The goal of this study is to examine racial residential segregation in U.S. metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas. The study uses 1990-2010 decennial census data to answer a broad theoretical question: is the historical black-white color line being replaced by a black-nonblack or white-nonwhite color line? The results show that blackwhite segregation is higher than black-nonblack and white-nonwhite segregation in metropolitan areas, nonmetropolitan areas, and the United States as a whole. A multivariate analysis reveals that population size tends to be associated with higher segregation in metropolitan areas and lower segregation in nonmetropolitan areas. As a control variable, diversity seems to play an important role in segregation by U.S. region. The study concludes that further research is needed to examine how the color line might change, especially in nonmetropolitan areas, which experienced rapid minority population growth during the 2000s.

This thesis investigates the notion, perception and mediation of whiteness in the Swedish-American immigrant newspapers coverage of lynchings of African-Americans between 1900–1922 and how the editors, of both the larger bourgeois and the smaller socialist and communist press, deployed it in the construction of the racial Swedish-American identity to mirror the contemporary American racial hierarchy.  A main departure point is that the Swedish-American identity, in part, was constructed in relation to other racialized groups in America but also to already existing groups in the American society such as the Anglo-Saxons, as the hegemon of what constituted whiteness, but also the descendants of African slaves as the polar opposite.  A crucial claim is that the Swedish-American immigrant group were socialized into the racial hierarchy of the contemporary American society by the Swedish-American newspapers. This was possible due to the Swedish-American bourgeois press normalized the victimization of the African-American community in regards to the practice of lynchings, both by how they reported on lynching cases but also by the very placement of news articles.  This study has shown that, with the exception of the communist press, the Swedish-American press participated in the practice of lynchings by reproducing and mediating different aspects of African-Americans Otherness and blackness to their readers by creating a color line between white and non-white Americans.

Chesnutt's short stories collection The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line (1899). Charles Chesnutt wrote two short stories which are "The Sheriff's Children" and "Her Virginia Mammy." He wrote them with white audiences in mind. In “The Sheriff’s Children,” Chesnutt presents Tom as a protagonist, his father Sheriff Campbell, and his half-sister Polly. In “Her Virginia Mammy,” he mentions Clara as a protagonist, her love Dr. Winthrop, and her mother Mrs. Harper. Chesnutt records their struggles in Post-Reconstruction North Carolina. He romanticized his characters’ difficult ethical decisions related to racial identity to illustrate more dramatically the consequences of their oppression. “The Sheriff’s Children” and “Her Virginia Mammy” both illustrate the ethical dilemmas of their protagonists, demonstrating to Chesnutt’s white readers the struggles and losses of black and biracial families.

Previous studies of interracial couples' residential outcomes in the United States have limited their focus to a truncated selection of interracial couple-types. To provide a more complete understanding of the residential patterns of interracial couples and how they fit into the contemporary color line, I assess an expanded set of interracial and monoracial couple-types' outcomes in percentage White, entropy, and neighborhood income. I do this by employing multiple OLS regression analysis using data from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act from 2005 to 2015. My results suggest that different types of interracial couples follow residential patterns that are distinctive from those of monoracial White couples and in many instances, from those of their monoracial couple-type counterparts.

Color (sub)Conscious explores the African American female's experience with colorism. Divided into three distinct sections. The first section is a literary analysis of such works as Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Gloria Naylor's The Women of Brewster Place, Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Alice Walker's "If the Present Looks Like the Past, What Does the Future Look Like?" an essay from her collection In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens. The second section is a research project based on data gathered from 12 African American females willing to share their own experiences and insights on colorism. The final section is a creative non-fiction piece of the author's own personal pain growing up and living with the lasting effects of colorism.

