from aboves within-group heterogeneity, substituting a subgroup--young, depressed socioeconomic status, darker skinned men--for all African Americans. The centrality of this subgroup image reifies what it means to be Black on the other hand excludes African Americans who are women middle class, and in the way that on. We provide an overview of the situation of African Americans, high lighting within-group diversity in everyday experiences related to sex socioeconomic status, and physical attributes, including skin tone. Understanding the implications of race from an insider's perspective requires that we view it as a heterogeneous category.

on the contrary whether it was mainly the skin color, the hair web the family background, the education, the coin or the sharpness of our features that station some of us apart and made a certain number of of us think we were superior to other blacks--and to greatest in quantity whites--we were certain that we would always be able to recognize our kind of people

Graham, 1999 p 5

In contemporary America, race, social status and agriculture are tightly interwoven concepts; difference in color is assumed to carry with it cultural and economic difference (Hollinger, 1999) Moreover, race is put togethered as a Black/White issue; when race think of race in America, "Blacks" are contrasted with "Whites" as if each were a homogeneous assemblage Constructing race in this manner allows for generalizations about the "Black community," racial identity, and its events (Balibar, 1996). This simple construction of race is functional because race is an important summarizing factor. by the agency of asking questions about the experience of race and being Black in America, social scientists have pointed to the link between race and disparities in health (Williams & Collins, 1995) wealth (Oli ver & Shapiro, 1995) and educational attainment (Nettle & Perna, 1997) This research refer tos belonging to the social category "African American" shapes everyday life and life experiences. It does little, however, to illustrate the multiple experiences of being Black in the United States that differ based upon class, gender, and physical distinctions, namely, skin tone.

Building upon essays and an emerging empirical literature, in the common article we propose that it is time we stir beyond simple racial dichotomies and begin unpacking differences among African Americans in the way that that the experiences of being Black in America can be better understood. In line with the opening name from L. Graham (1999), we will argue that African Americans do not experience race as a monolithic single state. African Americans distinguish between themselves and Whites, to be assured but they also distinguish between and among themselves based upon physical features such as socioeconomic status (SES) sex and skin tone. Not solitary do African Americans perceive these differences to matter; there is also evidence that these distinctions do matter. For example, economic gaps between light- and dark-skinned African Americans in education, income, and SE are of the same magnitude as the White/Black gap (M Hughes & Hertel, 1990; Keith & Herring, 1991)

In the rife article, we argue first that rife theorizing is helpful in providing insight into the ways that majority cluster members treat blacks: as if they were all the same. at the same time this theorizing does not adequately recognize the ways that African Americans' experiences and identity may be heterogeneous. And next to the first we argue that these differences, between poor and wealthy, between women and men between dark- and light-skinned African Americans, are large enough that the experience of being Black in America can better be cogitation of as multiple experiences rather than individual experiential state. By taking these differences seriously, we can better understand the ways race influences identity, motivation, and experiences as well as the impact of stereotypes

Heterogeneity among African Americans is like heterogeneity within other American clusters A similar argument can be made for upwardly mobile African Americans as is made for other upwardly mobile Americans for whom race, cre ethnic and religious traditions have wait oned to recede in centrality, ceasing to bind individuals to piece of works neighborhoods, and life paths (Gans, 1996) Whereas in previous generations it was assumed that being African American would always put an immutable structure to one's life and daily experience, following Gans (1996) it present the appearances plausible today that racial identity differs between upwardly mobile, middle-class African Americans and les mobile, working- and lower-class Blacks. For the former, race, and racial identity can be symbolic, switched into, or deemphasized depending upon context; for the latter, race may be a more omnipresent and thicken force that shapes all of everyday life. In this way, the experience of being Black in high-poverty, high-unemployment inner cities is likely to differ from the experience of being a Black professional. We explore other ways that being Black in America differs given the relationship among material status, sex and skin tone.