Literature Review of Race and Racism

In this investigation, a quantitative approach examined the problem of workplace bullying from a theoretical viewpoint. This study reviewed the relationship between workplace intimidation and employees’ work performance. The Negative Acts Questionnaire (NAQ) consisted of 22-item of the harmful actions, with variances related to bullying and work-related harassment. Data was accumulated from 217 employees from an ASEAN region. The employees worked in a plastic manufacturing company. The reliability analysis for workplace bullying was .923 and job performance was 0.836. The data analysis by SPSS 16.0 uncovered that there was a significant positive relationship between workplace bullying and towards job performance. The outcomes showed that the three predictor factors accounted 51% increase in work performance. The research also uncovered that the person related bullying was prognosticated as an active contributor toward job performance. A predictor model was assembled through an analysis of multiple regression analysis. Numerous suggestions were presented to manufacturing, managers, and leaders that some additional plans can be carried out to generate a safe environment for the employees to produce an excellent work performance. The study contributed a new idea in the research of management by opening up discussion on the importance of employee participation in producing a perfect job performance. This fact that statistically there is correlations and regression that workplace bullying has an impact on the dependent variables job performance. This finding also suggested that management might be able to decrease the level of job stress by increasing satisfaction with compensation, policies, work conditions and improving the interactions with employees in a staff meeting. This research also sheds information on how workplace bullying can be effected towards job performance. This study found that organizational cultures make worse the problem when the leaders either do not understand workplace bullying or dismiss it as solid management. The study concluded that a systems approach to designing a training program that discusses the root causes, involves all individuals from all levels, and yields skills for dealing with this phenomena can foster a congenial working environment.

Turner, R. J (2013). Understanding health disparities: The relevance of the stress process model. Society and Mental Health, 3(3):170-186.

The primary research questions of the study examined the disparities of stress by gender; stress by race/ethnicity and stress by socioeconomic status as a result of recent life events. Measures used to address physical health status included self-report information on the latest illness, chronic diseases, and self-rated health. The population studied was 493 non-Hispanic and 406 African Americans. The method used a cross-sectional design to assess lifetime and recent incidents of drug abuse and addiction, alcohol misuse and dependence, and psychiatric disorders. Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI) was used to interview the participants. The subjects were randomly selected. The empirical basis for this study describes an ongoing community study designed to more efficiently assess the hypothesis that lifetime exposure to stress can represent a significant factor in the perceived race and SES wellness disparities. Depressive symptoms decrease on status characteristics and five dimensions of stress exposure for 406 African Americans as it related to different levels of socioeconomic status. It is inferred that the viewpoints of the approach may advance the capacity of future research to evaluate the mental health significance of the stress process. Furthermore, recent life events can account for less than 6 percent of examined inequality in depressive traits with demographic circumstances controlled compared to about 20 percent for all stress; African American total stress exposure was .286, compared to whites (.920). Limitations were two-wave panel study and elevated cost of field work. The design could have been achieved with longitudinal data. Future research could advance mental well-being implication of the stress progress.

Hall, R. (2013). The idealization of light skin as vehicle of social pathogen vis-à-vis bleaching syndrome: Implications of globalization for human behavior. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, 23:4, 552-56.

The scope of the survey is to investigate the global account of light skin; empirical evidence about light skin; and the bleaching syndrome. The participant in the study examines a universal idealization of light skin by using two groups of women of color to explore their ideas about beauty. The sample consisted of 117 participants. Respondents had a mean age of 20 years. A self-report instrument was administered for assessing skin color called a Cutaneo-Chroma- Correlate (CCC). A quantitative analysis of the idealization of light skin sample of college students enrolled at a women’s institution of higher education. The majority of students determined that beautiful skin is 76.1% lightest or light and the medium tone is 18.8%.Whereas, respondents’ personal values about the skin color of beautiful women for light skin was 68.1 and medium was 20.5%. The effect precipitated the bleaching syndrome as a common pathogen amongst people of color. The study argued that train social workers globally will need to address bleaching syndrome. Moreover, people of color and the Western social workers who work with them will move the line of work to its next level through the use of assisted technology.

Garcia, D., & Abascal, M. (2015). Colored perceptions: Racially distinctive names and assessments of skin color. American Behavioral Scientist, 60(4):420-441.

