Read on Twitter
so I’m just seeing this thread and while I agree that this is a particularly unique and constrained job market year, I’m not so sure how disproportionate the calls for “race scholarship” actually is among listed subfields. https://twitter.com/weedenkim/status/1346555012005191681
for instance, racial and ethnic minorities (SREM) is one of the largest sections. people in the section are part of a wide array of other popular subfields — education, political, family, crim, health, etc. I’d say most of these folks don’t necessarily ID as race scholars first.
I know a lot of folks who do race who call themselves social stratification sociologists. so, maybe race is being emphasized in many calls (from what I’ve seen it’s race *AND* health or crim or gender/class) but I think that accurately captures a wide swath of sociologists.
also, this year may not actually be an anomaly — back in the 2012-13 cycle, race and ethnicity was high among advertised positions:
many of us who were on the 2016-17 job market cycle have joked that the 2020-21 cycle is a repeat of that hiring cycle. I’ve literally seen some of the same positions I applied for then or that friends applied for them listed again this cycle.
looking at data for 2018-19 cycle job advertisements, race was again in the top (shoutout to @zra_research finding these graphs). so, race being listed among say, the top 10 specializations departments want to hire in precedes this 2020-21 hiring cycle.
what I imagine is an underlying concern is that so-called race jobs are often understood as closeted “diversity hire” positions where a department also wants to try to hire a POC. I think that unspoken assumption informs why folks might be rankled by an “increase” in race hires.
what I would be interested in seeing is how many of these race jobs are join hires with Ethnic Studies/Black Studies/Women’s and Gender Studies.
I’d also love to know how many of these race jobs are cluster hires. cluster hires are a strategy to recruit and retain POC.
I’d also love to know how many of these race jobs are cluster hires. cluster hires are a strategy to recruit and retain POC.
I also am thinking about how departments are necessarily looking to round out faculty expertise so much as they want to make sure certain classes get offered. there are still many departments that don’t even offer a graduate course solely focused on race/ethnicity/racism.
we also know that many ASA sections focused on race and sexualities are highly populated by graduate student members. so clearly graduate students have interests in these areas.
there’s also that infamous 2007 ASA resesrch brief on the pipeline “leak” for Black undergraduates through to PhD holders — Black students are disproportionately sociology majors as undergrads. yet they are not disproportionately among our degree holders or faculty.
many Black scholars (not all but many) have an interest in race in addition to some other subfield.
we should think about how race is an important interest for a population of our students who are disproportionately likely to major in our field. race and ethnicity is in demand.
we should think about how race is an important interest for a population of our students who are disproportionately likely to major in our field. race and ethnicity is in demand.
(this could also be my opportunity to point out that I don’t see how you do *any* sociology without attention to race/racism because it is embedded in everything — even if you only study middle class white people — but maybe those are just fighting words 
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