A Tripartite Framework for Understanding the U.S. Racial Hierarchy: Social Status, Culture, and Phenotypicality

Due to the systemic nature of racism within the U.S., racially marginalized group members face pernicious disparities and indicate mistreatment across many vital life domains. To better understand groups' and individuals' experiences, this review seeks to identify primary facets that contribute to marginalization. Integrating key models from across social scientific fields, we generate an interdisciplinary framework to more fully explain positionality in the U.S. racial hierarchy. Our framework posits that groups and individuals can vary in their proximity to the culturally-dominant group, White Americans, in terms of at least three critical dimensions—perceived cultural cache (i.e., being seen as more “American”), social status, and phenotypic (or physical) appearance. Critically, we posit that perceived distance from an idealized White prototype should predict prejudice and discrimination (but not stereotyping) and that this distance from Whiteness construct should be particularly useful for explaining the marginalization of groups without clear group prototypes. By considering how groups and individuals vary along these dimensions, this framework can make predictions for both broader categories (by considering culture and status) and specific individuals within social groups (by incorporating phenotypic cues). In doing so, this framework can offer a parsimonious way to explain a broader range of marginalization experiences among many of the fastest-growing and emerging social groups, such as multiracial or Latine Americans.

Duke Scholars

Author Maureen Alyson Craig Psychology & Neuroscience