Roth, Wendy D. 2012. Race Migrations: Latinos and the Cultural Transformation of Race. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

In this groundbreaking study of Puerto Rican and Dominican migration to the United States, Wendy D. Roth explores the influence of migration on changing cultural conceptions of race—for the newcomers, for their host society, and for those who remain in the countries left behind. Just as migrants can gain new language proficiencies, they can pick up new understandings of race. But adopting an American idea about race does not mean abandoning earlier ideas. New racial schemas transfer across borders and cultures spread between sending and host countries.

Behind many current debates on immigration is the question of how Latinos will integrate and where they fit into the U.S. racial structure. Race Migrations shows that these migrants increasingly see themselves as a Latino racial group. Although U.S. race relations are becoming more “Latin Americanized” by the presence of Latinos and their views about race, race in the home countries is also becoming more “Americanized” through the cultural influence of those who go abroad. Ultimately, Roth shows that several systems of racial classification and stratification co-exist in each place, in the minds of individuals and in their shared cultural understandings of “how race works.”

Newman, Katherine S., Cybelle Fox, David Harding, Jal Mehta, and Wendy Roth. 2004. Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings.New York: Basic Books.

School shootings have decimated communities and terrified parents, teachers, and children in even the most “family friendly” American towns and suburbs. These tragedies appear to be the spontaneous acts of troubled, disconnected teens, but this important book argues that the roots of violence are deeply entwined in the communities themselves. Rampage challenges the “loner theory” of school violence, and shows why so many adults and students miss the warning signs that could prevent it. Drawing on more than 200 interviews with town residents, the authors take the reader inside two of the most notorious school shootings of the 1990s, in Jonesboro, Arkansas, and Paducah, Kentucky. In a powerful and original analysis, they demonstrate that the organizational structure of schools “loses” information about troubled kids, and the very closeness of these small rural towns restrained neighbors and friends from communicating what they knew about their problems. Their conclusions shed light on the ties that bind in small-town America.

Syed, Moin, Enrique Neblett, and Wendy D. Roth, editors. 2019. “Ethnic and Racial Identity Development from an Interdisciplinary Perspective” Emerging Adulthood (special issue), 7(2).

Ethnic and racial identity (ERI) is a topic studied within numerous disciplines in the social sciences, humanities, and the arts, but there have been relatively few attempts to bridge across disciplines. The purpose of this special issue was to provide a forum for understanding ERI from an interdisciplinary perspective by bringing together scholars from different disciplines into the same space, while focusing on the period of emerging adulthood from ages 18-29. The special issue introduces the historical and conceptual background for the volume, reviews some of the major contributions of the seven articles included in the issue, and highlights future directions for continuing to examine how ethnic and racial identity emerges and develops in early adulthood from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Roth, Wendy D., Mary E., Campbell, and Jenifer Bratter, editors. 2016. “Measuring the Diverging Components of Race in Multiracial America.” American Behavioral Scientist (special issue), 60(4).

This special issue brings together original research that advances the emerging subfield on the measurement and analysis of varying components of race. The articles provide insight into how social scientists can tease apart the multiple components of race and leverage them to better understand how race continues to divide life chances, creatively using existing and new sources of data. The articles speak to three key themes: how we can better understand the various ways that race is experienced, alternative approaches to measuring the different components of race, and the implications of race measures for understanding social inequality.

Hu, Olivia, Xiang Lu, and Wendy D. Roth. Forthcoming 2023. “Linking Genes and Race: Racial Conceptualization among Genetic Ancestry Test-Takers.” Ethnic & Racial Studies: Online first. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2023.2224871  

The genomic revolution is highly relevant to scholarship on racial conceptualization. As genomic research has increasingly focused on small amounts of variation between ancestral groups, it may promote beliefs in racial essentialism. Genetic ancestry tests (GATs) are one of the primary ways the consequences of the genomic revolution are communicated to laypersons, necessitating a better understanding of how test-takers conceptualize race. We analyze 108 in-depth interviews with U.S. and Canadian test-takers to examine how they conceptualize the relationship between race and genes and how they believe GATs influenced their race concepts. We present a typology of racial conceptualization that moves beyond a dichotomy and toward a continuum between social constructivism and genetic essentialism. We also find that test-takers believe GATs reinforce their pre-existing race concepts, regardless of what those were. Our results support an emerging view that people selectively interpret genetic information to confirm rather than transform their race concepts.

Roth, Wendy D., Elena van Stee, and Alejandra Regla-Vargas. 2023. “Conceptualizations of Race: Essentialism and Constructivism.” Annual Review of Sociology 49: 39-58.

