Visual Imagery in Criminology Texts Reinforce Social Construction of Race and Gender

Introduction

Textbooks, including their visual portrayals of a discipline, play a central role in education. Many studies have found that racial and gender biases are common in textbooks. In particular, women and racial and ethnic minorities have been excluded and/or portrayed in a stereotypical manner. If pictures tell stories that we believe to be true, it’s important to analyze the nature of these images and the messages they convey
to students. The study was designed to contribute to the dialogue around visual imagery in criminal justice and criminology textbooks.

Previous studies analyzing images of textbooks in several disciplines provide evidence that images often perpetuate stereotypes about race and gender. In government and politics textbooks, for example, African Americans, Asian Americans, and women were overrepresented in sections dealing with poverty while white and Hispanic Americans were underrepresented when compared to actual rates of poverty in society. Across all of these studies, one thing holds true: women of color are rendered invisible given a general tendency to view gender and race as separate and distinct categories, resulting in images where all the women are white, and all the people of color are men. This study seeks to answer the following five questions to better understand this phenomenon in the context of criminal justice and criminology textbooks:

1. How often are women and people of color represented?
2. Do portrayals of women and people of color perpetuate stereotypes about their roles in the criminal justice system?
3. Are images of women and people of color placed adjacent to content that contributes to stereotypical views about race and gender?
4. Are women of color especially marginalized in terms of their overall representation and portrayal?
5. Has representation of people of color, especially women, improved over time?

Dr. Helen M. Eigenberg was a Professor in the Criminal Justice department at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga focused on women and crime, victimology and institutional corrections Dr. Seong min Park is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas researching patterns of crimes and victimization.

Methods and Findings

A total of 2,965 images were identified from 23 criminal justice and criminology textbooks published between January 2008 and May 2012. Images were coded by race and gender, role being portrayed (criminal, professional, victim or peripheral person), racial composition (singular vs. mixed race or genders depicted) and placement relative to five categories of text (overview, theory that reviews explanations of criminality, examples of crime, criminal justice system components, and special subject areas).

• Men and white people were most visually dominant, each appearing in 73% of images. Men of color and white women were similarly represented in 20% of images. Women of color were underrepresented, appearing in just 7% of images.
• Across status categories, white men accounted for 51% of criminals, followed by men of color (26%), white women (19%), and women of color (4%). Professionals were majority white men (66%), followed by men of color (15%), white women (13%), and women of color (6%). White women were overwhelmingly portrayed as victims at 43%, followed by men of color (26%), white men (21%), and women of color (10%). Women of color were twice as likely as white women, men and men of color to be in minor, or peripheral, roles (42%).
• White men were more likely to be represented in the sections that focused on criminal law, criminal justice history, cybercrime, white-collar crime, and property crimes. Men of color were located in sections focused on overview of materials and theory. White women were particularly prominent in sections focused on criminology and victimology.
• Women of color were notably absent from most sections, but most often present in sections relating to victimology and violent crime.
• Compared to data from a similar 1994 analysis, representation of white men decreased approximately 10 percentage points, representation of white women increased slightly by approximately 4 percentage points, depictions of men of color have remained approximately constant, and depictions of women of color have increased approximately 3 percentage points. There has also been a slight increase in representations of men of color as victims and a slight decrease in their representation as criminals.

Compared to population Census data, the researchers found a vast overrepresentation of white men, a slight overrepresentation of men of color, a relatively significant underrepresentation of white women, and a drastic underrepresentation of women of color. It is difficult to draw comparisons of representation in textbooks to real-world interactions with the criminal justice system because most datasets reflect bias in enforcement that results in overrepresentation of people of color.

Conclusions

This study is largely consistent with other studies of visual images in textbooks. In particular, the underrepresentation of women, people of color, and women of color has been consistently documented. Portrayals of various race and gender groups also continue to reinforce traditional views about race and gender.

The authors acknowledge some limitations of this study. Namely, their approach to racial categorization based on visual identification is subject to human error and obfuscates distinctions between Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, and Native Americans. Additionally, the inability to compare image representation to real-world levels of interaction with the criminal justice system leaves room for further research.

