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Purpose – Differential racialization experiences influence ethnic and racial self-identification. This research assesses how ethnic self-identification colors perceptions perceived discrimination and how this in turn influences adolescent depressive symptomatology.

Methodology/Approach – We use the second wave of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS) to examine the children of Caribbean immigrants. This research uses descriptive statistics, bivariate, and multivariate analyses to test hypotheses. The primary statistical method used is linear regression with OLS estimators.

Findings – Variations in the depression score exist among the racial/ethnic groups, with those identifying as non-black Antillean experiencing greater depression than the other three groups, and those identifying as white Cuban experiencing the lowest depression levels. The findings also show that some of this association is due to perceived discrimination.

Research Limitations/Implications – Future research should examine the association between discrimination and mental health longitudinally. We did not explore this option due to the lack of availability of relevant variables across multiple waves of the study.

Originality/Value of Paper – The results have implications for better understanding the second generation and elucidate how race and ethnicity shape adolescent perceptions of discrimination, and how these perceptions, in turn, are associated with mental health.

To provide a view of Rob Kling's contribution to socio‐technical studies of work.

The five “big ideas” discussed are signature themes in Kling's own work in the informatics domain, and of his intellectual legacy.

This paper conveys something of Kling's presence in social informatics (SI) thinking by focusing on a number of “big” ideas – “multiple points of view”, “social choices”, “the production lattice” (and its corollary, the problematization of the user), “socio‐technical interaction networks”, and “institutional truth regimes”.

A growing research community has demonstrated the power of SI techniques. It is essential that this body of work is sustained and developed, demonstrating how to undertake investigation and observation, that is not driven by instrumentalism but is informed by and leads to “technological realism”.

The SI corpus, exposing the dangers of naïve instrumentalism as an approach to information systems design and management, can guide practitioners on how to unpack the history of what is in view. This may be a specific technology, a social formation, or a sociotechnical circumstance. Practitioners may draw on the concepts presented, not as a prescriptive toolkit, but rather as a sensitizing frame to assist those who wish to re‐vision the workplace.

Central to the successful utilisation of computers in work, we argue, is the continuing development of a portfolio of interpretive concepts (such as STINs, regimes of truth, production lattices) that can consolidate Rob Kling's “big” ideas that are the core of this paper.

Research has shown that for young adults, marital attitudes (e.g., desire, importance, and expectation) are associated with relationship quality. However, how this association plays out for young adults of color is less known. Additionally, the influence of skin tone perception on the relationship between marital attitudes and relationship quality remains understudied. To explore these associations, the authors examined African American and Latinx young adults (N = 57, M_age = 20.71 years, SD = 1.28; 75.4% female) attending a Midwestern university. Exploratory results indicated that marital expectations were positively associated with relationship quality in that young adults who expected to marry one day, reported greater relationship satisfaction, commitment, and intimacy in their current relationships. Additionally, skin tone perception moderated the association between marital attitudes and relationship quality in two ways (i.e., between expectations and satisfaction and between importance and intimacy). Collectively, findings suggest that differing levels of marital attitudes and skin tone perception contributes to young adults’ perceptions of relationship quality. Considering these psychological factors of attitudes, skin tone perception, and relationship quality, together with systemic racial/ethnic discrimination, the authors discuss future research and practice considerations.

To extend the work of Rob Kling, whose research interests, and advocacy were at the center of a movement in analytical inquiry and empirical research now known as “social informatics”.

Reviews the work of those who engage in social informatics research to strengthen and further the conceptual perspective, analytical approaches, and intellectual contributions of social informatics.

The vibrant and growing international community of active social informatics scholars has assembled a social informatics resource kit that includes: perspective lenses through which research data can be viewed critically; techniques for building theory and developing models from socially rich empirical data; and a common body of knowledge regarding the uses and effects of ICTs.

The paper identifies opportunities to engage new scholars in social informatics discussions, and suggests new venues for promoting and extending the work of scholars already enrolled in the social informatics movement.

This paper considers the available documentation on the Virtual Colombo Plan (or VCP for short), launched by the World Bank and the Australian Government in 2001. The Plan is one of the World Bank’s key projects for encouraging greater use of information and communications technologies (ICTs) in developing countries, with a focus on the using ICTs for education, as well as for economic benefits.

In this special section of Political Power and Social Theory, we present the work of scholars from various disciplines documenting and analyzing the Obama phenomenon. The work in this section, including both theoretical and empirical analysis, is an early step in the much-needed academic discussion on Obama and racial politics in the contemporary United States. We offer this compendium as a call-to-arms to progressives and leftists, encouraging the revival of radical critique of Obama's discourse and policies instead of the fulsome praise or confused silence that has so far greeted Obama from the left.