Demonstrating how race is socially constructed has been a core sociological objective, yet many individuals continue to hold essentialist and other concepts of what races are and how to account for group differences. These conceptualizations have crucial consequences for intergroup attitudes, support for social policies, and structures of inequality, all of which are key sociological concerns; yet much of the research in this area has emerged outside of sociology. Our review of this interdisciplinary scholarship describes the range of views people hold, the attitudes and behaviors associated with them, and what factors contribute to these views. We focus primarily on essentialism and constructivism, although we describe the greater variety of beliefs beyond this dichotomy, as well as fluidity in how people use these concepts. We conclude by presenting research on strategies for reducing essentialist belief systems and identifying key areas for future research.

Roth, Wendy D., Patricio Solís, and Christina Sue. 2022. “Beyond Money Whitening: Racialized Hierarchies and Socioeconomic Escalators in Mexico” American Sociological Review 87(5): 827-859. https://doi.org/10.1177/00031224221119803

A core sociological claim is that race is a social construction; an important illustration of this is how racial classifications are influenced by people’s socioeconomic status. In both Latin America and the United States, someone with higher SES is more likely to be classified as White than others of similar appearance, a pattern epitomized by the expression “money whitens.” However, recent studies of the effect of SES on racial classifications show inconsistent results, sometimes depending on the measures used. We develop a broad theorization of societies as having multiple racialized hierarchies with different socioeconomic escalators potentially bringing people to higher-status locations in each one. Yet racialized hierarchies differ across societies, and some non-White classifications may reflect a process of upward movement while others may not. We assess this process in Mexico using the 2019 Project on Ethnic-Racial Discrimination in Mexico, a nationally-representative survey including highly accurate digital skin-color ratings, perceived skin-color assessments, and ethnoracial classifications by respondents and interviewers. We find that having higher education increases respondents’ self-classification as Mestizo. Yet those with greater wealth are “whitened” by interviewers. Simultaneously, respondents and interviewers “lighten” respondents with greater wealth. We argue that SES can differentially affect mobility in different racialized hierarchies, showing how race is constructed partly by other social constructs like class.

Roth, Wendy D., Rochelle Côté, and Jasmyne Eastmond. 2022. “Bridging Boundaries? The Effect of Genetic Ancestry Testing on Ties across Racial Groups.” Social Problems: Online first. https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spab082

The phenomenon of widespread genetic ancestry testing has raised questions about its social impact, particularly on issues of race. Some accounts suggest testing can promote bridging social capital – connections between racial groups. In this multi-method paper, we ask whether (1) taking genetic ancestry tests (GATs) and (2) receiving results of African, Asian, or Native American ancestry increases network racial diversity for White Americans. We use a randomized controlled trial of 802 White, non-Hispanic Americans, half of whom received GATs. Unexpected findings show that test-takers’ network racial diversity decreases after testing. Using 58 follow-up interviews, we develop and test a possible theory, finding initial evidence that test-takers’ network racial diversity declines because they reconsider their racial appraisals of others in their networks.

Roth, Wendy D. and Alexandra Marin. 2021. “The Role of Skin Color in Latino Social Networks: Color Homophily in Sending and Receiving Societies.” Sociology of Race & Ethnicity 7(2): 175-193. https://doi.org/10.1177/2332649220940346

How does skin color shape the social networks and integration pathways of phenotypically diverse immigrant groups? Focusing on Dominicans and Puerto Ricans, groups with considerable diversity across the Black-White color line, the authors explore whether migrants to the United States have greater color homophily in their primary social networks than nonmigrants in the sending societies. The authors analyze egocentric network data, including unique skin color measures for both 114 respondents and 1,702 alters. They test hypotheses derived from ethnic unifier theory and color line racialization theory. The data show evidence of color homophily among Dominicans but suggest that these patterns may be imported from the sending society rather than fostered by the U.S. context. Furthermore, the authors find that migrants’ skin color is associated with having ties to White or Black Americans but with different patterns for each ethnic group. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for economic mobility and U.S. racial hierarchies.

