Inequality and Multiracial Gatekeeping

East Carolina University, Greenville NC

Investigators

Abstract

This research studies the impact of racial status on gatekeeper-client relations. Gatekeepers control access to "benefits" they do not own, benefits that are valued by "clients." Seeking access to those benefits, clients assume obligations which may be discharged by a fee paid to the gatekeeper. Employment agents, car salesmen, real estate agents are gatekeepers because they control access to jobs, cars and housing respectively as well as information about each. When clients are lower status, for example African American, employment agents may steer them to lower paid, less desirable jobs, car salesmen may ask for and receive higher prices, and real estate agents may show only segregated housing. This research will experimentally test the impact of racial status differences on gatekeeping. Do African American gatekeepers gain smaller fees from White clients? What happens when Whites are gatekeepers? Do African American clients pay higher fees for the access they seek? And what is the impact of the race of the person to whom clients seek access? These questions are important for both practical and theoretical reasons. The research findings will help us better understand the continuing effects of status differences and stratification on everyday life. Multiracial gatekeeping is studied in the context of exchange networks. For example, B is the gatekeeper when an A - B exchange must be completed before A may exchange with C. B is the gatekeeper because A, acting in the role of client, must gain B's consent to exchange before gaining access to and exchanging with C. As a part of the research, a measure of the quantitative impact of race differences is developed, along with hypotheses drawn from that measure. The research uses a 2 x 2 x 2 (race of A, race of B, race of C) design to test hypotheses. Funded by the Digital Library Initiative at the National Science Foundation, ExNet will be used to produce exchange relations among actors. Subjects seated in separate rooms negotiate through connected PCs using only mouse control. ExNet shows the network being investigated as an active display on each subject's screen. Subjects click icons to make and reject offers and to complete exchanges. Broader Impacts Findings will advance understandings of discriminatory practices in which power over racial minorities is grounded jointly in structure and status. Formal sociological theory is extended through new bridges between Network Exchange Theory and Status Characteristics Theory; perhaps the most extensively tested formal theories in sociology. More generally, results of will show how racially grounded status differences affect access to commodities that people value, potentially shedding light on one of the systemic, structural ways in which discrimination persists. While the research focuses on the impact of race on gatekeeping, the underlying theoretical process is not limited to racial status. It applies to any gatekeeping setting where "status characteristic" (identifiable attribute of individuals that carries with it cultural beliefs and/or evaluations of worthiness and competence) becomes salient. Gender, age, beauty and sexual orientation, for example, are all status characteristics, and when they become salient in a gatekeeper-client relationship, their effects should be the same as those predicted for racial status.