The scope of the study explores whether assessments of others’ skin color are affected by a subtle racial cue or a name. The research questions and hypotheses addressed the following questions: 1) how do racial cues shape assessments of skin color? 2) Racially ambiguous faces receive a different skin color rating when it is specified a distinctively Hispanic name versus a distinctively non-Hispanic name? 3) Gender differences in the perception of skin color? The randomization and descriptive methodology were based on an original survey experiment. The survey was distributed to an online convenience sample through an Amazon’s Mechanical Turk website. Overall, 560 different subjects participated in the study; the sample was limited to adults living in the United States. Each participant observed and rated images of five female and five male features using a skin color palette. After assessing skin color, and as a guidance check, subjects were asked to choose the “most likely” racial framework of the face. Finally, subjects answered a series of demographic questions covering age, gender, race, education, income, U.S. region, and self-rated skin color. Pretested 64 names via an MTurk survey analysis conducted in September 2014. Sixty-two different subjects participated in the pretests, all of them adults within the United States. Each subject rated 32 names regarding perceived race and class, such that approximately 30 subjects rated each name. Selected the 20 most racially unique names. Results indicate that racial cues influence seemingly objective assessments of phenotypic traits, like skin color. Results symbolize that skin color ratings are affected by the presence of a racially distinctive name. A notable share of people will rank the same features darker when that face is designated a distinctively Hispanic surname as opposed to a non-Hispanic name. Also, ratings of male faces are more sensitive to racially distinguished names. The central limitation of the present study lies in our inability to disentangle the effects of perceived race from those of class and immigrant status. The conclusions revealed valuable lessons for the understanding of the social structure of race and its role in creating inequalities.

Victor E. Sojo, Robert E. Wood, and Anna E. Genat (2016). Harmful workplace experiences and women’s occupational well-being: A meta-analysis. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 40(1):10-40.

The study consists of comparing the associations of different harmful workplace experiences and job stressors with women’s work attitudes and health. The researcher examined five hypotheses: 1) High frequency/low-intensity negative workplace experiences; 2) Harmful workplace skills; 3) Work attitudes; 4) The impact of harmful workplace experiences on women’s occupational; and 5) The association between adverse workplace experiences and women’s professional. A meta-analysis examination of studies explored the similarities among adverse workplace encounters and women’s occupational health. As a result of previous research, a classification of adverse workplace experiences affecting women was proposed and then used for the analysis of 88 studies with 93 independent samples, containing 73,877 working women from 1985 to 2012. Five proximal indicators were examined with measures of organizational commitment, job satisfaction, work satisfaction, co-worker satisfaction and supervision satisfaction. Four measures of women’s health were used as distal indicators of occupational well-being: general health, physical health, mental health, and satisfaction with life. Certain gaps in the literature were identified, and areas for future research, such as sexual harassment and gendered discrimination could benefit from more precision in the measurement constructs.

Strom M.A, Zebrowitz L.A, Zhang S, Bronstad P.M, Lee H.K. (2012) Skin and Bones: The contribution of skin tone and facial structure to racial prototypicality ratings. PLoS ONE, 7(7): 1-8.

The research was the first to evaluate the contribution of skin tone and facial metrics to White, Black, and Korean perceivers’ degrees of the racial prototypicality of faces from the same three groups. White and Korean participants were randomly selected to rate either male or female faces, while Black participants ranked faces of both sexes with the order of face skin toned across participants. The participants were thirty-nine White American college undergraduates, 26 Black American college undergraduates, and 48 Korean college undergraduates at a university in Seoul, Korea rated race-related appearance qualities and emotion expression of the target faces. White and Korean participants were randomly selected to rate male or female faces, whereas Black participants ranked faces of both sexes with the order of face sex equalized across participants. Thus, each face was assessed by approximately 39 White participants, 26 Black members, and 48 Korean participants. The photographs of the Black female target faces were selected from an American singles website for Black women ages 18 to 25. The results revealed that the relative contribution of metrics and skin tone depended on both the perceiver race and face race. White perceivers’ racial prototypicality ratings were less receptive to variations in skin tone than Black or Korean perceivers’ ranks. Caucasian perceiver’s ratings’ also illustrated the higher response to facial characteristics than to skin tone, whereas the reverse was true for Black perceivers. Moreover, transversely all perceiver groups, skin tone had a more uniform impact than metrics on racial prototypicality ranks of White faces, with the reverse for Korean faces. For Black faces, the relevant result varied with perceived race: skin coloration had a more compatible influence than metrics for Black and Korean perceivers, with the reverse for White perceivers. These results have important implications for foretelling who will undergo racial prototypicality biases and from whom.

Landor, A.M., Simons, L.G., Simons, R.L., Brody, G.H., Bryant, C.M, Gibbons, F.X., Granberg, E.M., & Melby, J.N. (2013). Exploring the impact of skin tone on family dynamics and race-related outcomes. Journal of Family Psychology, 27(5):817-826.