À la Martinique au XVIIIe siècle, les « libres de couleur », qu’ils soient nés libres ou affranchis, noirs ou métis, forment une catégorie juridique distincte des Blancs et des esclaves. L’étude comparée, avec les territoires espagnols ou anglais, montre qu’aucune réglementation légale n’a officialisé un passage de la catégorie Libre de couleur à celle de Blanc dans les colonies françaises de la fin du XVIIe siècle à la Révolution française. Aussi, cette thèse se propose de montrer les processus officieux qui ont permis à certaines personnes – les « assimilés » – de franchir la barrière de couleur. Une réflexion a été menée sur le préjugé de couleur, système raciste dont l’idéologie, soutenue par la réglementation locale, a légitimé la construction collective d’un ordre public et social. Puis, on a examiné l’élaboration de la barrière de couleur. Les libres de couleur ont été les premiers à faire les frais de l’imperméabilisation de la ligne de démarcation et des problèmes posés par la pureté de sang ; mais les Blancs mésalliés, dans le cadre d’unions interraciales, et les Amérindiens ont aussi été visés. Enfin nous avons réfléchi à ce qui faisait la blancheur et aux stratégies adoptées pour réussir ce changement de statut. Le notariat et les 33 000 actes des registres paroissiaux traités ont donné lieu à la reconstitution de généalogies pour examiner des individus et des familles sur plusieurs générations ; on a ainsi observé l’importance du phénotype, le blanchiment, la légitimité des relations, les conjoints privilégiés, le choix des réseaux, les niveaux de fortune et l’usage de l’espace. / In Martinique in the eighteenth century, the "free people of color", both those free by birth and freedmen, black or mixed race, form a legal category, which was distinct from those of whites and slaves. Comparative studies with Spanish or English territories show that no legal regulation formalized a shift - from the category of free colored people to that of White - in the French colonies between the late seventeenth century and the French Revolution. Also, this thesis proposes to show the informal process that enabled some people - the "assimilated" - to cross the color barrier. I analysed the color prejudice, a racist system, whose ideology, supported by local regulations, legitimized the collective construction of a public and social order. In a second step, I examined the development of the color bar. The free colored people were the first to bear the brunt of the impermeability of the demarcation line and of the problems posed by the purity of blood; but some whites, through interracial unions, and Native Americans have also been targeted. Finally I thought about what made the whiteness, and the strategies to achieve whiteness, change in status. Notarial acts and 33,000 acts of parish registers treaties led to the reconstitution of genealogies, in order to examine individuals and families over generations; I observed the importance of the phenotype, whitening, legitimacy relations, privileged partners, choice of networks, wealth levels and the use of space.

History of African American underclass community in northwestern DeKalb County, Georgia, from its settling in the late-1920s to its present displacement through gentrification. Thesis is that black underclass communities are the result of America's historic racism and subordination of blacks, whose members are left little choice but to engage in illegality as survival strategies. The work reveals the hard-work routines of people relegated to the bottom of American society, as well as their fun-loving leisure activities and embracing of vice as pleasurable. Established during Jim Crow segregation, Lynwood Park cultivated a reputation for danger and toughness to keep out outsiders, so that its children could have some semblance of a "normal" upbringing. The community's color line was then patrolled by dangerous men who created somebodiness for themselves as tough protectors, which ensured that they would be emulated as heroes. The work records the social and cultural history of the community as recalled and interpreted by residents in an oral interview project. Covers community organizations and institutions, such as churches and schools, as well as tensions within the community and tensions against both the white and black outside. Records social life of partying, hog killings, barbecues, baseball, drag racing. Includes culture of illegality and vice, school desegregation, racism, and the community's relationship to DeKalb County, its affluent white neighbors, and the various dynamics that eventually led to the displacement of the traditional black residents. The work challenges the golden-age-of-the-ghetto argument and demonstrates that Lynwood Park suffered from intragroup tensions and was not a safe cocoon for all its residents. The interviews also reveal that many children were left behind in the community's school during segregation because institutional caring generally rallied around only those children who demonstrated academic potential and a desire to eschew the negative dynamics of the enclave's street life. The work also demonstrates the ways in which whites were implicated in promoting, and profiting from, the community's illegality, which led to the eventual displacement of the traditional black residents.