Working Papers by Jennifer Hochschild
Working Paper
Authors' names in reverse alphabetical order; both contributed equally to the paper. There is not... more Authors' names in reverse alphabetical order; both contributed equally to the paper. There is nothing new in the observation that race and class intersect in complicated and non--obvious ways in the United States. Scholars have done excellent research and writing on the subject, and political actors are eager to identify and organize around race--class interactions in the public arena. Nevertheless, too often scholars as well as political actors debate racial issues in absolute terms -either barriers to equity dominate the lives of all people of color regardless of their situation, or class differences are so great that there is no longer a single black [or Hispanic or Asian] community ---and as though success or failure were a uniform property shared by all members of a group.
Articles by Jennifer Hochschild
For Ethnic and Racial Studies Symposium on William Julius Wilson, The Declining Significance of R... more For Ethnic and Racial Studies Symposium on William Julius Wilson, The Declining Significance of Race
ABSTRACT: The significance of class is increasing in the United States, in the sense that economic inequality is rising within the black and Latino populations as well as among whites. Growing inequality is associated with increasing disparities in lived experiences. Is class also increasingly significant in political life? Survey evidence shows that the answer is yes: compared with prior decades, well-‐off blacks and Latinos are less strongly liberal in some policy preferences and feel more politically efficacious, while poor blacks and Latinos tend to move in the opposite direction. Well-‐off nonwhites have not, however, lost any commitment to racial justice, so the United States is not becoming 'post-‐racial'. Given the complex patterns of change and persistence in opinions, Wilson's arguments about when and how race is significant remain as important and controversial as when first expressed.
Perspectives on Politics
several anonymous reviewers for very helpful comments on earlier drafts or in response to queries.
Social Forces, 2007
Dark-skinned blacks in the United States have lower socioeconomic status, more punitive relations... more Dark-skinned blacks in the United States have lower socioeconomic status, more punitive relationships with the criminal justice system, diminished prestige, and less likelihood of holding elective office compared with their lighter counterparts. This phenomenon of "colorism" both occurs within the African American community and is expressed by outsiders, and most blacks are aware of it. Nevertheless, blacks' perceptions of discrimination, belief that their fates are linked, or attachment to their race almost never vary by skin color. We identify this disparity between treatment and political attitudes as "the skin color paradox, " and use it as a window into the politics of race in the United States over the past half-century.
Papers by Jennifer Hochschild
Genomic Politics
In the contemporary United States, most important societal disputes have become politicized, with... more In the contemporary United States, most important societal disputes have become politicized, with the result that there are Republican and Democratic positions to which partisans largely adhere. Interestingly, that is not the case for societal uses of genomic science; controversies surrounding genomics are largely nonpartisan, or its uses are not even considered controversial. Chapter 3 demonstrates this unusual pattern by examining American elected officials’ unanimous support for forensic DNA databases and their silence on scientific DNA databases, the lack of partisanship in legislation and funding for genomics research, and the absence of controversy in the courts around genomics.
Genomic Politics
There is no most-compelling approach for governing genomics technologies, There are several possi... more There is no most-compelling approach for governing genomics technologies, There are several possibilities: Governance may be top-down from experts to the public; it may be sideways, through advocacy groups for particular issues; or it may be bottom-up, resulting from an incident or political framing that engages the public. It may, alternatively, not occur much at all, or be dispersed across many separate arena. Many experts see particular genomics arenas as distinct and requiring separate governance structures, while the public mostly sees its possibilities and risks as a unified whole. A further complication is that residents of each quadrant typically prefer different governance structures, although Enthusiasts and the Hopeful, and (separately) Skeptics and Rejecters, agree more than other pairings. Author Jennifer Hochschild explains why she fits more into the Enthusiasm cell than the others. She reasons that excessive caution about what might go wrong makes innovations in socie...
Social Research: An International Quarterly
Abstract:Albert Hirschman's The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy offers t... more Abstract:Albert Hirschman's The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy offers two sets of insights, designated roughly by the title and subtitle. Both are arresting, the subtitle because it seems so right and the title because history has proven it wrong, at least for now. Together they illuminate contemporary American politics. In Hirschman's analysis, perversity, futility, and jeopardy are arguments that conservatives use to halt progressive reforms. But in American politics of the past few decades, the political valence of these three arguments is often reversed, so that liberals use arguments of perversity, futility, and jeopardy to try to halt conservative reforms.
