Relationally Refracted Model of Inequality: The Case of Race and Gender in Pretrial Detention

• In Event: Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 8. Race, Gender, and Inequality

Abstract

Building on intersectionality and gradational critiques of standard approaches to stratification research, we advance a relationally refracted model of inequality, which suggests that cues and categories operate relationally within organizations. Using administrative data on 7,105 felony arrests linked to arrest photos, we reveal skin tone and masculinity/femininity (gradational cues tied to racial and gender categorization, respectively) stratification in pretrial detention between and among Black women, White women, Black men and White men, though the consequences of the particular combinations of skin color and perceived masculinity or femininity (cues) differs across these intersecting racial and gender categories. Our findings demonstrate that social categories remain indispensable for understanding inequality, but their explanatory power depends on recognizing how their intersection and the unique cluster of continuous cues that partly determine them stratify organizational outcomes. Social stratification results from a relationally refracted process between categories and cues, depending on their contingent, organizationally specific content.

Author

• Yader R. Lanuza, University of California-Santa Barbara