This essay tackles the Obama “phenomenon,” from his candidacy to his election, as a manifestation of the new “color-blind racism” that has characterized U.S. racial politics in the post-civil rights era. Rather than symbolizing the “end of race,” or indeed a “miracle,” Obama's election is a predictable result of contemporary U.S. electoral politics. In fact, Obama is a middle-of-the-road Democrat whose policies since taking office have been almost perfectly in line with his predecessors, especially in terms of his failure to improve the lot of blacks and other minorities. In this essay, I review the concept of color-blind racism and its application to the Obama phenomenon. I also revisit some of my past predictions for Obama's presidency and evaluate their accuracy halfway through his term. Finally, I offer suggestions for constructing a genuine social movement to push Obama and future politicians to provide real, progressive “change we can believe in.”

This chapter is based on a chapter I added for the third edition of my book, Racism without Racists. Louise Seamster, a wonderful graduate student at Duke, helped me update some material, locate new sources, and rework some sections, as well as abridge some of the many footnotes (interested readers can consult the chapter). I kept the first person to maintain the more direct and engaged tone of the original piece and because the ideas (the good, the bad, and the ugly ones) in the chapter are mine, and thus, I wish to remain entirely responsible for them.

This work examines the intersection between traditional human resource management and the novel employment arrangements of the expanding gig economy. While there is a substantial multidisciplinary literature on the digital platform labor phenomenon, it has been largely centered on the experiences of gig workers. As digital labor platforms continue to grow and specialize, more managers, executives, and human resource practitioners will need to make decisions about whether and how to utilize gig workers. Here the authors explore and interrogate the unique features of human resource management (HRM) activities in the context of digital labor platforms. The authors discuss challenges and opportunities regarding (1) HRM in organizations that outsource labor needs to external labor platforms, (2) HRM functions within digital labor platform firms, and (3) HRM policies and practices for organizations that develop their own spin-off digital labor platform. To foster a more nuanced understanding of work in the gig economy, the authors identify common themes across these contexts, highlight knowledge gaps, offer recommendations for future research, and outline pathways for collecting empirical data on HRM in the gig economy.

This chapter examines whether the racial identification of mixed-race adolescents can be understood through several theories: Status Maximization Theory, the rule of hypodescent, or social identity theory. Status Maximization theory posits that mixed-race adolescents will attempt to identify as the highest racial status group they possibly can. The rule of hypodescent or hypodescent theory, also known as the one-drop rule, is a legacy of the Plantation-era South and prescribes that mixed-race individuals identify as their lowest status racial identity. Social identity theory posits that the higher frequency or quality of contacts with parents or individuals in mixed-race adolescents’ peer networks affect the racial identification of mixed-race adolescents. Also, social identity contends that a mixed-race adolescent's intergroup dynamic (measured here as a child's level of self-esteem, whether there is prejudice at school, and a child's self-concept) dictates how he or she will racially identify. Through analyses of mixed-race adolescents in the National Longitudinal Adolescent Health (Add Health), I find that Asian-white and American-Indian-white adolescents do not status maximize nor abide by hypodescent, while black-white adolescents do not status maximize but do adhere to hypodescent when forced to choose one race. There is no tendency for the frequency or quality of contact with parents, romantic partners, or school composition to affect racial identity, as predicted by social identity theory. Yet, several of the aforementioned social-psychological variables are found to influence the racial identification of mixed-race adolescents. Specifically, whether they felt positively about school, if they experienced prejudice, whether they had higher levels of self-esteem, and if they felt socially accepted by their peers. Another key finding from this research suggests that racial identification for Asian-white and American-Indian-white adolescents are both fluid and optional; this is not the case for black-white adolescents. I conclude by offering the implications of these findings for black-white multiracial individuals.

A social skill is similar to a skill found in a workplace that involves social interaction. The hallmark of a social skill is the smooth progression toward a goal. As with other workplace skills, social skills have both cognitive and behavioral components (Attwood, 2003). According to Webster's New World Dictionary (1986), a social skill is a “developmental tool used to interact and communicate with others to assist status in the social structure and other motivations” (p. 23). This means that social rules and social relations are created, communicated, and changed in verbal and nonverbal ways creating social complexity useful in identifying outsiders. The process of learning these skills is called socialization (Barry & Burlew, 2004). Specific examples of social skills may include initiating, responding, and keeping interactions going; greeting others and conversing on a variety of topics; giving and accepting compliments; taking turns and sharing; asking for help and helping others; and including others in activities (Wahlberg, Rotatori, Deisinger, & Burkhardt, 2003). Simply put, social skills are the behaviors we use to work and socialize with other people. As Walker, Todis, Holmes, and Horton (1988) pointed out, social skills are defined as social responses and skills that (a) allow one to initiate and maintain positive relationships with others, (b) contribute to peer acceptance and to a successful classroom adjustment, and (c) allow one to cope effectively and adaptively with the social environment.