Abstract
Migration enforcement, gender in court, and meritocratic myths in the NBA.
the myth of meritocracy in the nba
We often think of professional sports as a pure meritocracy where performance alone determines success. In the National Basketball Association (NBA), teams keep detailed records of each player’s performance statistics, publish salaries, and set contracts in a highly competitive market. This transparency should theoretically limit bias. Yet some players’ careers advance more quickly than others, even when their performance statistics closely match. In a study recently published in Socius, sociologist Di Shao examined the role of racism in shaping these uneven career paths by analyzing differences in job stability between Black and white NBA players.
Drawing on data from more than 4,500 NBA contracts signed between 1990 and 2022, Shao focused on two measures of employment stability: contract length and contract renewal. The NBA’s precise quantification of individual players’ performances enabled Shao to compare players with similar performance measures. The results revealed clear and consistent racial gaps. Even when holding numerous factors constant in addition to individual performance, including salary, age, position, and overall team performance, Black players received shorter nonentry-level contracts than white players and were less likely to be re-signed by their current team. Further analysis showed that racial differences in shorter and less stable contracts could not be explained by decisions among Black players to strategically choose leaving their teams for better opportunities elsewhere.
These findings call attention to racial gaps that persist even in highly elite and ostensibly meritocratic jobs. Moreover, inequality at work does not stop at pay: Job security, too, is unevenly distributed. Shao’s study illustrates that even organizations that appear equitable on paper can still produce racially unequal outcomes.
Even when holding numerous factors constant, Black players received shorter nonentry-level contracts than white players and were less likely to be re-signed by their current team.
iStock Photo // tomeng
why some parks still don’t feel public
For many, visiting a park offers an easy way to relax, exercise, or spend time with family. But access to public space has never been equal. During the mid-twentieth century, hundreds of U.S. towns adopted “sundown” practices that relied on violence, intimidation, and the law to enforce a curfew on Black residents. Although many treat these towns as relics of the past, sociologist David Rigby and colleagues found that their legacy still impacts who feels welcome in public spaces today. In a recent study published in Ethnic and Racial Studies, the authors combined historical data on sundown towns with cellphone mobility data from Missouri to examine whether these exclusionary practices continue to influence how often people use public parks. Even when parks are a similar distance away and similar in size, residents of majority-Black neighborhoods visit parks located within former sundown boundaries with far less frequency than residents of majority-white neighborhoods.
Activities that seem neutral, like visiting a park, reflect a history of exclusion that continues to influence who feels welcome and entitled to inhabit public space.
iStock Photo // Nikola Stojadinovic
The researchers identified two reasons for this pattern. First, segregation: Sundown towns historically pushed Black communities away from resource-rich areas, leading to the concentration of parks in predominantly white neighborhoods. Second, avoidance: Over time, people came to see these parks as “white spaces” where Black visitors are more likely to face surveillance, discomfort, or exclusion, even decades after formal sundown practices ended.
Racial violence leaves lasting marks on everyday life. Activities that seem neutral, like visiting a park, reflect a history of exclusion that continues to influence who feels welcome and entitled to inhabit public space. This study reminds us that dismantling inequality requires confronting the long shadow of racial control in our public places.
deterrence doesn’t work
Migration control around the world often relies on deterrence as a strategy designed to persuade most people against migrating across borders. According to this logic, the high risk of deportation associated with excessive enforcement should compel undocumented migrants to return to their countries of origin. In The Sociological Quarterly, social scientists Jihye Park and Rene Rocha examined a specific deterrence-based policy—the Secure Communities (S-Comm) program—to test this logic. Piloted under President George W. Bush’s second administration in 2008 and expanded under President Barack Obama between 2011 and 2013, S-Comm mandated that local law enforcement share arrestees’ biometric data with the federal government to identify deportable non-U.S. citizens, even when they had not been convicted of a crime.
Research demonstrates the ineffectiveness of deterrence-based policies designed to prevent migration across the U.S.-Mexico border.
iStock Photo // Photo Beto
The authors found no evidence that S-Comm influenced migration decisions among undocumented migrants. But other factors did matter. For instance, they found that Mexican migrants without papers were more likely to return to Mexico from the United States if they were seasonal laborers, had only been in the country for a short period of time, or lacked relatives with U.S. citizenship.
