This research project received funding through the 2023 Institute for Diversity Science Seed Grant Program
Principal Investigator: Mosi Adesina Ifatunji, Departments of African American Studies and Sociology, UW–Madison
Co-Investigator: Savannah Larrimore, Ph.D., Epidemiologist, Texas Department of State Health Services
Abstract: We propose a theory of ‘geographic ethnoracism,’ which postulates that, ‘areas’ (e.g., neighborhoods, counties, states) will vary in their ethnoracial schema. Therefore, we expect that, in areas where Whiteness is more salient and central, residents will more likely parse and rank Black populations according to non-phenomic ‘ethnic’ cues (e.g., nativity status). Since previous studies suggest less antagonism between Whites and Black immigrants than between Whites and African Americans, we investigate the relative health of infants birthed by native- and foreign-born Blacks, as a function of the percentage of county residents that are White. We account for selection effects by parsing the Black population into three groups: native-born non-migrant, native-born state-to-state migrants, and foreign-born Blacks. We then assess the relationship between the percentage of county residents that are White and the relative health of infants across these three Black populations. We draw on linked data from the 2003–2013 National Center for Health Statistics, the 2007–2013 American Community Survey and the 2010 Decennial Census. Our county-level fixed effects models show that infants birthed to foreign-born Blacks are healthier as their counties include more Whites, but this is not true for infants birthed by native-born Black people, irrespective of their internal migratory status. As a result, we argue that Black immigrants benefit from living in White areas in ways that African Americans do not. We take this interaction, between percent White and Black nativity status, as evidence in support of geographic ethnoracism.
Interview with Professor Ifatunji about the project
IDS: Could you tell us about your research?
Ifatunji: My empirical work is focused on the comparative study of African Americans and Black immigrants. I am interested in differences between African Americans and Black immigrants in terms of their labor market participation and their population-level health. While there’s a fair amount of research comparing African Americans and Black immigrants based on secondary data, I’m one of the few researchers conduct empirical studies specifically designed to identify the differences between African Americans and Black immigrants. Sometimes these comparisons reveal insights about other factors studies by social scientists. For example, my student coauthors and I argue in a 2022 paper that the comparative study of Afro-Americans and Black immigrants helps us better understand the social determinants of health. It can help us see the ways health outcomes are racialized in unique ways.
In recent years, people have begun using the term ethnoracial in their manuscripts and papers. However, no one has offered a formal definition for this term. It is a construct that incorporates physical and nonphysical features in the development of ethnoracial groups. I’ve already published a paper developing the idea of ethnoracialization, or how ethnoracial groups emerge. When I came to this very small literature, there were two people that were in the literature, and they were both thinking about something they were calling ethnoracism. But just like racism, if you’re going to have racism, you need races, you need a definition for races. You need something called racialization, which is the process of assigning racialized meanings to people and populations.
I view my comparative study of Afro-Americans and Black immigrants as not just basic demographic or even social demographic work, but also as a way to help us better understand the mechanisms driving ethnoracial inequality in the United States.
IDS: Your IDS seed grant project is called “Self-Selection, Local Context, and Black Infant Health in the United States: Testing a Theory of Geographic Ethnoracism.” What do you mean when you talk about geographic ethnoracism?
Ifatunji: Ethnoracism is a bit different than racism in that it allows us to think about the use of nonphysical cues, markers, or symbols in the process of racialization. These can be things like language or religion. Geographic ethnoracism is just the proposition that the experience of ethnoracial groups varies by political geographies.
IDS: Many researchers have compared the health of children of US-born Black parents relative to foreign-born Black parents. How are you expanding on that work in this project?
Ifatunji: I’m comparing the infant health of African Americans and Black immigrants. And while other researchers have done this, there is a real gap in our understanding of contextual factors for why infant health varies between these groups. Previous work has mostly argued that the reason Black immigrants have healthier babies than African Americans is because they have, as a population, better health behaviors, higher socioeconomic status and standing, better nutrition and diet, and so on. I have speculated that via ethnoracialization and ethnoracism, people have different ethnoracial stereotypes about African Americans and Black immigrants. And because of this, Black immigrants have better relationships with Whites.
To get at this question, we use a county level of analysis. We look at the percentage of the population that is White in a county and how it might be associated with differential health outcomes for infants. In the study, my coauthor and I show that Black immigrants who live in Whiter counties have healthier babies, but African Americans do not. This is a comparison within the same counties. And it doesn’t matter for African American kids whether they are state-to-state migrants or whether they have grown up in that state. So geographic ethnoracism essentially proposes that differential treatment of African-Americans and Black immigrants by Whites varies by geographic locations.
This lines up with what people in population health fields are calling structural racism. There’s not really a clear way to study structural racism right now, but these area-level analyses are emerging to help us better understand structural racism.
IDS: How does this work contribute to diversity science?
Ifatunji: One of the areas that I think this study offers a lot of promise is that the comparative study of African Americans and Black immigrants highlights how diverse the US Black population really is. It doesn’t make sense to treat this population as a homogeneous group. My research also helps us better understand the experiences of an understudied and growing population, foreign-born Blacks. Finally, I hope that this work can help to show how important context – especially geographic context – is for policies and intervention programs that aim to improve the health of Black infants in the United States.