Racial Incorporation: A New Historical and Analytical Tool

Amy Jones Haug, Teachers College Columbia University

This paper asks what makes full incorporation of African Americans into mainstream society possible. I develop the new concept of racial incorporation as an analytical tool to measure four domains: full citizenship, self-determination, economic autonomy and social influence. Using historical comparative analysis of Supreme Court cases involving African American social inclusion, I find that over time African Americans have not been afforded full racial incorporation, but instead have been engaging in a “one step forward, two steps back” political environment. This paper presents a tool to understand the social location of African Americans from slavery, to Reconstruction to Jim Crow to integration, to affirmative action, to the current strategy of racial incorporation of the 21st century, diversity.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 106. Theoretical Perspectives on Race