The data include four short vignettes that specify hypothetical individuals of various racial and... more The data include four short vignettes that specify hypothetical individuals of various racial and ethnic backgrounds who have submitted their "DNA" for genealogical testing. The vignette provides the test's "results," manipulating them in various ways. Respondents are then asked to react to the posited results. The four questions, the three response categories, and the positive or negative pole within each response category are randomly ordered. The gender of the hypothetical person matches that of the respondent. The race of the hypothetical person matches that of the respondent for questions 1 and 2, but will differ from that of the respondent for questions 3 and 4. (For purposes of this survey experiment, we treat black, white, Hispanic, Asian American, and multiracial as mutually exclusive and conceptually identical "races.")
Recent events in America show that voters are increasingly the victim of misinformation, especial... more Recent events in America show that voters are increasingly the victim of misinformation, especially over issues such as President Obama’s birth certificate and the Affordable Care Act. Here, Jennifer Hochschild and Katherine Levine Einstein show that misinformation is rife in America, and propose a number of smaller remedies to at least help improve voter literacy and counter ignorance.
Genomic Politics, 2021
Chapter 1 introduces four societal uses of genomic science that demonstrate its breadth, importan... more Chapter 1 introduces four societal uses of genomic science that demonstrate its breadth, importance, and political complexity. They are race-based medicine, racial or ethnic ancestry testing, use of DNA in the criminal justice system, and prenatal gene testing and therapy. Although most people endorse the ideas of appropriate medication, finding one’s roots, correct determination of guilt or innocence, and healthy births, each of these uses of genomic science is intensely controversial. In parallel to their benefits, these uses evoke concerns about eugenics, racial essentialism, surveillance, and discrimination. This chapter depicts each use and its controversies, outlining the contours of Genomic Politics.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2013
Governing in a Polarized Age
Perspectives on Politics, 2016
Woodrow Wilson is the only American political scientist to have served as President of the United... more Woodrow Wilson is the only American political scientist to have served as President of the United States. In the time between his political science Ph.D. (from Johns Hopkins, in 1886) and his tenure as president (1913–21), he also served as president of Princeton University (1902–10) and president of the American Political Science Association (1909–10). Wilson is one of the most revered figures in American political thought and in American political science. The Woodrow Wilson Award is perhaps APSA’s most distinguished award, given annually for the best book on government, politics, or international affairs published in the previous year, and sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation at Princeton University. Wilson has also recently become the subject of controversy, on the campus of Princeton University, and in the political culture more generally, in connection with racist statements that he made and the segregationist practices of his administration. A group of Princeton students associated with the “Black Lives Matter” movement has demanded that Wilson’s name be removed from two campus buildings, one of which is the famous Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs (see Martha A. Sandweiss, “Woodrow Wilson, Princeton, and the Complex Landscape of Race,” http://www.thenation.com/article/woodrow-wilson-princeton-and-the-complex-landscape-of-race/). Many others have resisted this idea, noting that Wilson is indeed an important figure in the history of twentieth-century liberalism and Progressivism in the United States. A number of colleagues have contacted me suggesting that Perspectives ought to organize a symposium on the Wilson controversy. Although we do not regularly organize symposia around current events, given the valence of the controversy and its connection to issues we have featured in our journal (see especially the September 2015 issue on “The American Politics of Policing and Incarceration”), and given Wilson's importance in the history of our discipline, we have decided to make an exception in this case. We have thus invited a wide range of colleagues whose views on this issue will interest our readers to comment on this controversy. —Jeffrey C. Isaac, Editor.
