Page 328 - Sociology and You

298 Unit 3 Social Inequality
Survey Research:
The Legacy of Racism
According to many scholars, African Americans today suffer more from low economic class than from racism. In a well-known study of the early 1990s, one sociologist, Joe Feagin, challenged this line of ar- gument. Feagin set up a study that looked at African Americans’ access to public accommodations, including restaurants, hotels, and motels.
Feagin interviewed middle-class African Americans in several cities. He wished to study African Americans in the middle class because they would have the economic resources needed to take advantage of pub- lic accommodations. His research was guided by several questions:
Do middle-class African Americans still experience racism in public accommodations?
If so, how is it manifested?
What means do middle-class African Americans use to handle discrimination?
What are the effects of discrimination on its victims?
Feagin conducted 37 in-depth interviews. Those interviewed were drawn from a larger group of 135 middle-class African Americans in several large cities.
The interviewees were representative of the larger sample based on such characteristics as occupation, age, income, education, sex, and lo- cation. The initial participants in the study were identified as middle class by city-based consultants. Names of additional participants were suggested by the first people interviewed. (This is known as “snowball” sampling.) Middle class was defined as “those holding a white-collar job (including those in professional, managerial, and clerical jobs), col- lege students preparing for white-collar jobs, and owners of successful businesses.”
Middle-class African Americans, Feagin concluded, still experience discrimination based on race. Several types of discrimination were re- ported by the respondents, including avoidance, verbal attack, physical abuse, and subtle slights. Rejection and poor service were the most common forms of discrimination, however.