Yaylacı, Şule, Wendy D. Roth, and Kaitlyn Jaffe. 2021. “Measuring Racial Essentialism in the Genomic Era: The Genetic Essentialism Scale for Race (GESR).” Current Psychology 40(8): 3794-3808. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-019-00311-z

Racial essentialism is the belief that races are biologically distinct groups with defining core “essences,” a notion associated with increased social distance and racial bias. While there are different kinds of racial essentialism, understanding and measuring genetic essentialism – the belief that racial groups and their defining core essences are determined by genes – is increasingly important in the wake of the Human Genome Project and the genomic revolution that it spurred. Many have questioned whether such genomic advances will reinforce genetic essentialist beliefs about race, but scholarly research is limited by measures that do not specify the role of genes in these beliefs or allow for distinct theoretical sub-components. In this paper, we develop and validate the Genetic Essentialism Scale for Race (GESR) using a sequential transformative mixed methods approach. Data for analysis come from an original survey-based study with a sample of 1069 White native-born Americans. We employ both exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory analysis to derive and confirm a three-factor model of genetic essentialism (category determinism, core determinism, and polygenism). Due to the high correlation between these factors, we also test for a second-order measurement model with three first-order factors. After conducting additional reliability, validity, and construct validity testing, we propose the GESR— a second-order construct with three first-order dimensions— as a reliable measure of genetic essentialism. The GESR will allow researchers to determine the impact of new genetic developments like race-based medicines and genetic ancestry testing on genetic essentialist beliefs about race.

Roth, Wendy D., Şule Yaylacı, Kaitlin Jaffe, Lindsey Richardson. 2020. “Do Genetic Ancestry Tests Increase Racial Essentialism? Findings from a Randomized Controlled Trial.” PLoS ONE 15(1): e0227399. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0227399

Genetic ancestry testing is a billion-dollar industry, with more than 26 million tests sold by 2018, which raises concerns over how it might influence test-takers’ understandings of race. While social scientists argue that genetic ancestry tests may promote an essentialist view of race as fixed and determining innate abilities, others suggest it could reduce essentialist views by reinforcing a view of race as socially constructed. Essentialist views are a concern because of their association with racism, particularly in its most extreme forms. Here we report the first randomized controlled trial of genetic ancestry testing conducted to examine potential causal relationships between taking the tests and essentialist views of race. Native-born White Americans were randomly assigned to receive Admixture and mtDNA tests or no tests. While we find no significant average effect of genetic ancestry testing on essentialism, secondary analyses reveal that the impact of these tests on racial essentialism varies by type of genetic knowledge. Within the treatment arm, essentialist beliefs significantly declined after testing among individuals with high genetic knowledge, but increased among those with the least genetic knowledge. Additional secondary analysis show that essentialist beliefs do not change based on the specific ancestries reported in test-takers’ results. These results indicate that individuals’ interpretations of genetic ancestry testing results, and the links between genes and race, may depend on their understanding of genetics.

Roth, Wendy D. and Biorn Ivemark. 2018. “Genetic Options: The Impact of Genetic Ancestry Testing on Ethnic and Racial Identities.” American Journal of Sociology 124(1): 150-184.

The rapid growth of genetic ancestry testing has brought concerns that these tests will transform consumers’ racial and ethnic identities, producing “geneticized” identities determined by genetic knowledge. Drawing on 100 qualitative interviews with white, black, Hispanic/Latino, Asian, and Native Americans, the authors develop the genetic options theory to account for how genetic ancestry tests influence consumers’ ethnic and racial identities. The theory maintains that consumers do not accept the tests’ results as given but choose selectively from the estimates according to two mechanisms: their identity aspirations and social appraisals. Yet consumers’ prior racialization also influences their identity aspirations; white respondents aspired to new identities more readily and in substantively different ways. The authors’ findings suggest that genetic ancestry testing can reinforce race privilege among those who already experience it.

Roth, Wendy D. 2018. “Establishing the Denominator: The Challenges of Measuring Multiracial, Hispanic, and Native American Populations.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 677(1): 48-56.

For multiracial, Hispanic, and Native Americans, norms for racial and ethnic self-identification are less well established than they are for other population groups. There is considerable variation and fluidity in how multiracial, Hispanic, and Native Americans self-identify, as well as how they are classified by others. This presents challenges to researchers and analysts in terms of consistently and accurately estimating the size and population dynamics of these groups. I argue that for analytic purposes, racial/ethnic self-identification should continue to be treated as a statistical numerator, but that the challenge is for researchers to establish the correct denominator—the population that could identify as members of the group based on their ancestry. Examining how many people who could identify with these groups choose to do so sheds light on assimilation and emerging racial classification processes. Analyses of the larger potential populations further avoid bias stemming from nonrandom patterns of self-identification with the groups.

Roth, Wendy D. 2018. “Unsettled Identities Amid Settled Classifications? Toward a Sociology of Racial Appraisals.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 41(6): 1093-1112.

Individuals are claiming greater scope for choice in their racial identities. But how they are seen and classified by others is not necessarily changing in a similar way. Racial appraisals are the way that people classify the race of others, both particular individuals and larger groups. In this paper, I make a case for the study of racial appraisals as a field of sociological inquiry. I map out the different analytical levels and methodological approaches for this field and discuss how these can be used to understand observed race, norms of racial classification, and societal norms of the racial order. I present an example of how societal norms and logics of racial classification can be analysed in real time through survey research, using 2015–16 data on 866 White Americans’ reactions to Rachel Doležal’s racial identity claims. I present an agenda for studying changes in racial boundaries and classification norms through the longitudinal tracking of racial appraisals.