This paper identifies various goals for citizen monitoring groups concerned with the enforcement ... more This paper identifies various goals for citizen monitoring groups concerned with the enforcement of rights that accompany racial desegregation, sex equality, and aid for the handicapped in schbols, and presents recommendations for successful civil rights group monitoring. It is,suggested that successful citizen monitoring requires: (1) establishing the monitoring group as part of the civil rights program; (2) recognizing different viewpoints of.group members; (3) clearly specifying the extent of the group's authority; (4) developing appropriate monitoring structures; (5) choosihg membprs carefully; (6) providing appropriate resources; and (7) preSenting group reports to the school system. Four types of civil* rights monitoring groups are identified according tethe type of mandate imposed on them (statutory, poiitical, educational, or social). The s,tructurep, resourCes, and.strategies appropriate for each type, elements that might make for group success or failure, and specific recommendations for group success are discussed. In regard to the problems that monitoring groups may confront, it is held that effective group monitoring depends not only on following general strategies for success, but al §o on knowing a group's particular .
A Way Out America S Ghettos and the Legacy of Racism, 2003
The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, 1995
EJ512953 - Affirmative Action and the Rumor of Black Inferiority.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2015
This paper examines when and why Americans are optimistic or pessimistic about societal uses of s... more This paper examines when and why Americans are optimistic or pessimistic about societal uses of scientific innovation. Public opinion is not, of course, dispositive in shaping policy choices about innovations in science, but neither is it immaterial. Constituents' views may be especially important to elected officials in the case of issues about which they have no prior record, views, or expertise; in such a case, politicians may follow the lead of their voters. Our vehicle for examining optimism about science or technology is genomics, in particular, Americans' views of medical and forensic biobanks. The theoretical framework is the interaction between ideology and the institutionalization, or lack thereof, of the innovation. The evidence comes from a new national survey of about 4000 Americans , with parallel items on medical and forensic biobanks and almost 4000 open ended comments explaining the respondents' stances on biobanking. We find that Americans tend toward optimism about medical biobanks, which are not institutionalized, and even greater optimism about forensic biobanks, which have much broader and deeper roots in the policy arena. Despite the fact that Americans know nothing about medical biobanks, Republicans are less enthusiastic about them than are Democrats, extreme conservatives are more pessimistic than are other conservatives, and Blacks are less enthusiastic than are Whites or Asians. Supported by insights emerging from the open-ended responses, we interpret these results as further evidence of the importance of institutionalization on attitudes-through partisanship in the case of Republicans and Democrats, rejection of all institutions in the case of extreme conservatives, and experiencebased mistrust of institutions in the case of African Americans. We conclude that comparison across of types of biobanks offers a fairly precise way to measure the impact of institutionalization on public opinion, and the relative importance of the scientific innovation itself compared with respondents' prior histories, stereotypes, or commitments. We open the possibility of comparing views on genomics across countries as a way to further explore the interaction of ideology and institutionalization.
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Working Papers by Jennifer Hochschild
Articles by Jennifer Hochschild
ABSTRACT: The significance of class is increasing in the United States, in the sense that economic inequality is rising within the black and Latino populations as well as among whites. Growing inequality is associated with increasing disparities in lived experiences. Is class also increasingly significant in political life? Survey evidence shows that the answer is yes: compared with prior decades, well-‐off blacks and Latinos are less strongly liberal in some policy preferences and feel more politically efficacious, while poor blacks and Latinos tend to move in the opposite direction. Well-‐off nonwhites have not, however, lost any commitment to racial justice, so the United States is not becoming 'post-‐racial'. Given the complex patterns of change and persistence in opinions, Wilson's arguments about when and how race is significant remain as important and controversial as when first expressed.
Papers by Jennifer Hochschild
ABSTRACT: The significance of class is increasing in the United States, in the sense that economic inequality is rising within the black and Latino populations as well as among whites. Growing inequality is associated with increasing disparities in lived experiences. Is class also increasingly significant in political life? Survey evidence shows that the answer is yes: compared with prior decades, well-‐off blacks and Latinos are less strongly liberal in some policy preferences and feel more politically efficacious, while poor blacks and Latinos tend to move in the opposite direction. Well-‐off nonwhites have not, however, lost any commitment to racial justice, so the United States is not becoming 'post-‐racial'. Given the complex patterns of change and persistence in opinions, Wilson's arguments about when and how race is significant remain as important and controversial as when first expressed.