SAS Professor and Grad Student Honored for Best Scholarly Article
April 2006
History professor Michael Katz and sociology doctoral student Jamie Fader along with Mark Stern, a professor in the School of Social Policy & Practice, have been selected by the Organization of American Historians to receive the 2006 Binkley-Stephenson Award. The honor goes to the best scholarly article published in the organization's Journal of American History during the preceding year. The Organization of American Historians is the largest learned society and professional organization dedicated to the teaching and study of the American past.
Katz is the Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History. His work has focused on three major areas: the history of American education, the history of urban social structure and family organization, and the history of social welfare and poverty. Fader's research interests include deviance, urban culture and inequality, the effects of correctional interventions, the re-entry of incarcerated youth and transitions to adulthood.
The article by Katz, Stern and Fader, "The New African American Inequality," is an ambitious essay exploring some of the most dramatic changes in U.S. society during the 20th century. Using census data, the authors illuminate and analyze the evolution of black/white inequality, from the monolithic forms of the Jim Crow era down through the subtler, more complex patterns that appeared by the end of the 20th century. The formal outlawing of segregation and discrimination, they demonstrate, significantly expanded individual opportunity for some, thereby permitting the growth and prosperity of the country's black middle class. The authors show just as clearly that severe economic inequality remained a fact of life for a large segment of the African American population.