Introductory textbooks expose many students who are not yet critical consumers of knowledge to a particular field. They may also be the only material students are exposed to if they’re taking a general studies class or elective. For these reasons, the authors recommend that publishers own the creation of a more diverse pool of images, and that authors demand diversity, attend to the selection of pictures, and negotiate how images are used in order to present a balanced view of criminal justice and criminology. They also recommend that final versions of textbooks with images be made available to reviewers prior to publication. Until then, faculty can either responsibly contextualize the intersectionality and marginalization omitted by these images or refuse to require textbooks until their visual images are diversified.

Student Debt: A New Mechanism for Racial Social and Economic Inequality

Introduction

In the US, a college degree is a prerequisite for access to many middle-class and high-paying jobs. Yet, the social and economic payoff of a college degree is racialized, as evidenced by the highest economic disparities across races existing within the college-educated middle class. Relatedly, a growing body of research recognizes that the burdens of rising college costs, decreasing financial aid packages, and increasing student loan debt to bridge the gap are disproportionately shouldered by students of color, particularly Black youth. Race scholars argue that these disparities in costs and benefits of a college education have helped create a “fragile Black [college-educated] middle class” at increased risk for downward mobility.

Previous studies have found that parents’ social and economic resources are key determinants of their adult children’s college success. White families are more able to draw from their wealth to pay for college than Black families. As a result, Black students are more vulnerable to being steered toward predatory, high-interest loans at institutions that offer fewer labor market benefits and have high drop-out rates, making the debt that much more difficult to repay. Beyond college, labor market discrimination contributes to growing disparities in student debt over the course of a career. Scholars have hypothesized that these disparities in college funding sources and career trajectory contribute to long-standing racial inequalities in wealth. In this study, the authors build on this literature by:

• Theorizing that racial disparities in student loan debt accumulation and repayment result from generational racial economic inequality and discrimination
• Exploring factors that contribute to differences in Black-white debt trajectories over time
• Analyzing whether racial disparities in student loan debt are linked with racial disparities in wealth during early adulthood

Dr. Jason N. Houle is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Dartmouth College specializing in social disparities in mental health and well-being, processes of social stratification and mobility, and life course sociology. Dr. Fenaba R. Addo is an Associate Professor of Public Policy at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill studying debt and wealth inequality, union formation, and economic strain as a social determinant of health and well-being.

Methods and Findings

Drawing data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth’s 1997 Cohort, the authors analyzed the student debt and net wealth of 3,516 respondents at ages 20, 25, and 30. They included variables that are constant, including race, parents’ highest education, parental wealth, number of siblings, family structure, sex, and region of residence; and those that change over time, including highest degree pursued and attained, total aid-to-cost ratio years enrolled in a private institution, and other measures of socioeconomic status (i.e. marital status, parental status, full-time employment, wages, home ownership). The authors use two types of statistical analyses, hierarchical linear growth curve models, and regression decomposition, to conduct their analysis.

1. Race is significantly associated with debt levels. Black youth report 86% more debt than their white counterparts.
2. These racial differences in debt grow over time by about 7% annually. Black youth starting at 86% more debt than their white counterparts faced would lead to an approximately 186% disparity 15 years later.
3. Fifty-one percent of the racial disparity in debt across early adulthood is explained by racial differences in family background, postsecondary experiences, and young adult social and economic factors. Controlling for these factors, the racial debt gap only increased by approximately 48% over the 15 years observed.

To better understand the relationship between student debt and the racial wealth gap, they further analyzed the data at ages 25 and 30. They find that the average racial wealth gap is $46,849, and that Black young adults held 10% less wealth than their white counterparts, attributable to the higher student debt burden. Educational experiences accounted for 14% of the wealth differential, while racial disparities in social status accounted for 36% of the wealth gap. They also found that the racial wealth gap nearly triples between ages 25 and 30, and that the contribution of student debt to the racial wealth gap also increases over time from 13% at age 25 to 23% at age 30.

Conclusions

The authors conclude that the exaggerated impact of the student debt on Black youth will have consequences for the next generation of the Black middle class. Their work builds on the existing body of research by assessing changes in these factors over time. The findings substantiate their claim that the student debt crisis is contributing to increasing racial disparities in wealth, and that the debt gap grows exponentially into early adulthood.

