W. Carson Byrd

Bio: W. Carson Byrd is an academic researcher from University of Louisville. The author has contributed to research in topics: Racism & Racial formation theory. The author has an hindex of 10, co-authored 33 publications receiving 283 citations. Previous affiliations of W. Carson Byrd include Virginia Tech.

Biological Determinism and Racial Essentialism: The Ideological Double Helix of Racial Inequality

Abstract: I August 2012, nine months after being artificially inseminated using a sperm donation from the Midwest Sperm Bank of Downers grove, Illinois, a white Ohio woman named Jennifer Cramblett gave birth to a racially “mixed” and healthy baby girl named Payton. Despite the triumph, the woman soon filed a “wrongful birth” suit in Cook County Circuit Court, alleging that the sperm bank gave her sperm vials from an African American donor instead of a white donor, which in turn caused “personal injuries . . . pain, suffering, emotional distress and other economic and non-economic losses” (Circuit Court 2014, 8). The lawsuit states “that they now live each day with fears, anxieties and uncertainty about her future and Payton’s future” (Circuit Court 2014, 6). The supposed racial mismatch between parent and child in Cramblett v. Midwest Sperm Bank reveals the presence of two powerful belief systems that haunt both the popular imagination and stalk the scientific landscape: the notions of “biological determinism” (that race is genetically inherited) and “racial essentialism” (that group-based biology maps to basic social behaviors). Together, biological determinism and racial essentialism form the “ideological double helix” that intertwines to shape beliefs about race and inequality and influence the theoretical approaches, analytic strategies, and interpretations taken by scholars

Conflating Apples and Oranges: Understanding Modern Forms of Racism

Abstract: Social scientists generally agree that the post-Civil Rights form of racism is different from that which existed in the Jim Crow-era in the United States However, beyond this agreement, what exactly modern racism is and “looks like” is debatable With this in mind, a surprising and somewhat disturbing trend frequently occurs among social scientists that can have real consequences within academia and the general public: conflation In naming a newly developed concept as “racism”, social scientists often conflate three interrelated concepts: racial prejudice, racial discrimination, and racism This paper clarifies these three interrelated concepts and the problems with conflating them Additionally, this paper describes many of the alternative conceptions of racism in the post-Civil Rights era, identifying where conflation exists in each concept In closing, the paper describes the implications of conflation for social science research and the American public

The Foundation of Racial Disparities in the Standardized Testing Era: The Impact of School Segregation and the Assault on Public Education in Virginia

Abstract: We present a historical outline of racial inequality in Virginia’s kindergarten through 12th grade educational system focusing on de jure school desegregation and subsequent massive resistance foll...

Ultimate Attribution in the Genetic Era: White Support for Genetic Explanations of Racial Difference and Policies

Abstract: This study uses a nationally representative survey to examine the relationship between attitudes about genetics and race. We focus on the ways in which negative out-group behavior can be explained as innate and genetic (Pettigrew’s “ultimate attribution error”), and how this may underlie racial prejudice and racial individualism—the notion that individual capabilities, not structural inequality or discrimination, drive racial stratification. We examine the relationship between attitudes about genetics and racially ameliorative policies. We find whites are more accepting of genetic explanations for blacks’ traits and behaviors. Our analyses show that racialized genetic attribution, among other factors, increases opposition to racial policies. When linked with racial individualism, though, genetic attribution can actually reduce opposition to racial policies—a finding that paints a disconcerting picture of how biological determinism is embedded in white racial ideology. Findings are discussed in relation to...

The souls of white folk beyond formation and structure: bound to identity

Abstract: Omi and Winant's Racial Formations (1994) and Feagin's Systemic Racism (2006) and White Racial Frame (2010) provide robust analyses of race, racism and racial inequality. Yet, both models hold distinctive, even antagonistic, assumptions on how white racial identities are formed and their relationship to (anti-)racism. We point to a theoretical synthesis of the strengths of both paradigms that centres on ‘hegemonic whiteness’ (Hughey 2010, 2012a) – namely the role that interactional accountabilities and expectations of racial identity performance have to play as both product and cause of the racialized social order. The ongoing pursuit of an idealized white racial self is thus illuminated as the point of suture between Feagin's focus on the relative uniformity of white privilege and Omi and Winant's attention to the political and ideological heterogeneity of whiteness.

Invisible colleges : diffusion of knowledge in scientific communities

Abstract: No wonder you activities are, reading will be always needed. It is not only to fulfil the duties that you need to finish in deadline time. Reading will encourage your mind and thoughts. Of course, reading will greatly develop your experiences about everything. Reading invisible colleges diffusion of knowledge in scientific communities is also a way as one of the collective books that gives many advantages. The advantages are not only for you, but for the other peoples with those meaningful benefits.

A History of American Higher Education: Thelin, John R.: Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 421 pp., Publication Date: August 2004

Abstract: ly, modem utopian communities, of which there were at least seven hundred in 2000 (such as Drop City, Stephen Gaskin’s The Farm, or Twin Oaks). Although Sutton undoubtedly is right in concluding that “secular communities, in contrast to religious ones, often lacked a charismatic leader,” he provides vivid portraits of many visionaries whose names are indelibly associated with some of the communities mentioned above that they inspired. When Sutton’s introduction labels utopian communalism as “an unbroken motif in American history,” readers may expect a celebration of this tradition. However, his tone throughout is even handed, and, in fact, he concludes by pessimistically noting the “eventual disillusionment” experienced by most members of communal societies when they realized that their experiments were simply microcosms of the larger society, sharing the same problems and shortcomings. Even readers familiar with the subject will most likely encounter new information; however, because Sutton was constrained by both the book’s brevity and breadth of coverage, they may also wish that he had devoted more attention to certain communities, such as Frances Wright’s radical Nashoba Community. I was surprised that the selected bibliography omitted such works as John Egerton’s Visions of Utopia: Nashoba, Rugby, Ruskin, and the “New Communities ” in Tennessee’s Past (1977), Richard Fairfield’s Communes USA: A Personal Tour (1972), Robert Houriet’s Getting Back Together (1971), and Ron Roberts’s The New Communes: Coming Together in America (1971). Nonetheless, this brief overview, along with his companion volume on religious utopian communities, belongs in all major library collections.

The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935 [Book Review]

Abstract: Some previous histories of southern education, such as Charles W. Dabney's classic Universal Education in the South, slighted the role of American Americans in shaping their own education. James Anderson's new book, the best single volume on black education in the post-bellum south, commits the opposite error. Anderson exaggerates the power and autonomy of southern ex-slaves during Reconstruction and of southern blacks in general during the Jim Crow era, and correspondingly underemphasizes the significance for their education of the efforts of former free people of colour, northern blacks and whites and white southerners. While meriting praise for its uncovering of the role of ordinary people struggling to improve their educational lot, Anderson's revisionist book almost wholly excludes electoral, legislative and administrative politics. The exclusions and lopsided emphases make it nearly as one-sided and incomplete as the white-centred, bureaucrat-dominated history that it seeks to replace.