The current multisite, longitudinal study employs data from the Family and Community Health Study (FACHS). Approximately, 800 African American families residing in Georgia and Iowa participated in the study. Self-report questionnaires were administered in an interview format using a computer-assisted personal interview (CAPI). The current study employed two waves of data, consisting of 350 males, 417 females and their primary caregivers. Using data from a longitudinal sample, 767 African American families’ skin tone, was assessed to determine how skin tone impacted experiences with discrimination or was related to differences in quality of parenting and racial socialization within families. The outcomes indicated no link between skin tone and ethnic bias, which proposes that lightness or darkness of skin, does not either guard African Americans against or intensify the encounters of unfairness. On the other hand, families illustrated preferred approach toward offspring based on skin tone and these disparities varied by gender of the child. Notably, darker skin sons endured higher quality parenting and more ethnic socialization fostering mistrust related to their counterparts with lighter skin tone. Lighter skin daughters received quality parenting compared to those with darker skin. Also, the gender of a child-directed the relationship between the main caregiver skin coloration and racial socialization promoting mistrust. These results suggest that colorism remains a prominent issue within African American families. The implication for future research is the examination of repression and intervention as it relates to the skin tone of a family.

Feliciano, C. (2016). Shades of Race: How phenotype and observer characteristics shape racial classification. American Behavioral Scientist, 60(4), 390 – 419.

Employing a unique data set drawn from observers’ assessments of photos posted by White, Black, Latino, and multiracial online daters, this study investigates how phenotype and observer attribute impact racial categorization and events of divergence between self-identities and others’ classifications. The data was collected from the Internet dating profiles posted on Match.com, between April 2011 and June 2011. Moreover, there were random, stratified samples of profiles from people seeking opposite-sex partners, living within 50 miles of four large cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, or New York City who self-identified themselves as Black, White, or Latino. The Research assistants randomly selected 200 profiles for each self-identified race/gender/region combination and coded all of the demographic information the participants provided that addressed age and race. Every coder was randomly set from 300 to 1,700 profiles, and at least seven observers coded each silhouette. The coders were unequivocally instructed not to gaze at any parts of the portrait except for the photo(s). The measures examine self-identified race, observed race, phenotypic characteristic, observer features and control variables. Finding, individuals who self-identified race as black (97%) had a higher mean percentage of observers who view a person as White (92%). Finding illustrated how phenotype and skin color shapes divergent racial classifications because of skin tone. Limitations were due to incomplete resources and individuals who self-identified as Black, White or Asians. Future research is to categorize Asians skin tone.

Johnston, D.W., & Lordan, G., (2016). Racial prejudice and labor market penalties during economic downturns. European Economic Review, 84: 57-75.

The study examines racial prejudice in the workplace and labor penalties as a result of economic crisis. Several hypotheses were asked concerning if economic downturns encourage racist attitudes and if racial attitudes lead to worse labor market outcome for minorities? The researchers employed British attitude and workforce data. The opinion data show that racial prejudice is countercyclical, with the effect driven by substantial increases for high-skilled middle-aged workers in which implies there is a 1% point increase in unemployment is estimated and an increase self-reported racial discrimination by 4% points. Correspondingly, the labor force data reveal that racial hiring and wage gaps are weakening, with the greatest effects observed for high-skilled men, notably in the manufacturing and construction industries. A 1% point increase in unemployment is estimated to increase the wage gap by 3%. These results were consistent with the theoretical literature, which proposes that racial prejudice and discrimination are the results of labor market competition among individuals with similar traits and that the effects of this competition are intensified during periods of economic downturn. Limitations of the survey revealed that the participants self-identified racist attitudes which influence labor market outcomes for minorities.

Embrick, D.G., & Henricks, K. (2015). Two-faced -isms: racism at work and how race discourse shapes class talk and gender talk. Language Sciences, 1: 1-12.

In this paper, a mixed-methods approach was employed to examine the contextual variabilities and nuances of racial discourse in a southwestern baked-goods workplace. Data was collected from interviews and participates (38 respondents) observations. The participants were Asians, Latinos and multiracial. Previous conclusions were questioned on how stereotypes and slurs are racially unequal in a workplace setting and to investigate what is uniquely racist about the deployment of stereotypes and stigmas and how prejudice shapes gendered and classed dimensions of these terms. Further, the researcher demonstrated how gender and class could be constructed along the lines of racial ideology at micro-levels of interaction. The outcome argued that race talk not operates independently or in isolation from other discourses like gender talk and class talk. Instead, racist remarks are often exposed adjacent to classist and sexist remarks by people, who concurrently engage multiple racial, class, and gender locations. Data were obtained for this case study from in-depth interviews and participant observations. Future research in gendered and classed could focus on white race talk or nonwhite race talk in a workplace setting.