These findings matter because ICE enforcement has become highly visible in cities far beyond the U.S.-Mexico border and phrases like “self-deportation” are commonly used in politics and the media. Although S-Comm is no longer in use, the authors’ findings add to a large body of research showing the ineffectiveness of deterrence-based migration policies and how such politically motivated policies reliant on overly simplistic understandings of migration can cause real harm to both migrant and native-born communities.
judging womanhood in court
Many assume that the criminal justice system treats women with leniency, based on the common perception (whether true or otherwise) that women tend to be more frail or innocent than men. Sociologists Kylie Jaeyun Yim and colleagues tested this assumption in a recent study published in the American Journal of Sociology.
Analyzing Texas criminal cases between 1993 and 2015, the authors compared how courts treated men and women at multiple stages of the legal process. For first offenses, women were less likely to be convicted at every stage of the legal process when compared to men charged with the same crimes. Judges tended to offer these women more lenient alternative penalties like deferred adjudication, where defendants often avoided formal conviction through probationary periods and other court-ordered sanctions. In cases where judges could not exercise personal discretion, this gender gap disappeared. Meanwhile, this pattern reversed for repeat offenses, as judges penalized women more harshly when they had prior charges. Each prior charge increased women’s chances of being convicted far more than it did for men.
Judges’ beliefs about womanhood strongly bias court sentencing.
iStock Photo // BrianAJackson
These findings suggest that judges’ beliefs about womanhood and femininity strongly bias court sentencing. When judges had discretion, they tended to show disproportionate lenience toward women. However, that same discretion led judges to punish women more harshly when they violated expectations of femininity—namely, by having a criminal record.
the health tradeoffs of coal’s decline
Environmentalists and politicians alike point to improved public health as a benefit of transitioning away from fossil fuels like coal toward renewable energy. However, in an article published in Rural Sociology, sociologist Ryan P. Thombs and colleagues explore whether job loss and economic instability resulting from this transition can actually worsen public health outcomes in mining communities.
The authors analyzed how changes in coal production, miners’ working hours, and coal-mining employment at the county level impacted life expectancy. They found that reductions in miners’ working hours increased county-level life expectancy, meaning that fewer hours of exposure to coal mining improved one’s health. But at the same time, the authors found that the loss of coal mining jobs actually lowered life expectancy due to the negative health effects associated with unemployment and poverty. These findings show that while the environmental workplace hazards associated with coal mining can prematurely shorten the lifespan of both workers and surrounding communities, job loss and a lack of diverse employment opportunities may have similarly negative health effects. To improve public health, policymakers lobbying to eliminate coal jobs for health reasons should also seek opportunities to attract new jobs to their counties.
Although the environmental workplace hazards associated with coal mining can prematurely shorten the lifespans of both workers and surrounding communities, job loss and a lack of diverse employment opportunities may have similarly negative health effects.
iStock Photo // krblokhin
asking for favors
When we need a favor, we often turn to friends or family members because we think they are most likely to help. However, the larger the favor, the greater the risk of rejection, even from those closest to us. In an article published in The Sociological Quarterly, sociologist Andrew Chalfoun and colleagues examined how people make requests and why they approach them with optimism, even when the person they’re asking for help is likely to turn them down.
Drawing on audio and video recordings of everyday interactions across seven languages, the authors analyzed how people made “major requests,” or requests requiring a considerable investment of time and effort. The authors focused on two key features: whether speakers carefully tested the waters first with a pre-request or simply asked directly and whether the request’s wording anticipated agreement or refusal. Across different cultures, people overwhelmingly made these requests in ways that anticipated cooperation. Speakers rarely prepared for rejection, even though potential helpers initially resisted many major requests.
The authors argue that people around the world maintain social preferences for optimism. We rely on shared norms that treat cooperation as the default expectation even when such optimism may be misguided, with refusal very likely. Presuming goodwill, even in the face of probable disappointment, plays a key role in sustaining solidarity in everyday social life since cooperation often depends on help-seekers’ willingness to act as though their requests will be granted, despite their uncertainty.
Cooperation often depends on help-seekers’ willingness to act as though their requests will be granted, despite their uncertainty.
iStock Photo // Prostock-Studio