Race scholars have long argued that the Black middle class is uniquely fragile. Black people are not only less likely to reach the middle class than their white counterparts, but also in a more precarious position once they achieve that status. While the study provides new information linking inequality and processes of debt accumulation and repayment, the research is limited by an inability to follow these young adults as they age further, an inability to speak to causal processes and an inability to examine beyond the Black-white binary with the available data. The authors suggest that future research could further examine how debt trajectories are linked to social and economic outcomes to better understand the consequences of student debt.

Intersectional Analysis of Social and Economic Policy is Critical to Understanding Existing Disparities

Introduction

In the United States, racial and gender identity are correlated with wide disparities in economic outcomes. While women earn less than men on aggregate, Black and Latinx women fare worse than both white women and Black and Latinx men in terms of income, wealth, and employment. Yet, most scholars lack a critical understanding of how social policies like SNAP, TANF and Medicaid, as well as economic policies like minimum wage and workers compensation, affect women’s economic positioning by race. This study adopts an intersectional approach to address this gap, and assess the role of social and economic policies in producing and reducing racialized and gendered inequality.

This study specifically seeks to analyze the relationship between state-level policy levers and economic outcomes for women of multiple racial identities. The authors choose public policy as the instrument of change because it is uniquely vital to addressing and solving inequality; and it is amenable to change and reflective of local government. Notably, the authors do not seek to make any causal inferences about these relationships, only to identify whether economic outcomes vary by race among women receiving similar social and economic support. Given the significance of these policies, the authors seek to understand whether they are uniformly predictive of economic status for women of various racial backgrounds.

Dr. Jamila Michener is an Associate professor in the Department of Government at Cornell University and Co-Director for the Cornell Center for Health Equity. Her research focuses on poverty, racial inequality and public policy in the United States. Dr. Margaret Teresa Brower is a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University with the Inequality in America Initiative. Her research investigates how institutions reproduce inequities, particularly across intersecting identities of race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexual orientation.

Methods and Findings

The authors first explore the landscape of economic inequality among Black, Latina, and white women across four dimensions: educational attainment, employment status, earnings, and poverty level.

• The findings reveal wide disparities in educational attainment (i.e. bachelor’s degree) with white women leading the way at 34%, compared to Black women at 24%, and Latina women at almost half the rate of white women’s educational attainment, at 18%.
• In employment, white women maintained the lowest unemployment rate at 4.2%, followed by Latina women at 6.3%, and Black women at 7.8%.
• The researchers also documented similar patterns across earnings and poverty rate. White women fare better on both accounts, earning $814 per week and having the lowest poverty rates at 11.7%, less than half as likely as Black and Latina women to be living in poverty.
• Black women in the study, on average, earned $673 per week and had a 25.7% poverty rate. Latina women earned $618 per week and had a 24% poverty rate.

Next, the authors created an economic status index from individual data of over seventy-five thousand Black, Latina, and white women from the Annual Social and Economic Supplement of the Current Population Survey (CPS). They used multivariable regressions to identify correlations between individual economic status and state-level policies, and found:

• Among state social policies that ensure access to material necessities, levels of TANF benefits and state provision of public health insurance were positively correlated with economic status for unemployed Latina women.
• Levels of SNAP benefits were moderately positively correlated with economic status for employed white women.
• Expansiveness of WIC policy was significantly positively correlated with economic status for unemployed Black and white women.
• Among economic policies that support labor force participation, state minimum wages above the federal minimum wage were significantly positively correlated with economic status for both employed and unemployed white women.
• Higher state earned income-tax credit rates are positively associated with improved economic status for employed Black and White women, and even for unemployed Black women. However, the same is not true for Latina women.
• State unemployment compensation was marginally negatively correlated with unemployed Latina women’s’ economic status.

Ultimately, the authors analyze and name the disparities that are produced for women across lines of race when social and economic policies are implemented. Among racialized sub-groups of women, policies have unequal impact, and demonstrate that state-level decision making on resource allocation actively impacts lived experience.

Conclusions

Given prevalent economic harm facing women of color in the United States, equitable poverty reduction and economic mobility efforts require an intersectional approach. Specifically, the authors propose that future scholars build on their work to identify specific leverage points to better address racialized gaps in outcomes of target populations of social and economic policies. The authors acknowledge that this study is limited by its lack of causal analysis. To build on the body of intersectional policy analysis, future research must continue to evaluate variance in policy effectiveness across racial groups and the design choices and incentives behind critical social and economic policies.

