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I am interested in pushing race scholarship past the point of simply mapping racial inequality onto a set of taken-for-granted racial categories. My research asks the question "what is race" and explores themes related to the origins of racialization and racialized social outcomes, the slipperiness of racial categories, and how physical appearance maps on to and intersects with race. I explore the origins of racial inequality, the origins of colorism, and draw empirical connections between historical origins and contemporary forms of racialized inequality. Moreover, I am investigating racial differences in health outcomes related to body weight discrimination and the intersections of fatness, race, and skin tone

 

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Publications

Reece, Robert L. 2022. “Freedom to Resist: The Story of John Henry Sylvester and Strike City, Mississippi.” Journal of Mississippi History.

Reece, Robert L. 2022. “'Is it better to be fat than ugly?': the effect of physical attractiveness, body size, and race on individual income.” SN: Social Sciences.

Reece, Robert L. 2022. “Slave Past, Modern Lives: An Analysis of the Legacy of Slavery and Contemporary Life Expectancy.” Journal of Black Studies.

Reece, Robert L. 2021. “The Missing Social Movement: Colorism in Black America.” Interface.

Reece, Robert L. 2021. "The Future of American Blackness: On Colorism and Racial Reorganization" Review of Black Political Economy.

Reece, Robert L. 2020. "The Gender of Colorism: Understanding the Intersection of Skin Tone and Gender Inequality" Journal of Economics, Race, and Policy.

 

Reece, Robert L. 2019. “Coloring Racial Fluidity: How Skin Tone Shapes Multiracial Adolescents’ Racial Identity Changes.” Race and Social Problems.

Reece, Robert L. 2019. “Whitewashing Slavery: Legacy of Slavery and White Social Outcomes” Social Problems

Reece, Robert L. 2018. "Color Crit: Critical Race Theory and the History and Future of Colorism in the US." Journal of Black Studies

Reece, Robert L. 2018. “Coloring Weight Stigma: On Race, Colorism, Weight Stigma, and the Failure of Additive Intersectionality." Sociology of Race and Ethnicity

Reece, Robert L. 2018. “Genesis of U.S. Colorism and Skin Tone Stratification: Slavery, Freedom, and Mulatto-Black Occupational Inequality in the Late 19th Century.” Review of Black Political Economy 

O'Connell, Heather A. and Robert L. Reece. 2018. "Quantitative Studies of Place and Spatial Regression Analysis: A Study of the Legacy of Slavery in the U.S. South." Sage Research Methods Cases.

Reece, Robert L. and Maggie Hardy. 2017. "Moving Beyond Metrics: A Primer for Hiring and Promoting a Diverse Workforce in Entomology and Other Natural Sciences." Annals of the Entomological Society of America.

Reece, Robert L. and Aisha A. Upton. 2017. "How Skin Tone Shapes Civic Engagement Among Black Americans." Pp. 157-177 in Color Struck: How Race and Complexion Matter in the "Color-Blind" Era edited by L. L. Martin, H. D. Horton, C. Herring, V. M. Keith, and M. Thomas.

Reece, Robert L. 2016. “What Are You Mixed With?: An Analysis of Perceived Attractiveness, Skin Tone, and Mixed Raciality.” The Review of Black Political Economy

 

Reece, Robert L. and Heather A. O’Connell. 2016. “How the Legacy of Slavery and Racial Composition Shape Public School Enrollment in the American South.” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity

 

Reece, Robert L. 2015 “The Plight of the Black Belle Knox: Race, College, Web Cam Models, and the Internet.” Porn Studies

 

Reece, Robert. 2014. “Blacking Up Critical Whiteness: Dave Chappelle as a Race Theorist.” Pp. 69-90 in (Re)positioning Race: Prophetic Research in a Post-Racial Obama Era edited by S. Barnes, Z. Robinson, and E. Wright III. New York: SUNY Press.

Reece, Robert. 2014.
“Sex as Subversion: The Ethnosexual Protestor and the Ethnosexual Defender” Pp. 105-116 in Routledge International Handbook of Race Class and Gender edited by S. Jackson. New York: Routledge.

 

Download my entire CV here. 

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