Individuals in Default or the System? Race and Ethnicity, Stratification Views on Legal Debt, and Desire for Escalating Punishment

How do members of racial and ethnic groups explain the origins of unpaid legal debt from monetary sanctions, and how do such attributions undergird group differences in support for policy responses that escalate punishment? Using data from the Chicago Area Finances Survey, 2019, we apply an attributional typology of stratification beliefs to account for why legal debt from fines, fees, and tickets goes unpaid. We find differences in attribution types along key measures of socio-demographics and political values, and we identify racial differences in these attributions when other measures are held constant. How people understand why legal debt goes unpaid shapes their policy preferences as well, and they explain a small but significant fraction of racial and ethnic differences in the desire for punitive recourse.

Understanding Inequality: Mexican Americans’ Stratification Beliefs

How people understand ethnoracial inequality, or their stratification beliefs, is an important concern for social scientists. Stratification beliefs can be highly influential in the development of individuals’ political attitudes and support for social policies. Despite this, research on stratification beliefs is limited in a number of ways. First, whereas much attention has been given to Whites’, and to some degree Blacks’, stratification beliefs, the attitudes of those in the “racial middle” have been largely neglected, despite their growing demographic presence. Second, much of the literature on stratification beliefs has focused on whether individuals adopt cultural or structural explanations for ethnoracial inequality, with less understanding of how people use a combination of these explanations to interpret inequality. Finally, theoretical and empirical knowledge of stratification beliefs is based largely on survey data. In an attempt to address these gaps, this research draws on interview and supplemental survey data from 70 Mexican Americans to provide an in-depth exploration of their stratification beliefs. The authors pay particular attention to respondents’ use of mixed explanatory modes, illustrating how they draw on cultural and structural discourses to make sense of the world around them. Ultimately, the authors argue that scholars need to pay attention to the interconnections among ideology, everyday experiences, and identity to understand the complexities of stratification beliefs.

White Supervisor and Subordinate Beliefs about Black/White Inequality: Implications for Understanding and Reducing Workplace Racial Disparities

This study examines the racial stratification beliefs of white Americans who have decision-making power at work (managers and supervisors) and of those (subordinates) who lack such power. We focus on whether these groups vary in overall levels of support for, and in determinants of, beliefs about racial inequality. Pooled cross-sectional analyses of data from the 1977 to 2014 General Social Surveys (GSS) reveal that, among both white supervisors and subordinates, support is greatest for a motivation-based explanation of black disadvantage, followed by (in order) explanations focusing on blacks’ lesser educational chances, discrimination against blacks, and finally, blacks’ supposed lesser ability. In line with Group Position Theory, our multivariate analyses reveal few differences across the supervisory divide in levels of support for, or in the determinants of, whites’ beliefs about black disadvantage. Differences that do exist align with alternative perspectives including Social Dominance Theory, a Group Self-Interest Model, and Intergroup Contact Theory. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and methodological implications of our findings for future research pertaining to what does and does not work to ameliorate racial inequality in the workplace.

Ideologies and Beliefs about Poverty

This article examines ideologies and beliefs about poverty. In 1981, Kluegel and Smith provided the first comprehensive summary and critique of scholarly research on beliefs about social stratification. Focusing primarily on the United States and Great Britain, they reviewed research on public beliefs in three primary areas: opportunity, the distributive process, and social class. In so doing, they identified four key questions that continue to define research in this area: What is believed about social inequality? What principles organize thought around social inequality? What determines what is believed? What are the consequences of these beliefs? This article considers what Americans (and to a lesser extent, the British) perceive and believe about social inequality; the nature of ideologies and other social psychological processes governing the intrapersonal organization of beliefs; selected factors that shape patterns of belief; and selected consequences that stratification beliefs hold for the person and for politics.