Additionally, the authors chose an idiosyncratic post-recession year both for ease and its theoretical value. They maintain that this is important for understanding how policy operates when women are most vulnerable in the larger economy. However, this situational factor fails to provide an understanding of what happens when the economy is considered ‘stable.’

Foundations Must Redistribute their Power in Order to Drive Racial Equity

Introduction

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and a surge of attention to pervasive racial injustice in the United States, many areas of philanthropy made public commitments to promote racial equity and social justice. Many foundations, both large and small, committed publicly to shifting the foundation-nonprofit relationship to be more trust-based and reciprocal. Additionally, many statements claimed to create participatory grantmaking processes to give constituents power over resource allocation, while centering equity in the way they do their work. Those efforts however, continue to be undermined by the operational structures and processes that underpin foundations that center and sustain whiteness.

This article provides an analysis of the current state of the field of equity in philanthropy, and recommendations for a path forward to build more accountable practices of foundations. The authors propose three major strategies for transforming philanthropic power dynamics based on their professional experiences working with over 100 foundations and on efforts led by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, and grassroots organizations.

Tanya Beer, MPA, is Associate Director of the Center for Evaluation Innovation, where she helps to lead the Center’s work with a particular focus in the areas of systems change and advocacy evaluation. Patricia Patrizi, MSS, provides strategy and evaluation consultation to foundations and non-profit organizations, and directs the Evaluation Roundtable. Julia Coffman, MS, is co-Executive Director and founder of the Center for Evaluation Innovation.

Methods and Findings

This article examines the historical and current realities of how foundations evade accountability to the people and communities they claim to serve. The authors characterize the limitations of accountability of funders, and the harm enacted through grantmaking in four domains of “capture”:

• Grantees by Funders’ Interests – Through philanthropic processes of control, grantees often become beholden to the foundation’s own interests and terms of engagement.
• Strategy – Strategies are typically designed around the foundation’s beliefs about how to solve a problem with little to no regard for the communities impacted and with a long history of organizing.
• Evaluation – Evaluation practices of the field further serve to reify the strategic choices of the foundations without raising any questions about the validity of said choices.
• Learning – Learning techniques are structured to support the original problem statements and strategies rather than complicating and informing these theories of change.

To overcome these traps, the authors advocate for a transformative approach to accountability in philanthropy that affords communities influence over foundations and a realization of their espoused values.

First, they recommend “flipping the principal-agent relationship,” by reversing principal-agent dynamics through which foundations currently demand one-directional accountability from grantees to funders. Instead, foundations should re-frame themselves as agents accountable to the communities they serve. To increase this direct accountability they must name their constituencies, make precise commitments, and create transparency and relational opportunities for evaluation and analysis of their work.

Second, they recommend that foundations shift their strategic approach to ensure that they develop channels for BIPOC -led and other grassroots organizations to meaningfully inform and challenge the foundations’ frames, assumptions, and actions. This would mean practically moving from strategies that center funders’ interests to those that are restorative and deeply informed by community needs. To do this, foundations will need to give up power, and shift control and decision-making of funding away from their own interests and towards the communities they support.

Third, the authors argue that for their first two recommendations to proceed as intended, the role of the evaluation and learning must also shift to ensure that foundations live up to their racial equity and social justice commitments. As such, the primary client of the evaluation would become the constituencies to whom the foundation is accountable. This approach would also enable critique to evaluate the foundations’ achievements and failures in a more robust way. “Boundary critique” is one exemplary tool for critical analysis of how strategies/systems look now and how they should aim to look from various constituency standpoints.

Conclusions

Foundations seeking to live out their espoused values of equity and justice must fundamentally reimagine extractive structures and processes to instead redistribute their power and agency to the communities they serve. To get there, it will require that foundations themselves be willing to give up their traditional ways of operating, turn the evaluation and accountability lens on themselves, and become conscious of how their processes, policies, and structures reinforce inequitable power dynamics. The authors acknowledge that this analysis is limited by their own identities as white women who have worked both in foundations, and as evaluators of foundations. By leveraging their experiences withinside these organizations, they hope to reinforce the messages that BIPOC leaders have been sharing for years about changes needed in philanthropy. As strategy evaluators, they also understand that their call for transformation is restricted by their role as external actors. Foundations must decide to make real change and make it possible for the innovators in-house to facilitate change, lest their espoused values continue to stand at a distance from their actual practices.