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RACE AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
In light of a series of recent incidences involving communities of color, especially the African American community, phrases such as "lives matter," race matters," "social justice" and the like accent the continued significance of race in the United States. Its significance affects everyday life experiences, social status, opportunity structures and outcomes, power and influence, health status and many other aspects of social and political life (Jones, LaVeist, and Lillie-Blanton 1991; Omni and Winant 1994; Williams 1997). Social science scholars, having explored the social construction of race through both a macro perspective as well as through individual viewpoints and experiences, show how politics and power relations shape the racial order at all levels of society (Bonilla-Silva 1999; James 2001). In addition, political states can have interests in how the deployments of racial categories are accompanied by their associated hierarchies to serve the state's interests (Delgado and Harris 2013). In more authoritarian states, dominant groups tend to maintain and police racial boundaries through social closures and use of force. Concepts of outsiders and insiders, otherness, phenotypes, racism, discrimination, ideology are associated with the notion of race and the use of different categorical distinctions (Arrighi 2007; Cerulo 1997).
This paper represents a "meta- analysis" of social science empirically driven studies and examines how, in these studies, race is represented (i.e. conceptually, categorically, and dimensionally). This research also analyzes the characteristics of the principal investigator(s) (PI) and the period in which the studies were conducted. The central questions that will be explored are as follows: What is the manner in which race has been measured over time (1950-2012)? What has been the scope of race elements that extend beyond the categorization of specified racial groupings? That is, beside "what race are you," were the other items that attempt to capture the meaning and context of racial status in a person's "everyday" life experiences? Do personal characteristics of the PIs (i.e. race/ethnicity, gender, discipline, etc.) affect the nature and scope of dealing with race? Has a broader set of race-related properties increased over time in which surveys have been conducted? To reiterate, the way race has been measured including (or as well as) the breadth or scope of race-related measures is the central foci of...