As an academic field of study, sociology clearly encompasses many issues that have important effects upon the lives of people of color in the U.S., such as racial discrimination, education, income and wealth inequality, crime and violence, etc. But the question becomes, how well represented are students of color in sociology? A new comprehensive study on this question presents a decidedly mixed picture:

[U]nderrepresented minority groups are more widely represented in sociology than in other social science disciplines: About 15 percent of sociology Ph.D. recipients are black or Hispanic, compared to 13.1 percent in political science, 8.3 percent in economics and 12.8 percent in psychology. . . .

While both black and Hispanic students are more likely than their white peers to report a desire to go to graduate school (with 63.5 percent of black students and 57.4 percent of Hispanic students, compared to 40.9 percent of white students, indicating plans to attend), they are also far more likely to report plans to attend graduate school part-time while working. . . .

The study finds that the ratio of black to white students, 1 to 4, stays constant through the awarding of master’s degrees but that it falls, based on 2004 data, to 1 to 9 among Ph.D. recipients. The study reports that 85 percent of black master’s graduates are lost from the pipeline at the Ph.D. level, compared to 51 percent of their white counterparts. . . .

Black and Hispanic instructors are also far more likely to get tenure-track jobs, with 71.8 percent of black applicants and 63.6 percent of Hispanic ones gaining tenure-track positions, compared to 57.6 percent of white applicants and just 31.3 percent of Asian candidates. . . .

But while “the protected minorities,” in Spalter-Roth’s words, seem to be in demand on the job market, and will be more handsomely rewarded financially at the full professor level than their white counterparts, with black full professors making $1.30 for every white full professor’s dollar, they are far less likely than their white counterparts to persist through the tenure process.

As you can see, there is both good news and bad news in regard to how Black and Latino students fare in terms of “succeeding” in the sociology discipline. The good news is that they are more likely to have success in sociology than in other academic fields, are more likely to want to attend grad school than Whites, are more likely to get a tenure-track job, and likely to make more money than Whites once they reach full professor status.

The bad news is that they are more likely to attend grad school part time than Whites, are less likely to receive mentoring once in grad school, are more likely drop out of grad school altogether, and are less likely to persist through the entire tenure and academic career ladder than Whites.

The article notes that mentoring in grad school seems to play a large role in increasing the chances that Black and Latino sociology grad students will succeed in the discipline. In fact, this finding consistently appears as a crucial factor in many studies of academic and career success, whether it relates to all grad students in general or female minority lawyers, etc. In other words, social support goes a long way toward facilitating professional success.

Now, perhaps we can pay a little more attention to the finding that Asian American sociology grad students are the least likely of all groups to end up with a tenure track job. Stay tuned . . .