The associate professor of sociology's research was the focus of a new episode of The Measure of Everyday Life.
Research by Elon sociologist Raj Ghoshal was the basis for a new episode of the radio show and podcast The Measure of Everyday Life. The episode, also released on Spotify, examined how people make assessments of other people’s race and ethnicity. These assessments, called racial appraisals, are important because they underlie discrimination, shape anti-discrimination efforts and affect individual and group identities.
Ghoshal’s study, recently published in Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, was the first to consider how racial and ethnic groups vary in how they appraise others’ race. In the 30-minute episode, Ghoshal shared key findings with host Brian Southwell. He noted that Americans are more willing to give some weight to other people’s self-identifications than prior research had realized, but that this willingness is greater when considering Hispanic or Latine identity than for others.
Ghoshal also shared that while all groups place significant weight on people’s ancestry and appearance in assessing their race, Black and Hispanic Americans give greater weight to individual and ancestral experiences in assessing race than white Americans do. Black Americans further place significant emphasis on white American’s own understandings of whiteness, which Ghoshal tied to legacies of how the White/Black “color line” was violently enforced for centuries.
The Measure of Everyday Life is a collaboration by WNCU and RTI International.