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Journal Article 1: Warner, T. D., & Swisher, R. R. (2015). Adolescent survival expectations: Variations by race, ethnicity, and nativity. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 56, 478–494. doi:10.1177/0022146515611730

Adolescent survival expectations are linked to a range of problem behaviors, poor health, and later socioeconomic disadvantage, yet scholars have not examined how survival expectations are differentially patterned by race, ethnicity, and/or nativity. This is a critical omission given that many risk factors for low survival expectations are themselves stratified by race and ethnicity. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, we modeled racial, ethnic, and immigrant group differences in trajectories of adolescent survival expectations and assess whether these differences are accounted for by family, neighborhood, and/or other risk factors (e.g., health care access, substance use, exposure to violence). Findings indicated that most racial, ethnic, and immigrant groups were more pessimistic about their survival than were non-Hispanic whites, with the exception of Cuban youth, who were the most optimistic. Foreign-born Mexican youth had the lowest survival expectations, contrary to expectations from the “healthy-immigrant” hypothesis.

Journal Article 2: Bonilla-Silva, E., & Dietrich, D. (2011). The sweet enchantment of color-blind racism in obamerica. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 634, 190–206. doi:10.1177/0002716210389702

It has become accepted dogma among whites in the United States that race is no longer a central factor determining the life chances of Americans. In this article, the authors counter this myth by describing how the ideology of color-blind racism works to defend and justify the contemporary racial order. The authors illustrate three basic frames of this ideology, namely, abstract liberalism, cultural racism, and minimization of racism. The authors then examine research that has empirically shown the effects of color-blind racism on whites’ reactions to Hurricane Katrina, among whites who have adopted children of color, and in America’s elite law schools. Finally, the authors examine how the election of Barack Obama is not an example of America becoming a “post-racial” country but reflects color-blind racism. The authors argue that the Obama phenomenon as a cultural symbol and his political stance and persona on race are compatible with color-blind racism. The authors conclude with the prognosis that, under the Obama administration, the tentacles of color-blind racism will reach even deeper into the crevices of the American polity.

Journal Article 3: Embrick, D. G. (2015). Two nations, revisited: The lynching of black and brown bodies, police brutality, and racial control in “post-racial” Amerikkka. Critical Sociology. doi:10.1177/0896920515591950

In 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson established the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (NACCD) to examine the 1967 race riots that were taking place in Los Angeles, Chicago, Newark, and Detroit that erupted in the mid-1960s. That report, officially labeled the Kerner Report, outlined structural inequalities in America that privileged whites over other racial and ethnic groups; the report concluded that the United States was headed toward two separate and unequal societies: black and white. Forty-seven years after the Kerner Report where do we stand? In this article, I revisit recent events on police violence toward minorities and give consideration to some thoughts moving forward.