The Shifting Salience of Skin Color for Educational Attainment

• In Event: 2183 - Section on Race, Gender, and Class Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 08. Race and Gender in College

Abstract

Whereas findings of an association between skin color and educational attainment have been fairly consistent among Americans born in the 1960s and earlier, little is known regarding the persistence of this relationship among Americans born after the Civil Rights era. Here we address that question, asking whether the association between skin color and educational attainment has changed between black American Baby Boomers (the CARDIA Study) and black American Millennials (the NLSY97). We find that this association has seen a modest and non-significant decline among black men between the two cohorts, while it has declined to near-zero among black women net of parental socioeconomic status. Results emphasize the need to conceptualize colorism as an intersectional problem, varying by both race and also gender, and highlight the importance of temporal context for understanding the social salience of the physical body.

Authors

• Amelia R. Branigan, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Jeremy Freese, Stanford University

• Steven Sidney, Kaiser Permanente