Race, Family Structure, and Poverty: Towards a Racial Stratification Approach

Family structure remains a dominant explanation for understanding racial inequality in poverty. Yet, empirical studies show family structure fail to fully account for this association, which is due largely to the assumptions undergirding this line of reasoning.

Conventional racial inequality in poverty research follows epistemologies that obscure racial domination and oppression by (a) highlighting the racial gap in poverty without conceptualizing and historicizing the social construction of race, (b) theorizing family structure as race-neutral to explain racial inequality, and (c) employing data analyses in ways that position White Americans as the standard against which people of color are measured.

Professor Deadric Williams will present racial stratification as an alternative perspective to emphasize the social construction of race and how race contributes to the unequal distribution of resources. To illustrate the link between racial stratification and poverty, he will present a conceptual model that begins with connecting racism (as structure and ideology) to the creation of racialized status (superordinate vs. subordinate) groups.

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