Roth, Wendy D. and Katherine Lyon. 2018. “Genetic Ancestry Tests and Race: Who Takes Them, Why, and How Do They Affect Racial Identities?” Pp. 133-169 in Reconsidering Race: Social Science Perspectives on Racial Categories in the Age of Genomics, edited by Kazuko Suzuki and Diego von Vacano. New York: Oxford University Press.

Direct-to-Consumer genetic ancestry testing is sold over the Internet by dozens of companies worldwide. These tests purport to tell people about their geographic ancestral origins based on a DNA sample. Although most companies avoid using a language of race, many tests evoke the concept of race in their presentation and categorization of ancestral groups. Scholars have wondered if these tests influence the racial identities of test-takers, and how that may re-shape racial lines in our society. Yet very little is known about the people who take genetic ancestry tests, why they take them, or what impact the tests have on their identities. This chapter draws on one of the largest surveys of genetic ancestry test-takers to address these questions. The findings show that nearly half of these test-takers report that the test results affected their identity or behavior. Yet there is considerable variety in the tests’ influence on racial and ethnic identities, friendships, and activities, all of which urge caution in interpreting these tests as likely to significantly re-draw racial and ethnic lines in our society.

Roth, Wendy D. 2015. “Studying Ethnic Schemas: Integrating Cognitive Schemas into Ethnicity Research through Photo Elicitation.” Pp. 89-118 in Studying Ethnic Identity: Methodological and Conceptual Approaches Across Disciplines, edited by Carlos E. Santos and Adriana Umaña-Taylor. Washington D.C.: American Psychological Association.

Ethnic identity is shaped by both individual and social factors. Yet much of ethnic identity research has focused on the self – how a person asserts and experiences her own ethnic identity. This focus on the self can overlook the important role of intergroup relations, particularly as they shape categorization processes and shared cultural meanings about ethnic groupings. In this chapter, I focus on the idea of ethnic schemas, the bundle of ethnic categories a person perceives and the set of rules for what they mean, how they are ordered, and how to apply them to oneself and others. Photo elicitation can provide a valuable technique for uncovering the ethnic categories people perceive and exploring how ethnic classifications are made and understood. As a method, photo elicitation is more common in research studying racial classification than ethnic classification. However, it can be valuable for studying ethnicity as well. I discuss how photo elicitation can be a useful technique for understanding the shared cultural meanings and cognitive schemas of all ethnicities or races that individuals perceive in their society. Combining this technique with qualitative interviewing to explore what the categories mean, how they are distinguished and the relations between them, and where the respondent places herself within the ethnic schema, can help us achieve greater clarity about ethnic identity and the broader structures that shape it.

Golbeck, Natasha and Wendy D. Roth. 2012. “Aboriginal Claims: DNA Ancestry Testing and Changing Concepts of Indigeneity.” Pp. 415-432 in Biomapping Indigenous Peoples: Towards an Understanding of the Issues, edited by Susanne Berthier-Foglar, Sheila Collingwood-Whittick, and Sandrine Tolazzi. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

In the last fifty years, the number of North Americans claiming Aboriginal heritage has increased dramatically – not due to high birth-rates, but because previously non-Aboriginal-identified people are coming to identify as Aboriginal. The dramatic increase in such claims raises questions about how these individuals and others view the legitimacy of the new claims. In particular, the emergence of the genetic-ancestry-testing industry provides a new avenue for people to claim Aboriginal heritage and identity. In this essay, we ask what Indigenous identities mean in the genomic age when people who previously did not identify as Aboriginal can claim Aboriginal group membership on a genetic level. We examine how people who take genetic-ancestry tests conceive of Aboriginality and the legitimacy of those who claim it. We draw on data from a qualitative study with 111 Americans and Canadians who have taken DNA ancestry tests. Test-takers claiming Aboriginal ancestry in our study distinguish three discursive levels of authentic Aboriginality: ‘Wannabes’, ‘Lost Descendants’ and ‘Real Indians’. DNA ancestry test-takers are engaging in ‘boundary work’ – drawing conceptual distinctions between groups of people to create new systems of classification or new relations between groups. In doing so, they try to redefine who is included and who is excluded from the category ‘Aboriginal’. Their efforts attempt to create new symbolic boundaries that use genetic ‘evidence’ of Aboriginal ancestry as defining characteristics.